Several months ago, we reported that TQdigital, one of the largest game developers in China, together with UBI Soft was designing a very classical strategy game: Heroes of Might and Magic Online. Just a few days ago, TQdigital announced that the game was now in Open Beta stage in mainland China. It has a great impact for Chinese MMORPG market: 1st, HMM series is one of the most popular game types in China, just like warcraft III from Blizzard; 2nd, a MMO with SLG element fills up a gap between MMO and Browser Games (In china, browser games are normally SLG while client based games are MMO).

10 years has passed since 3DO released Heroes of Might and Magic III. TQdigital has spent almost 5 years, using its same old 2D map + 3D character engine to present the game to the world. To us, we think if TQdigital uses 3D engine, just like Heroes of Might and Magic 5, it will fail. 2.5 D is still the best engine for SLG type of games.

First Impression

We have to compare this online version with HMM3(Heroes of Might and Magic III). This online version of Heroes of Might and Magic inherted the best of the best in HMM3. Races, magic, skills, armies…they are almost the same to HMM3. The only difference are the images. But the online version has ripped off the low level of the armies. Take the human race for example, they have lv.1 spearman and halberdman. But in online version, we only have halberdman for human race.

Not like in other MMORPG, you are not playing a role of normal warrior. Every player here is a lord. Each one of them has their own castle and they can hire different soldiers from their castle. But the game also has MMO elements as well. You will find the game interface looks like Eudemons Online’s interface as well. You can also find a lot of settings inherted from Eudemons Online as well.

Online Version Creation

Since the game is an online version, the game designers bring a great communication system to the game. If you are a fan of TQdigital games, you will know that the chat part is a masterpiece of their games. When you are not in battle, you can trade resources with other players in market; you can also find important NPCs in the city to get new quests. Most important, when you are doing epic quests over lvl 30, you need other players to assist you to complete the quests – this is what we need for online version.

After creation, you are set for a race. But if you want to hire other races, what do you need? You need to create a new castle to hire different races’ soldiers. Of course, it will cost you a lot of time and money to do so – that is how the money will be generated from this game as well.

In HMM3, treasure can be hunted during battles. In online version, players can create different treasures themselves to enhance the power of the hero. Sure, real money is needed to purchase materials to create them.

PVP part

After you reach lv 40, you can PVP with other players. There are three modes for PVP: Duel, PVP and Brutal PK. In duel mode, you and your opponent will not consume a single soldier; In PVP mode it’s a real PK mode. Deaths within your army reducing your forces to 10% will be regarded as a failure.

Brutal PK is the most interesting part of the game. It is held in the Arena. When you reach lv 70, you can make a Brutal PK with other players over 70. If your opponent accepts your challenge, you will spend 30 minutes to complete the whole process of Brutal PK. The winner will gain Honor Points, which can be used to exchange valuable items in the Honor Shop.

Epic Quests

Epic quests are the core content of the online version. You can upgrade your heroes, gain materials and equipments in completing Epic Quests. There are three types of Epic Quests you can take: Single, Multiple and Unit. What’s the difference between Multiple and Unit? In multiple quest, all players are in a same map while in unit quest, players are scatterred into different maps to complete different tasks. Unit Epic Quest will cost players a lot of time to reach their goal, but it’s the most interesting part of the epic quests.

It’s very simple to start epic quests: Just like in other casual games, all you need is to create a gaming room, invite other players to join this room and start epic quests with you.

Conclusion

If you are a fan of Heroes of Might and Magic, you should have a try of this online version made by a Chinese developer. It will remind you of the days you spent on Heroes of Might and Magic III. If you want to say something, feel free to comment and if you want to have a try on the game, we can make accounts for you.

Official website: http://yx.91.com

7th Chinajoy will be held between July 23rd to July 26th. A lot of game companies, both Chinese and from the rest of the world, will set up their booths there and you will see a lot of hot girls there as well.

Here are the stage placements arrangement pictures for this year’s exhibition. We will update the Chinajoy report from time to time.

We have updated our free mmorpg list on April 9th, 2009.

If you find out that we have missed some other free mmorpgs, please feel free to contact us or leave a message here. We are glad to add them to the free mmorpg list.

You can visit free mmorpg list by clicking here.

Today we picked up some nice screenshots from Kaixin Online (Happy Online), which is in open beta testing in mainland China right now. We hope these screenshots can give you a brief idea about how neat and beautiful the game is shaped.

