Anime vs Realistic Graphics in MMORPGs

December 9, 2009 at 1:28 am · Filed under MMORPGs

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In the MMORPG space nearly every single game has either realistic or cartoony anime graphics with cartoony anime graphics being the most popular. Personally, I’m a fan of anime inspired cartoony graphics, as games that employ cartoony graphics don’t really age too much as technology. 3D realistic MMOs on the other hand look terrible after a couple of years. Games like Shaiya and Last Chaos for example were top notch gorgeous games when they were first released, but years later (now), these games look ‘old’. Next to modern 3D MMORPGs like Karos Online and Atlantica Online older 3D games look terrible. Now I’m sure Karos and Atlantica will also look ‘old’ in a couple of years as 3D graphics are improving exponentially.

On the other hand, anime MMORPGs age as well but not nearly as fast. 2D Games for example tend to age the slowest. Games like MapleStory, LaTale and Wind Slayer still look good even today, even though they were released years ago. Cel-shaded anime inspired games like Fiesta Online, Bright Shadow and Fantasy Tennis will easily look great even in the coming years as 2D / Anime graphics don’t improve nearly as fast as 3D graphics. It’s crazy though how fast 3D MMORPGs age, as I can barely stand to even look at old 3D games these days. Games like Knight Online and Xiah Rebirth are just painful to look at.

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Asians Love their Martial Arts MMORPGs

November 19, 2009 at 2:57 pm · Filed under MMORPGs

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I guess all Asians do know Kung-fu as they seem to be obsessed with martial arts themed MMORPGs. I don’t know how popular Martial Arts are in pop culture over in China, Korea and Japan, but I can’t imagine Western gamers being too interested in martial arts, but either way there seems to be no shortage of martial arts themed MMORPGs making their way to West – the latest being Dragon Oath – an extremely popular 3D martial arts themed fantasy MMORPG from China that vaguely resembles World of Warcraft. My one beef with Dragon Oath is the game’s terrible translations… One of the game’s many playable classes is called ‘beggars alliance’. How on earth ‘beggars alliance’ is a ‘class’ is beyond me.

Next up is the three popular martial arts themed MMORPG games from the MMO juggernaut – Aeria Games. And by three – I actually mean four -as I completely forgot about Dragon Sky – their newest game which is fantasy themed and has some martial arts components to it. Aeria’s two other martial arts themed MMORPGs are Last Chaos, Twelve Sky and Twelve Sky 2. I Guess Aeria has some weird love affair with martial arts themed games – as almost half of their games are martial arts MMORPGs! I have no personal problem with Martial Arts games, in fact all of them are quite good, relatively speaking of course. Both Twelve Sky and Twelve Sky 2 are PvP heavy so PvP fans should definitely check those games out. Last Chaos is a more traditional PvE oriented fantasy MMORPG, but it has a boat load of content, making it well worth checking out.

One of my personal favorite Martial Arts themed games is World of Kung Fu. I guess I didn’t even have to mention that the game was martial arts themed – as the game’s title itself sort of speaks for itself. I guess the reason I like World of Kung Fu so much is that the game has a lot of content – in terms of quests as well as the dungeons to explore. The game has a solid interface as well – so playing the game is actually quite fun. Though not as visually stunning as Twelve Sky 2 – the graphics are still up there.

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Too many Tactical MMOFPS Games

November 8, 2009 at 9:05 pm · Filed under MMORPGs

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Honestly, there are way too many so called ‘tactical’ MMOFPS games on the market. Every single free to play game publisher these days has their very own MMOFPS game. Nexon has Combat Arms, Netgame has Operation 7 and AeriaGames has Wolfteam. This of course isn’t the end of it though as there are over 13 free to play MMOFPS games currently on the market. THIRTEEN! This actually wouldn’t be a big deal if all of these games were actually unique – but they’re not. In fact – most of these games are extremely similar.

By ‘Extremely Similar’ I actually mean almost identical. The fact is most of these free to play games are actually based off a game called ‘Sudden Attack’. I guess Sudden Attack sort of laid the foundation for the modern MMOFPS genre – and every other game developer built their games around those plans. It’s actually quite interesting – because I never heard of Sudden Attack until a few weeks ago – but after playing the game and doing some research on it I learned it was one of the first free to play MMOFPS games…. ever.  After playing Sudden Attack I quickly realized how similar the gameplay, graphics and interface were to.. well… every other tactical shooting game!

One game publisher, ijji, definitely went overboard with the whole MMOFPS craze. ijji today publishes FIVE different shooting games. That means out of the 13 MMORPGs / MMOs ijji publishes five of them are MMO shooting games. The five games they publish are Alliance of Valiant Arms, Soldier Front, GunZ, Huxley and Karma: Operation Barbarossa. To be fair though, GunZ is actually pretty unique so it’s not exactly fair to label it as just another shooting MMO.

You’d imagine with so many free to play MMOFPS games on the market – game publishers would.. well.. stop publishing new MMOFPS games, but unfortunately that isn’t the case. Instead of creating new and genuinely different games game publishers seem to be more interested in releasing these ridiculously similar shooting games. Outspark is working on a new MMOFPS called Blackshot while GamersFirst is working on Parabellum. Ugh! Stop with the MMOFPS games! I’m tired of them!

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