Black Prophecy: In Your Face

There really aren’t a lot of MMOGs set in space available on today’s market. For a while now, EVE Online has enjoyed the relative peace that comes from occupying a niche gap, as well as having an under-used setting. This is soon bound to change as Black Prophecy (and Jumpgate Evolution), the latest title from Reakktor Media, is readying for release. The game has just entered the open beta stage in Europe, and there is quite an influx of new players checking it out right this moment.

In Black Prophecy, players can enjoy the intense action that comes only with fast-paced, real-time combat. They can take part in large-scale space battles (up to 300 pilots) and engage in various missions, both solo and with friends. In addition, the game has a detailed ship-design system based on modules that influence the appearance and the attributes of your spacecraft. Add to that clans (guilds) that can own their own space stations and modify them according to their needs, a comprehensive crafting system along with great visuals, and it becomes fairly obvious that this game seems to exude potential.

Will it actually deliver on all those promises? Check back for additional coverage and videos that explore the game. For now, hit the jump for an official trailer (as usual) and quick peek at the character creator created by yours truly.

7 Comments

  1. Just downloaded Black Prophecy, and had a try.
    Tutorial missions went well, lots of cinematic cutscenes and action.
    Then on to the first real mission…
    Which is bugged all to hell…
    Go to a sector and enable a satelite thing. so off i go to the sector, only to find theres no satelite, and tons of other players stuck in the same predicament as me…
    Also, the server is laggy as anything, your ship either doesnt respond for a second or two, OR responds like its on some hyper-speed space drug and just flips out like a nutter.
    Way to go :(
    Although I do like what i’ve seen so far.
    Still, it’s only beta, so cant really complain too much.

  2. A lot of people had a similar experience to yours, Stormkiller. Luckily, I managed to get in just before the large wave of new players put the servers down on their knees, so to speak :) I still got some lag later on though. Expect more videos coming up soon.

  3. Going to see if i can play at different times of the day, hopefully that should sort the lag problems out. So far it reminds me a lot of an old game called Freelancer. Which isn’t a bad thing at all in my book as I enjoyed that too :)

  4. i still play freelance, except i play a modded version of the game called tides of war. its a full emersion mod that changes the entire game to starwars.

  5. Looks like I’ll be uninstalling Black Prophecy, as I, and many many others it seems can’t get past the ‘A Practical Test’ mission bug, and it’s apparently a game-stopper. A bugged tutorial mission…
    From what I hear, it’s only in the EU, but I may be wrong. Ah well…

  6. Sorry to hear about that man. I was lucky enough to get past that part before everyone started experiencing the bug. Just flying around and doing mission at the moment.

    My initial thoughts so far:

    Better looking than I expected

    A bit less ‘Freelancer’ than I anticipated. No feeling of a big expansive universe that really adds atmosphere to player experience, just a collection of instances and sectors that fail to come together in a meaningful way to create a feeling of being in a world.

    Very newbie-friendly controls and PvE wise(excluding the bug you mentioned)

    More of a session-based game rather than a real MMOG. Come in, pew-pew for 15-30 minutes and leave.

    I have yet to get into a clan to see what clan warfare is all about. Sad to hear that clans cant attack each others’ space stations though.

    PvE content lacks in variety. Missions maybe separated in two different types, but they all involve repeatedly killing NPCs in one form or another which leads to a feeling of grind. It’s not really meant to be a PvE-centric game though, so thats forgivable.

    Black Prophecy definitely has potential, but it still needs some work and a lot more content in order to really be a quality product. But hey, its the only game of its type on the market (the only thing this game has in common with EVE is the space theme) AND free, so what the hell :)

  7. Forgot to add,

    I’d wait for about 6 months after the game officially releases. Hopefully that will give developers enough time to shape BP into something better and with more ‘meat’ to it.

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