Note: The following article is made based on Talisman Online Chinese version. There might be some version gaps between Chinese version and English version, but we are sure that all reasonable and great elements from Chinese version will be introduced into English version.

Currently in China, the Chinese version of Talisman Online has become more and more popular. As most of the players know, the Tailisman Online is made by the group of guys who procuded Zhen Feng Shen several years ago. But the company went bankrupt due to some issues. While the team, together with Mircale Castle, grouped together and made Talisman Online in English market first, and then introduce its Chinese version in China.

Judging from Zhen Fengshen, the first product they have made, the item system, skill systems, graphic effects and power-leveling system are the most attractive key elements for all gamers. The CEO of Miracle Castle Ltd., is a hardcore gamer which definitely knows what players want. So let’s take a look at Talisman Online and let’s see what makes it a big hit in both English market and Chinese market.

1. Client Size

The client size of Talisman Online is around 250M. Such a tiny client can reduce the loss of the conversion from signing up to entering the game. As we know most of 3D game clients are over 3G or 4G, such sizes definitely bring the distribution problems for the product. Will the small client causes low graphics and other losses to the games? Definitely no.

2. Graphics

In 2007, when I first saw Talisman Online chinese version, I was totally shcoked by its graphics effects within such a small client. There are not so many houses, buildings in the game, which reduced the work of art designers as well as the Chinese themed element in the game. The skill effects are the most important to players and they handled it pretty well in Talisman Online too. Attacking is the most pleasant thing in the game since you can enjoy the effects of each skill you are using. It also makes grinding not a pain in the game. The view of the game is not a full 3D view but that is good for all kinds of gamers, since over 60% of the players will faint for full –3D games. Color rendering for graphics is also the best that I have ever seen – sometimes you don’t need a reasonable explaination for that why here we should use deep dark color and there we should use light color, but the joyful of seeing it and enjoying it. This is also the key between a natually born designer and an aquired designing learner.

3. Marketing

Marketing? Yes! We have seen a closely marketing bound game here. There are a lot of marketing activities in quests. For example, you have a series quests of adding friends to gain good items. Maybe I want to solo but where the reward is great enough, I will add those people I don’t even know, or accepting their requests. As first I was thinking it was only a method to get my rewards. But during the later play, I have really made friends of some of them in my friend lists – playing instances together, teaming together etc. Another example is that, when I grow to level 20, I have a quest of inviting other friends into the game and I will get super items. Most of the company do it outside the game, and made it very diffuclt in order to reduce “alts” and control the economy.

4. Temptation

If you stay online for another 5 minutes, you will get a mount! If you make your level +2, you will get elite equipment. We can see this kind of settings in game everywhere. People are greedy. Sometimes they actually just download the game for a try, never thinking of staying here. But the natural esense of the human will force him to stay and claim those items maybe he doesn’t even want. The longer he stays, the more addctive he will be.

5. Newbie Village

Most of the games out there having a lot of factions, so that they bring a lot of newbie villages. What’s the benefit of it? Scattering people around and make the game a Massive Single Online Role Playing Game? In Talisman Online, there are only 1 newbie village. All people are gathering there and you will feel the game is crowded even the actualy number of concurrent users is not that high. They have also put the important NPC there so that advanced players need to go back to this village from time to time. Newbies will be fasinated when they see advanced players’ costumes and skill effects. Advanced playes can help the newbies with quests and answer their questions.

6. Items

Currently most of the game item systems are copying World of Warcraft (sorry for mentioning this game again, lol). But is this kind of item system the best one? Definitely not. So far, Conquer Online item system is the most reasonable and attractive system that we have evern seen. From the investment part, you don’t want to drop your items when your character grow up. You want to invest a thing that you can use for your whole life. In talisman, every dollar you invest will not go waste. Three kinds of items will grow with your characters. But we also found that the fun we have in Zhen Fengsheng is lost, that is when you grind outside in ZFS, you will find a lot of items dropped, each item has different elements and attributes. If Talisman Online can bring this back to the game, it will definitely last long the enjoyment of hunting mobs.

