We were waiting for it and here it comes: today 33 RIFT Head Start servers will go live and open their gates to PvP, PvE and Role-Playing gamers who have already pre-ordered RIFT (I myself is getting my RIFT client patched as i write this post). RIFT head start will be going on for a week until the official release dates – March 1 for USA and March 4 for Euro zones respectively. Also, according to RIFT Facebook group, Trion Worlds “announced today that more than one million accounts have been created to date”, meaning a high level of interest to the game. RIFT pre-orders are still available as well as founder’s pricing plans until March 15, so don’t miss out your chance! And if you don’t know how to subscribe to RIFT in a specific currency of your choice and get the game cheaper, click on the link.

Other posts about RIFT you may be interested in:

RIFT: Planes of Telara - End-Game Content Show Off In A New 18-Minute Video
RIFT: Planes Of Telara – Final Open Beta 6 Days Event Is Starting February 15, 2011
How To Subscribe In A Specific Currency Of Your Choice And Get Game Cheaper
RIFT: Planes of Telara: New Introduction Trailer
Rift: Planes Of Telara – Closed Beta Screenshots – Part 1
Rift: Planes Of Telara – Closed Beta Screenshots – Part 2
RIFT: Planes Of Telara - Closed Beta Screenshots – Part 3
Release Date Revealed And The Game Is Available For Pre-order Now

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After going Open Beta February 10, Alicia Online is getting more and more press and player attention right now. Korean web-portal BetaNews.net has posted a short article about Alicia Online (link is in Korean ;), which i’m posting here for you. It is really short but tells us about some gameplay details that were only hinted by Alicia Online screenshots before, so it’s worth reading. Also, I’m going to post more information like this later. A side note: rather than a direct translation of the said article this post is an exposition of what is said there. My Korean is currently revolving around an ability to decipher hieroglyphs into syllables, so i have to make an extensive use of a translation software - but with my experience of translation between other languages i can at least make out the whole point of the text, if not the exact wording. If anyone more fluent in Korean happens to stumble upon this post, I'd be grateful for any mistakes pointed out.

First of all, Alicia is an online racing game, but rather than simply offering the racing it also offers a solid gameplay, where the race itself is only a part of the bigger image. Besides the racing users are offered to take care of a ranch with horses, to grow and to mate these horses, to decorate their foals and characters, and to make use of a good variety of different skills in the process. If you think conceptually, racing games are using inanimate objects like cars and changing them into a living creature adds an whole new emotional aspect of gameplay appealing to the player.

Apart from other games to create the character in Alicia Online you don’t have to download the game and run the client – it can be done through the official website. Select character’s gender, face, body and voice, then add character name and do all that while you’re downloading the client. After you downloaded and started the game you’re off to create your first horse, which has a name too. On the first look player experience in Alicia resembles traditional racing games so much that it will be really easy to learn how to play. Press the “start” button and your character will arrive at its ranch. The ranch is where such options like horse pasture management, item shop and inventory are available. Also, you can check your stats, write a letter to other player or use a messenger to talk, and other random players can visit your ranch through a portal (you’re able to visit other players too).

Alicia Online’s strong sides are easy controls and player engagement. Although it’s a horse riding game it includes the usual stuff seen in traditional racing games, like dash (speed booster) and gliding (drifting in air), which are utilized by filling a special gauge by successfully performing jumps over obstacles and other tricks, which are becoming essential. There are two kinds of possible jumps: first is when you’re just floating in the air with a horse and the second is when you hold the jump button while in the air and your horse suddenly grows white translucent wings that allow you to glide slowly. Due to its distinctive elements and solid gameplay Alicia is going to be an unique attraction.

Races are not only give player a ranking position, but also allows characters and horses to grow and level up together, and taking more races or growing horses on your ranch is to score you more points – and when you get 10 stat points for each horse your rating goes up. A 4 star horse is registered and can breed either with someone else’s horse or with one of your own horses, either way with horse mating you get a colt. It’s born with a potential level and statistics, and horses born at the end of a lineage are comparable to those sold in the item shop.

