Disclaimer: The views of the writer in no way match the views of rest of the Lore Hound crew. In fact, they are just as disturbed by this post as you are.

People like to dabble in role-playing, right? We automatically assume certain roles in our day-to-day interactions, we occasionally imagine ourselves as different characters living in fictional universes, we role-play during sex… and where was I? Oh yes, role-playing.

Today, I’m going to role-play an armchair game designer. And not just any game designer, but a jaded, angry, border-line maniacal fellow who wants to bludgeon you with a vicious-ass trout. Get ready because this is going to be a rant of sorts, and boy, do I have an axe to grind.

Recently, a number of gaming-related portals have posted PvP Impressions for Star Wars: the Old Republic. Turns out, the new mechanics in the game allow fights to last longer due to a lack of burst damage at mid-levels, an anti-crowd control measure for each class and an unusual approach to tanking. With regards to the latter, in most MMORPGs, the various taunts and aggro-related skills for tanks only work in PvE, with no consequence for enemy players. However, SW:TOR’s PvP mechanics make active use of those skills by having a slightly different effect. A taunted player, for example, will do -50% less damage to everyone besides the person who put the effect on him. Another example is the guard ability, which will allow tanks to take damage instead of enemies.

SWTOR seems to be taking a page from Warhammer Online, which has made use of some of the mentioned tanking mechanics for PvP. There is ‘nothing’ wrong in borrowing good ideas from other sources, provided they can be implemented into your game, right? Right. What really strikes me as odd are the people writing about their SW:TOR experience and commenting how fresh these mechanics felt. Come again? Continue Reading

Recently, Perfect World Entertainment announced that Forsaken World will be launching on the 9th of March (today!). As you may know, the Lore Hound crew has been checking the game out for some time, and you can see for yourself what we think of it so far. By the looks of it, we got at least a couple of you interested in checking this title out. For those of you who want more of an insider look at the game, we bring you an interview with Clifton Chu, Product Manager of Forsaken World. Today, we get some more details on the game and its features, Twong gets his question answered and we find out whether those damn Vampires really don’t sparkle.

For those that haven’t been following our coverage of Forsaken World, can you give us a quick synopsis of the MMORPG (in three or so sentences)?

Forsaken World is Perfect World Entertainment’s first game built from the ground up with the western audience in mind. Players can look forward to a darker, fantasy driven game with Dwarves that are more steam punk than drunk, Vampires that don’t sparkle and Stonemen, living, breathing forces of nature.

The beta phase has been pegged as the main reason to the early launch. What made you decide to launch two weeks ahead of schedule?

This has been our largest and longest closed beta to date and thanks to our active closed beta community, we were able to finish localization and polishing the game ahead of schedule. Given that Forsaken World has been our most anticipated game to date, we figured; why not launch two weeks ahead of schedule if the game is ready?

What kind of feedback has been the most unexpected or interesting?

We’re very fortunate to have such a dedicated and loyal fan base where they will try a new game and give feedback on not only what’s wrong, but how to fix it. One of the features that wasn’t originally planned for launch, but was requested by our players was the addition of the auction house. The auction house system was suggested by our players, and the developers were able to integrate that feature for closed beta testing as well as for launch.

Did anything that community members mentioned cause a major change or rethinking?

There’s always room for improvement in games and with MMOs, it’s more of a service than end product where we are constantly tweaking and improving features based on player feedback. Since Forsaken World was built with the western audience in mind, one thing that we weren’t expecting was the positive feedback we received from our Asian players who really liked some of the features that we implemented, and this is something we’ll keep in mind across all of our games. Continue Reading