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.