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Thread: Age of Wushu

  1. #1
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    Default Age of Wushu

    This is actually a pretty cool WuXia themed MMO. In fact I would say the devs have really done their homework. It has:

    1. Beautiful scenery ranging from busy marketplaces to pavilions on serene lakes to flower covered mountain trails.

    2. A "flying skill" (Qing Gong) system so you can jump on roofs, and carry out acrobatic battles.

    3. A craft system for harvesting raw materials and making items such as food, bags, clothing, various pills for internal cultivation, weapons, etc.

    4. Various schools to join each with their own skills including classic ones like Shaolin, Wudang, Emei and Gai Bang. Incidentally I didn't see XL18Z listed as a Gai Bang skills so maybe that's JY trademarked.

    5. The system is very WuXia themed. You can meditate to recover health and inner power, and use various odd ingredients, exotic locales and group training exercises (in a DDR-like mini-game) to improve your inner power.

    6. It covers many of the classic WuXia tropes in its quests.

    On the downside (at least for me), it's automatically PvP. So on occasion you'll get jumped while doing some PvE quest. If you're defeated you have about a minute to call for help or just respawn at the closest "hospital". You can also challenge people to friendly duels.

    I've spent about 7 hours on it thus far reaching the point where I've joined a school, and picked up a number of martial art moves (went with Scholar with the single sword style). Now I'm kind of directionless so I've been following the main quest a bit, and trying to learn some life skills (picking herbs and mining ore).

    Evidently you have to buy food from other players since NPCs don't sell them, and you'll suffer if you go hungry. It's an interesting take on a player driven economy since I think players can set their own prices. I was tempted to learn how to cook to be self efficient but supposedly there are too many cooks already driving down food prices.

    The system is pretty complex and nuanced so it probably requires a fair amount of time to be good at it, and the tutorial doesn't seem to cover the more advanced concepts very well (for example as a practitioner of calligraphy I can create pieces of calligraphy that are worth less than the materials that went into them... so I'm not sure what I should be doing with these things. I'm also suppose to be able to annotate martial arts manuals to make cultivation easier but I'm not sure if I can do it for techniques I'm already training in.)

    I tend to have an obsessive personality so I've tried to stay away from MMOs. A WuXia themed MMO however was just too difficult to avoid at least trying out. Now that I've tried it, it really difficult for me not fixate on things like trying to max out all of the crafting and cultivation allowed per day, and just enjoy the scenery. This is further complicated by the fact that it requires a fair amount of work to pick up good "flying skills", and whenever I see a mountain top or a large pavilion I feel the need to reach the top to see what's there.

    It's free for the first ten hours, and I think past that you can play for free 1 hour a day. The cost is negligible for the full version for me but I'm concerned about spending too much time on this since I can easily see the attraction. On the flip side it feel like I've avoided MMOs for far too long (last one I tried was over a decade ago), and that I should see what's out there just to stay current with technical developments... lest I become the guy complaining not being able to work these newfangled doohickeys... it's an interesting tech demo for UI design, 3D graphics, workflow and network capacity planning if nothing else... not that I need a rationalization.
    HK47: Now do you understand the travails of my existence master? Surely it does not compare to your existence but still...
    You: I survive somehow
    HK47: As do I. It is our lot in life I suppose master. Shall we find something to kill to cheer ourselves up?

    -KotOR

  2. #2
    Moderator CrazyT's Avatar
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    I am downloading the game as I type. One of the reasons I have avoided World of Warcraft (or any other MMORPGs) is because I didn't want to get addicted. However, my love for videogames have died down quite a lot over the last decade (which saddens me because I miss the thrill and joy of buying a new videogame and being completely immersed in a strange new world). I don't think I will get addicted to any game now.

    I just bought a Microsoft Surface Pro so I'm hoping the system can handle this game fine. If it could, with today fast mobile data and phone tethering options, gaming on the go sounds very appealing.

    I will post my thoughts on the game itself after I get it up and running.
    I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code.

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    Quote Originally Posted by CrazyT View Post
    I am downloading the game as I type. One of the reasons I have avoided World of Warcraft (or any other MMORPGs) is because I didn't want to get addicted. However, my love for videogames have died down quite a lot over the last decade (which saddens me because I miss the thrill and joy of buying a new videogame and being completely immersed in a strange new world). I don't think I will get addicted to any game now.

    I just bought a Microsoft Surface Pro so I'm hoping the system can handle this game fine. If it could, with today fast mobile data and phone tethering options, gaming on the go sounds very appealing.

    I will post my thoughts on the game itself after I get it up and running.
    Same here about the addiction and the brave new world feel.

    I might stick with the free limit of 1 hour a day just to keep the addiction in check. Although with a limit of an hour I'm mostly just wandering around, and learning some life skills like hunting and gathering while slowly cultivating my inner power.

    My id is SublimeWay and I think I'm on the BlueDragon server. Drop me a note when you're on. I'm still not sure how the in game chat works if your characters are not standing close by. You might have to buy a carrier pigeon for 100 Wen to send a msg to people far away. I tend to stay around Chengdu or the Scholar School grounds.

