Violence has always been a part of human nature. From the gladiatorial combat in Ancient Rome to the bloody massacres seen on modern television, the viewing of violence as entertainment has never changed. One of the first MMOG developers to approach this grisly medium is Gravity Interactive, a studio best known for creating the wildly popular children’s MMOG, Ragnarok Online. Their entry into the marketplace is titled Requiem: Bloodymare, and the developers have pulled out all the stops to insure that this game is as nightmarishly brutal as possible. With the game now in closed beta and free for the press to preview, Cody "Micajah" Bye sat down with the title and pounded his way through the initial play experience for Requiem: Bloodymare.
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All gore and guts aside, the atmosphere of the game really does an incredible job of pulling you into the game. As you traverse through your initial starting area, you’ll find the secluded city of Rondel. Built into the middle of a massive, snow covered peak, Rondel is reminiscent of cities you might have seen at the beginning of the electrical age. Power lines run through the city streets and steam blasts out of vents on random intervals. Glowing fires can be seen in many of the buildings and armed guards walk down the stony alleys. If the Fallout franchise focused on swords and sorcery, this is the sort of town they might have designed.
Excellent preview piece. You definitely hit on many of the key points that when looked at as a whole, have made Requiem not only one of the better localizations I've seen, but an otherwise fun gaming experience as well.
One of the cooler features that I've never really seen before isn't even one that directly relates to gameplay. I think the per-character password protection is potentially a giant leap forward for account security, and is a system I'm surprised other games haven't implemented as of yet. I have a feeling it was mainly inspired by the original game being primarily played in cafes, but regardless it's just enough added protection so that even if someone can hack into your account they still aren't able to do much damage to your characters. I'd love to hear how it's worked out for them as far as security goes.
Another thing I think deserves some mention is the "job change" system. You're only really given basic information on your options before making your class choices so it's a bit hard to feel like you're making an informed decision. It's only after making the (permanent) change that you're able to see what type of skills your new class has to offer. Thats one area I think they could add a bit of clarity even as early as character creation, since your choice of race is the first limiting factor for what classes you'll eventually have to chose from.
Otherwise, Bloodymare has helped me realize one of the few ways spending much time in WoW has spoiled me. I'm as far from being a "loot whore" as possible, but oddly enough I've come to realize more and more that I enjoy being able to continually alter the appearance of my characters. There's so many variants of each type of armor in WoW that drop at basically every level, so it's rare that I'd go for more than 2 levels with any given overall visual appearance.
At first BM seemed to address that much better than most imported MMOs - I obtained new armor sets at levels 4, 7 and 10 fairly easily through random mob drops. After that point though, my character was stuck in that level 10 armor set all the way up to level 20, with even level 19 monsters still dropping level 10 armors. Mind you, the armors all look fairly cool from what I've seen, but I'd love to see a bit more variety on that front, especially once xp / advancement begins to slow down past level 10.
The game has been fun to play though, and I do think they've done an excellent job with the localization. Mobs tend to be on a very hyperactive respawn timer (even more so during the Nightmare cycle when they respawn in a matter of seconds) which definitely keeps you on your toes once you reach more of the areas beyond the non-aggro starter mobs. And even though the quest system is well done, I've actually gotten a bit back to one of the things I enjoyed so much about EQ - I don't ever have that feeling like I have to quest at all times to have fun in the game, enjoying my time just as much if I'm simply roaming around and seeing what kind of trouble I can get myself into.
What do you think of the quasi-crafting system? After playing the game for a while now I still haven't gotten a handle on how doing your own item upgrades works. I have half a bag full of upgrade components but no matter what item I try to 'reconstruct' I never seem to have all the required parts, or the parts I do have keep giving me the message that they can't be used etc.
Breaking items is straight forward enough - though all I've been able to obtain is the basic xeon thingies so it tends to get a bit costly to do it too much.
I'm in the CB and I've enjoyed my time in it, looking forward to the game going live.
Things I like the most are the atmosphere, mix of themes (horror,fantasy,scifi)
One of the main things hope they do though is flush out the game with more Quests, hopefully ones that deal with the main Story and not just the "go here, kill that" kind
Defiantly a game to keep an eye on!
Regards
__________________
Roland
"believe in what gods you may...but Trust in cold hard steel!"
What do you think of the quasi-crafting system? After playing the game for a while now I still haven't gotten a handle on how doing your own item upgrades works. I have half a bag full of upgrade components but no matter what item I try to 'reconstruct' I never seem to have all the required parts, or the parts I do have keep giving me the message that they can't be used etc.
Breaking items is straight forward enough - though all I've been able to obtain is the basic xeon thingies so it tends to get a bit costly to do it too much.
Have you had any luck with that system at all?
That's actually one part of the game I haven't been able to get into yet - as you could probably tell since I left that part out.
I may do a bit more digging this afternoon to see if I can figure it out.
Requiem: A Bloody Preview
Linear Mode
