Play Tera For Free?

After an earthquake and a hurricane all in one week you'd think I'd pretty much seen it all. Wrong! That's right, if you make enough gold it will be very possible to avoid your subscription fee in Tera thanks to the implementation of chronoscrolls. In an effort to deter gold-farmers in their upcoming MMO, En Masse has announced they will be offering chronoscrolls as a way for players to legally buy gold. Players will be able to purchase these scrolls from En Masse with real money and then sell them for in game gold to other players who will be able to convert them into more play time. Essentially this allows any player who wants to buy gold the ability to do so in a legal way that also completely avoids supporting gold farmers. The downside is that you will have to find players that are willing to pay you for these scrolls and the price they're willing to pay could vary dramatically depending on certain circumstances (your server's current supply & demand).

What are chronoscrolls?

Tera's COO Pat Wyatt tells us, "Chronoscrolls are an in-game item we’re using to fight gold farming, game account theft, phishing, chat spam, and other criminal behaviors in order to create a better gameplay environment for TERA. Players can trade their excess gold for chronoscrolls and redeem those chronoscrolls to play TERA for free"

Read the article here.
Check out the chronoscroll FAQ here.

RH: Thoughts on Phase 2 of Closed Beta

Phase 1 has come and gone and we now find ourselves exploring the second phase of the Rusty Hearts Closed Beta. So what's changed? The biggest and most welcomed difference (to me at least) is the number of loading screens in town. Previously if you wanted to visit every area of the town it would mean waiting through ~6 different loading screens. Now, thankfully, the entire area is one continuous and uninterrupted zone.

Before...(P1)

After..(P2)

You may also notice some new item graphics on your toon...

Back in phase 1 my sword just looked like this...

But now, in phase 2, it lights up... oooooo cooool

I'm also a fan of an 'inspect' function so I know what I'm up against in PvP. Which btw is still as horribly unbalanced as I expected but we'll get to that another time.

While PWE claims to have added a 'skill point management system', where certain abilities can only be unlocked by first purchasing prerequisite skills, it's missing one very important detail; there currently is no specification as to which abilities are required to unlock the locked abilities. So I pretty much just spent skill points on the skills I wanted and if a locked ability just happened to open up I made sure to learn it. Not the end of the world, it's just one of those things that'd be nice to know x.x. To see the full list of improvements/additions made in phase 2 you can find them here.

Until next time, thanks for reading!

Darkspore: Online Dungeon Crawl

Intro
If you bought or eventually end up buying a digital copy of the game online like I did, be sure to check out the online manual here. Personally, it helped me pick up some cool hero-editing tricks. Also be sure to refer to my screenshots if you haven't already.


Game Overview
Darkspore can be a bit confusing/overwhelming to a new player. For instance, at first you're rewarded for opening every obelisk you see. But when it comes to the 'boss area', if you open the obelisks they only contain health and power capsules and will count against you when calculating your medal results after the mission. There is a distinct difference between these obelisks though, the regular obelisks are blue and health obelisks are green (see pic below). However, this color difference didn't mean anything to me in the first few levels of the game, one of them gave me loot and catalysts and the other gave me health and power capsules. It simply made sense to open all of them, unless of course you knew about the objective log (shortcut 'O') that early in the game.

^Bad (Unless you're dying)  Good^

You, the player, are the Crogenitor and you gain experience and levels by killing, slaying and obliterating all Darkspore in your path. In order to do this though, you must first 'edit' your heroes with the appropriate gear and more importantly, looks (or is it the other way around?). Each hero is one of five types, bio, cyber, necro, plasma, or quantum; sadly, the only real importance your heroes types have is that Darkspore deal 100% more damage to heroes of the same type. Your heroes on the other hand deal the same amount of damage to every type. In addition, each hero is one of 3 'classes': the sentinel, the tank type whose primary stat is strength, the ravager, melee fighter type whose ability damage is dexterity based and lastly, the tempest, the mind-focused caster type. With these heroes you are tasked to form squads, squads consist of 3 heroes that can be used interchangeably throughout each threat, as long as they're alive. If you or one of your party members does happen to lose a hero, they can be resurrected by picking up a 'resurrection capsule' dropped from any random Darkspore. It resembles an empty capsule surrounded by a whitish glow and unlike other capsules, it must be clicked on to be used.

The game's only currency is 'DNA', which can be obtained as a drop from mobs in the form of a strand or in exchange for selling equipment to the DNA converter (the store). DNA is used to purchase upgrades such as higher stat caps for your heroes, increased inventory size, unlocking catalyst slots and more. This can all be done in the Arsenal by opening your inventory ('I') and clicking the 'Upgrades' tab in the DNA converter.