Being a living creatures, horses need food and body care similar to what a real horse gets – it’s arranged with a menu options allowing you to feed the horse or to wash (or to comb) its body. After a long run horse may turn out injured and you’ll need to use tools to treat it or to play with it so it may heal up. To raise the abilities of a horse and to protect it you may want to use special items. There are items in the store like horse protection, character items, food, medical treatment or horse toys. As your mating horses are becoming more popular and more people come in, you may also want to decorate the appearance of your ranch. After a certain number of races you get experience and in-game money to spent on your ranch, and because it can be visited by your friend and other users, so it won’t be a bad idea to dress up your ranch nicely.

February 10, 2011 is when Alicia Open Beta testing began and using a popular Korean singer as a model for player characters is getting a good response. Currently, overall response to Alicia from many users is “good” and the game servers are flooded with people up to a point when those servers are going down for an emergency maintenance.

Okay, this is where the Korean article ends.

A list of other posts about Alicia Online can be found here:
Alicia Online: Fresh News, Tips and All You Wanted to Know

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G4TV has published a new 18-minute video detailing end-game content of an upcoming new MMORPG RIFT: Planes of Telara by Trion, featuring both 10- and 20- man raid types. Trion calls them “on-demand rifting” and this kind of activity isn’t tied to a character progression, like in other MMOs, but instead is triggered via world event. RIFT will supply us with 5 unique raids at launch with more to come after the release.

 

Other posts about RIFT you may be interested in:

RIFT: Planes Of Telara – Final Open Beta 6 Days Event Is Starting February 15, 2011
How To Subscribe In A Specific Currency Of Your Choice And Get Game Cheaper
RIFT: Planes of Telara: New Introduction Trailer
Rift: Planes Of Telara – Closed Beta Screenshots – Part 1
Rift: Planes Of Telara – Closed Beta Screenshots – Part 2
RIFT: Planes Of Telara - Closed Beta Screenshots – Part 3
Release Date Revealed And The Game Is Available For Pre-order Now

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Good news, everyone!© Divine Souls servers are open again for the current weekend! Divine Souls is a free-to-play fantasy action MMO developed by GamePrix and released by Outspark, which is currently *supposedly* undergoing an open beta stage. Supposedly because, when DS beta was opened it was barely playable and bugged like hell, players started to leave and Outspark closed Divine Souls servers until further notice to fix the bugs. It was almost a month ago – January 27, 2011 actually. Outpark was planning to open game servers only for a 6 hour window, but as they write on the official website - “Because the game has remained stable all day, we are extending this 6 hours open server window through the rest of the weekend!”. Game servers haven’t crashed in SIX consecutive hours – an improvement worthy of an early alpha version, but pre-release?! Oh, for holy Metroid Prime’s sake! Before i get any more sarcastic, there’s a fresh Divine Souls PVP video for you behind the cut.

 

Other posts about Divine Souls:
Divine Souls Review: Open Beta First Impression
Divine Souls: Are Beta Bugs Driving You Crazy too?
Divine Souls: Not All Hope Lost Yet? Divine Souls Is Taken Down Until Critical Issues Are Fixed

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Minions of Mirth is a F2P Indie MMORPG made by Prairie Games, released back in 2005 and still alive and kicking. The game is currently available for an assortment of platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X and netbooks. But what means “Indie MMORPG”, you might be asking? It means that Minions of Mirth was created without a development studio, without a publisher or its major funding, by a team less than small – Prairie Games had only 2 (yes, TWO – a married couple, actually) full-time staff members and several outsourcing specialists, but they were able to create and release a fully working MMO title. Have you ever had a dream of creating your own game? Well, this couple had a dream too, and they forged it with their own hands, making it true and alive. And this is the story of how it was possible.

To tell the truth, these people weren’t “the average gamers” like us. People who co-founded Prairie Games in 2003 were Lara Engebretson and Josh Ritter, who changed his name to Josh Engebretson later, so both his names are still present in the Internets. Lara has a degree of Art Institute of Colorado, she was a producer and game designer, but Minions of Mirth was her first shipped project. As for Josh – he was a programmer and had been creating games for a decade, being a co-founder of Canopy Games development studio he had his hand on 12 retail titles by the time he and Lara had formed Prairie Games. Besides Lara and Josh there were 3 outsourcing specialists working on the project at some point - Magnus Blikstad, Christophe Canon and Ronald van Deurzen, all of them were artists.

