Bluehole Studios Is Hiring For Their Next Game; Possibly A TERA Sequel.

A post appeared on Bluehole Studios’ website, advertising that they are on the hunt for programmers to work on their next big title.  They are looking for people who have knowledge on data structure, algorithms, and operating systems.  Candidates must have an open mind, great communication, and must be willing to help deal with any problems that may arise during the production.  

Bluehole Studio is looking for passionate programmers who will realize the dream.

Now’s the part where we start speculating on what this new game will be.  What are they planning?  Could this mean a sequel to TERA  is already in the works?  While the exact words “TERA 2” have yet to be spoken, Bluehole Studios has said they are working on a next generation MMORPG to follow TERA.  Keep in mind that when this game draws closer to completion, it could be about three to five years down the road.  Is this a good time for a TERA sequel?

Don’t forget, there is still a large chance that it’s not a sequel whatsoever.  They may be working on a completely new game that will (quite literally) follow TERA.    Whichever way they are going, everything is still in the planning stages and we will not be hearing about it for several more years.  

What do I think?  Originally, when I saw the post I thought expansion.  However, the way things are sounding is that they are looking to hire a team of people.  They are not going to need another team of people to work on a TERA expansion.  At this point in time, the sequel idea seems way too soon.  I later thought maybe a spin-off of the game.  Perhaps there was a certain area or group of characters that they were going to continue with in another game; however, that doesn’t sound MMO-like to me.  My vote is for an entirely new game, and this will be the last we hear about it for three to five years.  

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Small Ass Monsters

The folks at En Masse Entertainment have sent out a press release today touting a brand new PVE element. Included in the PR was a video featuring a look at the arrival of Small Ass Monsters in the world of TERA: Rising. These SAMs have been created in order to balance out the title’s famed Big-Ass Monsters (BAMs). Staying true to TERA’s action combat roots, the addition of Small-Ass Monsters also debuts the game’s ferociously powerful new “jump and squash” combat mechanic!

Their small stature definitely does not take away from TERA’s signature action combat in any way, but rather offers up a brand new way to combat enemies.  Instead of the usual dodging, blocking and attack combos, players will now be able to use the “jump and squash” technique to crush the SAMs in a way that would make even Mario proud. Though you should watch out for your ankles, they are feisty little fellas!

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TERA: Rising Announces Five-Day Event to Hunt “Big-Ass Monsters” in Celebration

Player participation in TERA: Rising has increased “tenfold” reports En Masse Entertainment. Since the February launch of the subscription-free game, which was a transition from a subscription-based game, the player count in North America alone has soared to over 1.4 million players. To celebrate such a sharp jump, the company has announced “Dracoloths Rising” which invites players to “hunt big-ass monsters” for special drops and prizes.

“We’ve been blown away by the waves of players logging into TERA, and we’re seeing amazing growth in both registrations and daily users. It’s always great to eclipse the one-million-player mark, and at our current rate, it won’t be long before we hit two million,” said Chris Lee, CEO of En Masse Entertainment. “This success is pushing En Masse even harder to deliver more content and improve our service, so stay tuned!”

The celebratory event, Dracoloths Rising, will be held on March 20 through March 24. Dracoloths will appear all over the world of TERA: Rising. Defeat the monsters and get the loot. We can expect plenty of consumables and gear to be dropped.

The Exiled Realm of Arborea, officially known as TERA, is a fantasy MMORPG developed by Bluehole Studio in Korea. It was released in 2011 in Korea and Japan, and a year and a half later it came to North American and Europe. Less than a year after that, the transition to TERA: Rising allowed players all over the world to play without a subscription. Along with the revamp came new features: brand new dungeons, The Champions’ Skyring PvP battle arena, and new servers so players could choose a new or existing community. The “freemium” aspect of the game continues to attract more and more new and returning players.

One of the draws to TERA: Rising is that En Masse promises there will be “no time, level or content restrictions” that are sometimes tagged on to other “free” games. Sure there is plenty of stuff to buy in the in-game shop, but “the core of the game will be 100% free.”

