Sorry for the lack of posts...
Life's been hectic for me as of late, and the flow of free games has slowed to a trickle, so please bear with me as I review a sort of free game (explanation coming).
I spent a lot of time reading up on a game called "Graal Online". When it first came out back in 1998, it was known as "Zelda Online". It changed pretty quickly however from a java game to a full blown application. It's got a small community, as well as several different servers to play on. Oh, and it's a one time fee of $29 for the software, with limitations.
There's 2 "premium" servers (for now) to play on. There's Graal Kingdoms, which is a medievil fantasy game with pvp that has various kingdoms in control of some islands. Then there's "Zone" which is a modern/futuristic game heavy on guns and pvp. These constitute the "gold" servers, which you get 6 months of free access to when you buy the software. For the other servers, there's 2 catagories; Classic and Playerworlds. Classic is run and maintained by the staff but it different from Graal Kingdoms, and playerworlds are versions of classic run by various players of Graal.
This is good because they were one of the first companies to embrace allowing servers to be run with OFFICIAL software for a game. Secondly, it provides more options for players who don't want to pay for gold access. To me, I found the classic and playerworlds servers to be a bit blah, but there's lots of people who like it better than Kingdoms.
For me however, I bought a year's access to gold (special package they offered) because of the good community as well the immense amount of roleplaying going on. Plus, it was pretty cheap anyways, only $10 more. Anyways though, Kingdoms is an MMO, but the world is fairly small, which is fine, because without any speed enhancing items, it'll take a LONG time to even walk the mainland, nevermind swim, or catch a boat to the various islands. It's 2d, with 3d environments (similar to ragnarok), with crisp clean sprites.
When you create your character, your options are limited. Only 5 classes, but even those don't matter much as everyone can eventually learn every skill and spell if they have the time and in game resources. Then you choose male or female, and then you're given a pre-set look to start with. Your looks (hair, clothes, face, body) can all be changed later though at shops for minor amounts of money. Hell, there's several people who are running around as foxes!
The gameplay is pretty solid, as there's 6 areas of growth for your character. There's Physique, Mental, Wisdom, Agility, Personality, and Magic. Most are self-explanitory, but personality is for skills like shopping, which deal with getting a better deal at shops and other such things. the leveling curve is quite steep, and you get less experience each time you kill something, so it's best to hunt in areas with varying creatures.
I'd say about 99% of items re created or harvested by players. Sure some stuff can be bought in shops, but most stuff can be made cheaper, or hell, ONLY made by one of the tradeskills, or alchemy. You can also "prepare" a weapon, which opens up slots on it for enchantments based on your physique level. Also available are various blessings for your weapons as well, which can be done by anyone devoted to a god, who has a high enough wisdom level. Various gods allow higher levels of blessing than others, and from I've seen, only 2 of the gods (the ones with the highest blessings) are used FOR blessing, one for PvP, one for PvE. So basically the others don't matter that much, except for roleplaying, or certain situations.
What is so great about the game though, is that 90%+ of the players are diehard roleplayers, and you can ALWAYS get in on it. After only two days, I got myself into a kingdom, and am already helping breathe new life into the world. I was shocked when the prince of my kingdom took my roleplaying, and expounded on it, bringing in about 7 people, and even fleshing out my own story more! Talk about stroking my ego! I feel like my head can't even fit into my computer room anymore :P
Anyways, I think Graal is a game EVERYONE who loves roleplaying should try. The price is right (and they even accept paypal!), and the community is better than you'll find on most MMOs. Pick it up and look around for Trindras Sanreum, and start up a conversation.
Trindras
I spent a lot of time reading up on a game called "Graal Online". When it first came out back in 1998, it was known as "Zelda Online". It changed pretty quickly however from a java game to a full blown application. It's got a small community, as well as several different servers to play on. Oh, and it's a one time fee of $29 for the software, with limitations.
There's 2 "premium" servers (for now) to play on. There's Graal Kingdoms, which is a medievil fantasy game with pvp that has various kingdoms in control of some islands. Then there's "Zone" which is a modern/futuristic game heavy on guns and pvp. These constitute the "gold" servers, which you get 6 months of free access to when you buy the software. For the other servers, there's 2 catagories; Classic and Playerworlds. Classic is run and maintained by the staff but it different from Graal Kingdoms, and playerworlds are versions of classic run by various players of Graal.
This is good because they were one of the first companies to embrace allowing servers to be run with OFFICIAL software for a game. Secondly, it provides more options for players who don't want to pay for gold access. To me, I found the classic and playerworlds servers to be a bit blah, but there's lots of people who like it better than Kingdoms.
For me however, I bought a year's access to gold (special package they offered) because of the good community as well the immense amount of roleplaying going on. Plus, it was pretty cheap anyways, only $10 more. Anyways though, Kingdoms is an MMO, but the world is fairly small, which is fine, because without any speed enhancing items, it'll take a LONG time to even walk the mainland, nevermind swim, or catch a boat to the various islands. It's 2d, with 3d environments (similar to ragnarok), with crisp clean sprites.
When you create your character, your options are limited. Only 5 classes, but even those don't matter much as everyone can eventually learn every skill and spell if they have the time and in game resources. Then you choose male or female, and then you're given a pre-set look to start with. Your looks (hair, clothes, face, body) can all be changed later though at shops for minor amounts of money. Hell, there's several people who are running around as foxes!
The gameplay is pretty solid, as there's 6 areas of growth for your character. There's Physique, Mental, Wisdom, Agility, Personality, and Magic. Most are self-explanitory, but personality is for skills like shopping, which deal with getting a better deal at shops and other such things. the leveling curve is quite steep, and you get less experience each time you kill something, so it's best to hunt in areas with varying creatures.
I'd say about 99% of items re created or harvested by players. Sure some stuff can be bought in shops, but most stuff can be made cheaper, or hell, ONLY made by one of the tradeskills, or alchemy. You can also "prepare" a weapon, which opens up slots on it for enchantments based on your physique level. Also available are various blessings for your weapons as well, which can be done by anyone devoted to a god, who has a high enough wisdom level. Various gods allow higher levels of blessing than others, and from I've seen, only 2 of the gods (the ones with the highest blessings) are used FOR blessing, one for PvP, one for PvE. So basically the others don't matter that much, except for roleplaying, or certain situations.
What is so great about the game though, is that 90%+ of the players are diehard roleplayers, and you can ALWAYS get in on it. After only two days, I got myself into a kingdom, and am already helping breathe new life into the world. I was shocked when the prince of my kingdom took my roleplaying, and expounded on it, bringing in about 7 people, and even fleshing out my own story more! Talk about stroking my ego! I feel like my head can't even fit into my computer room anymore :P
Anyways, I think Graal is a game EVERYONE who loves roleplaying should try. The price is right (and they even accept paypal!), and the community is better than you'll find on most MMOs. Pick it up and look around for Trindras Sanreum, and start up a conversation.
Trindras
posted by trindras at 6:14 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home