Josh, being a player of such games like Ultima IV, Bard’s Tale and Gold Box always wanted to create a role-playing game and thus became a professional game programmer. He was already on that career when a first MMORPG title hit the market, and within only a few hours of gameplay he suddenly knew: that’s what he wants to do. The only thing was to figure out how one person with a very limited money supply could accomplish that. I don’t know how he managed to suck Lara into the business and what she was doing prior to that, because she did not gave so many interviews like Josh did. I suppose helping Josh build a game became “a family business” for her – i myself would do the same if only i had any 3d modeling skills…

At first, Prairie Games weren’t even planning to do an MMORPG as their first title. Josh wrote that the time through autumn 2003 to spring 2004 was full of blur: they wanted to do a single-player game first, then to add a multi-player to it, then to get back to a single again, and Josh wrote a lot of code. Back then he was using Quake 2 engine for almost a year, it was getting obviously obsolete and Josh wanted to switch to Quake 3 engine. But id Software has postponed Q3 engine from getting GPL license and it had became known only at January 1, 2005 – when Minions of Mirth were only a couple of months away from alpha stage, that was scheduled to begin March 22, 2005. At the time Tribes 2 engine (the Torque Engine by Garage Games) became available, so Josh immediately bought a source license and started the migration process.

Minions of Mirth – both client and server sides – were written in Python (Eve Online client, at least the old one, was also written on it) using either free or cheap technology and tools. Producing Minions of Mirth took 11 months of development time (since the date when it was transferred from Q2 to the Torque Engine and until the release date – what was before is referred to as “prototype”) being written by one person and if not for Python it would require much more time to finish. Migration to the Torque Engine took a lot of effort (especially right before the alpha launch) and tricks, but finally it turned out so that this engine was ideal for Minions of Mirth’s goals.

Money also were a significant problem for Prairie Games and producing a game required a strict budged planning. But they found a way to do it: after founding Prairie Games Josh and Lara sold their property and moved to North Dakota (USA) where they bought a house worth $40 000 by a mortgage for $300 per month. They also had to cut their budged down as much as possible. Without the move and austerity policy it wouldn’t be possible to finish the game. In his interview to Gamasutra 9 months after the release Josh has said: “Minions of Mirth's development was a blur of fear, work, and stress. The work schedule was extremely rigorous and focused. It was like living in a cult. We were highly motivated, and stressed, by the fear of impending financial doom. Did I mention that it was a blur of fear, work, and stress?” But they still managed to do it.

Outsourcers were enlisted to work on the graphical part when the game was ready to get all suited up. A mistake was made there for the character and monster modeling had began a bit late (April 2005) and not everything that was intended got into the final release – for example, the release lacked a few character models that were added later along with a series of content patches. But the artists were doing a great job and they all had a significant influence on what turned out to be a final version of Minions of Mirth. Which wasn’t looking bad at all by the release year’s standards.

As for the musical score, Prairie Games weren’t going for an extensive soundtrack at first. They wanted just to buy some licensed material and be done with that, but one of the artists, under an impression made by the game, suggested adding a lot more music. No one really had time for that so he took the task onto himself and started recording the soundtrack. He worked for 10 months and the results of his creativity had been shown to the team only when a full 2 hours of soundtrack were finished and uploaded to an FTP server. The said soundtrack was amazingly fitting Minions of Mirth, adding a tangible emotional depth to the game.

With the time passing and the game progressing on its path to the release, Prairie Games found out that there was a fellow community forming around their project. It's still possible to find a snippets of code from early Minions of Mirth client/server installments, posted by Josh on game development forums and commented by the users. The community became very helpful and also had a significant influence on the final product – the gamers weren’t only suggesting their opinions and testing the game, but they also took their part in creating quests, characters, dialogues, items and even graphical elements of the game (buildings, for example). Without the faithful community Minions of Mirth would never became what it was, and never a fan community would get so much of influence on a developing project than with the indie MMO game.

