Travel in Age of Conan is never dull.

hordes, and ancient middle eastern mysticism. Age of Conan is subscription based, but it is well worth it, featuring cutting edge DirectX 10 graphics.

Age of Conan’s gameworld is lush and vibrant, owing this to the use of the Cheetah engine, with advanced shadowing and lighting, SpeedTree which provides a rich high quality of foliage rarely seen in MMORPG games, and Umbra which allows the world to be drawn to large distances, which really immerses you in the gameplay. The game contains three main countries namely: Cimmeria, an arctic land filled with mountains, snow and ice, Aquilonia which is comprised of rolling green hills, open plains and temperate forests as well as the large bustling city Tarantia, and Stygia which is for the most part, vast deserts and dunes, and thriving cities. There’s also the island of Tortage which is mainly tropical. The music and voice acting in Age of Conan ispraiseworthy, with more than 40 voice actors contributing to the game, you never feel as if your speaking to the same NPC over and over again (unlike The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion).

Character customization in Age of Conan is incredibly detailed and open to creativity, your able to choose your facial features, tattoos and a plethora of other details. You first pick your homeland, and

Hyborian is one of the most immersive gameworlds around.

after that your able to choose one of 12 classes (which come under the main four: Rouge, Priest, Soldier and Mage) although not every class is available to each race, with only the Khitan able to choose from each main class, however you’ll find a class that suits your playing style regardless of your choice of homeland.

Unlike many of its counterparts, Age of Conan features minimal grind. Age of Conan is centered around combat, and consequently the combat in Age of Conan is the very best that an MMO game has to offer. Combat in Age of Conan (both PvP and PvE) is based on directional attacks, you can attack from the top or bottom diagonally in either direction, or go for an overhead attack to your enemies skull. The combat is also based on combinations of attacks, difficult combinations cause far greater damage at a much faster rate. The

Combat is Age of Conan's strongest feature.

combat is immersive, brutal and mature, and is one of Age of Conan’s highest achievements. The quests are extremely well written and always interesting, despite being based on regular objectives (gather this, kill this, rescue this), and this can be attributed to the well written story, and real effort put into the plot by the writers.

Overall, Age of Conan is a well polished, immersive and one of the most satisfying MMORPG’s to be played, the combat shines as an example to other MMO games, and will keep you coming back for more, a rare trait among games of this genre.

Training in Mabinogi

Mabinogi has undergone a number of updates (called “generations” by the developers), with each new update comes new worlds to explore, as well as extending the plot and giving the player new quests to undertake, currently Mabinogi is up to Generation 12, and further updates will be released in coming years.

One of the many features that sets Mabinogi apart from other MMORPG’s is its class system, that is to say, there isn’t one. In Mabinogi your given a choice of race,  human, elf or giant. You can choose the age of your character (between 10 and 17, but don’t fret your character ages a year every week), and ability points are given with aging, with the amount decreasing with age. You have a huge amount of control of your characters appearance, and if you pay for a premium appearance you can customize your can then customize lips eyes and other features in much more detail, but its not essential to gameplay. You can at any point in the game chose to be reborn, giving your character a new appearance while maintaining all skills that you gained, this is an excellent choice on the part of the developers, and really extends the

Mabinogi 's anime art style works well.

life of Mabinogi’s gameplay. What you feed your character also determines what it’s build is like. You can also acquire the ability to transform into a paladin or dark knight.

The graphics in Mabinogi is based on a mixture of medieval Europe and Anime styling’s, which works surprisingly well together. Mabinogi is filled with towns, open countryside, jungles, volcanos, castles, the deserted city of the gods, dungeons and quest areas, and is expanded constantly with major updates.  There are many subtle intricacies within Mabinogi, for example there are two moons in the sky, and one of them were told is the source of all magic energy, mana regenerates at a much faster rate when this moon is in the sky.

