RODE Online to launch this March 2012

Rise of Dragonian Era, or R.O.D.E. Online, a new dragon-based fantasy MMORPG from MGAME USA, is set to go global soon, the company revealed recently.

First announced back in 2009 at the Brand New MGAME press event, R.O.D.E. Online (or War of Dragons: Age of Dragons in South Korea) is a fantasy MMORPG set in a world where tribes around the world have allied with the great dragons Firean and Azurian to fight against the dark dragon Devilo and each other.


Here’s a quick glance at R.O.D.E. Online’s features:

DRAGON RIDING SYSTEM - Players can take part in aerial combat as they ride their dragons in the sky.

MOUNT SYSTEM - There are various mounts to choose and collect including dragons.

CASTLE SIEGE - Players can conquer and seize castles located in the Piral continent.

CRAFTING SYSTEM - Players can obtain materials through mining, extracting, fishing, and gathering to craft rare and helpful items.

DEVILO SYSTEM - Monsters will randomly attempt to invade castles that belong to players.

REGION WAR - Players can take part in massive PvP battles known as the Region War, where Azurian and Firean fight each other for domination.

Check out this video gameplay of RODE Online



The Korean version of R.O.D.E. Online is in open beta and an English version is currently in the works. Not much information about the English version has been released by MGAME, but I’m told that there will be a closed beta test in December.

I’ll let you guys know if anything new pops up. In the meantime, you can check out R.O.D.E. Online’s Korean website to get an idea of what to expect.

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Dragon Nest Online Game review

Dragon Nest is the latest in a string of Action-MMORPGs to migrate from South Korea. While the developer, in this case Eyedentity Games, is usually responsible for the awesomeness in any given title, Dragon Nest owes a great deal to its localization team in North America for some of its more joyous aspects.

That's not to say that Eyedentity Games didn't do a great job, though -- because they did. Dragon Nest is a solid action game; the controls are tight, combat makes a lot of sense, and group interaction during the fifteen-minute (or so) dungeons, like rushing in to juggle an enemy after an ally has knocked them up, is intuitive while remaining interesting.

They've also done a lot with very little in terms of visuals. While nothing in Dragon Nest seems to extend beyond PS2-era visuals, a cohesive, vaguely children's-bookish art style combined with smooth animations and lots of effects has stopped me from completely disregarding the simple looks. Dragon Nest isn't a graphical powerhouse (and given its intention of being playable on as many systems as possible, it was probably never intended to be), but presents itself with enough confidence and occasional pizzazz that its simple appearance never became an issue. That said, it's weird -- and kind of off-putting -- seeing some of the women with their boobs half hanging out in a game that, from a glance, looks so family-friendly.

But that's kind of Dragon Nest's MO. It looks simple on the surface, but there's a lot more depth (and fun) than initially meets the eye. Fighting isn't just a simple case of mashing the mouse buttons (although that's certainly part of it); dodging when you need to, turning your dodge into a counter attack, and knowing when and how to cancel an enemy's attacks are all very important. Self-preservation is key to the later, tougher fights, because even the Priest class (which I primarily played) heals only very rarely, and for quite small amounts. Instead, the "healer" relies more on disabling enemies and positioning them cleverly for allies to pour on the damage. It's a system I enjoyed immensely, though at times felt a little less rewarding than I would have liked.



Rewarding players is something that Dragon Nest definitely needs to work on. Sure, quests have rewards, but I found myself getting rewards that I typically had no need for, like Topaz Fragments (which I have yet to find a that requires them), or pieces of gear I couldn't use yet, like a level 20 necklace when I was still level 17. Finding gear that was too high-level for me was a consistent issue with Dragon Nest. There seems to only be gear made for specific level ranges, so during gap levels I found myself accumulating gear I couldn't equip. That's a problem, given how little inventory space you have by default. More can be bought permanently from the NX shop, but if you plan on playing for free, be prepared to go all Sophie's Choice on those new boots and that new pair of pants you found. More frequent usable upgrades would help alleviate this, because I would be less inclined to keep gear if I knew more was always coming.

Dragon Nest Gameplay




Luckily, the quests themselves are entertaining, even with temporarily-unusable rewards. Whenever you pick up or turn in a quest, you are met with some genuinely clever, often witty dialogue with the NPC. Each NPC is completely fleshed out, and they make tongue-in-cheek jokes about the similarities they may have to other NPCs in other towns. Reading the dialogue is delightful, and it's entirely thanks to the North American localization team at Nexon.

Although the quests always send you to a dungeon, the dungeons have enough engaging encounters and difficulty levels that they tend to at least keep me interested throughout. The boss fights on the hardest (or "Abyss") difficulty are particularly cool. Sometimes Abyss bosses come with a second, identical boss for you to tackle at the same time. Other times they are just super strong, have way more abilities and double the health. Whatever the case, the boss encounters are always challenging and enjoyable.

Getting a group together to tackle a dungeon on Abyss can be a pain, though, especially if you've got a specific dungeon in mind. The current party system only displays players looking for party members in your local area. Players can display which dungeon and difficulty they're running, but typically don't, and there's no matchmaking. Nexon's other 3D session-based MMO Vindictus has a dungeon-by-dungeon party system which works much better. 