In Town

As you can see from the above picture, everyone has got a blessing (buff). It’s evening when taking the picture so you can feel a kind of quiet there.

Wedding Ceremony

We happened to get a snap of the wedding ceremony. It’s really like the traditional Chinese wedding ceremony. Guards are escorting the bride to bridegroom. The angels are sending out little gifts to all the people in the town to celebrate this happy day! Fireworks are everywhere! You can find that your eyes easily get hurt if you follow the wedding team due to lots of splashing effects.

Battle and Skills

The upper left in the picture are the pets we are fighting against. The lower right are a team. You can see we are casting a skill at them and we formed a lotus flower formation under our feet.

Outside Town

We need to go outside the town to battle. As you can see from the screenshot, it’s an amazing place to hunt with your friends. Have you noticed that face? Yes, it’s sleeping time and you need to go to bed and take a rest. Normally it will take 30 seconds to rest for recovery.

Overall, the game reminds us of Monster and Me produced by TQdigital in 2002. We hope more and more stuff will be added to the game soon.

310,000  current users with 43 game servers – that is an outstanding performance of the newly released cartoon style MMORPG – Luvinia Online, published by Simo tech in mainland China. Of course, the figure is from the “Official Website” and we doubt that always :p.

Before we get into the game details, let’s gossip about the company. Everyone knows that SNDA, largest game company in China has bought Aurora Tech in Chengdu. The rumor says that the leader of Aurora Tech has “escaped” from SNDA and made a new company called Simo Tech and they started to publish the new game called Luvinia Online.

Is that true? We don’t know yet but let us just regard this as a little appetiser before we get into the details of Luvinia Online(Chinese: ????).

As you can see from the screenshot above, Luvinia Online’s interface is just like other MMORPG’s, copying WOW interface. If you look closely you will find there are a lot of similarities with the icons used in WOW. The game is made from a 3D engine while zoomed into 2.5D views. It has solved the dizzy problems for some players. The whole game style is like a mixture of European and Japanese styles. We can also see some elements copied from Ragnarok Online, especially the profession settings, the maps and town names.

We have captured a lot of high quality screenshots in our testing machine but we don’t have them at hand. We will upload them to the next article on this game and explain them in more detail. We have reached lv. 20 and we haven’t found anything exciting beside the beautiful interface and skill effects. NPC and characters are really cute and we think this might attract a lot of girl players and RO styled MMO fans. But overall, from the official website’s introduction, this game is pretty plain and simple, with average MMO settings and features and we haven’t found out anything unusual yet. But it’s definite a game with all of the current popular settings.

If you understand Chinese, as always, please visit their official website for more details:

http://www.star07.com/

Before we go into details, let us have a look at the amazing screenshots downloaded from the official website of Kaixin Online, a free Chinese MMORPG:

Looks amazing right? OK now let’s get into the details of Kaixin Online – in English it means: Happy Online.

I think most of our readers have played a game called Stone Age, which was published a long time ago from a Japanese company. But the failure of that game was mostly caused by the useless and ugly pets. The pets there are only 2 functions: Tank and mounts. At that time, TQdigital developed a gamed called: Monster and Me (http://www.monsterandme.com) which is also a turn based 2D MMORPG, focusing on pet raising, evolving and composing. And that game made TQdigital a great success! Now TQdigital has just released a new game called Kaixin Online – Happy Online in mainland China on March 7th, 2009. Inheriting its success of turn based/ pet raising MMORPG, TQdigital announce Kaixin Online has hit 100,000 CCU on the first day of the launch!

Pets are still the most important part of this game. You can create your pet when you are creating your character. This has never been seen in any other MMORPG’s. They can not only fight with you, but also make perfumes and fruit drinks. They can also help the master to identify pets and digging mines as well. You can also give baths and feed the pets to become a real pet trainer!

In Kaixin Online, you can only turn on duel to fight with other players, that means bad PK behavior is forbidden in this game.

Here are the main features of this game:

Massive Quest System, Path Finding system, Family Settings, Pets and Unique Guild wars etc. We will get into the details next time. Here are the other amazing screenshots:

Official Website: http://kx.91.com

Meng Jiang Online started its Closed Beta in China on Jan 18th, 2009. Ming Jiang means famous warrior. The game background is set in the 3 Kingdoms period, ancient China when Wei, Shu and Wu’s three kingdoms were fighting each other, each of them seeking to unite China.