1.4 million people in North America seem to be enjoying it. Have you played TERA: Rising? How does the free-to-play feel to you?

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Last week at New York International Toy Fair, USAopoly announced several upcoming board games based on video game properties, such as Trivial Pursuit: World of Warcraft and RISK: Mass Effect Galaxy at War Edition.

We thought this was only the tip of the iceberg and began to wonder what other video game properties – especially MMORPGs – would work well as board games. Here are some of the best video board game ideas we could come up with:

SWTOR Operation

Instead of extracting body parts, the object of the game is to extract money from your players in the most creative ways possible. Free game, but comes with half a tweezer; the other half must be purchased separately.

PlanetSide 2 Connect 4

Like regular Connect 4, but instead of an 8×8 matrix, it’s 800×800 and is for three players. Players must drop their tokens into the matrix from orbit.

Firefall: The Board Game

We’re not sure how it plays, but it still says “In Development” on the finished box product.

World of Warcraft Chutes & Ladders

Land on one space and subscribers go up by 700,000. Land on another, and they go down by 400,000. Only one move may be made every three months.

The Secret World Scrabble

All the tiles are written in ancient Sanskrit. Put them together in the right order to summon an ancient horror. Or maybe just bees.

Magic Realm: EVE Online Edition

If you’d ever played Magic Realm, you’d get the comparison. EVE looks about as complex as Candy Land by comparison.

Trivial Pursuit: Elder Scrolls Online Edition

Answer such exciting questions as “In what year in the Third Era did Emperor Uriel Septim II assume the throne?” and “What mine in Morrowind has the most ebony?” (Due out later this year, but we’re not going to show you practically anything about it.)

Guild Wars 2 RISK

The classic war game re-invented for Tyria! Before invading a neighboring territory, however, you must spend at least 10 minutes banging down the gate to that region.

TERA: The Board Game

Gorgeous components, and seems to require a good deal of skill, but it takes at least 20 hours to get to anything resembling fun.

Rift Chess

Plays like the normal game, with white and black pieces, except that every few minutes, pieces of a different color enter the board and mess everything up.

(Answers to the TP:TESO questions: 64 and Mausur Caverns)

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First Impressions Of The Neverwinter Beta

Neverwinter was the one game that eluded me at PAX Prime, so it wasn’t until this Wednesday that I got my grubby little gauntlets on the game for the first time. The tl;dr of my first impressions? It’s solid and does most things well, with most other issues being the usual quirks that can be chalked up to beta.

Cloak and daggers

I was summoned to a level 16 dungeon, the Cloak Tower, to accompany three other press-types and Neverwinter Lead Systems Designer Chris Metz. I was playing a guardian fighter, one of the three classes available for the event. There were three of us in the party, along with a trickster rogue and a devoted cleric. As a dwarf, I was, of course, the handsomest of the bunch.

In about the three minutes that Chris briefed us on how to equip things, choose our powers, and so on, I was able to become completely familiar with my character’s skill set. I had two basic melee attacks, one each on the left and mouse buttons, and four “button” moves, tied to the Tab, Q, R, and T keys. There was also an “ultimate” ability that I built up the power for over time, and when I unleashed it, it knocked back all the mobs around me. (I choose to believe it was a “sweat meter,” and when I got worked up enough, everyone wanted to get away from the stinky dwarf.)

Neverwinter uses a non-targeted, action-combat system, not unlike TERA, and it takes a little getting used to for someone who’s accustomed to tabbing to targets. You do have a reticle, and when it lights up over an enemy – or an ally for heals – you can activate the power.

This can be a little tricky at range, such as when I was using my charge attack (which I often accompanied with a call of “LEEROY!”) and thought I had the shot lined up only to press my key and have nothing happen. The group’s healer also commented that it was often difficult to single out friendly targets, and I imagine the same would apply to long-range bow- or spell-using characters.

