Finally we have got a chance to log into the pre-closed beta server for Dragon Oath. As we have mentioned in our last articles, Dragon Oath is one of the most popular MMORPGs in the Chinese market now. How is it going for the English version?

The client is really small, about 600M roughly. After several patches, we finally logged into the game – to our surprise, the manual patch can’t update our game to latest version – that is really unpleasant.

As you can see from the above log-in interface, sohu.com remains its Chinese logo with pinying. Don’t they need an English name? After that, you are directly to the 2nd log in interface.

As you can see from the above, the integrated bulletin tells the players which event is being held today with time, event name and related information. This function is really great and players do not need to visit the game website to retrieve the latest event news.

Here we come to the server list. As we can see from the above, there is only one server for pre-alpha testing and is called Death Valley – sounds cool or dull? Lol…You can also see the network status right here. We do believe the translation here is a bit confusing and we will leave this part alone for them to fix. Let’s get into the character creation interface.

The default character is a she. She is a very traditional Chinese girl. You can name her, or change her to a him by clicking the Male button, choose her facial form from “the beautiful” to “the tender”, you can also dress her and find the best portrait for her. We do believe the customerization is good but we dislike the avatar icons. They should input some American facials there. If you are creating a male character, you can find a rainbow behind him. That’s a bit gay to us.

When you’ve logged into the game, you are in a deserted place that you don’t know. No novice guide, no hints. Since it’s pre-closed beta, we can bear it. We saw an old man riding a big bird and we do belive he is important. If you look carefully at the screenshot above, you will see there is a security period after each log in. That’s cool but sometimes it’s annoying – especially when you are doing trades – you have to wait till the period is gone!

The short cut is really hard to remember. Alt-A for bag?…Maybe the chinese use “A” letter for their bagpack instead of using “B”.

The texture here is really colorful. Sometime it’s too colorful that we can’t read the text! Auto-path function is really good. But if the NPC is not in the same scene, you have to manually find it’s area map (for god’s sake, it’s Tab key, not M key…). After you reach that map, you can then continue to use auto-path function. Bad and uncomfortable.

By following the quests, it’s really easy to reach level 10. But since it’s pre-closed beta, we have found tons of language mistakes and inconsistancies in quests and dialogues, sometimes you still find Chinese languages that untranslated. We do believe they will fix them before the closed beta launch.

Compared with other Chinese cultural themed mmorpg, such as Phoenix Dynasty Online (we have also introduced this game a lot), Dragon Oath is more fictional. History is only a background while in Phoenix Dynasty Online, you can find real historical figures everywhere, as well as their thoughts such as taoism, Confucianism, yinyang, wuxing etc.

Let’s see what happens when Dragon Oath goes to commercial launch.

Dragon Oath, known as TLBB in fmmorpg.com has finally being translated and brought to USA! We have changed [CN]TLBB to Dragon Oath in our free mmorpg list from now on.

Official Introduction

What is Dragon Oath

Dragon Oath is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game set in ancient China during the time of the Song Dynasty in 960 AD. The main storyline of Dragon Oath is based upon the mythology of the eight races of non-human deities described in Buddhist cosmology.  According to Buddhism, these Demi-Gods exist on a higher plane of existence than mortals, and yet they are still bound by their passions and desires to the Samsara, the cycle of reincarnation.  While the Demi-Gods themselves are not the primary focus in the game, the story’s main characters are modeled after the deity races, exhibiting many of their qualities, both divine and mortal.

The story behind Dragon Oath revolves around an elaborate saga of complex, troubled relationships among numerous characters from various kingdoms and sects during China’s Northern Song Dynasty. The warring empires involved in the story are those of Song, Liao, Dali, Western Xia, and Tubo. The struggles the characters experience within their combating factions affect the bonds between themselves and their families, societies, ethnic groups, and countries. As a result, strife and conflict abound, and each player will find himself quickly pulled in to the fray, striving to evolve and leave his mark. Part of this evolution involves choosing one of the nine martial arts classes. Once chosen, the player’s class will foster development of uniquely powerful skills and abilities that will define the player as a true force with which to be reckoned.

What does Dragon Oath have to offer

Dragon Oath allows players to engage themselves in ancient Chinese lore and take part in captivating quests that tell the tale of warriors and diplomats from this time period. Dragon Oath has a large emphasis on teamwork and community within its gameplay mechanics. Marriage, guilds, and blood relationships play a huge role in the overall experience of the game.

We truly belive this game will definately give a shock to western mmo companies: Chinese MMORPG is no longer a copycat from western games. They are gradually changing to meet the needs of the player, and provide the most convenient functions to players. The only issues would be the cultural. But to all gamers, a game is to be played. Unless you are definately against foriegn cultures, we suggest you give this a try. You can also review the articles related to Dragon Oath we have on our site for a further look at this game. They are also looking for game translators. If you are insterested you can also contact them and try to become one.

Official Website: http://www.dragonoath.com

Tian Long Ba bu, known as Demi-Gods, Semi-Devils, is a very famous kung fu fiction written by Jin Yong. We have introduced some of this same name game in the last year. Since the game is officially released for a long time and it’s very popular in China, we would like to run thorugh the details of this game and present this extremely good MMORPG to our readers.

