DunNa
February 26th, 2007, 08:01 AM
The Link (http://9dragons.acclaim.com/)
Basic info
Ancient Chinese themed
Running off a heavily modified l2 engine
Currently in beta and looks to be that way for atleast afew months to come (aka free)
Easy combat system (both a good and bad thing)
This game is looking like a solid free time sink. The game is based off the l2 engine and its asian themed thus its basicly a big grind. Though so far that grinds actually been rather enjoyable, the combat is pretty and simple, and the fights arn't overtly difficult (yet) so you can play this while only semi aware you are even alive (kinda like EVE). PvP is currently pretty limited but they plan on expanding it, but for now you don't have to worry about getting ganked.
COOL SHIT!
An actual story line, you will deal with characters through out the story and they will react to you, this is partially alot cooler due to how they do the chatting. Think of it sorta like the defias quests from the alliance nub area in WoW but going through out the entire game and dealing with opposing player clans and npc clans.
The skill system rocks. Like every MMO that takes "grinding" approach from now on has to use a system like this or I will feel cheated. Though this is also partially due to the combat system and not just the skills. Basicly your skills have levels and by using them they improve, nothing overtly revolutionary by any means until you see how the skills are emplimented. They have skills like "basic saber skill" and this will effect how all your basic saber swings speed, damage, and looks. By upgrading the skill you get a more complex and prettier swing pattern/combo and more damage. There are also multiple schools of "saber skill" like basic, heavenly demon, bloody saber, etc which has special attribuites to them to more specialised to what you want. Some emphasis slower arching power slices while others super fast slices all over the place. You can even take your basic skill all the way if you wanted though the "real" schools would have advantages its still possible.
This skill leveling system also works for spells and such but in a much less flashy way in my experience and isn't as TOTALLY AWESOME!
Mini-games and interesting quests.
Once you buy a new kung fu skill you have to train it. This simply means going to a training ground of the correct type and doing a minigame of some sort. Usually a timing game (click while the cicle is in the red zone) or a balancing act (right click leans right left leans left, keep the ball in the middle). I have yet to fail one of these mini games but I hear for the really advanced skills the games get much more challenging and people have spent like a day trying to finish it to get a skill. Though if you fail you can just try again no harm done.
Challenging quests, and not in the "these stupid items wouln't drop" sense. We are talking actually challenging. Like time limits where even if you do everything flawlessly your looking at cutting it down to seconds away from failing. Then you have text quests where you will actually need to type in responses like old school adventure games (though rather limited). Though there are also your fill of standard courier and go kill X type of quests. I've atually felt like I accomplished something after doing some of these (specially the clan entry test).
The basic faction setup. The main division is between white and black clans (yin and yang style thing) basicly those who support the emporer and those who oppose him. Both of those clans are composed of martial arts clans. The white has shaolin, wu tang, and beggers (think drunk styles and all that). The black clans have heavenly demon, thieves, and some female assassin group I can't recall the name of. There are also afew NPC clans that are neither black nor white.
Each martial arts clan has there specialties, like for heavenly demons is sabers and unarmed (though you can wear gloves/claws). You start out clanless and must earn your way into a clan (or you can stay clanless and just get shafted on cool abilities and nifty story line quests) and once you are in a clan you there and thats that, there is no "thanks evil guys for teaching me super death touch I'm joining the good guys now". The actual quest to join them was pretty long and over all AWESOME specially for an MMO story wise. Shaolin is restricted to male only characters and the assassins are restricted to female only.
There are also some pretty nifty stats. Like there is a rage meter, basicly think of this like FF7 limit break. I haven't found out exactly how it fills up but once it fills up you get a red aura and once activated you go into beserker mode and basicly rape everything for abit.
Then there is external and interal damage. Basicly if you get beat up enough you get HP/MP pool reductions. So if you have 60 external wounds your max HP is decreased by 60. Healers can eventually learn to cure these or you can go to doctors in towns and pay to have them patch you up. There are also items that can be used.