Another cool feature is the quest system in Mabinogi. Rather than seek out an NPC or location, quests and items are dropped by owl’s at random intervals, often enough so that you have plenty to do, but not so frequently as to overwhelm you. The PvP combat in Mabinogi is excellent, if you choose manual combat reaction times and predicting your enemy are the order of the day, but if

PvP combat in Mabinogi

your not that fast, you can choose the automatic combat mode, however automatic combat against a manual player isn’t recommended, as your characters moves become very predictable. Mabinogi also includes a number of part time jobs to help you gain ability points, but these in all seriousness are a chore to be endured. Another noteworthy feature is the social interaction system, specifically the ability to play your own music on instruments in the game, sit around a campfire, play mini-games and share food.

When it comes down to it, Mabinogi is fun, and more importantly free, making it excellent value for money, although the point and click movement system can get a bit tired, the atmosphere and pacing of the game more than make up for it.

Aion PvP

still has light became known as the Elyos, and those that lived in darkness came to be known as the Asmodian.  You start as a human in your world of choice, and through the completion of tasks, you ascend as winged immortal Daeves (sort of like demigods), and become holy servants to their respective peoples.

The world of Aion, thanks largely to the CryEngine can be stunningly pretty at times. Aion is quite possibly the prettiest MMORPG game ever made, having said that, Aion like many other games in the genre, still pales in comparison to most modern FPS games.

Character customization is one of Aion’s strongest features. You choose from two races (although the choice makes only cosmetic changes to your character and the gameplay), and you then choose from four classes: Warrior, Scout, Priest and Mage with further class specialization coming at level nine. The facial customization in Aion is excellent, allowing you to select hair style, skine tone, facial textures and facial features, so far as to say that it puts your characters in the uncanny valley (so real that the brain can’t

Flying in Aion as an Asmodian

possibly register them as real), which can be a tad unsettling. Aion allows you to fully customize the size, scale of body parts and the weight of your character; it can be a looming giant, or a diminutive midget. However an issue of contention with Aion is the character animation when you change size, larger characters appear to move in slow motion, and smaller characters move much faster than normal.

Flight is one of Aion’s major draw cards. Unfortunately its somewhat ruined by the inability to fly for more than a minute at a time before an atmosphere shattering alarm sounds and your forced to land and regain your strength. Quests rarely call on you to fly, and you’ll often run into invisible walls and be forced to land, with no justification given in game other than inferred uncreative design by the developers.

Quests in Aion are not varied, and after about twenty hours really start to have a grinding quality to them, and they become a chore, with only the choice of fetch, kill, collect and deliver objectives. Unfortunately there’s not a large volume of quests available, and you’ll find yourself repeating the same quests over and over again in order to level. Combat in Aion is fluid and well designed, and focuses on attack combinations, in a system very similar to that of Assassins Creed. The large PvPvE battles, which involve

Aion is avery pretty game, just not often enough.

players controlling huge fortresses can be a lot of fun when they’re balanced, however when there are a large number of players involved, the servers struggle to keep up and the game comes very close to being unplayable.

Overall, Aion is a missed opportunity. The quests become mind numbingly dull after the first 20 or so game hours, and you’ll find that to level you’ll simply be going through the motions without actually engaging with the game. A major issue for me at least, was the consistently horrible ping times on oceanic servers (always over eight hundred). If the game world were as well planned and full of life as the starting areas, Aion would be a winner, but in its current state, it’d be difficult to justify paying for Aion.

Stark Trek Online: away mission combat

the events of Star Trek Nemesis, with all its associated empires and oddities.You command your own ship, within the United Federation of Planets fleet, or (once you reach a high enough level) the fleet of the Klingon Empire.

Character customization is one of Star Trek Online’s most redeeming characteristics, there’s a large range of races to choose from, and it also lets you create your own alien race, much like Spore.  Unfortunately there isn’t much in the way of ship customization. You’ve got three types to chose from, cruisers (balanced), escorts (high firepower, low hitpoints), and science ships (support). To make up for this though, the vessels are very accurate when compared to Star Trek Canon, and are well modeled and interesting to watch.

