MMO updates |
- Duke of Mount Deer Online - First impression
- Rusty Hearts (KR) - 4th character teased
- The Weekend Journal
| Duke of Mount Deer Online - First impression Posted: 20 Jun 2011 06:54 AM PDT  Before I begin, please be informed that this is just a small preview, with me barely scratching the core content even at level 40. Duke of Mount Deer Online is based on Louis Cha's final martial arts novel, developed for around 5 years by China MMO giant, ChangYou. While the game stays true to the novel in terms of storyline, characters etc, additional elements are added to boost the game's lore and content. Let's take a look!
And now, some brief footage of the early game. There are quests, tons of them right from the beginning. A nice feature is the automated mount system, where characters automatically mounts if the distance to the next location is further than a few steps. There are quite a few cut scenes as well. Continuing parts of the footage can be seen at my YouTube channel. As you can see, there are 2 followers and 1 golden floating blob aiding me in fights. One of them is the normal pet, one is a mercenary while the floating blob is actually a... Let's call it the Spirit (it is directly translated as Tail). For pets and mercenaries, players can actually hold up till 4 each and switch any time. They gain experience points as well through each fight and will evolve up to a tune of 10 stages. The Spirit can transform into the appearance of the last mob you fight and aid players in battle for a short time until the skill cools down and there is enough "Spirit points" to consume. It levels by feeding equipments to it. The skills available are also affect by the horoscope you chose when creating characters.
Let us now skip to around level 40, which is my current level after a few hours of gameplay. From level 30 and onwards, players will get to add stats for their characters. There will be prompts every time a level is gained, including suitable players to be my disciple or my master. Every time a new member is added into the guild, players have the option to send some Cash Shop credits or just a gesture to welcome him. If I missed out, there are quests which reward players with a small amount of Cash Shop gold. Talking about the social aspects of the game, there is also a family system which is different from the guild. There is a slightly worrying feature found in the experience system though. There are 2 different experience bars for each character, one being the normal experience while the other being the job experience points. Normal experience points are needed to upgrade skill levels together with in-game gold. If the character is level 40, skills can be upgraded to a maximum of 45 (5 above base level). All these need huge amount of gold and experience points. For job experience, the only way I have so far found to obtain it is through doing the class quests. However, the quests are mostly "go there and get something for me" or just playing mini-games at a NPC nearby within the class' main town. After level 30, job experience points are needed to level up the job (different from based character level) and also to upgrade the equipped Holy Gear. Holy Gear is different for each class and it acts as a bonus equipment to give extra stats to characters. It can also "reborn" and be upgraded into a stronger one... At a cost again. This part of the game seems very tedious to me.
Note that this is just the Closed Beta phase and the amount of content available is already very impressive, although it might overwhelm players as well. The English teaser website seems back online now, so have a read and understand more about the game as well! You can also read through my previous posts about the game.  | ||||||||||||||||
| Rusty Hearts (KR) - 4th character teased Posted: 20 Jun 2011 12:51 AM PDT  Rusty Hearts North America will be going into Closed Beta soon, and the Korean server today teased about the upcoming 4th character (shown above), the gun-slinging Natasha. From the teaser video below, it seems that she will be able to wield both dual pistols and rifles as well. And she comes packed with several AOE skills and the ability to dish out some insane combos! The official English website can be found here while more information is available here.  | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 19 Jun 2011 08:49 AM PDT  Hello folks, how was your week? Mine started off slow but suddenly picked up speed near the end of the week... phew. I am working on the small preview for ChangYou's multi-million MMORPG, Duke of Mount Deer Online and it is late due to some technical hiccups video wise. The game's graphics engine is nothing to wow about when compared to Unreal or CryEngine, but the content available will put most online games to shame. And yes, combat is still point and click, but leveling is really smooth and fast via questing. I will be starting my new role as a junior manager at a online publisher in a few hours, one which most probably hasn't heard of yet. I will try my very best to hear what the community has to say and at the same time balance with the company's goals. Fret not, the company will avoid from being a greedy money grabbing machine and become one which has a human touch... while making profits at the same time of course. My apologies for this short post, but my bed is summoning me! Have a good week ahead! Oh, and in case you do not know, all the female models I posted are connected to the online gaming world~   |
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