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Apr 27th, 2011 at 09:25:13 - Global MU Online Season 6 (PC) |
Global MU Season 6 – Thursday, April 21st
Global MU Season 6 is an MMORPG published by Webzen on Octobers 6th, 2003.
= Game Play / Mechanics =
You can choose one of three realms to play on; Valhalla, Helheim, or Midgard. Once you have chosen the realm you wish to play on you have several servers to choose from. If you’re a paying player you can access several “gold” servers which give increased item drop and experience rates. Then you have several servers that are Non-PvP and several servers that are PvP. When first starting the game you have the choice of choosing between three different characters; a fairy elf (archer/arbalest), dark wizard, and dark knight. The fairy elf starts out in a map called Noria. If you choose a dark wizard or dark knight you will start out in the Lorencia map. Each character has hit points (HP), mana points (MP), an AG points for high level skills/spells, and SD points which is a pvp shield that takes 90% of all pvp damage (once all SD points are gone, HP goes from taking 10% of the damage to 100% of the pvp damage).These three characters have 4 stats, Strength, Agility, Stamina, and Energy. Each level up (until you complete a quest at level 220) gives these three characters 5 stat points to spend. Each of the three characters has different ways you can build them based on what stats you choose to focus on raising when leveling. There are three types of builds for the fairy elf. One is an agility elf (AE), the second is an energy elf (EE), and the third is a hybrid between the two. An AE focuses primarily on Agility and Strength allowing her to deal high amounts of physical damage and later learn the powerful skill Ice Arrow which deals a significantly large amount of damage and freezes the opponent in place for a few seconds. An EE primarily focuses on Energy, which allows her to learn and use powerful defense and offense buffs as well utilize a healing spell to replenish HP. A hybrid elf is a mixture between an EE and an AE, specializing in neither of the elves main abilities. There are two main types of dark wizards. One of them focuses mainly on Energy to allow for high damage output and much large amount of MP. The other focuses on Strength and a ton of Agility in order to wear stronger armors and increase the effectiveness of a wizard spell called Soul Barrier that scales off of Agility. Soul Barrier reduces all damage by a % based on a wizards Agility. A wizard with high Agility is also very swift to cast their spells and be able to teleport around extremely quickly to avoid being hit by other players. Agility also increases a wizard’s chances of hitting monsters and especially other players. The best dark wizards find a good balance between the Energy they add and the amount of Agility and Strength they choose to have. The third starting class, the dark knight, is the tank of MU. There are four main types of dark knights players make. One focuses a ton of strength to deal high damage. Another focuses Agility to increase their defense and speed, making them extremely hard to hit and extremely hard to deal any significant amount of damage to. Another, rarer choice, chooses to focus on Stamina which gives a player additional HP. This rare type is almost obsolete now since the SD bar was implemented. In the past this type was mainly used in synergy with a full set of armor with a special option of damage reflection on each piece. So anyone hitting them basically ended up killing themselves before they ever managed to lower the dark knights health enough to kill them. The last type focuses on Energy, due to a skill they learn later called Fortitude, which depending on how much Energy the player has increases the max amount of HP of the player and all their partied allies; which greatly increases survivability. Once any of these starting three characters reach level 150, they have the option of doing a quest to upgrade their class and gain a reward of 20 stat points. A fairy elf will change in appearance and be renamed a Muse Elf. A Dark wizard will change in appearance and be renamed a Soul Master. A dark knight will change in appearance and be renamed a Blade Knight. After any of these three characters reach level 220 they are allowed another special quest which allows them to unlock a special skill/spell of their class and gain 6 stat points per level from then on. Additionally when a character reaches level 220, they are allowed to create a new character with the class name Magic Gladiator, which is a hybrid between a dark wizard and a dark knight. They gain additional stat points per level, can wear lower armor sets belonging to both the dark wizard and dark knight, can acquire both of the classes lower level skills based on their stat points and which ones the player raises, and later get their own specific class armor. They also have all stat and level requisites on items lowered, so they can use gear earlier than the first three classes. When a character reaches level 250 another character class is unlocked and a Dark Lord can be created which receives even more stat points per level than a magic gladiator. However, a Dark Lord has five stats instead of four. He has the additional stat of Command, since he is a character that has command of a couple pets. The higher the Dark Lords Command stat, the stronger his pets become. The Dark Lord can use lower level dark knight armors and weapons, and later gets his own class specific gear. There is also a Summoner class that was introduced, that was not supposed to have a level pre-requisite in order to be able to play, but this is apparently false as I cannot create one. Webzen’s documentation is so poor it doesn’t state what the requirements are now in order to create a Summoner, so there is not much more that I can say about them other than they were meant to be a hybrid between an elf and a dark wizard.
