Beta begint vanavond!
Voor degene die er nog niet veel van weten heb ik hier een review gevonden van een van de andere alpha testers. Aangezien ik zelf niet zoveel tijd heb hiervoor;
Voyage Century Online
Ahhhh, the feel of the wind in your face and the sound of the sea slapping the side of a wood ship. The beauty and peacefulness of hearing the wind sough through the rigging, men moving about and low voiced commands to tighten up some rig or loosen that sail.
Just as quickly that beauty can be shattered by the thunder and smoke of hundreds of guns barking thier roar's of anger at facing a hostile enemy.
This is a time of adventure and discovery. A time of unknown places and beautiful vista's broken into shards by violent conflicts.
This is the VOYAGE CENTURY.
Gameplay
Currently gameplay is overall excellent, though there are the occasional niggling little misspelled words or wrong quest information. All things considered, this being an alpha compounded by how quickly IGG seems to get patches put out make this a game that is both simple, yet extremely involved.
Most everything can be done with mouse and a bit of keyboard support. Some controls are editable, though support for even more control customization would be appreciated by many I'm certain.
Moving around or attacking an enemy is easily done by point and click. Targetting of enemies is a bit trickier and could easily benefit from the additon of targetting system that allows for quickly switching targets.
The User Interface
The interface itself is very powerful and has many options. What it sadly has is a cluttered feel on smaller screens and little ability to modify the HUD to your liking. Also changes to the interface don't save to your character information when you log out, so each time you start the game, you wind up having to spend time resetting your HUD to your previous settings. Sadly, the only modifiable aspect of the HUD is what windows are open and how large the chat log is. The interface could benefit incredibly just by adding the ability to move the windows around the screen to suit an individual players style.
Character Creation
Character creation is based solely on the avatar you have chosen. Currently there are 4 main avatars to choose from. You choice seems to indicate what your nationality is. On the left are two characters that start in Athens while on the right are two characters that start in Alexandria.
All characters start out equal with the same basic skills preselected and the character then builds up most skills by usage.
Create a new character, decide upon a path and off you go. Do you want to be a great explorer? Perhaps captaining a powerful ship of war? Maybe you wish to be a merchant, plying the sea for profit and power?
You can do all these things if you wish, yet its the smaller details and support for even simple trades that makes this game stand out.
Don't crave the adventure of the sea? Be a lumberjack, making new timbers for construction of shipping and housing! Wander the land, hunting animals for their skins and other bits so you can take it to the local tailor who can make wonderful items of clothing and armor!
Less adventurous? Become a farmer, plant your crops(most crops mature in only 20 real time minutes), harvest your fields and take the provender into town for sale to tailors and alchemists alike!
Need a good sword or metals for your ship? Go learn the trade of mining and foundry! You can build all your basic gear from any of these trade skills and anything you can't make can be purchased.
The Skill System - Advancing your Character
The skill system is broken up into basic skills and specialist skills. Nearly all basic skills have 3 specialist skills that are subject to advancing your basic skill. These skills are further divided by classifying them as Phase 1 or Phase 2 skills.
Phase 1 skills are basic skills that are rated at level 31 or below. Phase 2 skills are any skills that have been upgraded to allow them progression beyond 31st level.
All characters can advance all basic skills to level 31 if they so choose to take the time for character development. This can of course burn up large amounts of time as you work towards that next level in any of your basic skills.
Now this is where you come to decision time, once you have basic skills high enough level to advance into Phase 2, you have some hard choices to make. You can only advance 7 of your basic skills into Phase 2. Only those who dedicate themselves to specific skill sets will be able to produce the best goods or specialist skills from that Basic skillset.
All characters start out with 1 skill to start out and it is already a Phase 2 skill. That is your Voyaging skill. All characters get that skill as a freebie.
Advancing your basic skills are as simple as using them. Examples of this system would be as follows:
Voyaging - Advanced by Sailing on the Open Sea
Weapon Play - Advanced by successfully attacking creatures with your weapon of choice.
Planting - Advanced by planting the seeds you find or buy.
Specialist skills are sub-skills of your basic skill set. Say you want to be able to carry more gear when you are exploring the land or harvesting resources. You would then learn or upgrade your related Specialist skill that allows for carrying more gear. There are 3 basic skills that can apply such an upgrade, those being Mining, Timber Felling & Planting.
How do you upgrade these specialist skills?
Well you would study the basic skill until you receive 'stunt' points for that skill(you receive 1 stunt point for every 4 levels you gain in a basic skill). These stunt points can then be applied to learning or upgrading your specialist skills.
This system of Phased Basic skills and Specialist skills makes for a very in depth and advanced player economy. No one character can learn to do everything at a professional character, so teamwork and alliance is the name of the game. You have to work together for the betterment of all.
The Ships - or to heck with my character, what do I get to blow things up with!
Ships are characters in and of themselves, each ship has approximately half a dozen or so pertinent 'skills' of thier own. Just like a characters skills, the ships skills advance by using them or performing special functions related to them.
There are 3 main classifications of ships to choose from. Warrrior? You'll want a warship. Adventurous explorer? You'll want an adventure ship. Merchant? Take the merchanting ship.
To work your way into better ships you not only need your character to be of an appropriate level, but your ship itself will need to have certain skills upgraded.
Currently there are only 6 levels of ships I have seen. That doesn't mean thats as high as it goes, just that I have only seen 6 levels of ships available.
Now not only do you need to have high enough skill to upgrade your vessel of choice, you will need resources from those aforementioned crafting skills. Primarily Timbers and refined Metals from Lumberjacks & Miners, though there may be additional items needed for the most powerful vessels.
I personally feel that there needs to be additions and further refinement of the ship choices, but overall the available range of ships is satisfactory and highly entertaining.
The World
The world itself is absolutely huge, basically covering the entire globe of the Earth. The only lacking bit is you can't yet circumnavigate the planet. The map ends at an eastern and western end. Still this is a huge game map, with cities throughout the world. Most of the European and African cities are implement, with things starting to go missing as you work your way into america and the caribbean.
All in all plenty of space to travel through and places to see.
Overall Conclusion
This game is going to be a tough one NOT to play. Its fun, has a great community atmosphere and overall caters to the entire family. The best part being that the developers have promised this to be FREE FOREVER.
You can't beat that with a stick by any means.
My suggestion to you, keep an eye on the developers site, become a member of the forum and keep an eye on this game!
Your dedicated Piratical Elf,
Cap'n Drow
Links
Voyage Century Main Page -
http://voyagecenturyonline.com/index.php
Voyage Century Forums -
http://www.voyagecenturyonline.com/forum
Mijn ingame is Zeeduivel mocht je vragen hebben kan je me een pm sturen. De beta zal van start gaan met twee servers en een paar duizend spelers. Als je het spel wilt gaan spelen vanavond zou ik alvast gaan downloaden (1.4 gig) en regristreren!. Er is btw gebruik gemaakt als de zelfde engine als van potc.
greetz!
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... Er zijn in totaal 54 havens die je kan ontdekken.
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