Long-time readers may have some recollection of a series of posts I made about World of Lordcraft, an Evony clone that stole as much as is possibly could from World of Warcraft. I’m happy to report that the World of Lordcraft website now redirects to Blizzard’s site.
There have been quite a lot of visits to my Lordcraft posts from Blizzard over the last few months, and I hope they found them useful :) Though, you know, if I saved your lawyers any time and all, I wouldn’t say no if you wanted to slip me a few dollars.
Update: Turns out that while www.worldoflordcraft.com now takes you to Blizzard, Lordcraft simply went and got themselves another domain. Is even the might of Blizzard’s legal department impotent against them?
This week I have only been playing games with the word “empire” in their names. Empire Avenue, the social-media trading game is one of them, and I may write about that at another time, but the one that has most of my attention right now is a Free-to-play game called Dungeon Empires.
Dungeon Empires is a next-gen free-to-play 3D browser game that presents a unique mix of tactical role-playing game and dungeon editor. Prove your skill as a dungeon builder and create your own lair full of monsters and other dangers. Those who dare to enter your dungeon must not be allowed to make it out alive! Explore and plunder other players’ dungeons, fight against terrifying creatures and loot new monsters, rooms and items to make your chamber of horrors even more deadly and grandiose.
What awaits you?
Build your own dungeon and challenge your friends!
Conjure and train mighty monsters!
Take part in intense turn-based battles!
Create and train your own hero!
Team up with friend to plunder enemy dungeons!
Highly-detailed 3D graphics right in your browser!
Descend into the underworld. Fame and great fortune await!
It’s a fairly simple of game of building your own dungeon, and adventuring into other people’s dungeons in order to find more parts for your dungeon, so that people can then adventure in your dungeon to find better parts for their dungeon. Dungeons figure quite large in Dungeon Empires.
It is a fully 3D affair, using the Unity engine. The adventuring side of things does still feel a bit primitive, but it is engaging, especially for short gaming sessions. I have a soft spot for turn-based combat. Every combat results in a chest, which is always fun, in a “pull the arm on the slot machine” sort of way.
Arkenor criticially smites a Mercenary in Dungeon Empires
The cash shop sells a full range of dungeon parts and adventuring gear. It’s a bit overpriced in my opinion, but they have played fair, and all the items can also be obtained through gameplay. So far I have not felt the need to buy anything, but then I do have rather more time on my hands than most.
When players come to my dungeon, they either get through to the exit, or perish. Either way, I receive some gold and items, though I receive rather more if they die :D So, it is important to get as many people visiting your dungeon as possible. For that reason, it is unfortunate that there is go good way to find a suitable dungeon for your level, other than searching manually through them all. That needs rectifying soon. When you do find a good one, be sure to write its name down!
Adventuring is a bit of a necessary evil, as you need to gather monsters, rooms and fixtures to build your own dungeon. Spare items can be broken down into runes for upgrading your existing dungeon parts. I would prefer to not have to adventure quite so much, and just build my dungeon, but I suppose if everybody felt like that then there would not be anyone visiting my dungeon. The adventuring side of the game needs to be made much more interesting, I think, for Dungeon Empires to have longevity. It has to be so much fun that people would want to play that game, even if there was not a dungeon building game attached to it, and I don’t think that is really how things stands. In the short term though, I’m having a great time. Take a look at my devilish creation below!
Arkenor's Dungeon Empires Map - Here there be no Dragons. Yet.
I’ve now got almost entirely uncommmon rarity rooms and above, allowing me to unlock plenty of monster slots. There’s still a lot of upgrading to do of course, and I need more rare monsters! If you feel inclined, why not come pay my dungeon a visit at the Dungeon Empires website. I’ll probably be writing further about how the game works at a later date
My friend, Terr, pointed this news out to me this morning. Fortune League, a vaguely EQ2-themed Facebook game, is shutting down:
As of Monday, July 11th this Facebook game will no longer be operational. In the meantime, you may continue to play and redeem prizes until the conclusion of this final season. However, the ability to add Station Cash funds to your wallet will be disabled on Friday, June 24th. Any existing funds in your wallet can still be used until the game is turned off.
Beginning on Monday, July 11th, you may request a refund of the non-promotional Station Cash in your wallet if you play Fortune League and do not also currently play any other SOE game (EverQuest II, Free Realms, etc.) where you can still continue to use the Station Cash in your wallet after this Facebook game has been turned off. If you are eligible for a refund, please contact a Customer Service.
Fortune League was not, in my opinion, a very good advert for Everquest 2, having far more in common with stockbroking than high adventure. I did play it, because it granted useful in-game goodies, but it was an 2 minute annoyance once a week to set my team up, rather than something to be actively enjoyed. I truly doubt anybody spent real money to buy additional trades for it, and nobody who wasn’t already playing EQ2 would want to play it, so it is probably just as well that this distraction is being wound up.
Perhaps it will eventually be replaced by something a bit more fun.
It has been a little while since I made a video, so I thought I would take the opportunity of EQ2’s City Festival being in New Halas to show off the new Aether Race. It’s quite an enjoyable one, with plenty of dodging stormclouds to be done. The title for this track is “Snowflake Chaser”, requiring a time of 104 or less.
While I was about it, I figured I might as well show off the Green Lodge’s newly acquired guildhouse too. We’re mighty proud of it, even if we can’t afford many amenities for it yet. It has been a lot of fun helping Terr decorate it! Feel free to drop by, should you happen to find yourself in North Qeynos on Crushbone.