Your ship (potentially)

Fortunately you do get to customize the bridge of your ship, for the true Star Trek experience, but it doesn’t have a function role within the game. Your often sent on quests, but they’re not really memorable or all that interesting, which can be blamed mostly on the hasty writing of the games plot. The soundtrack in Star Trek Online is one of the games strengths,  it always seems symphonic and epic in nature, and this adds well to the atmosphere of the game, particularly when navigating in deep space.

The voids of space.

Overall, Stark Trek Online isn’t a great MMORPG, the game is very buggy, and frequent crashes are to be expected, particularly if you own an ATI graphics card. However the space combat, provided it’s filled with human players, can be  a rewarding experience. It would seem though, that Star Trek Online has been rushed to release, and the plot and consequently a large chunk of the missions have suffered for it.

Choas Chosen (Tank)

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is an MMORPG based on the Warhammer Fantasy world from Games Workshop. You chose a race on one of two sides; Order (comprised of The Empire, the Dwarfs, and the High Elves) or Chaos (Greenskins, Chaos, and Dark Elves).  Both sides offer the same basic careers (classes), but these are heavily distinguished between races as well such as Sorcerers  for the Dark Elves, or Engineers for the Empire, with some very specialized abilities, as with other games, engineers can deploy turrets and other fortifications, sorcerers on the other hand are able to heavy damage to their enemies at the risk of killing themselves. Character customization in Warhammer Online isn’t overly extensive, but you can add tattoos and other miscellany to your character to help distinguish you from the rest. Combat is at the heart of Warhammer Online, and engaging in battle is the main way to level in Warhammer Online.

Orc Choppa from Warhammer Online

The singleplayer quests in Warhammer Online are fairly varied and entertaining at times (in one a Goblin asks you to save him by finding an alternate source of food for a ravenous Orc), but after a few they begin to feel generic, but luckily they’re never predictable. The rewards for quests in Warhammer Online make them worth doing (some of the best armour is rewarded by quests), but the main reason to do them is to get the titles added to your name that come with success, such as “The Fearless”. On the other hand, the multiplayer quests are Warhammer Online’s strongpoint. The game lets you join any quest being completed by players at any stage (if level appropriate), and the more you do in that quest, the greater the share of loot you get upon completion, the battles in these quests are intense and chaotic, and very entertaining, and every quest is altered to make it seem like a new quest, which keeps the game fresh and interesting.

Human Runepriest

Combat in Warhammer online is superb, early on in the game a quest encourages you to join one of the games high action PVP scenarios, and once enough players have signed up to the quest, your spirited away to the battlefield, where you’ll compete against other teams of players in traditional game modes like Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, King of the Hill, and every other classic mode available.

Warhammer Online is one of the best looking MMO games to date, and has been optimized to run on a huge variety of machines. The animations aren’t always smooth, but the textures are vibrant and detailed to make up for it. Warhammer Online has excellent particle effects, that brighten the world and really engage you with the combat. Overall, Warhammer Online is a fresh offering to the MMO genre, and removes a lot of the grind associated with other MMO games, the combat is always chaotic, and is always fun, I would recommend it to anyone just starting off in the MMO game world.

Lycan from Immortal Night

Immortal Night is a fantasy game that has you develop a character in the world of Immortal Night. A world filled with supernatural creatures and beings. You play as a human turned into either a Vampire or a Lycan (werewolf), however you have 5 days to change your mind and switch classes. You move through the game world feasting on blood, prowling the night, and battling rival Houses for territory and dominance. Your ultimate aim is to become the most powerful immortal in the world of Immortal Night.

Immortal night is a browser based text interface game. There are a huge amount of quests to complete, ranging from home invasions, and theft of precious scrolls, fighting other vampires, or hunting Lycans. The world is an alternate reality of our world, the cities and towns are modeled on their real world counterparts, such as London or New York.