PvP
Unfortunately there isn't much to PvP in Darkspore. It's 2v2 on a small arena-sized map, where you and your partner's three heroes of choice are pitted against your randomly selected opponents. I guess the upside is that there is any PvP at all. Unless you have a friend you can team up with, you're going to be paired up with a random partner, that is, if you have the patience to sit in matchmaking long enough to find one.

Tips
- If you ever get lost, the trails of blood are a decent indicator of where you've already been and pressing 'N' on your keyboard will bring up an arrow on your mini-map that will help lead you to the end of each level (and make sure you don't miss any objectives along the way)
- The key to a successful squad is versatility, vary your hero types and classes in order to prepare for any special enemies you may run into
- Having a hero with a healing squad ability like Meditron or Tork in your squads is extremely helpful
- Get link bonuses from your catalysts by linking the same colors horizontally, vertically or diagonally
- Party up when you can, the experience bonuses are significant
- Beginners, check out this great beginners FAQ

Pros
- It's an online dungeon crawl with 25 different heroes (100 total, but 4 variants of each hero), attractive level designs, one of a kind skills & abilities, co-op gameplay and of course, awesome loot
- The 'chaining' of threats, completing consecutive levels for greater rewards
- Customization of heroes is impressive, you can easily spend hours making your hero look as awesome or as goofy as you want
- Being able to use not just 1, but 3 different heroes in the form of a squad
    - Each hero having their own squad ability that can be used by any
      member
- For those who enjoy having a stat sheet to look at, Darkspore keeps track of some basic stats as shown below

62240 = 17 hours, 17 min & 20 sec

Cons
- Matchmaking system is virtually worthless (see suggestions below)
- With 100 available heroes it'd be nice if I could have more than 3 squads with only 9 of them
- Poor design of teleports to boss areas (at ends of levels) can cause you to lose valuable loot

Careful, once you enter the red bubble there's no going
 back

- Can't equip new loot as you get it, this can only be done in the editor
- Can't change the camera angle (in game)
- Can't 'alt + tab' out of full-screen mode and get back into the game
- The same level designs are recycled over and over

Other Thoughts/Suggestions
- The stat for time played is in seconds (obviously not a problem.. but.. ?)
- The narrator and the uninteresting story practically begged me to turn off my speakers so that I could at least try to enjoy the game
- Instead of using the heroes I wanted to use, I constantly found myself using the heroes that I had the best weapons for at the time.
- Any player-to-player trade or auction house system would do wonders for this game
- The matchmaking queue would be 1000x more effective if players could do anything other than wait at the matchmaking screen for 1 minute before it timed out. Allow players to edit their heroes/squads and even solo campaign while they're in queue for a group.

Bugs
- Mobs with the self-resurrect buff are very buggy, they only resurrect half of the time, and some of times they do they're invisible for some time and then they disappear
- If you use Skar's 'Shadow Cloak' (invisibility) ability during a horde encounter where a mutation agent is present, the agent will simultaneously turn all the surrounding enemies into elites
- See pics

Says the upgrade is available when it should
 give the insufficient dna message seen below

The correct version (and yes it was purely coincidence that
my party members at the time just happened to be talking
about the game's bugs as I was documenting one)

Score - 73
The brilliance of the spore editor and the unique idea of squads aren't quite enough to counteract the seemingly endless stream of bugs that plague Darkspore.

RH: Phase 1 of Closed Beta Comes to an End

Straight from the Rusty Hearts forums:

"Rusty Hearts closed beta phase 1 is almost complete. Phase 2 is coming soon!

At 3pm Pacific/6pm Eastern on Wednesday, August 17th, the Rusty Hearts closed beta will temporarily be closed while we prepare the second phase of the beta testing period. The down time will last one week, and the servers will be back online, Wednesday, August 24th.

Below is a quick FAQ that should answer most of your questions. Thank you all for your continued support of Rusty Hearts, and we cant wait for you to see what's new!

Q: Will my character be deleted?
A: No, all of your character information will be saved, and you will be able to continue playing on your normal account with the same login information.


Q: When will the servers go down?
A: At 3pm Pacific/6pm Easter time on Wednesday, August 17th.


Q: When will the servers come back up?
A: They will come back online Wednesday, August 24th.


Q: Why are you closing the servers?
A: Based upon player feedback we've received during closed beta testing so far, we plan to make some changes and add new content to Phase 2. In order to devote all of our resources to making sure Phase 2 launches in the best possible condition, we must temporarily take the server down.