The game kinda reminds us of Phoenix Dynasty Online (http://pdo.enjoymmo.com). It has 2D backgrounds with 3D characters. However, the characters are far better looking than that game. There are 6 classes in total you can choose. Blademan, Swordman, Clubman, Spearman, Wizard and Priest. You need to distribute your points before you create your character. Do not mess it up otherwise it’s really hard to compensate yourself, lol.

As long as you know what color is, you can definitely look different from the other people. You need to choose your career path at first. If you choose warrior, you can become blademan, swordman, clubman and spearman; If you choose politicians, you can become wizard or priest.

After we log into the game, we were like: OMG! How could there be so many players dedicated to such a 2.5D game?! Are they mad? Here is the screenshot:

Did you notice the fairy on the upper right corner? She is very helpful when you are exploring the game alone. She reminds you when something/an action needs an explaination. And she is really sexy when she flies to you, lol.

Skills here are weapon based. If you use a spear you can only cast spear related skills. Before you learn some skills, you need to gain some basic kungfu points. These points can be gained when you complete any quests or from killing mobs.

Quests are really easy. You can use the robot funtion to find the target NPC/locations easily. But since it’s in closed beta, quests’ reward not high and you need to grind a bit to gain your levels. But that can be solved when open beta comes. Unlike other games, mobs are everywhere in the cities due to the first a few quests. But’s it’s really a nice setting: You will never feel lonely here. You will find a really defined community feeling here in the city.

Guess what we found? Take a look at the following screenshots:

We bet you know what are these systems in game. First is horse racing. You can gamble here to gain in game gold. We bet on the first horse but as you can see from the screenshot, yes we lost! -___- The second one is crafting system. We haven’t figured that one out yet lol…

Did you notice the arrows? When you fishing or doing other living skills, you can complete the tasks by playing this DDR-esqued mini-game to speed up the harvest. Just follow the directions of the arrows and tap in the combinations on the keyboard. Don’t hit it wrong otherwise you will start over again, lol.

Dungeon systems here are based on real history campaigns. If you have read a Chinese novel called: The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (and if you haven’t, pick up the book IMMEDIATELY!), you will find almost every famous campaign! Here are some screenshots from the official website:

Anti Dong Zhuo Union Campaign

If you understand Chinese or you are from Singapore, you can click here to read more campaigns.

We will bring more information after we reach certain levels. If you are intersted, you can share your thoughts here with us. We might get you a closed beta key, lol.

Name: Ming Jiang Online

Offiicial website: http://mj.8zgame.com/Default.aspx

Client Size: 544MB

Graphics: 2.5D

Subscription: Free to Play MMORPG

Language: Chinese

Free MMORPG – Chaos Online! It reminds us of an ancient magical world filled with…. motorcycles?! This game has entered the Closed Beta Testing stage and congratulations! You can now join the closed beta testing easily, just visit their official website: http://co.enjoymmo.com/

Here are the latest screenshots from Chaos Online, delivered by the folks at Ingle Games Ltd.

If you do like Diablo style mmorpg, you should have a try on this interesting free mmorpg: Chaos Online!

It seems that they have done a lot of modifications! The robot, used to be sold in shopping mall, is opened to all players! The languages are much better than that in Alpha Testing. Crafting seems a bit harder than in Alpha testing…and there is one thing that didn’t change, that their community is always active! If you want to meet new friends, definately choose Chaos Online!

We have played Tian Xia II for quite a while. We devoted our weekend to this game and all answers lead to a good WOW clone. And not only clone, it has a lot improvements on World of Warcraft. We are pretty sure the Netease’s stock price will go high again, even in this ecnomy crisis.

Here are some screenshots taken in 1024*768 mode for Tian Xia II. We won’t play any other 3D games until we get bored.

The game is neat, and quest languages are really nice. Quests are designed very well… I really hope all you guys understand Chinese and give it a go:) Maybe this game will win the top 10 MMORPG award hold in the end of the year by fmmorpg.com.

Zu Online: High level Monsters in Watercloud Palace Overview

In Zu Online (http://zu.igg.com/), players can play an apprentice of one of the five clans and then enter the epic battle between the Gods and Devils. To maintain justice, they have to fight various monsters in the game. Today, some high level monsters and NPC in Watercloud Palace will be shown as below:

Shark Soldier:

Davy Jones General quietly trains Shark Soldiers as his trusted subordinates. They are brave and battlewise but fierce and ruthless so they have gradually taken the place of the Chess Army.

