LeMU.waterbottle

No. I did not get a beta key, so I didn’t get to play with real peo­ple… not like I ever wanted at this moment

I. Bet­ter Graphics

Despite peo­ple may call SC2 “car­toony”, its graph­ics lives up to the pres­tige and era.  War­Craft 3 looked good, and I’m happy that this game looks sig­nif­i­cantly bet­ter.  There’s an immense amount of detail to each piece of tex­ture and ani­ma­tion to be dis­cov­ered… which I do when watch­ing AI play­ing against each other~  It’s also a plus which PC with very high to very low specs can run SC2… in dif­fer­ent graph­ics details.

II. Less Microing

The amount of micro-management and the less casual stuff , such as APM, really turns me off from the orig­i­nal Star­Craft.  I now applause the fact that SC2 is more about play­ing the game rather than play­ing a sport.  Don’t get me wrong though, a pro is still a pro with many aspects of play­ing SC2 can be trained opon.  Now it’s really about build, attack, expand, etc… all the macro-management where it is faster to learn and get a grip about.

Again, the game is still in “closed” beta test­ing.  Too bad I don’t get to see yo mommaship’s ownage before she got too fat, lol.  I guess even though her old skill sounds totally over­pow­er­ing, so it’s good to see things got more bal­anced this way.

In con­clu­sion, StarCraft2 does not dis­ap­point me at all; quite amaz­ing, so def­i­nitely I’ll get a copy of the game once it’s released :p

Offi­cial Sites: Nexon Korea(Korean), NHN Japan(Japan­ese), 盛大网络(Simpl. Chi­nese)
Developer’s site: EYEDENTITY Games(Eng­lish)

Even though news says that Dragon Nest will sched­ule to hit world­wide mar­ket in 2009, actu­ally believ­ing a KRPG to hit world­wide mar­ket within a year of its offi­cial release requires a leap of faith that I did not have… fur­ther­more, it’s Nexon we are talk­ing about, lol.  With this game being one of my 2009’s must-play action online RPG, I’m quite embar­rassed to learn the news of Shanda has already started closed beta test­ing… yet it is impos­si­ble for me to get into the closed beta any­way since Shanda only accepted testers using China Tel­com.  Mean­while, Hangame Japan’s offi­cial web­site for the game only has a splash flash ani­ma­tion (plus a devel­op­ment blog), and Nexon NA, accord­ing to presently still uncon­firmable sources, may announce their plan on the last day of 2009.  The rumor is con­vinc­ing to a degree due to the fact if the “sched­ule” means real busi­ness to Nexon NA, then they’d have to say some­thing before year 2009 is over, lol.  Any­how, assume the rumor is true, Dragon Nest is most likely the first of new gen­er­a­tion of Korean online RPG to hit North Amer­i­can market.

Steparu’s Dragon Nest CBT1 (on Korean server) review is very resource­ful if you want to know more about DN’s gameplay.  The review cov­ered three of the four classes cur­rently in the game (with game­play videos)… unfortunately I couldn’t find an in-depth cleric bat­tle video on youtube.  Hangame’s DN blogis in the process of releas­ing some inter­est­ing details on dif­fer­ent classes and their skills… they’ve done war­rior and mage; need archer and cleric now.

I noticed a num­ber of sim­i­lar­i­ties between this game and Tar­taros Online… such as the size of party, instanced bat­tle zone, and very lim­ited char­ac­ter bank.  Yet many other fac­tors assured that DN will be a whole dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence com­pare to Tar­taros.  First and fore­most, DN aims with a crosshair like in 1st or 3rd per­son shooter games; Tartaro’s aim is only two-dimensional, or sim­ply said, pure direc­tional.  Thus, DN requires a much more pre­cise aim­ing than Tar­taros.  The sec­ond dif­fer­ence from my obser­va­tion is that in Dragon Nest, hos­tile encoun­ters more often result in a more pro­logned engage­ment com­pare to Tar­taros.  It is more about keep from able to attack one­self than sim­ply mob­bing them… and prob­a­bly because of the more restricted use of potions, peo­ple can’t spam AoE skills too much in DN as they can in Tartaros.