Minions of Mirth release date is 15 December. And not only it’s still alive – Prairie Games official website right now holds a note that the closed beta of the latest content add-on for Minions of Mirth has been started 10/25/10: the game is still thriving and developing! From the very beginning it was using a mixed free-to-play/pay-to-play model: everyone could play without the monthly fee, but it was also possible to upgrade to a Premium version, which allowed players much more gameplay options and opportunities. Back then it was a true innovation, F2P model wasn’t even considered by major developers. But Minions of Mirth had proven to be successful – after all, the game managed to live for 6 years!

 

It’s a long post already, but i must mention some other technical details.
If you’re not interested in technology behind an “custom” MMO, you may finish your reading here, but if you’re curious… The game technically consisted of several parts – main/login server, world server, zone server, client, automatic patching system, game editor and game data base.

Besides the Torque Game Engine, other technologies used in Minions of Mirth are as following:
Python (free license)
Twisted (free license)
SQLObject (free license)
SQLite (free license)
Subversion
Python is the main programming language, but C/C++ were using in some parts of the engine.

Subversion was used as a cross-platform solution for automatic patching – it stored control sums for every game file and downloaded everything that was missing or changed. During the beta testing stage patches were applied even without players knowing that the patching was going on, and Prairie Games never received a single complaint. SQLite is a database used through SQLObject library for Python. It was chosen mainly because SQLite doesn’t needs a server to be configured – a very important features, providing the opportunity to "host your own persistent world Minions of Mirth", as Prairie Games called it. Other pluses were that it was extremely fast and very reliable – the test server was inhabited by the same characters from the late alpha and right to version 1.0, the game data never being wiped out or lost!

As for Minions of Mirth’s gameplay and other stuff – it’s a long story and I'd rather save it for another post sometime in the future.

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These weekend is really busy for gamers! Besides from RIFT Open Beta going on, two good games are also providing bonuses: Lord of the Rings Online is Welcome Back Event February 17-21, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is providing Bonus Experience Weekend February 18-22. Though, Vanguard bonus % is not directly stated – announcement only mentions that the bonus will be applied to all Crafting, Diplomacy and Adventuring activity. At the same time LOTRO players are promised to get +10% XP bonus on monster kill and 250 free Turbine Points for returning customers (i.e. for old characters). I bet both games are trying to lure audience out of RIFT events and back into business. To put something more amusing in this post there are two videos from the both games – how LOTRO players managed to crash the server before Siege of Mirkwood launch and “Tribute to Vanguard” player compilation video. Watch them behind the cut.

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February 15, 2011 (i.e. tomorrow) will begin the final 7th Beta event before RIFT: Planes of Telara launch. This Beta is going to be Open, and, according to Trion, will last for 6 days. To join the Open Beta all you have to do is create Trion account and wait for the invitation and download the game – everyone is invited to taste RIFT before it’s out! During the event all all previously opened content will stay available (as always with RIFT beta event), plus two new zones will be opened and level cap raised to level 42. The beta servers are scheduled to be available for play from Tuesday 2/15/2011 at 10AM PST until Monday 2/21/2011 at 10AM PST. If you’re going to sub to the game, you may be interested in my post on How To Subscribe In A Specific Currency Of Your Choice And Get Game Cheaper. Also, for those who haven’t seen RIFT in action, behind the cut is 15 minutes long HD gameplay video. Have fun!

Other posts about RIFT you may be interested in:

RIFT: Planes of Telara: New Introduction Trailer
Release Date Revealed And The Game Is Available For Pre-order Now
Rift: Planes Of Telara – Closed Beta Screenshots – Part 1
Rift: Planes Of Telara – Closed Beta Screenshots – Part 2
RIFT: Planes Of Telara - Closed Beta Screenshots – Part 3
How To Subscribe In A Specific Currency Of Your Choice And Get Game Cheaper

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I know i had a post about Vanguard quests less than 24 hours ago, but i can’t want with this one. For the first time i have stumbled upon a Vanguard quest that appeared to be bugged to the point it being totally unsolvable, but i still was able to solve it thanks to Vanguard GM team. When i understood that “Peculiar Fragments” quest is bugged (you can’t gather the quest objective items, because they aren’t active as quest items at all), i dropped it – because, based on my previous experience with online games if something is bugged, that’s the end of the story – and wrote “Found a bug” petition. After 15 minutes (!) a GM materialized out of thin air and gave me those quest objective items. For the first time in my whole online gamer’s life a GM was so fast to respond, so i can’t just leave this case unnoticed. Thank you again, Vanguard GM Exerege!