Q: Will the level cap be raised?
A: No, the level cap will remain at 20 for the remainder of the closed beta."

I have to admit I'm little disappointed that the level cap will remain at 20 throughout the remainder of the closed beta period (I wanted some more cool skills!). Other than that though, I look forward playing and bringing you a review of phase 2.

Games You Should Play and Why

Portal 2 (Puzzle Game for PC, Mac, PS3, Xbox 360) - If you love solving puzzles, and don't give up easily, this game will reward you with an undying feeling of accomplishment (and likely an appreciation for the level designers who create these puzzles). Portal and its sequel contain gameplay that is truly unique to themselves. While getting used to the idea and the physics of 'portals' undoubtedly takes time, once that light comes on it becomes almost second nature. Don't get me wrong, there were times when I swore that a level was unbeatable, but that just made it all the more satisfying when I figured it out (except for when I realized I had been thinking way too hard the whole time and the answer was right in front of me, then I felt pretty dumb for wasting an hour of my life).

Tips
- While I've gone about this backwards from having first played the sequel to just now playing the original, I'd encourage you to play the original Portal first. Unless you're like me and you don't mind the fact that you really don't have any idea what's going on in the story of the game until about 5 hours into it, then by all means follow my lead.
- If you've tried the same strategy multiple times and it's hasn't gotten you where you want to be, it's most likely  the wrong strategy and it's not going to get you there after twenty more tries. So think of something else ;)
- When you find yourself stuck and feel like you're beating your head against a brick wall, stop, it's not healthy. Okay, but really, if when you feel like you've reached that 'impossible' level, I found that taking a break and then coming back to the game after some time was just what I needed. That way when you come back, it will be easier to try and see the problem from a different perspective and hopefully lead you to the solution.

Price - only $29.99 for PC and $39.99 on consoles
Portal is available through purchasing the Orange Box. Which will cost you $19.99 and also give  you an additional 4 games to play around with.

One of the earlier levels in Portal

A portal, in Portal

Repulsion gel in Portal 2 (trampoline gel)

More pictures coming soon!

Minecraft (Sandbox Game for PC) - This game is simple, fun and for everyone (well maybe not for everyone, if you're afraid of moaning block-shaped monsters, pictured below, you might want to graduate from Hello Kitty Online first). Build whatever you want, destroy whatever you want and flood whatever you want and that's only in the classic version (which is all I've played so far because it's free, actually that's not true I also played the demo I got with one of my PC gamer issues, pics below!), but even with minimal functionality I still found myself glued to the screen trying to construct whatever my imagination could think up. The beta version on the other hand is constantly being updated and contains many more features, including enemies that attack you and your creations at night!

Tips and Tutorials can be found here.
-Play around with the free classic version here.

Price - 14.95 Euros or ~$21.56 US Dollars

Just some super exciting stairs I built in the classic version

Here piggie piggie piggie

The PC Gamer Cow!

Well clearly this is a.. ummm, well that one up
 there is definitely a bird

'hole-maker's' friend, one of the many infamous
block-monsters roaming the nights of Minecraft

I have to apologize for all the dark pictures (I lost my torches), I ended up spending all of the daylight I had on a 'Minecraft safari' (sorry, I can't help that I'm intrigued by animals that I can only identify by turning up my speakers to hear the noise(s) that they're making). After the sun went down and I was being chased down by zombie-bears, weird slingshot-wielding creatures and exploding leafy block-monsters I realized that a safari probably wasn't the best use of my time. I was bored of running so I naively decided to change my strategy from flight to fight, I had to see if these franken-spawns were as tough as they looked. I charged my nearest challenger and let's just say that's how I learned that the leafy block-monsters were explosive. Half my health was gone and I was in a good sized hole (3-4 cubes deep) where the ground had been (see picture above). Before I could hop out of my hole, one of 'hole-maker's' buddies was on top of me and my screen looked like so:

Not only did I lose the daylight of my first day without building a shelter, but when I died I also lost all of the free goodies I got from PC Gamer :(

I can't believe I lost some stuff!

It turns out 'some stuff' translates into bread, sticks,
stone tools, torches, coal, fishing line, compasses
 and something else

My good friend Mr. Zombie Bear

Incoming, some sort of projectile

Oooo an underground waterfall

Darkspore Pics

Why is this here?

Andromeda's Gravity Storm ability

This guy died and cool stuff happened.

Combat with some UI explanation.

Catalysts provide significant stat boosts to your
heroes.

Empty Overdrive

Full Overdrive

Overdrive being used against a boss.

