Dragon of Legends

Dragon of Legends Game Feature

An ancient threat looms on the horizon. The Forces of Nature signal with distress, but all calls fall on deaf ears. Two races fight for dominance within the world of Hávamál while time runs out. Will you stand for reconciliation, or reckless abandon?

Dragon of Legends is a 2D Orthogonal MMORPG that seeks to reinvigorate the old school feel of our favourite childhood games with updated game mechanics.

Dragon of Legends will be a cross-platform MMORPG which will be coming to PC, OSX, iOS, Android, PS4 and XBOX One!

Elder Scrolls Online

The Elder Scrolls Online

Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) is the highly anticipated MMORPG to the award winning Elder Scrolls series. Developed by ZeniMax Online Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks, Elder Scrolls Online serves as something of a prequel to the previously released, single-player only Elder Scrolls experiences: Skyrim, Oblivion, and Morrowind. The game features a pay-to-play subscription model which requires an initial purchase to download/receive the game and an additional $15 per month subscription for continued play. The payment model has been controversial and rather decisive since its announcement, with many arguing the merits of the game weighted against such a cost. It is widely believed that a transition to a free-to-play model is inevitable (much like the case with Star Wars: The Old Republic), though ZeniMax Online has yet to confirm with any certainty such plans.

The Elder Scrolls Online consists of three major factions, The Aldmeri Dominion, The Daggerfall Covenant and the Ebonheart Pact. Each faction consists of three unique races and has its own unique quest line to follow — the consequence of choosing any one race over the other is minimal and should be chosen purely by player preference. Regardless of faction or race, players must choose between one of four races (Templar, Dragon Knight, Sorcerer, Nightblade) which will determine the character’s skill set.

One emphasized feature of Elder Scrolls Online is the player’s ability to craft the character they want to play as, regardless of any permanent selections made during character creation. Any combination of faction, race or class is free to utilize any armor set, weapon or item, meaning players can play as a heavy tank character, a ranged mage or even switch between different variations at will. This allows players the unique and valuable ability to adapt to scenarios and approach them in the best way they see fit.

Much like previous entries in the series, Elder Scrolls Online features dynamic, action-based combat. Enemies are reactive of player actions and likewise, players must react to a wide variety of enemy actions and cues. A careful combination of offensive and defensive tactics will give players a distinct upper hand against foes.

Apart from an engaging main quest, there is a wealth of other gameplay options for players to immerse themselves in to keep them occupied. Multiple guilds are available to join with the promise of more on the way. Upper level players can choose to enter the thrilling PvP battleground which pits the three factions of Tamriel against each other in an all-out war for the domination and control of Cyrodiil. Or if it’s more main-questing that a player desires, there are always two other factions to which they can create a new character and start anew.

The Crew

The Crew

The Crew is an open-world driving MMO with RPG elements. The game is being developed by Ivory Tower and published by Ubisoft. In The Crew you will playing online with friends and strangers on a single server, and be earning XP, leveling up, and tuning your cars into each of five unique specs, all fully customizeable by you! The maps in the game will be based on locations in the United States, whether they are on asphalt roads, dirt tracks or wide open terrain. The country is divided into five regions, each with their own environments, moods, and driving experiences.

EverQuest Next

EverQuest Next

EverQuest Next is a 3D Fantasy MMORPG currently under development by Sony Online Entertainment. Tagged as the largest sandbox to date, Sony promises that this next-gen title will revolutionize and reinvigorate the EverQuest Series. Unfortunately, not much information is available regarding its release.

The Division

The Division

Tom Clancy’s The Division is a third person shooter MMO currently under development by Ubisoft Massive for the Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Based in modern day USA, a plague suddenly spreads throughout the entire country on Black Friday. Within 5 days America is ruined. Cue the “Strategic Homeland Division”, aka The Division, to come in and clean up the mess.

The Division will have an RPG element mixed with an open world environment. The gameplay will be more of a traditional tactical third person shooter, with a heavy cover/peek-and-shoot type of fighting. There will also be a supplemental app that allows you to play with your friends as a flying drone.

Destiny

Destiny

Destiny is a highly anticipated first-person, Sci-Fi, shooter MMO developed by Bungie. It will be releasing for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on September 9, 2014. It is set hundreds of years in the future during a Golden Age where humans have spread throughout the universe and colonized different planets. A sudden “Collapse” causes tremendous chaos and leaves humanity in an isolated city. You must take on the role of defender and save your people from a violent alien race that threatens your already fragile existence.