The level up system is pretty cool aswell, its broken down into sets of 12. Once you fill up the 12 green balls you get a level, once you get 12 of those levels you must "align your chi" (another mini game) you must pass this minigame or not be able to level up (its pretty easy though), Then you start your next set of 12 and so on. The main thing I noticed about this setup is that I was never as "zomg I only gained 2 levels this shit is boring", granted thats purely pychological but still. Appearently theres over 200 levels and by like lvl80 or so you start getting about .01% of a level per kill towards your next level. Though the final rank is "immortal" and supposedly you basicly become immortal or get an ability to temporarly become immortal.
Travel is awesome. At like lvl8 you get your travel form which is basicly bionic running. There is no trudging through 40 levels to finally waste every ounce of gold you have to buy a horse. This really removes travel as being a big obstical or time sink, there is also very little "dead" space thats just there to make you run an extra 5minutes between towns.
Death penalties are decent. There is xp loss but its adjustable depending on how you respawn. You can choose to respawn at your clans place (nearest town before you have a clan), where you died, or you can get revived. ANY character can revive a person while they are "knocked down" basicly when you die you have about a 10second period in which any character can walk up to your corpse and double click it, if they do you will get ressed there and not lose much/any xp. Once those 10seconds are up you are then stuck picking a revive point or waiting for a healer that can res.
Basicly the game is friggin awesome and has alot of cool points, though there are some shit things to :(
Its still a grinder, even though it looks nice and is rather neat its still at its heart an asian grind fest.
There is no way to share money that is dropped in a party whoever picks up the cash gets it. You can adjust the settings for who gets to pick up stuff but not share the cash.
Slightly confusing at times, specially with the challenging quests. At times abit to much so specially on something where its "repeat what xan yu said" and they don't accept your answer because you did capitalize someones name. Spending 15minutes typing the same answer over and over until you think "hum maybe that was capitalized?" and it works is slightly frustrating.
Horrible chat interface, I mean its beyond horrible. Like l2 had a bad chat setup, they somehow managed to make it worse....
Over all awesome MMO that free. Currently I'm on the Euro server (there is only two and the euro had the lowest population) named DunNa. Though I will probably be switching over to the US server just because there is so much non-english on the euro server...
Basic info
Ancient Chinese themed
Running off a heavily modified l2 engine
Currently in beta and looks to be that way for atleast afew months to come (aka free)
Easy combat system (both a good and bad thing)
This game is looking like a solid free time sink. The game is based off the l2 engine and its asian themed thus its basicly a big grind. Though so far that grinds actually been rather enjoyable, the combat is pretty and simple, and the fights arn't overtly difficult (yet) so you can play this while only semi aware you are even alive (kinda like EVE). PvP is currently pretty limited but they plan on expanding it, but for now you don't have to worry about getting ganked.
COOL SHIT!
An actual story line, you will deal with characters through out the story and they will react to you, this is partially alot cooler due to how they do the chatting. Think of it sorta like the defias quests from the alliance nub area in WoW but going through out the entire game and dealing with opposing player clans and npc clans.
The skill system rocks. Like every MMO that takes "grinding" approach from now on has to use a system like this or I will feel cheated. Though this is also partially due to the combat system and not just the skills. Basicly your skills have levels and by using them they improve, nothing overtly revolutionary by any means until you see how the skills are emplimented. They have skills like "basic saber skill" and this will effect how all your basic saber swings speed, damage, and looks. By upgrading the skill you get a more complex and prettier swing pattern/combo and more damage. There are also multiple schools of "saber skill" like basic, heavenly demon, bloody saber, etc which has special attribuites to them to more specialised to what you want. Some emphasis slower arching power slices while others super fast slices all over the place. You can even take your basic skill all the way if you wanted though the "real" schools would have advantages its still possible.
This skill leveling system also works for spells and such but in a much less flashy way in my experience and isn't as TOTALLY AWESOME!
Mini-games and interesting quests.
Once you buy a new kung fu skill you have to train it. This simply means going to a training ground of the correct type and doing a minigame of some sort. Usually a timing game (click while the cicle is in the red zone) or a balancing act (right click leans right left leans left, keep the ball in the middle). I have yet to fail one of these mini games but I hear for the really advanced skills the games get much more challenging and people have spent like a day trying to finish it to get a skill. Though if you fail you can just try again no harm done.