Complete all your objectives to get a better
chance at rare loot.

You have to find all 3 of these on every level to get a
gold medal for the objective.

Post mission stats are available the end of every 'threat'
(Darkspore's code name for a mission/level).

It broke...

Coming Soon: Darkspore Review

One of my buddies has been really persistent in trying to get me to play Darkspore with him for some time now, so I finally gave in and decided to pick up the game a few days ago. Now, thanks to my procrastination, I've got some serious catchin' up to do. Fortunately for me though, he's the one with the day-job and I'm the student that just finished up his summer class and now has plenty of time to kill. On top of that I'm still recovering from a hamstring strain (lame, I know), which gives me all the more reason for me to sit at my computer and play this game. Needless to say, there is truth to the title of this post, do not fear!

To customize or not to customize, it's up to you

Rusty Hearts (Phase 1 Beta) Review

First off, let me just start off by saying that I love beta's. They give me a chance to play the games I can't wait to play, before they're released to the public. I get a free test drive that will in turn help the developer polish their game into the final product. Where's the downside in that? Well I guess this experience isn't for everyone, especially those lacking patience and who are easily irritated by bugs and imperfections. I assure you, there will be monsters running through walls, shooting through walls, disappearing and reappearing for no apparent reason. Servers will come down for hours at a time just when you start really getting into the game and you just have to accept it because it's an integral part of the game testing process.

Character Options
All right, on to the game. There are currently 3 characters to choose from (if you're looking for character customization, this is the first area that Rusty Hearts will disappoint). Each character is just that, a character with their own appearance and abilities unique to them. The only thing that sets you apart from another person playing the same character, is your name. First off we have Frantz (the character I played primarily),  who's your basic fighter type, he wears heavy armor and wields either a sword or an axe. If you enjoy literally 'hacking and slashing' your enemies in aerial combat, Frantz is your man. Next up is Tude, who specializes in the use of fist weapons, either the gauntlet or the claw (the claw being the slower but more deadly of the two). He wears leather armor and most resembles the rogue class from other MMO's. Angela, is currently the lone female (another female character will be introduced later on) as well as spell caster, in Rusty Hearts. While she is a cloth wearer, she can also deal considerable melee damage. Angela's weapons of choice include the magic sword or the scythe, with the latter of the two being the '2-handed' option. The 'yet to be fully revealed' fourth character, if we follow the pretty clear trend, is likely going to be sporting a set of chain armor. Oh, and her name is Natasha (don't you feel like you know her now?).

Gameplay

Game interface with some explanation

So now that you've chosen your 'hero' what are you going to do? After you create your character you're given a choice of whether or not you want to run through the tutorial. It has a fair amount of dialog so if you're ready to play and dialog isn't your thing then you'll be fine to just skip it and start running dungeons asap. Dungeons in Rusty Hearts utilize a grading system based on a number of different factors, including but certainly not limited to, the time it takes you to kill the mobs in an 'area', chain kills (killing multiple enemies simultaneously), chain hits (consecutive hits) and the number of hits you take. Those are just a few of many things that will  affect which of these grades you will ultimately end up with: F , D , C , B , A , S , SS or SSS. Understandably, the higher your rank is at the end of your run, the more experience you'll be awarded. There are also certain quests that will require you to finish with a specific rank (for example, quests will often ask you to complete 'instance x' with 'A' Rank or higher). In addition to this grading system, (most) dungeons have 4 different difficulty levels beginning with normal. From there you can progress after clearing each previous mode with a 'D' grade or better to the hard, very hard and blood modes (blood mode isn't available for lower level dungeons and requires 5 'keys' attained from hard/very hard modes) for more experience and more importantly, better loot!

PvP

Once you reach level 10 you have the option to participate in the PvP arena. Even with some significant imbalances in the PvP aspect of the game, I was surprised to find myself still participating in it. What kept me interested more than anything were the unique PvP modes that were offered.  You have several options when it comes to the RH arena, the various types of matches include: solo survival, team survival, tag team, death match or a leader match. Solo survival should be pretty self explanatory, it's a free for all duel to the death or until time is up between all players. Team survival allows straight up 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 matches between players. In a tag team match, the order that players will fight is randomly selected at the beginning. From there it will keep going down each team's list of players until every player from one team has been defeated. A death match is similar to team survival except that players will respawn after they are killed until either 1) One team has reached a certain number of kills or 2) Time runs out. The last option is a leader match, where one player from each team is designated to be the 'leader' prior to the match and once either leader is defeated, the other team is victorious.

