World Of Warcraft

Comparing World of WarCraft Players Guides

One of the most popular massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORGP) online video games in history has been Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft (WoW). With the first game set being released in 1994 (Warcraft: Orcs and Humans), and regular sets and updates issued since, World of Warcraft is the world’s larges MMORPG with more than 10.9 million monthly subscribers and holds the Guinness World Record for being the most popular MMORPG. In the spring of 2008, WoW was estimated to hold over 60% of the massively multiplayer online game market.

There are many books, guides, and websites that offer shortcuts, tips, and tricks to quickly proceed through the games various levels while obtaining the most amount of gold. Recently, I reviewed two of the newer and more popular guides, Warcraft Millionaire, and Warcraft Supreme in order to help readers better navigate the many print and online guides that are out there.

Warcraft Supreme Players Guide

Warcraft Supreme scores a 5 of 5 possible stars. The user does not even have to purchase the product to start seeing benefits as the product offers a free introductory membership which gives a free e-course that will help most non-professional players start playing at a higher level immediately. Along with this, an additional bonus offered is instant access to a chapter of the Warcraft Supreme guide. The authors are an elite team of six professional gamers who have combined efforts in order to offer one of the most comprehensive guides to WoW on the market with updates to the guide constantly being released as the game is updated. They claim that new game players have gone from level 1 to 60 in as little as 96 hours of game play. The Supreme guide lists online for as little as $46 which is significantly lower than many of the competitor’s one will find online. Altogether, there are over 850 pages of tips and education on the game across 15 different game guidebooks.

Warcraft Millionaire Players Guide

Warcraft Millionare (WM) is another great guide to the WoW game written by Brad Johnson who is one of the richest players in the history of the game. Warcraft Millionaire scores a 4.5 of 5 possible stars when I reviewed the product. It is a large improvement over many of the guides one will find online since it actually attempts to build the players understanding of the game and basic skill sets rather than lay out what was a repeating formula in some of the lesser products – 1 – Use the Auction House, 2 – Daily Quests, 3 – Grind Random Stuff, 4 – Use Professions.

Brad Johnson demonstrates a case study where a player made over $9000 in gold in just seven days using his guide. WM also has a Level 1 to 60 guide to help the beginner quickly advance through the levels of the game, but focused on maximizing the amount of gold the player will make before reaching level 70. This guide definitely does not promise a ‘magic bullet’ to success, but much as Warcraft Supreme also provides a free lesson to the consumer to try out the product. Its price does come in $1 higher than Warcraft Supreme at $47, but the only potential negative it has is a slightly lower level of detail in the level details, maps, etc.

Both WS and WM are nice products. I recommend WS when going head to head with WM, but also recommend the reader try out the ‘freebies’ for each product before making your purchase decision!

Mmorpg

Dawn of Heroes: A Humorous RPG for the DS

Dawn of Heroes is a new single player RPG out for the Nintendo DS. This game makes good use of the stylus and touch pad system as it takes players through a series of 50 mini game style battles. Each of these games takes you on a series of branching paths, side quests and even hidden side quests. The game allows for a great amount of character development as you are allowed to choose from 25 characters and 6 factions. The enemies vary as well, being from 12 different factions. The game retails for about $30. It will be released on 4/13/2010.

This game also makes a great use of humor as you are introduced to the characters and throughout the game. This makes for a difference from the commonly seen super serious aspects of RPGs. The battles take place using both screens while the upper screen uses 3D imagery the touch screen displays a 2D grid. The grid controls the action while the upper screen shows what happens after you choose your actions. The game also utilizes the Wi-Fi for different multiplayer action.

Each battle is made more challenging by stipulations that allow for instance only specific numbers of characters to be used in each mission, eliminating any attempts by others. The wacky dialogue is what sets this game apart from other more straight forward RPG’s. If you take out the dialogue and the loosely threaded story there really isn’t all that much different in the game. There are a ton of items to collect and the touch screen controls lend a unique play style. Being that only sample copies have been out for reviewers to see, it is hard to know exactly how this game is going to go over with the general public.

It seems that this game will be best utilized for those who enjoy RPG’s have a good understanding of quirky humor and are well versed in the DS’s unique play style. This game would probably be designed for older kids to adults who will totally understand the humor in the game despite its E rating.

The game is produced by majesco. Pushing back the release date several times may have hurt the game’s release.

Mmorpg

Lunar 2 Eternal Blue Leveling Guide

Lunar 2 Eternal Blue is one of the most loved role-playing games for the old Sony Playstation. Most would say it has really cutesy graphics and indeed it is. However, past the very simple graphics are a solid storyline and an engaging game play. Known to most, the Lunar series on the Playstation is notorious for difficult leveling on higher levels. However, with enough knowledge, you can really pump your characters up quite quickly if you know what, where and how to level.

