To blossom on the cesspit of life.
1. RO
The first of love is always life destructive.
And one needs real time to pass away
Before acknowledging that it was yet a love.
2. Piratia (Pirate King Online aka PK Online)
Humble graphics, rather rich gameplay with an attempt to introduce a trace of storyline.
Possibility to sail a ship, but without a chance to take other players onboard.
Very poor char customization system and even more horrific job distribution. A girl has no chance of being a swordman and a boy has no chance of being a cleric.
Hunter and voyager are the only unisex jobs.
Imbalanced gameplay. Lance fencer dominates making a horrific amount of damage with a skill that was designed to be weak and intended only to call the mobs. I.e. swordman became ranged AOE damage dealer far more advanced than hunter or mage.
Most chars can be blown out with one swing of sword. In addition this job can hide.
The awkward journey to possess forgiveness
To poetry of bullies and rats
3. MicMac
A first in the world history 3D MMORPG with astonishing cute characters. Very good (for that time) char customization including hair and eyes color and face type. 2 genders, all chars are of the same age and height. Decent choice of jobs with decent possibilities for customization of build.
Small world - one town, 2 forposts and less than 10 maps.
Dungeons impossible to made solo at the reasonable level of char.
The sudden burst of World Salvation
Emitted from the hands of Guest
4. Asda Story
Direct sibling of the MicMac so all bonuses and maluces are the same.
In further patches the advanced craft system and system of titles vere introduced. Skills were subdued. Leveling was made hard. A week to 20 lvl even if it is not the first char of Yours. I mean a week to 20 lvl even if You hit 10 lvl in five minutes. Quests are choosen so so that You can not finish the current level only by questing. You need to take some bare grinding too. And the distance between the end of quests and the leveling up grows with level. The very end of quests hits You if memory serves me at 40 or 45 lvl. All further way up is bare munch.
Whisper to yourself.
Dance while nobody sees.
Dig to the center of Earth.
No social at all.
The voice of crying kitten in the desert
5. HBO
Decent graphics, reasonable gameplay. Cute and friendly GM's.
Poor char customization - u can select only gender and the hair form and color. No face type, no eyes color, no age (height). In addition to this You can choose an animal u will morph to all the game long.
There are 6 races: birds, dragons, dogs, tigers, monkeys and bulls.
On the contrary to the expectations all animals have the same stats and differ only in the job selection possibilities.
Character models are rough and low poly, but still cute enough. However most of time You will spend in animal form and the beasts are modeled without any 'cuteness' kept in mind. The more correct word here would be 'handsome'.
Phantasm tower replaces all the locations in the sense of grinding and looting. Indeed You can stay in the main town without going anywhere and have all the bonuses and even more.
Dungeons are made for large groups of players. One can solo them only when (at least) 10 levels elder than needed.
However leveling is rather fast and affordable.
Very social game but the most impressive fact is that players really behave like social archetypes of their animals: taurus are stupid and bully, monkeys are bothering and unreliable, dragons are noble etc etc.
What causes this? Does the type of animal define the behaviour of player or just players with different tendencies choose their animals in accordance?
The heaven should be like a kindergarten:
The happy voices of a bunch of smiling kids
6. C9 (Cloud Nine)
Solo Cleric 35+
Cool graphics, advanced physics with jumping flying and swimming, exciting mob models especially that 'predator rabbit' hard leveling, poor char customization, very stupid subclass system social rights of players are very restricted until 40 lvl, but this 40 lvl may be not one month of hard grinding. rather easy dungeons - the first impression that: 'at last it is the game where You Can Do It', gradually interchanges with 'so slow leveling I've never seen before.
E extremely polite but very distant players.
Even PKers make excuses and give gifts to ones killed by them.
No social at all.
The wonders of the unliving nature
Will colorize adventurer's last days
7. Eden Eternal
Well developed graphics, cute chars, bruised a bit however.
Possibility to choose hair cut and hair color, face type and color of eyes. Possibility to change all this after on by means of an item mall coupon. 4 races: (human young)adults, (human)kids, frogs, mices
and bears. Only humans have genders. Other races are treated as 'male'.
Very affordable leveling. Affordable dungeons (in modern patches).
System of titles and rating. And the level is very unimportant thing to get high rating. The main affect on the char rating is from overall PK score (guild wars, arenas, free field duels) the next is achievements from raid and party dungeons. The level, crafting and questing give
almost nothing.