Stats

You level up by visiting the training ground, where you can work on your Strength, Speed, Accuracy, Labor and Defense. You gain IQ (Which is important when completing mischievous deeds) by trading gold for IQ points at the exchange. In order to be able to attempt certain quests you must take courses at the school, and these courses also boost your stats. The main source of experience points is attacking other players, the success of your attacks being dependant highly on your stats and the quality of your weapons, but to some extent success also depends on chance.

Vampire from Immortal Night

Immortal Night has a multitude of weapons and amour to chose from, and like many games, the quality of weapons and armor available increases as you level up.  A large part of the game is also based on prowling, where you venture out into the game world and the game will give you random events to navigate through, this can also be a source of frustration, as Immortal Night often choses to injure your character or have you captured during prowling, not to discourage prowling though, as the rewards can be great.

Overall, Immortal Night can be enthralling once you overcome the initial feeling of being overwhelmed, there is literally so much to do, prowling and combat will provide endless entertainment, and the sheer size of the game world in Immortal Night will keep you occupied for some time.

MapleStory is fairly typical of fantasy based MMORPGs. It’s is based around exploring dungeons and battling monsters, while gathering Mesos (money) and experience points as well as items in order to level up. Monsters in MapleStory are never human, which is odd for an MMORPG, instead MapleStory will have you fight the undead, animals, plants, oozes and constructs. The MapleStory world consists of 4 large continents, common to all versions of MapleStory, complete with jungles, planes, mountains, tundra and more. The world is full of towns and cities to explore and interact with other players.  You can play a number of minigames with other players and the chat system is very entertaining considering the amount of expression you can make your character display while talking. MapleStory has a huge number of quests to go on, which centre mainly on overcoming obstacle courses, gathering resources, or defeating monsters and claiming items. When you start MapleStory you customize your character, however you don’t chose a class, instead you are given a beginner job to undertake, while you familiarize yourself with the game. Once you reach level 10 your able to chose your class; Warrior, Pirate, Magician, Thief or Bowman.

Despite having only 2 dimensions, MapleStory has a very engaging graphical style, reminiscent of Saturday morning cartoons. The game world is bright and colorful. MapleStory has an extremely rich 3D backdrop, which changes as you move across the screen. The towns and cities in MapleStory are well defined and memorable. The characters themselves are extremely detailed, and hugely customizable.

MapleStory in game chat.

MapleStory is not without its faults. There is a lot of grind involved in leveling, and at higher levels it can take a good few weeks level up. You should always check the reward for your quest, they can sometimes be pitiful when considering what your tasked to do. The music in MapleStory is good for a while, but it gets repetitive, but luckily there’s a mute button.

Despite its faults, MapleStory is a fun game with charming graphics, you’ll meet decent people, see them talking about the oddest things, and the character you create will really grow on you.

The brilliance of Napoleonic War is the same timer based building and upgrading that was used in Evony Free Forever.  This timer based system is the real-time strategy aspect of the game, and means the player needs to think about what to build next so they have enough resources to build something afterwards, or so they can build a pre-requisite of another building or troop type.  This timer based RTS system means the NapWar player doesn’t need to be there the whole time.  This lends itself to players of other MMORPG games like World of Warcraft or even Evony itself.  As you can switch windows to NapWar and check on your upgrades and if neccessary you can kick off another building or upgrade after the timer has finished.  This is particually useful when playing a game like WoW as when you jump on a ship or griffen to fly to somewhere else, or if there is 2 minutes of down time while waiting for other members of your alliance to gather, you can do a quick window switch, play some NapWar and switch back to WoW.

Also the alliances inside NapWar can take up to 100 people, so if you have an alliance in WoW you can extend your friendship into NapWar and have the same people in an alliance in Napwar.  This will make your alliance stronger as you can talk about either game inside the other game.

The ranking system of NapWar is Prestige.  Prestige is a measure of how big your city is, how many troops you have and how much technology you have.  Building up any of these will make your prestige go up.  Attacking other players takes prestige off them.
Playing NapWar is relatively simple as you can go through beginner quests which teach you how to play.  Once you’re out of the 7 day beginner protection the strategy part comes in.  You need to make sure when you attack someone that you leave enough troops at home so that if someone attacks you then you can defend your city from them.  More Tactics come in as you can now deploy your troops into a rudamentary strategy of defend or move forward.  There is also a graphical representation of the fights and you can even go in and control the fights real time.  This is a new fighting engine and is time and turn based, which works suprisingly well, even on web browser technology.