Destiny will be set in an open world with a highly interactive environment. It will not be modeled after the traditional MMOs, instead it has been labeled as a “shared-world shooter.” The new Umbra 3 engine and updates to the matchmaking system will make this game unlike anything you’ve seen before. Bungie will also be incorporating Social media into Destiny, allowing players to stay attuned to living universe in Destiny as it will always be changing.

Keep an eye out for the beta as it is rumored to be launching sometime this summer!

Defiance

Defiance

Defiance is a third-person sci-fi shooter MMO by Trion Worlds based on the Syfy television series of the same name. It released on April 2, 2013, and is available on PC, PS3, Xbox 360. The game is set in the San Francisco Bay area, following a war between Humans and rogue extraterrestrials known as Votans.

Defiance has five different DLCs planned for release, with Castithan Charge Pack and Arkbreaker already available for sale. Defiance is loaded with dynamic events, main story missions, side quests and challenges. Players are given a large amount of control over character appearance. There are no pure classes, you must chose an “Origin” and fill the role of either Veterans, Outlaws, Machinists, or Survivalists. Veterans and Outlaws are survivors of The Pale Wars who roam the land and seek opportunity. Machinists focus on scavenging, while Survivalists are simply trying to get by.

You don’t have to be a fan of the show to like this game. Check it out through Steam or play it on your console for some good ol’ third person shooting.

War Thunder

War Thunder

As the clouds around you part, you can see them – several bombers, flying high over the sea. If they reach your destination, things are going to go pear-shaped, and fast. Gunning the throttle, you dive towards them, ready to pump them full of lead and send them into the sea. Suddenly – almost too fast to react – you hear the sound of gunfire. Your plane lurches, and you realize you’ve been hit.

Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy. Those bombers are accompanied by a few fighters of their own. You’re their target. Think you’re enough of an ace to take them down?

This ladies and gentlemen, is War Thunder – a free to play vehicular combat MMO that takes place during World War II. The game should immediately feel familiar to anyone who’s played World of Warplanes. Familiar…yet smoother. Shinier. More polished and considerably more in-depth. Compared to War Thunder, WOWP almost feels like it belongs in an arcade cabinet.

From War Thunder’s lobby, you’ll train your planes flight crew. modify your load-outs, select your faction, and install your upgrades. You’ll also be able to choose between a number of different factions, each with its own array of strengths and weaknesses. Japan, for example, is virtually unmatched in maneuverability, while Great Britain is fond of aerial weapons platforms which can’t necessarily move very fast.

Each plane has its own individual flight crew which gains experience as you play. If you’re looking to stick with the same crew the whole way through the game, you can transfer them between planes for a small retaining fee.

Your selection of available planes will be relatively small at first – gaining experience with a particular faction will allow you to access more powerful vehicles, while Silver Crowns (the default currency) gained by playing matches are used to purchase most items in the game. There is a real money shop which uses Gold Crowns as currency, but it’s quite balanced and there’s no unpleasant stench of pay-to-win hanging in the air around it.

Now, I said War Thunder was quite in depth. I wasn’t kidding. There are three primary game modes, each one designed to appeal to a particular brand of player. For the average gamer, there’s Arcade Mode: your basic “pick up and play” scenario, which I’d imagine will be what most people go for. Simply hop into your plane, and you’ll control it either through some rather intuitive mouse-and-keyboard controls or with a controller. Getting shot down is no big deal, as you’ll be back in the air within seconds, and reloading happens on the fly. Anyone from any nation can join any team.

It’s good, explosive fun.

Historical Mode, meanwhile, is a bit more hardcore. Players will need to learn how to take off and land their plane, as they’ll need to return to friendly airstrips in order to reload and repair between skirmishes. Players from different factions will be unable to team up with one another, while lack of an aim assist and with realistic gun physics makes dogfights all the more challenging.

Last, but certainly not least, Full Real goes full-blown flight simulator, putting you in the cockpit of your plane.

Add in the fact that developer Gaijin plans to implement naval and land combat in the near future(they already have some pretty decent AI running land and sea), and you’ve got a game that has the potential to be one of the best vehicular combat titles ever made. This one looks like quite the promising game indeed.