No physics at all. One can jump but it does not help to overcome obstacles. No swim, no flying. One of the most stupid subclass system. Not so idiotic as in C9 but still enough. Character outfit depends only to his job or to equipped (real money) IM items. Moreover the intrinsic outfits of jobs are somewhere between 'ugly' and 'freaky'. Kinda bearable appearance thieves and engineers have. Other jobs should rush to the item mall ASAP. It dims when compared with other races. Frogs are so perfect that one may vomit onto the monitor. Bears can frighten even their own players. Mices have broken legs (especially noticeable when alpacca riding). Human kids are rather cute but Altsgamer syndrome hasn't passed them well aside.
Society is very communicative, but not as friendly as one could expect.
Your friends are dangerous
They form Your psyche
Remember this if wanting to be free
8. Luna
Decent graphics, no physics. Cute cutier and most cute.
Real kindergarten with swings and whirligigs. Leveling is affordable, dungeons too.
Developed system of peacefull life including crafting, fishing, gardening and house-keeping.
3 races: humans elvens and darklings. All of them have genders.
Poor choice of character appearance and customization each race has a set of 3..5 hairtypes (strictly bound with color) and 3..5 faces (also strictly bound with color of eyes and mostly expressing emotions, not just type of faces)
Friendly society.
The shine of dying world
9. ECO (Emil Chronicles Online)
No physichs, humble low poly graphics with no shaders...
Humble... But the art is done so that You will never notice the restriction of graphics. Appearance of that low poly models gives 100 points forward in comparison with most modern high tech games.
Characters are cute and the restriction of appearance selection is well compensated by the ingame means including beauty coupons.
Only one restriction - eyes color choice will correspond to race.
Titans have blue and green eyes, Emils (humans) have brown to gray eyes, Dominions have red yellow and violet ones. DEMs may choose any of colors.
4 races: Titans (angels), Dominions (Demons), Emils (humans) and DEMS (Demon Ex Machine - androids)
3 worlds: Titania, Dominion and Emil world. Dominion is PvP zone and has separate leveling system.
For those loving peacefull life there are a number of civil jobs like merchant, gardener, miner, etc etc. There are also quests of delivery and collect types, so one can level up and prosper without any kill.
Simple for a first glance gameplay system appears to be extremely complicated and deep if pay attention to details. E.g. 'posession' system - one character walking through the field may appear to be a group of up to six players. Why should swordman go with a cleric lurking around? Its much better to have that cleric bound to a brooche hanging on Your chest.
Extreme pet and vehicle system. Thousands of them with different properties and appearance. Special kind of pets - golems can even work while You are offline.
And yet the 'flying garden' - Your very own home and the ultimate vehicle to go around the world.
With all this beauty the game is quite tolerant to system resources and behaves almost without any glitches.
Leveling is rather hard and slow (as a payment to oldschool style) but not extremely.
May serve as an example of almost perfect game based on 'classic' MMORPG approach.
As the disadvantages one may point to absence of physics (no swimming, no jumping, no 'real' flying) and maybe the absence of the first person view possibilities.
Society is communicative and rather friendly.
It is a huge loss to the whole computer game culture that there no online official server has been left over the net. Only some private emulators try to fill this void but they are barely functional.
10. Edda (Legend Of Edda)
11. Heva Clonia
12. Divinia
13. RKO (Remnant Knights
