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- Gormash
Requiem Bloodymare - MMO.
I spoke to my old gaming pal yesterday. He's still playing a bit of WoW, a lot of EVE and recently something called Requiem Bloodymare. http://www.playrequiem.com/ which was released to the world in a rather quiet manner around the back end of June this year.
Guess what? It's free to play - or at least mostly. It's one of those ones where if you want special items you pay for them but essentially the basic game is free. You can even buy a mount at level 1 if you want, and he e-mailed me a pic of his mount which is a bi-plane lol.
Another couple of slight downsides are that the only servers available at present are US based, and that the game download is about 2.5Gb. This latter point has been worked around as my friend has sent me the install on a DVD which I received today. Apparently the patches are small.
So I havent had a chance to play it yet nor to see what the ping is like from the UK to the US although I am told that at the start in the heavily populated areas its a bit jerky, but once you get to lvl 10 or so and the world opens up its much better. Graphically it looks a fair bit like AOC where it is a very bloody game. You can lop horses heads off and pretty much make string vests of someones lower intestine. Okay it's not going to compare with the likes of WoW, LoTRo, or any new new game but what do you expect for free? generally something much worse than this.
I'll let you know what I think tomorrow after a hands on go.
Comments
Looks interesting. I might just give it a try unless you give it a score below bottom.
WTB more screenshots and some details about mechanics, PST.
ooooh! yes, yes, more SS prz.
oh, and clean-up in aisle 2, we've a bloodspill in aisle 2. :D
Well I dont know what it has to do with the game, but just for you Stigg:
Mechanics (Greek ????????) is the branch of physics concerned with the behaviour of physical bodies when subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effect of the bodies on their environment. The discipline has its roots in several ancient civilizations (see History of classical mechanics and Timeline of classical mechanics). During the early modern period, scientists such as Galileo, Kepler, and especially Newton, laid the foundation for what is now known as classical mechanics.
...unless you need to know about car mechanics!
Well I only played the game for a very short time tonight as I had to do some stuff with my son, but initial impressions are "not bad". It seems to be a cross between Guild Wars for character detailing and stylisation, although it is a larger character model, and Age of Conan for goryness.
The world seems to be a little on the rough side and I guess I would liken it to WoW for its slightly jaggedy edges to rocks, trees, etc but there is a more natural colouring to it all as opposed to WoW's fantasy style colouring.
Installation (although for me off a DVD) was without any hiccups and the patches took about 10 minutes to download and install. My friend had said that there was a known issue with the patch installation which could be sorted by switching off your firewall or DMZing it but I had no problems with my firewall on.
I went for a human like female character in a melee class, and I have to admit that she is a beauty. A lot of care seems to have been taken over the character, and the "at rest" animation of her yawning and stretching is very good. However you don't get anywhere near as much input into the characters features as you do with other MMO games I have tried. You can't choose the colours of hair, eyes, skin, etc, but you can choose the face type and hair type from several options.
I made it to level 4 I would guess in about 30 minutes by doing 4 simple quests and killing some beasties. At level 0 with no attack skills I took on a level 3 and won - okay, only just, but it seems perhaps the fine tuning of the game is still in progress as I wouldnt expect to have beaten it in any other game.
Other than that, its pretty much the same as every single other MMO under the sun. I didnt take any screenies Im afraid, but there are a few others on their website and some YouTube video's for those interested to look into it further.
As for me I think I will give this a go for a while and see how it pans out. For a free game I would give it a 10/10 really, but if I had to buy it and pay monthly I would reduce that score to perhaps a 6 or 7 simply because we expect more graphically beautiful worlds these days like AoC and LoTRo give us.
You could also have a look at:
* A Perfect World - It's very well tuned, free, has a similar model and is a really fun game to play.
* Sword of the New World - MMO concept, but you play a family in the "Spanish Main". But with guns, magic and so forth. What makes this unique is you play a party of 3 of your own characters at once, which makes it a bit of a management exercise. Quite good though!
And that's enough for me. I need sleep. Busy job is busy and we had a faxing 3 hour meeting with Microsoft today. Tired Tan is tired.
Well I had a chance last night to play a few hours of the game. There is the odd graphical glitch with the world which slightly annoys but doesnt really disturb you too much from the gameplay.
Agro of the mobs is a bit odd, wherein it seems you only actually generate agro in the beginner areas when you attack. Otherwise you can stand right next to something and it wont attack you. This changes when you get to the slightly more advanced zones.
Virtually every beast you kill seems to shred into multiple pieces with blood and body parts, some of which - like heads- even rolling down the slopes like footballs. Respawn rates are insane. Kill something and within 30 seconds the buggers back again, although in the main this is helpful in completing quests where you have to kill x number of something lol and also for XP increasing.
A lot of the game and use of NPC's is only available at level 10+ so only managing to get to level 8 last night these are still a mystery to me. However you have almost instant access to a plentiful bank storage and you start off with a nice sized bag with another bag of similar size easily gained from doing a very simple series of initial quests around town.
I have to confess to being quite taken with it.