Oh, speaking of looks? War Thunder is downright jaw-droppingly beautiful, with an amazing soundtrack, to boot. 20th-century dogfights have never looked so sexy.

There’s one last thing I should note before I sign off for the day. Like Warframe last week, War Thunder is technically still in open beta. There are still a few glitches in the system that need to be worked out between now and release day. Keep that in mind when you play.

Play Now 

Dust 514

[review]
[list]
[stat=Publisher]CCP Games[/stat]
[stat=Developer]CCP Shanghai[/stat]
[stat=Genre]MMOFPS[/stat]
[stat=Distribution]Download[/stat]
[stat=Graphics]High[/stat]
[stat=PvP]Yes[/stat]
[stat=Free to Play]Yes[/stat]
[stat=Download Size]6GB[/stat]
[/list]
[/review]
Dust 514 is doing something revolutionary. While the free to play shooter market is certainly not unheard of on the PC, with games like Blacklight Retribution, PlanetSide 2 and Tribes being a dominating force, the F2P MMOFPS is hardly a common place on consoles. This free to play giant is looking to take on the console space by storm on the PS3 and if the beta is anything to go by, they have a really good start.

The game takes place inside the universe of Eve Online. This mechanic alone is an interesting one that should bring in a bunch of players. Players of Eve can put out contracts and support the battle field on PC while the soldiers of Dust 514 do their dirty work. Players pick a faction from the Eve Online universe and then become the soldiers of fortune. Once players pick a faction the real fun begins.

Fighting over resources, different factions are encouraged to take over bases so that their Eve Online counterparts can reap the benefits. Player can use different dropsuits that act as the different classes for the game. The dropsuits include an assault class, a scout class, a heavy class and a support logistics class. There also is a few vehicle sets that some players can specialize in to support ground troops. The massive scale of battle and vehicle play are similar to something you would see in PlanetSide 2, and that is a good thing. Players of Dust 514 are in for a real treat when this game goes live.

The large scale battles, the different classes and the connectivity with Eve Online make Dust 514 a special game. Check out the link above to learn more about Dust 514 including how to get yourself in the beta testing. This game is going to make some waves in how the console and PC markets both operate in the future. Be a part of this historic game today!

Warframe

Warframe

I’ll admit, I wasn’t entirely sold on Warframe at first glance. It was yet one more free to play FPS in a veritable sea of titles plagued by pay-walls, poor gameplay, terrible graphics and unscrupulous developers. In short, I wasn’t really all that interested in checking it out. I’m willing to own up to my mistakes.

A week or two ago, I noticed one of my Steam friends playing the title – and that they’d been playing it fairly frequently for some time. I decided it couldn’t hurt to drop them a line – to ask them what they thought of the game. They sung the game’s praises quite highly, and I figured I might as well give it a fair shake. After all, it was free. What did I possibly have to lose?

Only several hours of time where I could have been doing something productive, but instead wound up shooting down angry mutant space marines and robots. So…yeah. It’s pretty damned fun.

The basic story of Warframe isn’t really anything special; basic, standard space opera fare:

You are an ancient warrior equipped with a powerful and ancient suit of armor -a titular Warframe – and preserved for centuries in cryogenic sleep. You’ve recently been awakened to a solar system completely unfamiliar to you, in which a terrible war is being waged. The brutish clone armies of the Grineer, suffering from centuries of genetic degeneration, try to exert their will over the galaxy, vast armies of monstrosities infected by the Technocyte plague consume everything in their path, and the merchant cabals of the Corprus remain indifferent to pretty much the whole conflict, so long as they can make a profit.

As one of the Tenno – the faction to which all players belong – your job is to wipe out the lot of ’em, restoring peace to the galaxy (presumably).

After a brief tutorial, you’ll dive headlong into your first mission; destroying the power generator on a Grineer ship. Here’s where the MMO component of Warframe comes in: missions are designed primarily around four-played co-op, and if you simply hop into a mission and start playing, there’s a good chance at least a few people might actually join your game. Of course, there’s also a good chance they won’t, and you’ll be in for a thoroughly frustrating experience trying to force your way through a mission designed for multiple people. There’s also a marketplace, clan system, and friends list, as well; though curiously enough, although I installed the game through Steam, the list is entirely independent of the client.