[table][tr][td][/td][td]Cute[/td][td]Cute[/td][td]Kids or height[/td][td]Kids or height[/td][td]Undress[/td][td]Undress[/td][td]Dress up as you wish[/td][td]Dress up as you wish[/td][td]Char creation [/td][td]Easy lvling[/td][td]Job balance[/td][td]Job balance[/td][td]Pacific Life possibility[/td][td]Overall rating[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]boys[/td][td]girls[/td][td]M[/td][td]F[/td][td]M[/td][td]F[/td][td]M[/td][td]F[/td][td][/td][td][/td][td]PVM[/td][td]PVP[/td][td][/td][td][/td][/tr][tr][td]RO[/td][td]2[/td][td]2[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][td]0/0[/td][td]0/0[/td][td]0/0[/td][td]0/0[/td][td]4[/td][td]3[/td][td]5[/td][td]5[/td][td]2[/td][td]23/23[/td][/tr][tr][td]Piratia[/td][td]3[/td][td]4[/td][td]0[/td][td]5[/td][td]8/8[/td][td]8/8[/td][td]5/5[/td][td]3/5[/td][td]4[/td][td]4[/td][td]3[/td][td]3[/td][td]0[/td][td]50/52[/td][/tr][tr][td]MicMac[/td][td]8[/td][td]8[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][td]0/5[/td][td]0/6[/td][td]5/8[/td][td]5/8[/td][td]4[/td][td]5[/td][td]5[/td][td]5[/td][td]?[/td][td]46/63[/td][/tr][tr][td]Asda Story[/td][td]8[/td][td]8[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][td]0/5[/td][td]0/6[/td][td]5/8[/td][td]5/8[/td][td]4[/td][td]2[/td][td]5[/td][td]5[/td][td]1[/td][td]43/60[/td][/tr][tr][td]HBO[/td][td]8[/td][td]8[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][td]7/9[/td][td]7/9[/td][td]8/8[/td][td]5/8[/td][td]5[/td][td]8[/td][td]8[/td][td]7[/td][td]1[/td][td]72/79[/td][/tr][tr][td]C9[/td][td]4[/td][td]9[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][td]0/8[/td][td]0/8[/td][td]3/4[/td][td]3/4[/td][td]8[/td][td]0[/td][td]8[/td][td]5[/td][td]0[/td][td]40/58[/td][/tr][tr][td]Eden Eternal[/td][td]7[/td][td]7[/td][td]5[/td][td]5[/td][td]0/5[/td][td]0/9[/td][td]0/6[/td][td]0/6[/td][td]5[/td][td]8[/td][td]5[/td][td]5[/td][td]1[/td][td]48/74[/td][/tr][tr][td]Luna Online[/td][td]10[/td][td]10[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][td]8/8[/td][td]8/8[/td][td]5/7[/td][td]3/5[/td][td]5[/td][td]6[/td][td]8[/td][td]5[/td][td]0[/td][td]68/72[/td][/tr][tr][td]ECO[/td][td]9[/td][td]9[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][td]8/9[/td][td]8/9[/td][td]8/9[/td][td]8/9[/td][td]8[/td][td]5[/td][td]3[/td][td]5[/td][td]4[/td][td]75/79[/td][/tr][tr][td]Legend of Edda[/td][td]7[/td][td]7[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][td]8/8[/td][td]8/8[/td][td]3/5[/td][td]3/5[/td][td]5[/td][td]5[/td][td]4[/td][td]3[/td][td]0[/td][td]53/57[/td][/tr][tr][td]Heva Clonia [/td][td]6[/td][td]5[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][td]0/0[/td][td]0/0[/td][td]3/3[/td][td]3/3[/td][td]4[/td][td]7[/td][td]9[/td][td]?[/td][td]?[/td][td]43/43[/td][/tr][tr][td]Lucent Heart[/td][td]4[/td][td]7[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][td]0/3[/td][td]0/3[/td][td]1/2[/td][td]4/5[/td][td]7[/td][td]?[/td][td]7[/td][td]6[/td][td]1[/td][td]42/50[/td][/tr][tr][td]RKO[/td][td]5[/td][td]8[/td][td]5[/td][td]5[/td][td]9/9[/td][td]9/9[/td][td]3/4[/td][td]3/4[/td][td]9[/td][td]7[/td][td]8[/td][td]8[/td][td]0[/td][td]79/81[/td][/tr][tr][td]IRIS online[/td][td]5[/td][td]3[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][td]8/8[/td][td]8/8[/td][td]3/4[/td][td]3/4[/td][td]5[/td][td]?[/td][td]5[/td][td]5[/td][td]0[/td][td]50/52[/td][/tr][tr][td]Divinia[/td][td]6[/td][td]8[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][td]1/2[/td][td]1/2[/td][td]2/4[/td][td]2/4[/td][td]4[/td][td]8[/td][td]7[/td][td]7[/td][td]1[/td][td]47/53[/td][/tr][tr][td]Spirit Tales[/td][td]6[/td][td]6[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][td]1/?[/td][td]1/?[/td][td]2/4[/td][td]2/4[/td][td]4[/td][td]8[/td][td]5[/td][td]5[/td][td]?[/td][td]41/56[/td][/tr][tr][td]Mabinogi[/td][td]6[/td][td]6[/td][td]5[/td][td]5[/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td]Unrated[/td][/tr][/table]
Job balance rating = 10/x
x - is "ratio of imbalance" - how many times character of the strongest job is stronger than the one of the most weak job, assuming that both are at the same level and have the top equip for that job and level.
On PvM it means 'how many weaklings are needed to pawn the same boss that stronger one kills solo'. And not 'how many times a hunter would die during boss hunting divided by the amount of knight's deaths' - the last term reflects mostly defence and stamina and does not take into account the attacking capabilities.
On PVP the criterion is even more simple and evident. x - is "frag" rato between weaklings and stronglings. Assumed that it is not 1 vs 1 duel (in such a case minor differences in balance tend to provide tremendous difference in score) but without any alliances.
