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E3 2009: Jade Dynasty at a glance
The third game in Perfect World's portfolio, Jade Dynasty, has been riding quietly in closed beta for a while. At this year's E3, however, the Jade Dynasty crew brought out their game and let us here at Massively take it for a test drive. They also hit us with an announcement as well -- Jade Dynasty will be jumping out of closed beta on June 15th, and a European server will be added in on that day as well.Overall, Jade Dynasty pulls much from Perfect World's other games: Perfect World and Ether Saga Online. The click on map to automatically move feature, cosmetic cash shop, and large amount of in-game quests returns, but a few new features have been added in that make this game a very interesting experience.Join us after the break as we break down Jade Dynasty's features, a few of which may be controversial for some gamers.
Angels Online first impression
Putting aside the whole concept of being a good angel tasked with protecting the people of Eden (Spoiler alert: They get kicked out. Guess you didn't do your job very well). Anyway, that aside, playing a cute little angel in Angels Online who must earn his or her wings via the tried-and-true tropes of killing and crafting has a fun factor built right in. Flying! You get to fly!But you aren't handed your halo, harp and wings from the moment you log in. You must learn the sacred jobs and responsibilities of an angel. And you must learn to slaughter those legendary enemies of angels, the Slarms. In her first impressions review of Angels Online, Ten Ton Hammer's Amber Weldon sets out to learn how to be an angel in a sinful world, from the stern lessons inflicted by Archangel Raphael, to her hours and days studying for her exams in the Lyceum, to her robot-assisted resource-gathering excursions.School? Lessons? Robots? If you're dying to become an angel (in Angels Online, that is), you'll definitely appreciate this clever first glimpse.[Ten Ton Hammer]
A first look at Mythos' Overworld
What do you call it when the developers of a hotly anticipated free-to-play Diablo-esque MMO decide at virtually the last minute to entirely redesign their game? You could call it crazy, or unwise, but developers of the upcoming title Mythos went ahead and did just that. Many of Flagship Studios' beta players said the game was more than ready to ship as it was, but it wasn't good enough for the developers. They combined all the instanced, single player overland zones into one massive continent, shared among all players. Instead of being reached by maps that led players through narrow paths to dungeons which looked identical from the outside, the devs placed the dungeons, Oblivion-like, through the world. For the past week, the folks at Flagship promised the Overworld Real Soon Now. A deathwatch was kept on the forums. It was going to be the next day, or the day after, or in a few hours. Players gathered on Mythos' IRC channel where devs tossed out tantalizing hints of what was to come. Then around 9pm EST dev Taylor Balbi advised everyone to re-patch and log in to the Test Center to see the Overworld. He gave some advice as people hurried to be the first into the new world. Test Center will be a separate server. Test Center and Beta Server will be online at the same time and require the same client. To tell which version you currently have, the login screen screen will make it obvious (two different ones). Test Center will start lagging after like 800 people, Mythos Beta won't. Taylor Balbi is Awesome. We think the other Flagship devs are pretty awesome as well. Though there were more than a few glitches with patching, we were able to eventually get in and take a quick run around some of the Overworld, its dungeons, the villages outside Stonehill, and the city of Stonehill itself. All we have left to wait for now is the open beta, expected in the next several weeks. Take a first look at Mythos' Overworld with us %Gallery-10781%
A look at METAbolt -- a non-graphical Second Life viewer
Ever log in to Second Life, run around awhile, and then shake your head and think, "this place is nothing but a glorified chat room! And that's what I like! I don't care about all this graphics stuff!" Well, frustrated, graphics-hating Second Life user, METAbolt has what you crave. When we heard someone had written a text-based Second Life client for computers that just couldn't hack the graphics, we were sort of expecting something like a regular graphical client, except where all the images were made of tiny little text characters... like the picture above, which is not from METAbolt, alas. (It's Second Life on Linux run through the aalib graphics-to-text library)As a chat room, though, METAbolt has some good points and some not so good points. For one, every time you log in, you are placed in the Welcome area. While this may be the fastest way to put you with potential chat-mates, it's not really the sort of thing you expect. Gone were all saved landmarks as well. You will arrive in the Welcome Area, and you will enjoy your time there.
