Ben-Colayco
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Elsword adopts cute, cuddly, ferocious pets
Pet lovers, rejoice: Elsword Online is adding a brand-new pet system to the game. Pet haters, rejoice: Elsword is allowing you to torment furry balls of cuteness in order to turn them into killing machines. Once players hit level 10, they can select a pet to help them in their journeys. Right now there are only two types of pets in the game -- Pocket Phoru and Ancient Phoru -- although Kill3rCombo promises that more are coming soon. A pet can be trained as it grows through multiple stages of life, changing based on how the player treats it. Pets aid their masters with different types of attacks and buffs. Kill3rCombo's Ben Colayco sees the pet system as keeping in line with the overall tone of the game: "Introducing pets to Elsword adds another dimension to the game and allows players to become fully immersed in the comic book style world. By echoing character evolution and growth within the pet system, we wanted to reinforce that Elsword offers a unique and dynamic environment to players, while at the same time maintaining the key differentiators that set us apart, such as maturation of characters." [Source: Kill3rCombo press release]
Elsword Online launch day is here
What's better than launch day for Elsword Online? Well, free beer for everyone springs to mind, but since we can't afford the latter, you'll have to settle for the former. Kill3rCombo's action manga is the next best thing for fans of anime-themed MMOs, though. The free-to-play title sports a highly stylized look resulting in an original side-scroller that feels as much like a comic book as it does a video game. Elsword boasts three customizable player characters and fighting styles that evolve based on job class upgrades and a variety of skills and combos. Gameplay includes solo content and cooperative missions, and there's a bit of PvP for the competitive crowd as well. "By keeping with the original manga aesthetic and animation, we hope to give players easily accessible gameplay while also staying true to the game's Asian roots," says Ben Colayco, CEO of Kill3rCombo. Head to the game's official website to download the client and get started.
PAX East 2011: Will World of Warcraft ever go free-to-play?
It seems that every new MMORPG wants to bill itself as a "WoW killer." From Lord of the Rings Online to Age of Conan to (most recently) RIFT, everyone wants a piece of the most popular subscription-based MMORPG of all time. To date, World of Warcraft has weathered the competition. Its subscriber numbers have reached an all-time high (now over 12 million), with its latest Cataclysm expansion selling nearly 5 million copies in the first month alone. The game should remain popular and successful for years to come. Still, even Blizzard admits: It can't stay on top forever. So what happens when the game starts losing a significant amount of its subscriber base? If what happened to Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online is any clue, World of Warcraft might move to a free-to-play model. Since switching to free-to-play, both of Turbine's games added subscribers and increased revenues. This past weekend, I sat in on the free-to-play MMO panel held at the PAX East 2011 conference in Boston. Afterward, I caught up with Robert Ferrari, VP of Publishing and Business Development for Sanrio Digital (Hello Kitty Online), to discuss WoW. We discussed the free-to-play industry and whether or not World of Warcraft could eventually find a place in it. "WoW has to be looking at a free-to-play model currently," Ferrari theorized.