The multiplayer component is actually where Warframe encounters the most trouble – odd, for a game designed around four-player co-operative play. Level ranges of planets in the solar system aren’t shown, so finding somewhere appropriate to your level involves a lot of guesswork; there aren’t any latency indicators, either. What’s more, games in progress don’t show the relative level of players. I actually wound up with a player more than ten levels higher than me on an assassination mission (basically, a boss fight). To my knowledge, bosses scale with level.

That was a fun fight.

Matchmaking quirks and minor bugs aside, though, there’s an extremely solid game here. Combat is incredibly fun and fast-paced; you actually feel like some sort of space Ninja as you jump and run off walls, slash through hordes of enemies with your blade and gun down even more from a distance. Though it’s somewhat curious that there aren’t really any grenades (or explosives), that’s sort of offset by the fact that each Warframe has its own unique abilities. I went with Loki, a frame which is all about stealth. Other Warframes include Excalibur (specialized for sword combat), Nyx (who messes enemies up with psychic powers) and Volt (one word: zap).

All of this is underscored by an intense customization system, which allows you to equip your Warframe and weapons with augments that serve a wide array of different purposes such as granting special abilities, adding bonus damage or increasing your health/shields. You can also hop into the foundry and use your accumulated resources, drops, and credits to build powerful equipment from blueprints both found in missions and bought in the marketplace.

Of course, like any free to play, there’s a cash store. While there are a few benefits that definitely smack of pay to win (Sentinels, for example, are incredibly powerful), most of what’s is either stuff that can be unlocked by grinding or boosts that make it easier to grind.

Warframe is a well-made, entertaining MMOFPS which definitely has some decent chops even though it’s still in open beta. Even in spite of the other faults, the combat here really shines through. Give Warframe a try, if for nothing other than that.

DC Universe Online

DC Universe Online

DC Universe Online is a Free-to-Play, massive online action game set in the DC Comics universe.

Jump into DC Universe Online with everything you need to get started on your Heroic or Villainous adventures!


Get four DLC Packs that include additional super powers, weapons and high-level missions, and two Legends PvP characters. You’ll get future Batman and future Harley Quinn!

Join thousands of other players in a massive online action game and experience true action combat as you fight alongside and against legendary characters such as Batman, Superman, The Joker and Lex Luthor.

Planetside 2

Planetside 2

Building off of the groundbreaking original, PlanetSide 2 is a free-to-play, massively multiplayer online first person shooter (MMOFPS). This epic shooter brings enormous maps, complex, hard-fought continent-spanning battles and still delivers the unrelenting, adrenaline pumping, FPS action.

Thousands of players align with one of three unique Empires in intense land, air and vehicle gameplay. In PlanetSide 2, the fight for territory is more than a victory, it’s survival.

World of Tanks

World of Tanks

World of Tanks is a 3D, team-based MMO shooter where players take control of mid-20th century era fighting tanks.  Gameplay in World of Tanks requires a lot of teamwork and strategy.  There are over a hundred completely unique tanks to choose from and up to sixty players per battle.  World of Tanks offers tactical gameplay and conflicts of epic proportions.

In World of Tanks, you are put in command of your very own World War 2 era battle tank.  WoT is a team-based game where two sides of up to thirty players each compete to destroy all opposing vehicles.  The many combat vehicles in the game are modeled after American, German, Soviet and British designs.  The game offers an in-depth gaming experience that is sure to get your blood pumping.

The tank-based shooter is developed by Wargaming.net, a Russian studio behind several other historically themed video games.  World of Tanks is their first free-to-play title, and they?ve come in swinging strong.  World of Tanks boasts great graphics, ease of play, and plenty of customization features.  The publishers promise a historically accurate setting and action-oriented gameplay.  RPG elements also make an appearance, as players will be able to upgrade their tanks with new parts and crew members.  New recruits start with a light German or Soviet tank, but after accumulating experience and credits, they will be able to upgrade to heavier models.  Additionally, it will be possible to upgrade individual parts such as turrets, chassis, engines, guns, radios, and ammunition types.

World of Tanks was first commissioned in 2009 and put into service in the second half of 2010.  It is built upon a freemium business model where participants only have to pay for optional features. The focus is on player vs. player gameplay with each player controlling a tank or armored vehicle.

 

Play Now