Previews

At an event in San Francisco last week, Flying Lab Software gave us a rather unique twist on the usual Pirates of the Burning Sea demo. They concentrated exclusively on the supernatural elements of their game, something they had not often talked about before.

FLS understands some players come to their game partly because of its grounded setting and they were careful to ensure that those supernatural elements included were both within the legend of their setting, and completely and totally optional as part of what a player must do to advance. This means that while there are a slew of missions for players to enjoy that deviate a bit from what is strictly possible, characters can in essence choose not to believe in that kind of thing and avoid them altogether.

The supernatural elements of the game are confined both through story and geography. Players must undertake missions to experience that content and it is confined to specific areas. While there are "ghost ships" (players cannot capture them) in the seas around these areas, the majority of the content is land-based.

Find out more about the spooky stuff after the jump.

Today, Tabula Rasa on WarCry offers you an extensive preview of Tabula Rasa's class system, including mini-capsules on each of the classes in the game's unique tree.

Advancement takes the form of a tiered, branching profession tree! All of you start on even footing here with me, as Recruits! You will then have several opportunities for divergence and promotion as you advance! Each new class brings with it opportunities for training in specialized skills, abilities, weapons and powered body armor! Your training time, as measured in "ability points", is limited...there's a war on out there! Not every member of the same class will train in the same manner! You'll have tough choices to make, Recruits! Do you read me? DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I'VE EXPLAINED HERE? DO YOU NEED ME TO DRAW YOU A PICTURE? All right then, here you go...

Click below for a comprehensive preview of classes in Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa!

Earlier this week, we released some first impressions of Fury based on our experience in Beta Weekend 2.0. Now, we have a full length hands-on preview of the game from this same weekend. Once again, Alan Hoover does the honors.

Trials are what you use to get your skills. You spend your hard earned Essence (mine wasn't so hard earned as cheaply stolen) to complete these trials to unlock new skills, as you unlock skills you raise in rank. Without even noticing, I progressed to Disciple, level 3 out of the 10 level s available. This meant I had more equip points so I could add higher armor and more skills. I decided I would do just that, but it would have to wait till the next day as I had to log out for the night.

Sunday arrives, all day I am thinking of Fury and playing my new Disciple character. Luckily for me Fury can be played casually and I wasn't falling too far behind the curve that I couldn't catch up. So, finally I get home with about four hours to go on the preview weekend. That's when I came to the realization I was facing a serious time restraint, because as some of you know, the Bossman , A.K.A. Tony Hilliam, Auran CEO, said they were going to reward players who achieve the rank of Adept or higher by giving them access to a new VIP account. Well this could be a problem as I was freshly Disciple and had a long journey to Adept (level 4) and getting my reward.

Read more after the click.

Over this past week, NCsoft has "relaxed" the Tabula Rasa NDA for members of the gaming press. I'm able to tell you this, because over this past week, NCsoft has "relaxed" the Tabula Rasa NDA for members of the gaming press (read it again, slowly). This means that any random internet boob, who happens to have a marginally recognized gameblog and beta access, can now get up on his soapbox, spill juicy details about the game, and editorialize his own agendas.

Hey, wait a minute. I'm a random internet boob with a marginally recognized gameblog and beta access!

Introducing this WarCry exclusive Hands-On Editorial Preview, and the first of many features to come that will start bringing Tabula Rasa into the light of day.

So, is Tabula Rasa a revolutionary game that redefines the genre and completely eliminates every negative aspect of the MMO experience as we've come to understand it? Will it also make thousands upon thousands of Julienne fries? Well...no. It does, however, exhibit the hallmarks of evolution. It's the primitive beast of a genre learning to walk, and even run in places, and one doesn't easily choose to return to crawling after that. It is also pretty fun to play...that's important, right?

Oh yeah...and theres giant robots.

Click below to read the article.

Alan Hoover, our Fury on WarCry Site Manager, ran through this weekend's Beta Preview event and came back with some thoughts. He took a different approach, as we've written a few articles on gameplay itself and this time looked at some of the less publicized features the game has or will have.