Dragon Elder:

It is a sea dragon. It was sealed by the Boulder Immortal in the sea chess for its evil deeds.

Chess Elephant:

It’s a sea elephant that has become a talented monster after years of hard training. It looks simple, honest and even a bit slow. But actually, it is of great wisdom like a military counselor. It was sealed in the sea chess by the Boulder Immortal.

Dragon King:

The Dragon King is the leader of the sea dragons. No one knows his age and no one has ever gotten a full view of his appearance. He resides deep in the Sea Dragon Cave but always cares for his clan and oversees the world using his sagacious eyes.

Huoshen:

Huoshen (NPC) is a talented master who possesses supreme power and has created tons of awesome creatures as well as guarding Watercloud Palace preparing to fight the Blood Demon. No one knows his history. No one knows his purpose either. People only know he is an excellent leader and guides the Resisting Army to fight against the Evil Chess Army without any complaints, even though he has suffered much hardship. However, he may keep a secret connection with the Evil Chess Army.

For more information, please click http://zu.igg.com/news/newscon.php?aid=1444

Zu Online: New Version 1.8.01 Available

The Zu Online (http://zu.igg.com/) Team is pleased to announce that the latest version 1.8.01 has been released on November 24th. Players can now run the client to update the game automatically. Those who have any problems updating the game client automatically, please visit http://zu.igg.com/download/download.php to download the updates patch.

In contrast with the previous version, there is a lot of new content in version 1.8.01, which will make the game even more fun. Boundary Hill, the second instance zone of Zu Online has been added. The monsters, especially the boss-level monsters in Boundary Hill are extremely tough, but they drop items that make it all worthwhile. Additionally, another two new high-level zones—Frozen Sea and Wei-Yang Palace have been added. What’s more, we have added several new systems, including Enchanting, pet combination, fashion improvement and the salary system. With the release of the new systems, players can improve their equipment by using the Enchantment function, attach a pet’s attributes to another, add extra attributes to fashionable items and get a weekly salary after meeting certain requirements. We also will improve the Commercial Travel system, add high-level Round Quests and improve some of the game settings.

In a word, Zu Online version 1.8.01 will certainly bring players an improved gaming experience in Zu Online.

For more information, please click http://zu.igg.com/news/newscon.php?aid=1458

Zu Online: Four New Bosses in Boundary Hill

Most people may have ever dreamt of winning a hero title. But it is not easy at all. To be entitled hero, you should be both brave and intelligent enough. If you wish to be a real hero, then just challenge those intelligent and tough demonized talented monks in the new instance–Boundary Hill in Zu Online ( http://zu.igg.com ). But you have to know that they are so strong that they may be able to kill anyone just by a hit.

Stony Devil

He was originally a martial monk of the Wan Temple. He had been seeking stronger supernatural power like crazy, which finally caused him to become a tall, unconscious and ruthless Stony Devil. He has become a killing machine absolutely. He was good at using Chaotic Hit ability to smite people instantly. He can even kill a strong man just by a hit. You had better not get close to him without a strong Sun Warrior accompanying you.

Broadsword Lord

Even though you may defeat the Stony Devil luckily, you cannot relax your will to fight because you will face a much stronger foe—the incredibly tall Broadsword Lord. Before him, fear, courage or any other power of will won’t work at all because no one had ever survived in his sight.

Broadaxe Lord

It means you are not far away from hell when seeing the Broadaxe Lord, the guardian of the Buddhist’s Finger Ring. He is very tall but surprisingly agile that even hitting him is a very difficult mission. What’s more, he is good at stunning his foes and attacking multiple enemies at a time. He also possesses unbelievably good defense. So, even the bravest people would try not to appear in his sight.

Red Winged Lohan

The Red Winged Lohan is the leader of the evil monks in the Boundary Hill. He was given birth by the Buddhist’s Finger Ring. Rumor had it no one had ever survived after receiving five hits from him. Even the strongest Sun Warrior would be wounded badly when receiving two hits from him. However, if he is not killed, the Flame Master’s conspiracy would come true. Who will complete the mission impossible?

For more information on the Contents of this new instance and How to Entry, please click http://zu.igg.com/news/newscon.php?aid=1463.