Exotic jobs (like 'jobless' or 'supernovice') are not taken into account. Usually (but not always) the strongest ones are melee tank or damage dealer jobs (knights or assassins). The weakest ones are traditionally mages or, sometimes, 'civil' jobs.
Also You should mention that for a single person it is hard to penetrate into all tiny game details. So the rating appears to be subjective to some extent. One should take is like this:
10 - amazing balance, everyone has their chance
8 or higher - well balanced, good feeling
4..7 - typical imbalance for a common online game
3 or below - crying imbalance - bad feeling, oftenly causing people to quit playing the game.
+1 - face selection (+2 if more than 10 faces available)
+1 - hair cut selection (+2 if more than 10 hairs available)
+1 - eyes color selection (+2 if independent from face selection or if there exist variants of most faces for different eye colors)
+1 - hair color selection (+2 if independent from hair cut selection or if there exist variants of most hair cuts for different hair colors)
+1 - race selection (+2 if all of them are cute)
+1 - stat build selection (+2 if it is usefull in the game)
+1 - for race independent constitution selection (tall/short, thin/fat, etc)
-1 - if no gender selection for one of races (-2 if for all races)
Cute:
10 - uber mega kawaii
9 - uber mega kawaii restricted by graphics and/or funding of art design
8 - very cute but with some remarks
6..7 - undercute, injuired kawaii, cute but damaged design
4..5 - explicit tendency towards cuteness
2..3 - can be imagined as cute
0..1 - uncute
Kids - means possibility to alternate age (tallness) of the character from others. I.e. in Luna or Legend of Edda all characters modeled as little kids.
But if there are no elders, how can we distinguish them?
Undress rating. Paradox, but in many games one need to buy a "bare body suit" to be able to undress. The pants genetically grown with Your body give strange and a bit unpleasant sensation. This stresses up the irreality of the gameplay and forces user to be even more distant from his character.
It is understandable that the reverse extremity will tend to deal with the law regulations (And even here one should note that the toys industry for years produces dolls without any problems with the law. And without age restrictions.) but in most cases the case is not limited by mere pants - characters often are unable to put off their winter coat or pope robe or metal armour. Yes after several hours of playing You will get used to it and stop noticing, but the remark will be done already.
Undress rating is [just_ingame_rating]/[real_money_mall_rating]
Undress:
10 - full undress (i.e. nude)
9 - bikini
8 - short panties/open swimsuit
7 - short panties with top/open swimsuit with additions
6 - long pants/swimsuit with closed belly
5 - long shorts (to knees or longer)/full closed swimsuit
2..4 - pajamas or light sportswear
1 - suit glued to body
0 - no skin visible other than face
Dress rating. Here most depends to one's tastes but... Lemme put some philosophy here. Most MMO designers twist themselves to invent most new and remarkable clothes. And yet - player looks into mall and feels like there's nothing to put on. The main problem of the designers is that they decide what to invent and not what they would wear. There exists three or four simple rules of success. And almost any of them appears to be ignored by designers.
Rule 1: Clothes must stress the beauty of the human body. (And keep its drawbacks away from eyes - but thanx Goodness the ingame bodies are perfect... well, intended to be.) Needless to say that in any case clothes must at least keep the human form. And what to say about numerous skeleton skully warrior dresses with hundreeds of bones and spikes. From a bit of distance they look like porcupine or hedgehog but not like even a humanoid.
Intended (probably) to inspire horror they appear to inspire nothing but perplexity and feeling of pity for their owners.
Rule 2: Clothes must follow their style. Simply, directly without extremities.
Rule 3: Designer should care about how the model will look on the screen.
Many of the saturated with details suits are seen as blurred color spots.
All the work is in vain if user doesn't see it. Another mistake is lack of usefullness. Art designer makes some wonderfull suits but game designer sets some low stats on it and the suit becomes left in the warehouse being put on only for the screenshots.
Rule 4: We're all humans. Generally we want to dress up stylish and beautifull.
But we all have some ideals, like favourite characters. Can You ever dress up as Neo from Matrix, as Dante from Devil May Cry, Sora from Kingdom Hearts, like Yuffie or Riku from Final Fantasy VII and X, like KOS-MOS from Xenosaga?
But very few of games offer the cosplay features of allow to dress up at least similarly. The next may be my very own opinion but I begin to hear the same fom others too: We are modern and free people. Now is XXI century. All those Victorian dresses do bother to death. And so do the old fashioned army uniforms.
Pacific Life possibility:
+1 - chance to live without PvP
+1 - chance to live without PvM
+1 - availability peaceful job except merchant
+1 - availability merchant job
Sideband
- Lucent
- Fantazmium
- Domo
- Wonderland
- YggRO
- IrisSpirit Tales