Back to chi­nese server’s closed beta.  Appar­ently a GM is post­ing beta test­ing logs (#1, #2, #3).  Ignor­ing the text doesn’t do much harm since only a few lines have things to do with the actual test­ing.  Do atten­tion to the screen­shots though… as they appear to be in some kind of abnor­mally fan­tas­tic graphic qual­ity that makes me won­der is it prob­a­ble to play the game in such detailed mode.

NAGIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Prob­a­bly due to com­plains about how ran­dom the slot game was in choos­ing closed beta testers for Tar­taros Online, MK-Style announced that extra 2500 invi­ta­tions will be up for grab start­ing Nov. 30th.  The impor­tant part is this:

[当選発表]
厳正なる抽選をおこない、参加当選者を決定いたします。

I think my Japan­ese is too crap to under­stand what it means.  We’ll see on the 30th :3

PS: Since I don’t know how many of the 5000*3 accounts will actu­ally be on closed beta, the extra 2500 might make it more interesting.

PPS: Thanks to a cer­tain kind-hearted 2ch-er who gave me an invi­ta­tion code!  Jさん有難う御座いました！

Pre­vi­ous Post: http://blog.kgptzac.info/?p=706

Tai­wan Server: http://ttr.lager.com.tw/index/index

Great news.  I man­age to have Lager to man­u­ally reg­is­ter an account for me so I can bypass their stu­pid phone acti­va­tion process >.< though, at the price of show­ing them my Driver’s License.  So now I have some­thing to do before JP server becomes a real­ity :3  But before I go into details with my game­play on the Tai­wan server, more news are to bring~

Firs, MK-Style has updated the game’s web­site.  The char­ac­ter intros now each has a voice clip for pre­view­ing pur­pose.  Most voices matches the feel­ing from the orig­i­nal Korean voice overs… save Soma and Nagi (or Gren­ite, since that’s her name on all other servers).  In the Korean ver­sion, Soma is voiced by a female per­son… but I’d say Shimono’s voice and Soma is not a bad combo.  On the other hand, Nagi, or Gren­ite, whichever name you pre­fer, seem to have a … change of per­son­al­ity(?) with her Japan­ese voice. (It’s a mys­tery to me why her name has to be changed orz)  To put it frankly, the new voice sounds a bit stu­pid com­pare to the orig­i­nal voice of her.

u1game, ser­vice provider of Tar­taros Online for Hong Kong and Macao area, has delayed closed beta launch to Nov. 26th.  It seems every­one is now jump­ing on this game except main­land China and… North Amer­ica… no? Q.Q

Also, I uploaded Tar­taros’ BGM: http://www.rayfile.com/en/files/54df4f4a-d5fc-11de-9fc3-0014221b798a/ca83a752/
The link requires Ray­File client, which has an Eng­lish ver­sion I believe.

con­tinue reading…

Teaser HP: http://ta-online.jp/teaser/

Hur­ray for MK-Style being so fast!  It’s only been four months since they announced the game has been lisenced to them, and now closed beta testers are being care­fully recruited!  Unfor­tu­nately, for now at least, MK-Style are recruit­ing only who are “seri­ous” about “test­ing”, such as, those who will be run­ning (or par­tic­i­pat­ing?) fansite/blog.

More infor­ma­tion about this game can be found on Steparu’s not-so-secret loli-harem here.  Right now he’s been labeled MIA and there has been rumors that the man has been kid­napped by loli, or the other way around, etc.  He said he will play on  Tar­taros’ JP server… hope­fully he’ll mira­cally reap­pear some­day soom and bring us more cov­er­age, that is, if he can some­how get into closed beta xD

Some­thing to look for in Tar­taros Online JP ver­sion… Per­son­ally, of course, it will be in a lan­guage that is rel­a­tively com­pre­hen­si­ble, lol.  Sec­ond, the voice act­ing will be local­ized accord­ing to the following…

con­tinue reading…