The fire and brimstone is settling as this weekend's beta preview event has drawn to a close. Players sheathed their swords and headed back to the only grind in this game, that of real life. Fury will absorb you and it will occupy the time with its nonstop pvp action. It truly is a game you could jump into on your lunch break, or you could play a game before you head out to dinner with the family, and share your stories of the armor and riches you obtained by winning in bloodbath.

Read more after the click.

If nothing else, Blizzard proved at E3 that they'd mastered the use of the apostrophe in names. They took to the show with a preview of the upcoming content patch, including Zul'Aman, a new modular ten man raid, VOIP support and guild banks. Find out what we learned in this Look Forward!

What about faction, you ask? Well, they made this a non-faction dungeon expressly to liberate their content designers for this kind of innovation. In a more traditional dungeon, people would practically buff the gong-ringer to get more faction. Obviously, that's an exploit. This approach gives them more variety in gameplay.

So if not for faction, what's the replay value of Zul'Aman? This time they're going with a timed dungeon. The faster a group can kill each boss and rescue his hostages, the better the loot. Blizzard fully expects this to become a competitive sport.

Click below to learn more.

It's officially here, the end of our E3 coverage. Today we bring you two more pieces to cap things off. The first is a look at the NCSoft free-to-play hack'n'slash MMORPG Dungeon Runners.

"There's no epic storyline in Dungeon Runners, it's about little self contained nuggets of goodness," we were told.

The dungeons in Dungeon Runners are procedurally generated. Essentially, the team built pieces and lots of content. The computer just spits out logical combinations every time someone goes in. This isn't a hardcore game that someone can grab a map for off our website.

Click below for more.

Fury is a fast-paced PvP MMO from Australian developer Auran and upstart publisher Gamecock. It's due out on October 9th, but we got a chance to take a peek at the recent EIEIO event in Santa Monica, during E3. Find out what we thought:

At EIEIO, we played Bloodbath, the scalable free-for-all game. It can hold anywhere from eight to 32 players and puts them in a map appropriate to the number who show up.

When I last played Fury, it was at PAX last fall and while I had a lot of fun, there was quite a learning curve. This time, I was able to jump right in and with only a few hints on how to use my character, get my licks in. In fact, I actually won my first game, albeit against a group of fellow newbies.

Click below for more.

As we polish off the last of our epic E3 coverage, today's non-MMO preview is of Civilization Revolution, the console adaptation of the epic strategy franchise. Sid Meier took a hands-on approach with this game and at E3 we saw the Xbox 360 demonstration.

The "revolution" of this game is the way it handles victory conditions. My one complaint about the Civilization franchise has always been that at a certain point, it feels like there is an inevitable march to a specific victory. It's an epic game and not really full of twists and turns. They reworked that for Revolution. They believe that every single victory condition is now viable and, what's more, each civilization will likely have a chance at one of them each game. This means that while Napoleon goes for a conquest victory, George Washington might be on the very of economic victory, Ghandi a cultural win and Elizabeth I a space victory.

The game also has a bunch of ways for players to pull the rug out from under each other. For example, if Rome is about to take home the economic win, a player who builds "The World Bank" wonder ups the amount of money Caesar needs, but leaves it the same for themselves. A well timed World Bank could be the difference between a narrow loss and a dominating win.

Read more after the click.

Age of Conan is likely one of the most anticipated MMORPGs headed to market, likely rivaled only by Warhammer Online. With its main competitor not at E3, they had the spotlight to themselves. Unfortunately, through no fault of their own, the demonstration suffered some unfortunate setbacks. Find out what we thought of this Eidos / Funcom project:

Melee combat differs from traditional MMOs. Instead of auto-attacks modified by a series of feats, Conan allows the player to swing their weapon in any one of five directions. Players equip feats that are in reality combinations. A half moon display at the bottom of the HUD shows each of these directions and lights up all the potential moves that would continue one of those feats. So after the first swing, three might light up, each a part of a different combination, after the player performs their second swing, perhaps only one or two light up, and so on. It's a great mechanic in a genre that desperately needed one, although it seems difficult to do with a mouse and keyboard (more on this later).

Read more after the click.