There is no real storyline for Mu Online. You fight big bad monsters everywhere, and level up as much as you can and pray good equipment drops or that you get drops you can combine to create good items or upgrade your existing items. The max level in Mu is level 400. After that you can pay to have your level 400 characters (you pay individually for each one) “reset” back to level 1, but they keep all their existing stat points. To put it bluntly, I played Mu for about 4 years (when the community was actually fun, and PvP was amazing) very consistently, even leaving my computer on overnight with a bot program to help me level, and I never reached level 400. This game is insanely difficult, and promotes the “rich get richer, and the poor get poorer” theme and that only paying customers or hackers prosper (although the hackers prosper much more than even the paying customers). There are game mechanics set up for equipment so that you can raise the level of an item up to 15 from 0. The first six levels require a jewel of Bless which has a 100% success rate. From level 6 to 9 it requires a jewel of Soul, which unless the item has the attribute of luck only has a 50% success rate. (Don’t let the advertised success rates fool you though. You’re much more likely to fail than succeed regardless of whatever the success rate is.) To raise an item to 10 or higher the Chaos Machine must be used. To put it simply, I’ve used the Chaos Machine to create other cheaper items and had put in enough combinational items that the success rate was 99%, and I still failed three times. The Chaos Machine is evil; its name is an epic understatement. The higher you try to raise the level of an item in it, the lower the success rate gets. If an item fails in the Chaos Machine, it is permanently destroyed and disappears. The incentive for raising items to such high levels though is that the equipment’s stats go up significantly more, and if you wear a full set of the same armor type of the same level (say +10) then your defense is increased by 5% of your total current defense. At +11 it’s a 10% bonus increase, and so on and so on. You can raise the item level of wings (able to be worn at level 180 depending on the wings. There are 1st stage, 2nd stage, and now 3rd stage wings), helmet, chest piece, pants, boots, gloves, and weapons and shields. There are four types of gear drops as well. There is regular equipment. There is excellent equipment that has a green name and is shiny with higher stats than regular equipment. There is ancient equipment with even higher stats than excellent equipment and if the whole ancient set is obtained and worn the player obtains other unique bonuses. Lastly there is the level 380 equipment for all classes. Also, while you cannot raise the level of these items, a player can wear a pet, two rings and one pendant. Since there is no storyline in Mu, the real main objective is to become as strong as you can and be in the guild that controls the “Castle”. This is a unique map in which special monsters spawn and drop unique and rare items. Only the guild that owns and successfully defends the Castle from other guilds during even times is allowed access to this map and its huge benefits. Additionally there is a tax in all NPC stores on all items and that tax (in zen) goes to the Guild Master of the guild that holds the Castle. Other than that, the only other goal is to get the best gear to look awesome and be able to kill anyone and everyone that you want to when you want to. A first kill of another player changes your name orange. A second kill changes your name dark orange. Three kills or more changes your name blood red, and eventually changes the shading of your character darker and darker. If you kill a player with a red name several times within a certain time limit your name terms blue and you get the temporary status of Hero. There are penalties to killing other players. When your name is changed because you’ve killed a player, you’re more likely to drop items you’re wearing or holding when you die (certain items, or items of a high enough +level cannot be dropped). You also lose more experience and zen (the in game currency) if you die from a monster. Also if you kill a player none of the NPCs will sell you anything. For each player killed, you must wait about 3 hours in game (if you’re logged out it doesn’t count) for that kill to be cleansed from your record. Additionally, after killing 2 or more people you are not allowed to use your warp command and warp to other maps (costs a certain amount of zen, and requires a certain level depending on the map). So the downside for killing people was that the killer had to walk everywhere which takes forever depending on where you want to go, and takes even longer when other people see you and know they can kill you for free and send you all the way back to the nearest town when you die. However, this warp penalty is broken. While when pushing the M key all the warp options are locked, you can type the command manually into chat “/warp |
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Mar 29th, 2011 at 00:23:32 - Age of Empires II: Conquerors Expansion (PC) |
Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Expansion – Tuesday, March 15th (Games One and Two)
Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Expansion is a single and multiplayer RTS game published by Microsoft on August 24th, 2000.