7. Numerical Balance

The numerical balance in Talisman Online is really nice. At your level, you are reasonable to do things fitting your level. You can also go to challenge the instances all by your own – instances have different scenes. You might be able to deal with mobs in the first scene, but it will cost you a lot of HPs or dollars if you want to explore dungeon deeper. At least you will team up with others and explore the instances together. Without a careful numerical engeneer, it’s really hard to balance the game like this. We would like to express our thanks to the hard working guys behind the scene.

8. Timing

Most of the companies are using the “Following Strategy”. They always want to be the first one to do something, but they never did it so they turned themselves into the follower. Once they saw the success of ther other people, they just think they can copy and follow, without any hesitation. Will they succeed? Sometimes they will, but 99% will lose the battle. Talisman Online is the first tiny client, awesome graphics, marketing embeded, temptation everywhere game. That is also the basic elements for its success. In the year of 2007, overall there aren’t strong titles out there in the market being released. Comparing those normal, average games, Talisman Online will win.

If you would like to check the game and become another addctive gamer, just click here to visit their official website and enjoy the fun of a real mmorpg, not the crap from those silly aquired designers. Fmmorpg.com can always find the best games for the gamers since our editors are truly gamers and natural game deisngers.

We don’t know how many of you know about the history of Genghis khan. If you are interested in researching his history, you can find information on the internet pretty easily. Today we are going to introduce Genghis Khan Online to you.

Genghis Khan Online is a 3D MMORPG based on the history of Genghis Khan. You need to download around a 700M game client and then install the game. After a few auto patches, you will see the log-in interface of the game. The background music you are hearing is composed by a very famous Chinese musician called GuoFeng. After logging in and creating your character, you are going to begin your own adventure in this fascinating world.

People regard Genghis Khan Online as a dark horse in the current Chinese MMORPG market. Currently it has over 10 server groups and over 200,000 CCU players. The game has several interesting features:

a. The whole game is historically based, so that you will find every quest, every structure, and every NPC fits in with this theme.
b. We always regard the people of Khan as being born with an excellent knack for training horses. So the horse mount system in game is definitely a key feature: once you get level 10, you are able to raise your own horse. Horses have different qualities and skills. You need to treat your horse well so that you can give a lesson to your enemies.
c. Nation war is a sparkling feature in this game – sure every game has a war of some kind right now;
d. Instances are designed carefully and are welcomed by all gamers right now – endless quests, endless instances.
e.  The rune system is the most complicated one in this game. You must heard of mahjong. Designers have used mahjong tiles as the runes in the game. Runes will grant your equipments with mighty effects and of course, great power as well.

We will follow up this game in our future reports and today let’s take a look at those stunning screenshots.

One more interesting issue out there with this game is, people from Changyou(US) made the accusation that the Kylin Software is stolen their Dragon Oath engine. They are fighting with each other in China and currently there isn’t any result yet. But as gamers, who cares? All we need is a playable game, good service and an excellent community! We believe this game will be introduced into English because the war between Kylin Software and Changyou(US) is everywhere!

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

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

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

Recently we have seen loads of advertisement from Xun Xian, a free Chinese MMORPG published by tencent.  Today we have got a chance to log into the new game, Seeking Gods Online (Xun Xian).

A lot of Chinese cartoon elements can be found in this game. You will find a wonderland that you dreamed of when you were very young. You can find these NPCs are very familiar due to the fact that you watched these animations at your youth stage.

It’s very easy to begin with. Just a few talks will take you out from the newbie village.

We picked up a very ugly uncle as our character. The funny part is the emotion part. Move your mouse on the following pictures and take a look at the following picture:

The game has a semi-GPS system. Maybe due to the factor that 3D game is hard to make a GPS system like in 2D games. But as you can see, the designer has already made the directions for you so that it’s really hard for you to miss a certain place or a NPC.

We will explore more about this game in the coming weekends. If you are willing to explore yourself, you can visit their official website: http://xx.qq.com.