Yesterday I finished downloading Requiem. I had to DL from one of their recommended missors (Gamershell) since I couldn't DL it from them directly, but apart from that there were no problems whatsoever. Not with the installation either, except that it took the better part of an hour. The patching process took me somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes, and went without a hitch.
All in all... Smooth as a baby bottom.
Unlike Chunder I got the choice of three servers (not sure if they are US or not), but I ended ut choosing the one called "Lintra" or something similiar. That one and another were normal servers, while the third was a PVP server.
I chose to create a Turian (human looking bugger) since the Templar sounded like the most fun class. I initially wanted a male character, but looking at their faces I realized that I didn't really want to look like the lead singer of a stoned band from the seventies, and ended up with a female named Dianah instead.
After a rather weirl loading screen where a fleshwound slowly opens I started at the edge of something called Kurt Desert. This struck me as mildly amusing since Kurt is a VERY common name here in Norway. ^_^
Anywhoo... You're introduced into the game with a very brief tutorial telling you how to move and turn the camera, and that's about it. No more holding hands, it's off you go. Not that you really NEED anything more. Most everything is slightly familiar, and if you've looked through the startup guide at the website like I did everything is clear from the get go.
Here's Dianah standing next to a teleporter gateway, about ten feef from where you start. I'm not sure if I entered the game through it or if I'll leave the starting area there, but I guess I'll find out later.
I then picked up a quest to talk to a Temperion trainer inside the nearby village. He explained to me why I had amnesia. Apparently that's usual after the Temperion surgery. What's a Temperion? Why, that's what YOU are. You're then told that you've entered the Temperion program to help people, having the Laoxonian (spelling?) corporation augment your body with cybernetic modifications, making you stronger and more durable than normal people.
After a little of this yatta-yatta you're told to see the skill trainer where he gives you a few initial training "programs". Yup, you're given discs that upgrade your software. ^_^
Then it's questing time. Go out, kill X number of Y. I need X artifacts, go get. You've seen it before, and it still works.
After a few quests and reaching level 4 I decided to tour the village a little. It's quite sparse on the level of details and looks more like a makeshift refugee camp among ruins than a real village, but that doesn't really matter.
While talking to a banker there I caught a glimpse of a guy riding a mechanical gryphonlike thing. It only ran on the ground though, but at a speed that make netherdrakes seem slow and ungainly. I want! ^_^
As for the rest of the village, here's a look, with a closeup of Dianah yawning.
I finally got a quest where I should deliver something to an outpost. The run took me about a minute through open land with some seriously demented creatures wandering the landscape. The looked like a mix of rotting flesh and zombie animals. Not really scare, but ugly and fascinating.
The outpost were even MORE sparse than the main village, but at least there were some quests there. That orangish thing is a ressurection alter I guess, though I'm not sure seeing as I've not died (yet).
And that's where I logged off last night.
So, what's MY impressions?
For a free game this is good. In fact, this is the ONLY free MMORPG that I've liked so far. It's by no means perfect, but it has tons of potential. The main flaws are the goldsellers (they are very persistant, and they are LEGIT >_< ). The second flaw is the occational lag. They are not really gamebreaking, but occationally annoying. Might be that I'm on a US server though, and that could be the reason.
The UI are clear and the controls are easy to get to grips with.
Here's a view of some UI elements:
And I just want to point out one thing: This game calls itself a horror MMO. Buuuuuuull-SHIT! Yes, there are undead-ish creatures here and the mood is darker than most games, AND there's gore aplenty. That doesn't make it a horror game. The most horrifying experience I've had so far is when the game lagged during a battle and I was low on health. That doesn't quite qualify in my eyes.
And don't be fooled by the cyborg thingie. This is still a fantasy game. Sure, fantasy with a light sci-fi backstory, but fantasy nonetheless.
Did I have fun playing it? Yes.
Was it difficult to get into? No.
Would I recommend this game? Yes.
Should you give me money? Yes.
Oh, and for those interested:
It's not only possible to buy ingame stuff with real cash, but if you're so inclined you can subscribe to the game with either a basic or premium package (premium is the same as one month of LotRO).
This will give you access to regional chat (free game has local chat only), you get higher chance of item drops, ressurecting cost you less XP, and you pay less to buy ingame stuff.
Me? I'm happy with the game as it is and won't waste money on it. ^_^
I made my character on the Valdes server. Two reasons - primarily because my friend already had characters on that one, and secondly, because he had told me that this was the more populated server of them all.
I'd agree its not a horror MMO, and I also agree that buying a mount is desirable (you can even buy one at level 1 apparently) but I dont feel the need to pump money into the game atm as Im liking it as it is. I think - not certain - that you have transport as part of the game like in WoW with ships and griffons.
I also went for a "human like"warrior class as I had been told that these stand up much better than the casters against opponents, but Im eager to try out the others.
My character is Morgainne.
What a shocker! >_<
Anywhoo... I'll make one on your server instead.
That looks...awesome for a free MMO. I will have to give it a look....at some point! Great work finding this game!
im playing in that server. how can i get a mount?
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