What makes the combat unlike TERA, or even Guild Wars 2, is that you can’t activate such powers – or at least the ones on my guardian fighter – without a suitable target. So I would never go charging off into oblivion, missing my target by three feet and slamming into a wall. The “pure” action-combat fans might be put off by this, but I think it’s a good compromise between action combat and a targeting system.

In melee, where I spent most of my time, it was pretty much button-mashing my two attacks – one of which provided me with a small heal – and my three non-charge powers: two tank-like taunting powers and a stun. Several of the tougher enemies telegraphed their attacks by lighting up the floors with their areas of effect (a la WildStar), but I was usually tough enough to take it – or, if I wasn’t, I had a healer and lots of potions.

Our trickster rogue, on the other hand, was often losing health at an alarming rate, which I’d attribute to his not paying as much attention to the enemies’ attacks and positioning himself appropriately. For us burly, heavily armored fighters, it wasn’t too much challenge to suck up what the bosses did to us, but I can see how squishier classes would need to pay better attention.

Ad-Vansi-ed tactics

The challenge level ramped up significantly, though, when we faced the final boss, a beastly she-orc named Vansi Bloodscar. We were doing our usual rofl-stomp on her king-sized health bar when she summoned adds. Lots of adds. Oh, and then she did a move where she knocked us all back, right into the waiting arms of said adds.

Did I mention you can revive other party members in combat with the F key? If we didn’t learn that before, we did during the Vansi fight. While I did a spectacular job of tanking Vansi and her minions – which included plenty of running for my little dwarf life with about 10 orcs hot on my heels – the other party members pitched in to get us all up in fighting shape. Eventually, we wore the mean old lady down and then there was loot to be had. Ah, loot. You’re why we do this in the first place.

My overall take on combat? It merges elements of the games I’ve already mentioned above, and I see nothing wrong with copying parts of what works in other games and finding the proper way to implement it in your own. With all the obvious “tells” for enemy attacks, I was rather lamenting the absence of any sort of “dodge” mechanic, but maybe that’s just reserved for rogues and other mobile classes – or at least classes more mobile than my stumpy little dwarf fighter.

[Edit: I later learned that my guardian fighter couldn't dodge, as some other classes can, but I can hold down the Shift key to raise my shield in advance of those particularly nasty attacks.]

I tend to think that the boss fights – Vansi Bloodscar excepted – were made fairly easy by the presence of a dev and possibly overpowered armor. Though we were all noobs, the fact that you only have a limited number of powers to choose from makes it quick to pick up on, which may have helped us to look like old pros. Difficulty level is something that can be easily tweaked as beta progresses, and if I have to earn that gear instead of just having it handed to me, it’ll probably make the fights more challenging.

A ‘shroom with a view

Graphically, the game looks great. I was honestly impressed with the character models, textures, and environments, which are on par with the best the MMORPG genre has to offer. The Cloak Tower environs flowed seamlessly from wizards’ keep to subterranean, crystal-lined lair to cave structure with giant mushrooms, because you can’t make an RPG these days without including a cave with giant mushrooms. It’s the law.

Sound is one area that still needs improvement. While there was plenty of hacking and slashing, it just seemed a little empty, audio-wise, and there was as yet, no voice acting. I’m sure that’s just something that will be remedied as the beta process continues; it’s typically one of the last things that gets finalized.

As we cleared the dungeon, there were various objects we could interact with, such as books and orbs, if we had the proper non-combat skills. Having blitzed through character creation, I couldn’t tell you at what point those skills are chosen, but there were quite a few options in the process, such as background and choice of god, so even with a fairly limited set of classes, you’ll have ways to stand out and customize your character to be useful to a party, even if there is some class overlap.

Speaking of class customization, I only had the briefest of moments to look at all the talent trees and other build options – which were probably abbreviated for the beta anyway – but there seem to be plenty of ways to spec out your character, as one would expect.

