Rhuidia Sketches

Blabbelon Five

There's a new kid in town on the voice chat front and it's Blabbelon. This may well devastate Ventrilo and TeamSpeak as we know them or it may just force them to copy its free, add funded business model. Or perhaps they will just be forced to offer better service. Anyways It allows you talk with lots of people at a higher quality level than ventrilo and do it for FREE.

Extra! Extra! read all about it! or here at Reuters for a more officialish one. Raiders Rejoice! Running a guild just got a whole lot cheaper.

What to expect in Lotro 2.0 (Links you may have missed)

So basically in my opinion, Riders of Rohan will be lotro 2.0 if they get mounted combat into the game and a new pvp system of some kind (pvmp skirmishes anyone?) (plz?)

But in the mean year that we have to wait, here's what's coming by this Christmas:

Mounts 2.0 Summary: Mounts will get the legwork they need to be more than an item in your inventory. They will be nameable, sometime they might have hitpoints*, but you can now open doors, interract with things and use certain skills and emotes on mounts. Considering how "mount centric" the battles in Lord of the rings were this is expected by the playerbase and future players.

Skirmishes! Summary: I like to call these pve battlegrounds.
If you want to read about skirmishes generally go here.
If you want to read about the story aspect of skirmishes, the the new siege of the prancing pony, go here
If you want to read about their new randomization and scaling aspects, and how they will come in solo, 3 man, 6 man or 12 man flavors, go here
If you want to read about the "soldiers" which is a pet which levels up and has traits but can only be used in skirmishes, go here
Lastly, if you just want the bottom line payout go here to learn about skirmish rewards

Now for my pvmp idea. Skirmishes could easily become excellent places for pvmp. Heck Alterac Valley in World of Warcraft is just a pvp skirmish! So its already been done! You could have both sides trying to accomplish goals and working against each other to succeed. And if they have to guard more than one way in and out, its a lot better. It breaks it up from being the same thing as the Ettenmoors blob versus blob fights. And it start each team with the same number (roughly) of people so that the fight is more fair. (see interesting) I can't see any downside. Monster Players could have their own goblin 'soldiers' too. That could be a lot of fun. And seriously, with Mounts 2.0, the Orc Monster players need warg mounts already. Why not let them ride warg players for a dual bonus? I can't see any reason why not....

*Correction: Mounts will have hitpoints and they will regenerate unless you get totaled and knocked off.

Back to work

Had a fun halloween, tried out Champions... uninstalled it cuz its not as good as City of Heroes, and then ran a dungeon with Anton (Great Barrows) and my little sister. Perfect place to be on Halloween. Here's an update of our game I got a sprite to stand up right and I'm messing with camera control and then I'll do sprite control.

(May as well get to work since it seems Anton is serious about this now, he keeps drawing good art for it anyways and I can't wait to put it to good use)

My Life as a Dark Lord: Impressions So Far

So I finally got this game! Yay!

While My Life as a Dark Lord is a direct sequel to My Life as a King, gameplay is completely fresh and unique. Oh yeah, and that bit about playing as the "bad guy."

At the beginning of a stage, all you get is a tower with a staircase at the bottom and the big heart balloon that houses your dark crystal. You also have a certain number of points to spend (In the picture a blue heart at the upper-right that says "500" is your indicator).

Your goal is to protect your crystal from all the adventurers that come along. Use your points to add floors and summon monsters in them. Watch what types of adventurers are approaching, and you can plan the best way to fight them.

Melee beats Ranged beats Magical beats Melee. Pretty standard 3-way setup. But you have to add floors and monsters in real time. New adventurers approach 1, 2, or 3 at a time. You need to prepare floors that will be effective against them. You are awarded additional points for beating each adventurer, so you can continue to add to your tower as the stage progresses.

The chart on the left of the screen shows what types of floors and monsters you've placed, and which adventurers are attempting to climb your tower. Yellow indicates generic typed creatures/floors/adventurers. Blue is magic-type. Green is Ranged Type. And Red is Melee Type. The icons also empty as HP is depleted, so you can see how high an adventurer is getting and gauge whether he'll reach the top before your monsters can stop him. Hopefully you have enough resources to react if they can't!

So far, I feel like this game has engaged my critical thinking with each stage, as it continues to introduce new adventurers and offer me new types of floors and summons. Getting a feel for what type of defense is best against which adventurers takes some experimentation. The game is also humorous, as the Dark Princess tries in vain to be the most fearsome bad guy ever, but nobody will take her seriously. It is highly polished, with lots of dazzling effects and a great depth of detailed artwork drawn up in a charming style.

I've had nearly 2 hours of gameplay out of it so far. Very excited to keep playing!

In case you missed it... Lego Universe!

Here's a great preview and screenies of Lego Universe from 1up.com!

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3176641

I am personally looking forward to this goofy game but I don't know if I'll be able to afford it...

addendum: Found another great post here:
http://www.destructoid.com/brick-by-brick-in-a-whole-new-world-lego-universe-153176.phtml

Title decided for our Tactical RPG

Thallian and I have made lots of decisons about our game in the last few months.
We've given it a title: Reclaimers of Rhuidia

And Thallian recommends I use my more sophisticated character designs rather than the simplistic ones I've been showing in the past. Here are some sketches. Enjoy!