Challenging quests, and not in the "these stupid items wouln't drop" sense. We are talking actually challenging. Like time limits where even if you do everything flawlessly your looking at cutting it down to seconds away from failing. Then you have text quests where you will actually need to type in responses like old school adventure games (though rather limited). Though there are also your fill of standard courier and go kill X type of quests. I've atually felt like I accomplished something after doing some of these (specially the clan entry test).
The basic faction setup. The main division is between white and black clans (yin and yang style thing) basicly those who support the emporer and those who oppose him. Both of those clans are composed of martial arts clans. The white has shaolin, wu tang, and beggers (think drunk styles and all that). The black clans have heavenly demon, thieves, and some female assassin group I can't recall the name of. There are also afew NPC clans that are neither black nor white.
Each martial arts clan has there specialties, like for heavenly demons is sabers and unarmed (though you can wear gloves/claws). You start out clanless and must earn your way into a clan (or you can stay clanless and just get shafted on cool abilities and nifty story line quests) and once you are in a clan you there and thats that, there is no "thanks evil guys for teaching me super death touch I'm joining the good guys now". The actual quest to join them was pretty long and over all AWESOME specially for an MMO story wise. Shaolin is restricted to male only characters and the assassins are restricted to female only.
There are also some pretty nifty stats. Like there is a rage meter, basicly think of this like FF7 limit break. I haven't found out exactly how it fills up but once it fills up you get a red aura and once activated you go into beserker mode and basicly rape everything for abit.
Then there is external and interal damage. Basicly if you get beat up enough you get HP/MP pool reductions. So if you have 60 external wounds your max HP is decreased by 60. Healers can eventually learn to cure these or you can go to doctors in towns and pay to have them patch you up. There are also items that can be used.
The level up system is pretty cool aswell, its broken down into sets of 12. Once you fill up the 12 green balls you get a level, once you get 12 of those levels you must "align your chi" (another mini game) you must pass this minigame or not be able to level up (its pretty easy though), Then you start your next set of 12 and so on. The main thing I noticed about this setup is that I was never as "zomg I only gained 2 levels this shit is boring", granted thats purely pychological but still. Appearently theres over 200 levels and by like lvl80 or so you start getting about .01% of a level per kill towards your next level. Though the final rank is "immortal" and supposedly you basicly become immortal or get an ability to temporarly become immortal.
Travel is awesome. At like lvl8 you get your travel form which is basicly bionic running. There is no trudging through 40 levels to finally waste every ounce of gold you have to buy a horse. This really removes travel as being a big obstical or time sink, there is also very little "dead" space thats just there to make you run an extra 5minutes between towns.
Death penalties are decent. There is xp loss but its adjustable depending on how you respawn. You can choose to respawn at your clans place (nearest town before you have a clan), where you died, or you can get revived. ANY character can revive a person while they are "knocked down" basicly when you die you have about a 10second period in which any character can walk up to your corpse and double click it, if they do you will get ressed there and not lose much/any xp. Once those 10seconds are up you are then stuck picking a revive point or waiting for a healer that can res.
Basicly the game is friggin awesome and has alot of cool points, though there are some shit things to :(
Its still a grinder, even though it looks nice and is rather neat its still at its heart an asian grind fest.
There is no way to share money that is dropped in a party whoever picks up the cash gets it. You can adjust the settings for who gets to pick up stuff but not share the cash.
Slightly confusing at times, specially with the challenging quests. At times abit to much so specially on something where its "repeat what xan yu said" and they don't accept your answer because you did capitalize someones name. Spending 15minutes typing the same answer over and over until you think "hum maybe that was capitalized?" and it works is slightly frustrating.
Horrible chat interface, I mean its beyond horrible. Like l2 had a bad chat setup, they somehow managed to make it worse....
Over all awesome MMO that free. Currently I'm on the Euro server (there is only two and the euro had the lowest population) named DunNa. Though I will probably be switching over to the US server just because there is so much non-english on the euro server...