Leveling up in Lunar 2 is quite tedious especially if you try to level up on the last few dungeons. Even on the epilogue, experience points are tough to come by. However, there’s a special place where you can level up real fast. You got past through this early in the game. You can level up with the Chiro Mongrels in the White Dragon Cave. Let’s start off with Chiro’s stats. It only has around 1,000 HP. You might be thinking that it’s really easy but let me correct you on that. Chiro Mongrel’s defense is top of the line. It has extremely high physical and magical defense and even your most powerful attacks will do minimal damage. Aside from that, the Chiros are very quick. They’ll try to escape immediately on their first turn and won’t even give you a chance to attack most of the time.

But why are Chiros viable for leveling up? It’s because they give 33,333 experience points and 11,111 silvers. If you’re able to beat at least one of them, you’ll level up in no time. Plus, as you level up from Chiros, you’ll gain more than enough money to fill your entire inventory.

Now, go inside the White Dragon Cave and look for the mongrel looking enemy (check the second screenshot I provided). You’ll encounter several random variations. You can encounter 1 Chiro along with 3 Shiro mongrels, you can encounter Shiros only or you can encounter 2 Chiros. Just keep on fighting them until you reach the next level then go out of the White Dragon Cave and go back again so that the mongrels will re-spawn again. I suggest that you start leveling with Chiros when you reach level 55 so that your characters have their most powerful attacks. This can be very repetitive as well so it’s best to make use of the AI. Don’t worry, the commands that I’ve set can be used on any combination of enemies except for 2 Chiros while you’re still below level 70.

So, from level 55 to 70, set your AI (or do it manually if you’d like but it’s time consuming and boring while doing it over and over again) to the following: Hiro with Triple Sword, Ronfar with Red Dragon Spirit, Jean with Blue Dragon Fist, Lemina with Catastrophe and Leo with Flash Blade. This is probably the strongest possible combination. But if you encounter 2 Chiros, concentrate attack on just one of them. If you use the AI, it will try to attack both Chiros but it won’t kill them. Thus, when they get their turn, they will escape. Sometimes though, they attack you giving you another turn to attack but this situation is quite rare.

When you have reached level 70, things will probably become much easier since Hiro’s triple sword can hurt the Chiros considerably and coupled with your other party member’s attacks, they will go down immediately. Remember, as you level up, your speed stats sometimes increase thus, the Chiros will become slower than you. From level 70, you can set a new AI combination. With your characters powered up, set it to this combination: Hiro with Triple Sword, Ronfar just defend, Jean with Blue Dragon Fist, Lemina with Crematorium or Catastrophe (this will be your back up just incase your first few attacks don’t kill the Chiros) and then have Leo do Flash Blade. At this time, Hiro and Jean will have the first 2 turns and they are now capable of killing a Chiros and leaving the other one easy enough for Lemina or Leo.

There you have it. In my experience, I reached level 90 in around 5 hours or so which is quite fast. If you leveled up in the later dungeons in the game, it’d probably take you days. Just don’t forget to save your game often. I usually save right after I beat a Chiro. Good luck! Trust me. You’ll have a very easy time throughout the game, especially the epilogue, when you’re at high levels.

Runescape

Why Runescape Won’t Shut Down

RuneScape is not shutting down, no matter what people say or do about it (unless something drastic like an alien invasion comes or something). Even though I despise this game, I know that the game will not simply give up the system of Runescape. For starters why did you have the impression RuneScape was shutting down? Was it because they ruined the economy by adding and taking off little bits of the game? What I believe is that they are not shutting down, just losing business.

Why? Because of Gold Sellers, Power levelers and other hacking and unfair techniques to gain advantage in the game. Jagex thought this was not good for the economy of the game so they decided to simply block off the sellers. This caused problems for merchants and other sales people. They cannot make a profit. Skillers are almost just as useless as them, only making profit of what anyone can make.

RuneScape wouldn’t shut down because of the employed people that work for Jagex. Over 400 people would no doubt work for Jagex. Could the Moderators simple tell them that they are shutting down? This would cause at least 300 people in worrying pain that they would have to search for another job that they would have no skill in. This wouldn’t give Jagex a very good impression even AFTER they shut down.

Even though they don’t look that fancy, Jagex has actually made an impressive 62 Million USD. this makes them the richest internet company that is less than 30 years young! Shutting down will not be the worst scenario of Jagex’s history, but what if they could make the game better? They could possibly raise that limit even further.

I don’t know why people think that RuneScape is shutting down; it is the most world wide played Java based game in the whole entire world. Even though it seems like nothing to games like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars (which has millions of players), RuneScape has its own and unique gaming system.

So, don’t go reading those crazy posts about RuneScape shutting down. The chances of such an event happening is slim. The only reason why RuneScape may shut down is because they are going bankrupt or a major loss in business if no one wanted to play RuneScape anymore.

So why doesn’t Jagex just bring back the old game like we all probably used to love? Well, I personally think that they just think it is unfair to the people that pay to play the game. Because, Free to Players still have a very large vast amount of area and concept to play in. Even though free to players won’t pay to become a member, they will pay for vast amounts of gold. With that amount of gold they gain an unfair advantage over members because they can easily make more than members.

So overall, RuneScape isn’t going to shut down… for now any way.