Maltheas gave us all some warning about this a few weeks ago, but now ripples of the news are beginning to spread amongst the general populace of Qeynos. Lock up your cheese-board. The Ratonga are coming!
Word is spreading fast among the citizens of Qeynos and its allies: ratonga have begun to openly enter the cities, and the guards are no longer turning them away at the gate. With Game Update 60: The Children of War, ratonga will now be considered a neutral race and may start life in any city of Norrath.
What deal have the shrewd ratonga negotiated that would make Queen Antonia and her allies change their minds? And what niche will these newcomers carve out for themselves in their new home cities? Only time will tell!
Visit the sages in South Qeynos and North Freeport to purchase “Out Of Necessity,†a book of ratonga history that scholars have recently unearthed. And celebrate the arrival – or departure – of your ratonga neighbours by visiting the Station Marketplace to collect a ratonga illusion and “Seeker of Cheese†house pet, both free for a week only, starting on May 31st. Be sure to check out the new Ratonga Heritage Armor and Underfoot Cheese Plate while you’re there!
So hurrah for free Ratonga-themed goodies. You too could, for a while at least, become as cute as one of our whiskery friends! The items will be available from the 31st of May to June 6th.
If you can’t wait to read “Out of Necessity”, Maltheas handily received an advance copy from his allies amongst the Freeport Ratonga.
Maltheas and Renree watch the sun set in Antonica. A romantic picnic, or a meeting to plot evil Ratonga deeds? We report, you decide.
This has been an aggravating time for any lover of SOE games. We still don’t really have an ETA for when our games are coming back, but SOE has revealed some of what they’re going to do to try to make things up to us.
First and foremost, all impacted players will receive 30 days of game time added to the end of the current billing cycle in addition to one day for each day the system is down. Additionally, many games are offering a variety of in-game items and special events to welcome players back once our services resume (per the outline below). This is true for both PC and PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system based products.
DC Universeâ„¢ Online: Batmanâ„¢ and Two-Faceâ„¢ Inspired Masks and 30 Marks of Distinction Free Realms®: Free daily items (7 to collect) Clone Wars Adventuresâ„¢: Count Dooku v2 Outfit EverQuest®: A series of events, including Double XP, Double Rare Mob Spawns and Double Faction Gains EverQuest II and EverQuest II Extended: A series of events, including Double XP, Double Guild XP, Loot Bonanza, and City Festivals Vanguard: Saga of Heroes®: A series of Double XP events Star Wars Galaxiesâ„¢: Bounty Hunter Statue, a miniature model of Boba Fett’s ship, the Slave Iâ„¢ Magic: The Gathering – Tacticsâ„¢: Four of each of these spells: “Ivory Mask”, “Duress” and “Angelheart Vial”, plus 500 Station Cash PoxNora®: Limited edition Carrionling, Welcome Back 5K Gold Award Tournaments and two Draft Tournaments, plus 500 Station Cash
For our lifetime subscribers, we’ll grant in-game currency; specifically 20,000 coins for Free Realms, 7,500 Galactic Credits for Clone Wars Adventures and 10 Marks of Distinction for DC Universe Online (in addition to the items listed above).
And finally, our Station Access subscribers will receive 500 Station Cash, in addition to the subscription time and items listed above.
Clearly, the last thing we want is for SOE to put themselves in any further financial trouble. It was only recently that they shut down most of their external studios, with widespread layoffs. The loss of revenue for the past months is going to have been considerable, and it is inevitable that subscriber numbers will have taken a heavy hit when things do get back to normal. So, in spite of how infuriating the last few weeks have been, I am trying to cut them some slack.
“A series of events, including Double XP, Double Guild XP, Loot Bonanza, and City Festivals” is what we’ll be getting over in EQ2. I guess maybe all the city festivals will be active at once, revealing a bunch of Aether Races we haven’t seen yet. That’ll be a lot of fun, and we’ll be sure to make good use of the double guild xp period. I always save up my status items for those.
Their development schedule did not get a holiday during this time. GU 60 still needed finishing off (It’s scheduled to go live itself in a few days), and GU61 is probably well underway, so they won’t have had much time to make anything special for us. However, there might be some old bits and bobs that could be added to the “Welcome Back” festivities, without seriously impacting current development. Some of them may just need a switch flicked.
There have been a lot of great world events over the years that were one-offs, some of which were pretty large. Perhaps, through the power of Chronomancy, there might be some way to sensibly bring one or more of those back during the celebration. The expansion and deity preludes spring to mind. I know I’d LOVE to get the chance to do the D.I.R.T.Y. quests that were part of the Shadow Odyssey prelude.
That’s just a thought really, mostly because I desperately want as many people to come back to EQ2 as possible. I’m a little frightened of what my server is going to look like when it comes back up. SOE needs to do everything it can, within its current capabilities, to make what comes next as awesome and enticing as possible.
Everquest, Everquest 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside, and Pirates of the Burning Sea are still unavailable after their surprise shut-down on Monday morning.
We still don’t know when they’re likely to come back. If I hear anything I’ll let you know. Until then, our characters must wait for us in the loneliness of the void.
Maltheas awaits the return of the world.
Yes, that was a short post. I’d love it to be longer, but we’re not being told terribly much.
Update: Turns out, if you read San Diego local newsapers, you get to find out that the servers will be down until at least Friday, and perhaps beyond. Why on earth SOE isn’t telling us that directly is a mystery to me.