= Game Play =
You choose a civilization and control a kingdom and all of its corresponding resources (wood, food, gold, stone, and your population limit in this case). You typically strive to advance through four ages; the Dark Age, Feudal Age, Castle Age, and lastly the Imperial Age. Each age of advancement unlocks more technologies in your civilizations technology tree which, for a price, can be researched. You control villagers that do all the collection of resources and create buildings, as well as any military units you choose to create. There are a variety of buildings that can be created. Town Centers allow you to create more villagers, while houses increase the population limit (the max limit is typically 200, but can be changed as a game setting). There are also military buildings like the Barracks and Archery Range for creating military units and doing corresponding military unit research and upgrades/enhancements. In fact, most buildings have research tied to them. For instance the mill has research tied to it to increase the productivity of food collection, universities include various technological advancement research, and castles provide protection and a place to safely house a king inside depending on the win conditions that were set for the game. When I play I change settings to where I always start off in the Dark Ages with fog of war on, with the minimal amount of resources and only a Town Center and a few villagers. I set the win conditions to Conquest mode. You have to destroy all enemy units as well as all enemy buildings that are capable of creating new units. There are several win conditions that can be set however. You can choose to destroy the enemy king as one option. As a second option you can choose to build a Wonder which require a ton of resources to build and keep it from being destroyed for a certain period of time. As a third option you can choose to have a time limit, and by the end of that time whoever has the highest score wins (which is determined by many factors, a couple being the amount of resources collected and units/buildings created etc.). The last win option you can choose to capture all the relics on the map (which are randomly scattered around the map) and hold them for a period of time in a monastery you have created.
There are two main modes of gameplay; one is strictly single player while the other can be either single player or multiplayer. There are Campaigns that you can play (strictly single player, the tutorial teaching you how to play is also campaign style) and there are Random Map games. The Campaigns start a player out with a story from ancient history (Like William Wallace and how he defied the British, and his defeat at Falkirk), and then the player must set out to complete goals that are laid out for them that follow the story. Random Map games can be single player with you fighting against NPC(s) or multiplayer over LAN or GameSpy Arcade (Unfortunately Zone.com no longer hosts a server as of June 2006). Random Map games allow a player to choose a ton of options like teams sizes and team difficulties (5 levels of difficulty if an NPC is chosen), as well as win conditions, general starting resource amounts, max population size, and what map is chosen and how big it is etc. For team matches, you can also choose the option Diplomacy where teams aren’t locked but you can forge and break alliances with players in the game. This is great because it’s always fun to play mind games with players and backstab a player or two when the benefits for you are right! You can even choose to have a Death Match where the resources are (almost) exhaustless and you can start a full-fledged war from the very start of the game. I personally almost always choose the Regicide type of game where you start out with almost no resources and build your kingdom custom from the ground up. I never got into the King of the Hill (control the middle of the map for a time period) or Wonder Race (first person to build a Wonder wins) game types.
= Audio & Graphics =
Microsoft was able to choose soundtracks for the background music that somehow never seemed to get old no matter how long matches lasted, or how many games you played back to back. Their music selection was impeccable. Their sound effects were decent, like for arrows being fired, or catapults damaging a castle or other building. They had sound effects for units when they were damaged, or wolves that were randomly placed on the map with the purpose of killing your villagers if you weren’t careful. The graphics were decent for the game when it was released. They don’t match up to the graphics now of course (the gold on the maps kind of look like lumps of messed up butter), but even so I’m so distracted having a blast playing that the graphics are more than adequate for the job. You basically have an isometric bird’s eye view of the map. Additionally you have a mini map in the corner which is crucial to help you navigate and keep track of unit movement on the map more easily.
= Analysis =
This RTS game really captured my attention and held it until they brought down the game’s online server at Zone.com in June of 2006. There were so many different kinds of strategies to play by, all dependent on the many customizable options within the game, and the many different technology trees each different civilization offered. I was always absorbed with how best to balance my strategies and tactics amongst not only my own team, but against the enemy team as well. With proper planning and strategy no defense was impenetrable, just as no attack was impossible to repel. The combinations players came up with and utilized in game matches were unending even after so many years of playing. Playing this game again brought back many fond memories of amazing adrenaline rushing fights to the bitter end; no game was the same as the next!