Fog of War: Napoleonic War is a fun game to play, and with the timer based Strategy system the game player can chose how much time to spend on it.  It could take over your life, or it could be a nice side game while playing another MMORPG.

By this I mean; a medieval world? Such as Evony Free Forever. Or perhaps a Dogs of the Sea setting which throws the gamer into a world on the high seas of boats, sword fights and buried treasure.

Or do you go with a modern setting? It’s hard to tell what todays gamers like; and to determine this we need to seek out which are the demographics of our gamers -

* Young, school based gamers?
* Internet cafe crowd, playing free MMORPG online games and MMORTS titles (Maybe teens?)
* Workplace based gamers (Certainly 21 years plus)

Now of those, you would see the majority of gamers would come from the 21 years and under group. While there are plenty of older gamers, slightly more would come from the younger group and they would have more time on their hands.

Do older backgroups such as Knights, Pirates and Cowboys appeal to them? Maybe.

If you take the latest example of Evony; you’ll see they have captured multiple markets – getting kids, older players and even females into their gaming world.

Result – huge success and massive growth.

So which gaming genre and backdrop will you pick for the next online browser game?

RuneScape

So the storyline of the game world is based of the world Gielinor, a fantasy realm divided into different kingdoms, regions and cities.  Players will be visiting all of these kingdoms as they advance in the game, both through leveling and quests.  The game has an expansive and free mechanisms for traveling around since the realm is of vast kingdoms.  The easy way and which doesn’t cost anything is on foot.  While there are spells that can teleport you which cost some items and take time to replenish, there are mechanical means of transportation as well which will count towards premium membership and features.

RuneScape

As usual in MMORPGs, players can customize their characters in the start at the creation of their account.  The gameplay consists of quests and leveling up.  Leveling up is done by defeating monsters (NPCs) which come in different variation for different places or areas.  Players basically have to complete quests to advance more in the realm.  The quests basically are to gather some resources or to kill certain monsters.  Quests reward players gold the economy of the game along with items depending on the quests. The game doesn’t have an storyline which the players have to follow on, making the game a sandbox of random goals and objectives.  Players can combat as told before monsters and other players.  The PvP (Player Vs Player) is only available in certain parts of cities, players can interact with each other through chatting, trading or cooperating in certain cooperative mini games or quests.

RuneScape

In depth speaking, there are total 24 skills that a player can have and advance on in Runescape.  Though some skills are limited to paying players only adding frustration as a lot of cool stuff is only for the paying players.  Skills are related to everything, the environment, NPCs and other players.  Players gain experience as they use their skills gaining levels in them which allows better interactions as well better yield or out come of a certain skill while sometimes a certain level of skill is necessary in achieving a certain interaction and gaining of resources.

The combat is free from the dependence of character classes as classes don’t exist, players can

RuneScape

choose anything they want to do in combat and master it.  For example player can choose both sword mastery or wizard mastery.  It doesn’t depend on the character class. PvP combat can be performed in certain areas or mini games but there is also free style PvP in wilderness area where players can engage any player they want along with NPCs for their items or experience. Quests are basically small story lines since there is no main story to the game.  Generally quests require players to either team up and hunt down a major monster or simply to collect and process certain resources, The game’s main economy is gold coins, which can be used to buy weapons, resources and other items in the game.

For the final words for the game.  The game can run on low and high graphics.  While both are not so good looking, running the game on low setting causes less glitches and lag.  The reason the game has been very popular and successful is that it was the first MMORPG among others that was Free To Play but since their success and all the developers are now cheaping it out, some of the fine quests and skills are with held form the free user accounts.  Over all the game is nice to try out but not for the long run.