If you get tired of running dungeons, challenge maps and a PvP arena also exist to ceaselessly murder in, too. I find the PvP pretty fun, but with more than about 8 players in a map it got too chaotic to really do anything. Instead, if I got singled out, I'd sit and watch my character get juggled for 20 seconds, unable to do anything except die. That's less than an ideal experience, but that's why smaller maps are available, I guess.

Article source: here

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Ran Online

RAN Online
RAN Online is campus-based MMORPG, which features schools (Mystic Peak, Sacred Gate and Phoenix) vying to become the best of the best. Players can choose to become the sword-wielding Swordsman, the melee fighter Brawler, the bow-brandishing Archer, and the Qi-Gong expert Shaman.

Previously, these job classes are gender-bound, meaning one can only create a male Swordsman/Brawler and a female Archer/Shaman. In the recent game patch called “The Rebirth”, this limitation is now a thing of the past. Players can also do better in the game with the assistance of the RAN Pets, who can perform specific skills.

Another latest addition in the game is the inclusion of the Hover Boards, which makes traveling easier, not to mention that players look cool wearing the Hover Suit as well.

Taught to fight
18 years ago a total eclipse enshrouded Asia and a meteor shower swept the land leaving only destruction in its wake. The affected part of the continent was quarantined by the rest of the world: the meteors had opened a dimensional rift into a demonic realm!

Soon afterwards, a new organization sprang up: it gathered wealth and resources, and built schools meant to train the strongest and the smartest: they would become fighters and make their stand against the uprising evil.
The organization erected shields around the schools, hoping to keep possessed humans and living dead at bay. But in Leonair, one of the campuses, the shields went down and, in but a single night, the school fell.
Now only three of them remain. And the fate of the world rests in their students’ hands.


The training begins
In the intro screen you will be greeted by a greatly-inspired hard-rock tune, which perfectly sets the mood of the game. Unfortunately the music in the rest of the game will be pretty ordinary, but the intro theme really rocks!
You have to choose your campus and your role: each school has its own peculiar style (old-fashioned, mystique, high-tech) while the available careers are four, but each one has two paths to be followed: even if careers are pretty standard (tank, melee DPS, ranged DPS, healer/buffer), specializing in one path is a way to customize them. You will receive skill and attribute points for every level, and you will be able to spend them accordingly, choosing to concentrate only on a few powers or to develop a wider array to draw upon. Just keep in mind that, in order to raise certain skills, you have to meet both level and attribute requirements.
If you want more skill points, you can perform tasks for a particular NPC who will award them on completion: usually it will be a hard task, but it will be worth your while.
As soon as you have spoken with teachers and other persons inside the school to understand the basics, you will be given missions. The first tasks are meant to let you explore the campus and give you an overview of locations (both interior and exterior) and opponents. Missions are detailed in the appropriate panel, and there are just enough of them to go by; usually they will involve killing mobs, but at times you may be required more menial tasks like cleaning rubble… a break from grinding, anyway.


Fighting style
Fighting mobs is pretty straightforward: just left-click and your character will start to auto-attack the enemy. The right button is reserved to use abilities, and you can place them on a shortcut bar, as well as potions and consumables you might need in battle to heal and regenerate power. Standard method, and it works, but considering that, as you progress, fights become more and more fast-paced, a quick activation of skill via keyboard (just like for consumables) would have helped.
Since WASD keys are reserved for items, movement is point-and-click and to rotate the camera you have to keep pressed the central mouse button; odd choice, and awkward at first, but it is balanced by a very efficient map system: you click anywhere on the mini-map and your character will go there, no matter how many twists and turns it takes. You can also buy “tickets” to fast-travel back and fro between the school building and the last place visited… or where you died. Apart from ordinary loot from the mobs you killed, there is a feature worth mentioning: destiny boxes are a sort of Easter eggs where you can find temporary buffs or, less frequently, bombs and even spawning bosses.
Students also want to look cool while fighting evil: the schools and departments will provide different uniforms as you progress, and if you want to further customize your appearance you can buy other unique outfits from the item shop (as well as other perks to help you leveling). Only the choice of faces is pretty limited.
Scantily-clad girls and fashionable boys will look even cooler while they perform their moves: while the game makes large use of polygons for environment, animations really look great, with plenty of special effects you won’t easily get tired to watch.
And since rivalry is so common among schools, there are limited time frames when members of different college can fight each other in PvP.


The darkness within
Your opponents are the spawn of hell, but in the beginning the mobs you’ll encounter will be just possessed humans; only later in the game you will face monstrous opponents like zombies and vampires. Perhaps the designers wanted to keep the horror theme more on the inside, but maybe some horns, claws and fangs more would have helped. But the real problem with enemies resides in the lack of information: the only thing you can see is a vital bar, but you will receive no information at all about the challenge level, as in most MMO. As a result, you’ll have to learn by yourself which opponents you can take on, without any means to assess it.

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