Game Engine

The game is made from a very famous open source 3D engine: OGRE. “OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine) is a scene-oriented, flexible 3D engine written in C++ designed to make it easier and more intuitive for developers to produce applications utilizing hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. The class library abstracts all the details of using the underlying system libraries like Direct3D and OpenGL and provides an interface based on world objects and other intuitive classes.” You will find that the game client is very small, only around 600M yet packed with a tonne of content. You can easily change your avatar in-game and dye your hair and clothes. But the developers made the game views to 2.5D so that the game will never make players dizzy.

Computer Specifications

Since it’s a 3D game, but we think most of your PC’s can handle this game. The following are the detailed specifications (not from the official website, but from our game reviewers. Oh yes, you need to install DirectX 9.0c to run the game.

Characters

You can create up to 3 characters in one account. You can choose to become a male or a female like in most other games. But if you want to delete your characters, you need to find the NPC in game and it will take 3 days to delete your character. Personally I think this is a good protection for those players whose accounts get stolen.

Interface

We hope the following information will be helpful to you if you want to try a game in a different language.

Bar Introduction

1.Character 2.Skills 3.Pets 4.Quest 5.Trade 6.Language Input 7.HotKey 8.ChatBox 9.Exp. Bar 10.Chat Setting 11.HotKey Sheet 12.Inventory 13.Friend 14.Team 15.Guild 16.System

Character Sheet Introduction

1.Character Name 2.HP 3.MP 4.Stigma/Vit. 5.Character Level 6.Avatar

Map Introduction

1.Lunar Time 2.Map Name 3.Help 4.Min Map Window 5.Coordinates 6.North 7.PK Mode 8. Facing Direction 9.Auto Path 10.World Map 11.Area Map 12.Help 13.Guide

Factions

If you have read the famous fiction: Demi-Gods, Semi-Devils, you will know that there are in total 9 factions in the book. Therefore, there are 9 factions in the game as well. I think most of you know about Shaolin Kung Fu. Shaolin is a faction in this game. For more details, you can search wikipedia about the factions of Kung Fu in ancient China. In this game, different factions will grant you different basic attributes of a character. For example, if you joined Shaolin faction, you distribute your points to HP or Attack will grant you more power than those in Xingxiu faction, according to the official introduction(We haven’t practised this yet since we only had a limited amount of time). But it is definately interesting when different people from different factions PK.

If you joined a faction, you can learn faction skills and do faction quests as well.

That’s enough information overload for today. We will bring you some other details in the next posts. If you are interested, please do reply and tell us what you want to know about this game. We would happily help you out.

The video has just been uploaded to youtube. Enjoy:)

You can also download the avi version from fmmorpg.com.

Wallpapers from Heaven Dragon Online:

Screenshots from Heaven Dragon Online:

As we have mentioned before, Heaven Dragon Online is a MMORPG based on Jinyong’s kongfu novel: Demi Gods and Semi Devils. You can find the full novel by reading Demi Gods Semi Devils. The game is made by 3D Engine OGRE and published by sohu.com (NASDAQ:SOHU). Now this game is free to play in mainland China.

I searched in the internet and wanted to find a good name for this title. . . People translated the book into Demi Gods, Semi Devils. Most people translate ”?” into dragon, actually they are not the same stuff. Here I use a new word ‘loong’ to distinguish it from dragon, so ”????” here I translated it into Heaven Loong Eight.

Heaven Loong Eight is a very famous novel written by Jin Yong. Almost every Chinese knows this novel. And people love to produce TV shows based on this novel too. If you are a NASDAQ fan you will know SOHU.com too. An MMORPG called Heaven Loong Eight, produced by SOHU.com has just stated its close beta test in China.

To mach with the novel Heaven Loong Eight, there are nine factions in this MMORPG too. They are Dali, Emei, Gai, Shaolin, Ming, TianShan, Wudang, Xiaoyao and Xingxiu. Once you get to lvl 10 in the game, you need to join one of the factions to continue your traning. Each faction has its unique martial arts and only the apprentices of this certain faction can learn. For instance, if you are a apprentice of Shaolin, you are able to learn the unique martial arts of Shaolin while you can not learn other 8 unique martial arts. There are differences in martial arts too. Some martial arts put emphasis on inner power, while some martial arts emphasis on muscles and bones. For instance, kongfu in Wudang has more emphasis on inner power while kongfu from Shaolin and Gai has more emphasis on muscles and bones. At first, the leader of each faction are acted out by the NPC. With the game growing, the leader will be replaced by higher level players. Actually you can regard faction as a very big guild. So a faction war can be regarded as guild war, but on a very large scale.

There are living skills too. You can train the following skills: cooking, medicine, sewing, fishing, wuxing (this is a kind of blacksmith, but different. This word is created by TQdigital during their game translation, you can check monster and me for more details), and even preserving health.

As to the quests system, currently they only opened the quests of Shaolin. You can also get copy quests just like in WOW too.

If SOHU.com want to translate this game, I think it is a nightmare.