Quest name: Peculiar Fragments
Quest giver: Saara Kalem, the Kalem Sisters Camp near Meadow Lake, Three Rivers Village area, Thestra continent.
Quest objectives: Gather Fallen Star Shards from and around Meadow Lake, and return to Saara Kalem at the Kalem Sisters' Encampment upon completion.
How to solve the quest: As i said above, the quest is bugged. Theoretically you need to gather those big blue crystals scattered around, but they are not active as quest items, i.e. you can’t gather them no matter what. I petitioned this bug and GM Exerege came to rescue damsel in distress! He said, the team is fully aware of the bug, but it is unknown when the developers get to fix that, so GM team is helping players with the bugged quest. I am not sure if you’ll get the help as fast as i did, but about the fact that you’ll be helped i have no doubts.

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This post is following Tips & Tricks On Solving Isle Of Dawn Quests post. I’m still playing Vanguard as I'm out of Isle of Dawn I'll resume writing about quests that were hard to solve – the only thing that changes now is that i will publish separate posts for these quests, divided by areas - as i don’t know how often i will encounter such hard quests. This post is about rather nasty Vanguard quest in Halgarad area, Thestra continent – Blood and Seals and The Unfinished Mission.

Quest name: Blood and Seals
Quest giver: Hrognar Torson - Thestra, Halgarad (west from the Rift stone)
Quest objectives: Interview Thormane, Gossip with Rothnar, Incite Boritt to Reveal What He Knows, Torson Clan Seal (0/1).
"Hail, %username, "Hrognar yells. "This old man has something that needs doing."
Sighing, Hrognar continues, "Old age has bent me low and left me unable to finally retrieve my clan's seal. The blood of the Torson clan calls for the ancient symbol's return, and though the task has fallen to me, I can't finish. Thormane Ragnuthson took the item from my father 50 years ago. Would you be able to oblige a man too long in the tooth and find it for me? I saw him last at the mark I'll put in your journal."

How to solve the quest: Thormane Ragnuthson is north-east of Halgarad, Thormane’s location is marked on your map after you talk to the quest giver. Supposedly, Thormane should put another mark on it, but it did not happen in my case – not sure if it’s a bug or just a false description, but i had to look around all Halgarad to find him.
So, I'm saving you some time here: Rothnar Morfang is hiding behind the Stone Mug Tavern (11781, 26602, 51943). Talk to him. He’ll send you to Boritt, who is inside a house just across from the Stone Mug. He has a suspicious jug/vase on a table but won’t let you touch it - you have to parley with him first. After that he tells you to take the Seal – it’s in the jug. Get it and your quest is done.

Quest name: The Unfinished Mission
Quest giver: Kranin Mar - Halgarad, Thestra. The quest giver is in Halgarad cemetery.
Quest objectives: Obtain the Broken Varanjar Sword.

 

How to solve the quest:  The quest is about finding an ancient sword that the spirit of Kranin Mar had lost long ago and cannot find peace without finding it. To get some clues on where the sword might be, talk to the cemetery caretaker Nosh. He will redirect you to High Shaman Durka, who is hanging around in Chamber of the Warchief. The Shaman will tell you, that the sword is lost, however, you can check out an old cave inhabited by gnolls. He speaks of the cave den where Explore the Den quest takes place. It can be found if you go to South Post from the Shield, and then further south and down the hill. The sword is in a chest deep down the den, to find it you need to look out for a gnoll standing besides a wooden fence. The fence actually has a door in it, and the chest is behind that door.

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Using mounts in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes might be a slight problem for the beginning players, because, as every other aspect of gameplay of Vanguard using mounts is slightly harder than in other MMOs that we’re used to. Even providing that Vanguard trial zone – the Isle of Dawn – is packed with the tutorial, it still may be not 100% clear or you may have forgotten, what it told you. Fear not, using mounts in Vanguard is not as hard as it seems, especially when you read this post!