First impressions of an MMO are often where people form their everlasting judgments, for good or for bad. My first thoughts on Neverwinter is that it’s a worthy addition to the Dungeons & Dragons legacy. It’s difficult to explain, but it just feels like D&D, at least the dungeon-crawl aspect of it that I experienced. And there’s still a lot more to be added to the game.

There are obviously some kinks yet be worked out in beta, polish to be applied, and bugs to be squashed, but the content I experienced seemed well-designed and just about ready for prime time. I, for one, can’t wait to see the finished product.

For Troy Blackburn’s impressions of the recent Neverwinter beta, click here.

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The Tera free to play date has officially been announced

If you’ve been on the site at all the last few days you probably heard that Tera is going free to play. Well thank goodness, we finally got an official date. Come February 5th anyone looking to play the award-winning action MMORPG Tera can do so for free, or if you want some extra perks you can go for founder or elite status. Details on account tiers can be found here.  Also, for all you eager beavers there is a free trial period you can jump into if you just can’t wait until the 5th.

If you haven’t heard about Tera, or just don’t know much about it, Tera is a fantasy MMORPG from the team of Bluehole Studios, Frogster Interactive Pictures, and En Masse Entertainment. Tera’s story is simple: the world is under siege by evil gods, monsters, and beings from the underworld, and it’s up to the players to stand against their onslaught to save the world.

True action combat is the main draw, meaning fighting is based on actual player skill. For example, in order to avoid getting hit in combat, you have to dodge attacks, and not just stand in place and rely on some sort of armor or skill rating. There are no factions, either. Players can choose from seven races and eight classes then they can run around the beautiful world and take on quests and fight over 600 monsters. Another interesting thing is that the game can be played either traditional keyboard and mouse style or with a PC compatible console controller.

I personally have been playing Tera a bit, and I think its pretty dang fun! The only thing I recommend is don’t play a low difficulty character if you want any kind of challenge at all. Other than that, the game is really pretty, the characters are really cute. It also seems like a really good game for a wide age range, and now that it’s going free to play there really is no reason not to get it, be it for yourself or maybe a child you know.

Also be sure to keep an eye out for a full detailed overview which I will get to you all sometime in the next week or so.

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TERA is going free-to-play in February, and while we’ve already been given some of the details regarding account tier perks, En Masse have released the full matrix of account perks and restrictions for their action-combat MMORPG based on your status as either a Free player, a Founder, or an Elite. The free-to-play system doesn’t appear to be terribly restrictive and even players who download and play the game for free will have access to all of the existing content, and the few restrictions present should not be enough to keep them from enjoying the game. Let’s take a look at the tiers.

Instead adding a ton of restriction to free players and chopping the content up into chunks to sale individually it looks like TERA is are making an effort to provide the base game experience to its free players, while providing extra rewards and bonuses to players who have already purchased the game and/or continue to maintain a montly subscription.

Games like Star Wars: The Old Republic have caught quite a bit of flack for making players feel like they had to buy basic game features, even if they had previously purchased the game. You can make changes to your free to play system of course, but it’s hard to loose that stigma you pick up initially with a bad free to play system.

Free players in TERA can expect a pretty unrestricted adventure through the game, with having only two character slots being one of the only obvious drawbacks to being a free player. Other than that, the system really leans more toward rewarding players who either have purchased the game previously, or are currently subscribing.

None of the existing content will be hidden behind paywalls, and all the dungeons and PvP is available for free for players to try out.

Players who have previously purchased the game will be in the Founder’s tier, and will receive an exclusive mount as well as eight character slots and a few other perks such as extra bank slots.

Subscribers will be in the Elite account tier and receive a yet to be announced epic mount, double the normal daily bonus quests, and daily xp, gold, and reputation boosts, as well as plenty of other perks including cheaper auction house brokerage fees and discounts in the cash shop.

On paper the TERA free-to-play program looks like one of the better ones out there, and players should be able to play and experience the game for free if they wish, with those who support the game directly being rewarded for their loyalty.

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