Pros
-It's 100% free to play, not just the beta, but the actual game itself will be free when it's released. So really you have nothing to lose by giving Rusty Hearts a test run
-Brings together the addictive qualities of an MMO as well as your typical dungeon crawl
-(Should be a pro, if it works) Like every half decent hack-n-slash game should, RH allows you to play with a console controller! (Unfortunately I wasn't able to because I don't have a wired controller)
-Each character has a set of unique and visually impressive skills
-Clearing instances with a friend is loads of fun, the runs become a lot faster, it allows you to take on more challenging enemies (for better loot) and you get a great group experience bonus at the end
-This is only the first phase of beta, there is still plenty more content yet to be released and fully tested before the official game's release

I guess that's sorta maybe kinda cool.. maybe

Cons
-Only being able to run the similarly styled dungeons over and over can start to feel like that dreaded repetitive grind
-There's zero character customization
-Dungeon grading system can be rather unforgiving at times (There were times where I was expecting my rank to go up after an area but instead it dropped two or three for no apparent reason)
-Current 'Stamina' system that's in place doesn't allow players to do quests or gain experience once they're stamina bar is empty. It also doesn't give you a warning if you turn in quests while your stamina is depleted, which can cause you to lose a substantial amount of experience and become a sad panda :(
-Key-binding options are very limited, for example you can't use modifiers like shift, ctrl and alt to bind with other keys. This is a huge downside for me, especially as the number of skills increase past level 20.
-Once you choose a weapon specialization (at level 20) there is no way for you to change it. The same is true for skills and abilities. There needs to be some sort of reset option.
-In dungeons that have locked doors, there's no confirmation before your key is used to open a door if you accidentally wander too close to it. There were too many times where I had my keys wasted opening doors I didn't want to open.

Best item description... ever.

Bugs and issues I ran into:
-A few times when I logged into the game, the shortcut keys to open my inventory, character screen or any other interface menu wouldn't weren't responsive. However, my skills and abilities would still activate properly. Each time this occurred I was able to resolve it by exiting and restarting my game client
-Early in the game when I was running the 2nd instance on hard mode one of the skeleton archers right before the final boss had managed to walk through the final 'barrier' into the bosses room, this was a problem because the barrier wouldn't let me pass until all the mobs prior to it were cleared. After a minute or so though, the 'runaway' skeleton reappeared in front of me and I was able to successfully complete the instance.
-There were a number of times where I would leave an instance (no particular instance, it happened to me in a few different dungeons) after I had finished it and my screen would go black and stay that way. This forced me to manually close the game and then wait around 5 minutes till I could log back on to my character again.
-This

Hmmm, it's dark in here.

Grade (0-100)
-N/A  (Can't grade a rough draft)

Diablo 3 News

Blizzard Entertainment has just announced that they will be implementing an auction house in Diablo 3 that will allow players to buy and sell in-game items for real money. It seems to be the fix that they've come up with to deter the infamous gold-farmers by giving everyone the chance to do it while giving themselves the ability to mediate the entire process. But don't think Blizz isn't taking their own cut now... that would just be bad business (especially now that they've made such a seemingly drastic attempt to eliminate the middle man)!

- "A nominal fixed transaction fee will be deducted from the seller for each item listed in the auction house. This fee consists of a fixed charge to list the item, which is assessed whether or not the item is successfully sold, and an additional fixed charge that is assessed only if the item is sold. Because the listing portion of the fee is charged even if the item doesn’t sell, it will be in the seller’s interest to list items he or she believes other players will be interested in, and to do so at a competitive price. Specific details related to the transaction fee for the currency-based auction house will vary by region and will be announced at a later date."


Can we buy gold from the currency-based auction house?
- "Players will be able to buy and sell gold through the currency-based auction house at whatever the current market price is, as established by the player community."


This ground-breaking feature brings a number of questions and concerns to mind. How will this affect the balance of the game?? Particularly PvP, where players who may spend boat loads of cash gearing their character will be matched up against someone who hasn't spent a dime. It will be interesting to see how Blizzard implements a solution to this and I look forward to not being disappointed. A less troubling question though, is what side will you be on? I know being the needy college student that I am, that I will be on the selling side of this new feature. I imagine most people will do a little of both, trying to balance the checkbook with each transaction. "Oh cool! An epic robe just dropped and I'm a Barbarian so I can't use it. Now I'll have money to buy the equivalent in plate gear!" Something along those lines at least ;) . 


Read more here or see the FAQ on Blizzard's site... OR for all you can eat Diablo 3 (no joke, this site has everything you could possibly want to know about Diablo III), check out this site.