As i said above, the first mount – a Pegasus - a player is to encounter can be found on the Isle of Dawn, Vanguard trial zone. Actually, you can’t finish the Isle of Dawn quests without using the said Pegasus, and using it a lot. So let us begin our tutorial here…

What do you do in a “normal” MMO when you want to use a mount? Either you equip an item representing mount or use a button stacked somewhere in user interface, the mount comes to you automatically and does what it must. People claiming that Vanguard has some “hard to understand” mounting system are wrong. What you do, is basically much the same, just a little more actions needed to be taken.

When you rent a flying mount (let’s assume you have began playing not so long ago and do not have your own), you get the Pegasus Reins – the item that represents the mount. BTW, no matter what creature are you renting, they’re still the Pegasus Reins. You need to equip them. As you may have a mount with you but not need to ride it just yet (or may need to get off), the mount is not activated by equipping the reins. To activate the reins and call the mount, you need to open up your Character sheet (press “C”) and open Mounts page. Activate the reins by clicking on them.

Now you’re on your mount. It walks, it runs, but how do you make it fly? Simply. To fly, a creature must first jump and then use its winds to take off. So, to make the Pegasus fly you have to make it jump - press “Space” several times. The creature will then jump, use its wings and start flying. To go up you need to aim upwards, to land – aim down. When the mount is flying low enough it will land on its legs and start running. If you need to get off it, activate the reins again.

The mounts you rent aren’t permanent, you have just several minutes to use them and the time starts ticking from the moment when you rent a mount, not when you equip it. The timer is on the top left of your screen, and when time’s up the mount returns to its owner, and you’re provided with 10 minutes long “slow fall” enchantment to safely land where the mount had left you.

When you leave the Isle of Dawn you get to get your own mount, the first one probably will be a horse – it doesn’t flies, but you can load it with saddlebags and stuff. When you have your own mount it doesn’t affects the mount you rent, i.e. they have different inventory slots.  Also, having your own mount is cool because you can upgrade it, but it’s a theme for another post.

Happy flying!

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  First of all, i’m not speaking about Alicia Online English release date, click the link to read what i know about it. Today’s news is that Alicia Online’s Korean release date is coming close, the pre-release Open Beta appears to be starting 10 February, 2010. Confirmed by Alicia Online twitter account and official website. Happy Koreans are having an Opening Party, it’s a total shame no one else can attend, but we can celebrate Korean release our own way! There are music video leaked out of the Korean Internets to YouTube featuring Alicia Online OST performed by Korean teenage diva IU. She’s Alicia Online “face” – being a very popular singer amongst the young adult audience, she was invited to record the game’s OST and do some promotional footage. As far as i can hear, she’s also actually not bad at doing the singing part! You can listen to Alicia Online OST for free legally and online on this official page, and here’s the music video (IU even plays the game in it):

 

 

Also, behind the cut are more IU photos done during the video’s footage.

 

Upd.: I wrote that 10 February was Alicia’s release date, but it appears that i was mistaken with the translation and it was the date when Open Beta starts, not opening of the game as a an exact “release date”. The release will be there in a month after the Open Beta.

A list of other posts about Alicia Online can be found here:
Alicia Online: Fresh News, Tips and All You Wanted to Know

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Good news for all Regnum Online fans – first, the Mac OS X version has been released to public just a few days ago! The fans were trying to run RO on Macs for years, and now it should run natively. Second, there are new mounts released, including wolves, sabertooths, hyenas and panthers. Also, new animal in-game models have been introduced: lion, panther and smilodon. Regnum Online is a free to play Realm-vs.-Realm (and actually the best one out there in the field) fantasy MMORPG by NGD Studios, released back in 2007 and currently slowly undergoing graphical and technical revamp. I myself think very good of this game and wrote in a Regnum Online review that is a “hidden pearl” actually, you can check it out. Regnum Online client for Mac OS X  v10.5 (and up) can be found on the game’s official download page, and pictures of the mounts and animals are in this post, behind the cut.

New mounts pictures from the Regnum Online official blog:

Alsius White Wolf, Syrtis Sabertooth and Ignis Hyena. There are 3 more mounts available for each realm respectively – White Sabertooth, Golden Wolf and Panther, but unfortunately their images haven’t been posted.

And here are the mentioned lion, panther and smilodon. If you haven’t logged into Regnum Online in a long time, be careful not to stumble into them, as they’re already roaming the wilds now:

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