= Final Thoughts =
I absolute LOVE Age of Empires II: Conquerors Expansion! If not THE best RTS game I’ve ever played, it’s one of them. I got the game as soon as it came out! I would definitely recommend it for lovers of RTS games. It’s a great way to let loose with friends online, and guarantees many hours of action packed fun. Speaking of time, for anyone that does decide to play it, here’s some advice. Try not to spend too much time trying to research everything. Research what you need. While it’s great if you can research almost everything, I’ve found you have to be especially careful with your time management. Resources do run out on the map in this game if the match ends up being too drawn out. When you collect that wood you needed so much of, the trees do disappear once they’ve been used; if you’re not careful and don’t win quickly enough then eventually you’ll run out of trees!
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Mar 29th, 2011 at 12:40:03.
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Jan 27th, 2011 at 20:12:02 - Clue: Discover the Secrets (Other) |
Clue: Discover the Secrets - Friday, January 21, 2011 (Session One and Two)
Clue: Discover the Secrets is a multiplayer board game for 3 to 6 players. The theme of the game is (murderous) mystery. Players are members of a (6 person total) party held at a posh mansion and one of the guests is murdered. Players must figure out who committed the murder, in what room it occurred and with what weapon. However, as a twist, the longer each player takes to catch the killer the more they risk becoming the next murder victim.
= Players =
Each player chooses which attendee from the party to represent and starts at a set position on the board. Each attendee has a unique ability that they can use once per game. These abilities range from allowing the player to start a rumor about the murderer to allowing the player to move instantly to any room in the mansion rather than having to roll until they can move enough spaces to reach the room they wished to enter.
= Cards =
Three types of cards exist within the game; character cards, rumor cards, and intrigue cards. Character cards represent one of the party attendees at the mansion and list that attendee’s unique ability. The rumor cards either represent a room within the mansion, a weapon, or a character. The intrigue cards mostly contain unique benefits that can be used once per game to do things like move three or four squares further across the board during your turn. However the intrigue deck also holds 8 instant death cards called the 8th hour cards that make you the next murder victim if drawn, and as such automatically eliminate you from the game.
= The Board =
The Board lays out the inside of the mansion and each of its many rooms and hidden passages. It’s broken up into a grid pattern. Players start at their set spots on the board and roll a D6 to see who goes first. Players roll two D6 dice in order to move that many squares (not diagonally) and get to rooms throughout the mansion. The die also contain a “?” that if rolled means to draw an intrigue card. The board also contains spaces on it marked with the “?” symbol. These are a double edged sword since you can either draw a card that will benefit you in some way, or draw one of the 8th hour cards.
= Game Play =
At the very beginning of the game a confidential card envelope is used to hold the card representing the killer, the card representing what room the murder took place in, and the card representing what murder weapon was used. The remaining rumor cards are dispersed evenly amongst the players. One of the players’ immediate concerns is to enter a room in the mansion as soon as possible. Each time a room is entered it allows the player to make a guess about who they think the killer is, and what weapon they think was used to commit the murder in the room that the guess is being made from. Whenever a player makes a guess the player whose turn is next must disprove an item that was guessed using one of the rumor cards that was dealt to them. If they cannot disprove any of the guessed items then they must say so and the next person must disprove one of the items, and so on until one item is shown (only to the player that made the guess) to be false. Each player has a little sheet that they mark to help keep track of what has been disproven. It is extremely important to mark the sheet wisely, as it is the only thing you have to keep track of clues as to who the killer is, what weapon was used, and what room the crime was committed in. One of my main strategies was to make a guess that included one or two cards in my hand so that if anyone had a card not in my hand they would be forced to reveal it to me. In this way I was not only guaranteed to be able to make an item elimination but also had the chance of guessing an item no one could disprove meaning that the item must be within the confidential envelope. This strategy also tends to throw other players off and lead them to false conclusions about what is within the confidential envelope. The first session the killer was Plum with poison in the dining room. The second session the killer was again Plum, but this time with a knife in the spa.
= Overall =
To be successful at Clue you must have lots of patience, well developed deductive skills, and be very accurate with recording your deductions. One tiny mistake can cost you the game. Clue is my favorite strategic mind game. I love nothing better than to fool other players into thinking one of the rumor cards in my hand is within the confidential envelope!
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