    What kind of GPU does the Surface Pro have? Does it have the pressure sensitive screen like some of the Sony Win8 tablets have (they recognize different amounts of pressure like a Wacom drawing tablet)?
    HK47: Now do you understand the travails of my existence master? Surely it does not compare to your existence but still...
    You: I survive somehow
    HK47: As do I. It is our lot in life I suppose master. Shall we find something to kill to cheer ourselves up?

    -KotOR

  4. #4
    Moderator CrazyT's Avatar
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    The Surface Pro uses the integrated Intel HD4000 graphics. I'm hoping it will be able to handle the graphics for the game. I've seen people run Starcraft II (on low settings) on YouTube so I can probably play the game.. but won't get the full graphics.

    It does come with a pen that support over 1000 points of sensitivity. I read online that it is a Wacom digitizer inside. Other Wacom pens works with the Surface Pro just fine. It's a very powerful machine. As a laptop, it rocks. As a tablet, it's use-able but I still prefer my Nexus 7.
    I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code.

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    Quote Originally Posted by CrazyT View Post
    The Surface Pro uses the integrated Intel HD4000 graphics. I'm hoping it will be able to handle the graphics for the game. I've seen people run Starcraft II (on low settings) on YouTube so I can probably play the game.. but won't get the full graphics.

    It does come with a pen that support over 1000 points of sensitivity. I read online that it is a Wacom digitizer inside. Other Wacom pens works with the Surface Pro just fine. It's a very powerful machine. As a laptop, it rocks. As a tablet, it's use-able but I still prefer my Nexus 7.
    I was torn between the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD. I liked the fact that the Nexus 7 had a GPS built it but eventually went with a Kindle Fired HD 8.9 since I had amazon prime (and evidently you couldn't access prime content on a Nexus 7), and decided to make the switch over from physical to electronic books.

    Are you running a development environment on your Surface? VS2010?

    I haven't actually played much of AoW since I've gone over the 10 hr mark so I'm limited to 1 hr a day now, and I haven't logged in for a couple of days because I'm concerned that my bags will run out. Evidently bags and various other equipment in your inventory only have a limited duration before they disappear (along with what's in them I presume). It's uber painful for a pack rat like myself -especially since I can't figure out what I'm suppose to do with half the junk I'm carrying... do I drop the snake gall bladder? the spider venom? the boar hide? Most of this stuff have very low value at NPC shops but with the intricate crafting system maybe a PC will buy them at a premium? Also the whole deluxe package for $20 is just so vague. I would hate to buy it, and find out that it gives me X items with a duration of 5 days...

    Taxes are coming up, and I need to look into a 529...
    HK47: Now do you understand the travails of my existence master? Surely it does not compare to your existence but still...
    You: I survive somehow
    HK47: As do I. It is our lot in life I suppose master. Shall we find something to kill to cheer ourselves up?

    -KotOR

  6. #6
    Moderator CrazyT's Avatar
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    I think that the Nexus 7 is the best bang for your bucks within the 7" tablet category. It runs stock Android and will always receive the latest upgrade directly from Google (where as for other tablets, you'll have to wait for your manufacturer to release their version of Android.. if they release it at all). The Kindle Fire HD is not a bad buy either if you have a Prime membership but since I already have NetFlix, I never really considered it.

    I installed VS2012 and SQL Server 2012 on my Surface Pro and it runs them like a charm. I'm able to develop on it without experiencing any lag whatsoever and it compiles my codes very quickly. The keyboard attachment also have dedicated Home/End/Page Up/Page Down buttons so that's awesome. I hate how some modern laptop keyboards have integrated those keys into the navigation arrows (using the Fn key to access them). As a programmer, I use those keys A LOT and having to press an extra button sucks.

    I haven't had a chance to boot up Age of Wushu yet. It took forever to download (7 GB!) and install (I installed it on an SD card instead of my SSD).
    I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by CrazyT View Post
    I think that the Nexus 7 is the best bang for your bucks within the 7" tablet category. It runs stock Android and will always receive the latest upgrade directly from Google (where as for other tablets, you'll have to wait for your manufacturer to release their version of Android.. if they release it at all). The Kindle Fire HD is not a bad buy either if you have a Prime membership but since I already have NetFlix, I never really considered it.

    I installed VS2012 and SQL Server 2012 on my Surface Pro and it runs them like a charm. I'm able to develop on it without experiencing any lag whatsoever and it compiles my codes very quickly. The keyboard attachment also have dedicated Home/End/Page Up/Page Down buttons so that's awesome. I hate how some modern laptop keyboards have integrated those keys into the navigation arrows (using the Fn key to access them). As a programmer, I use those keys A LOT and having to press an extra button sucks.

    I haven't had a chance to boot up Age of Wushu yet. It took forever to download (7 GB!) and install (I installed it on an SD card instead of my SSD).
    SQL Server 2012? I thought you worked for a game dev company of some sort? What's the SQL server for? Tracking users? How big is the SSD on the Surface Pro? 128g?

    AoW goes live today -I think the 1hr limit ended with the beta. I haven't logged on the last couple of weeks, ended up playing a fair amount of Farcry 3 (mostly making wallets and bags out of critters), finishing the Imager Portfolio trilogy and starting A Memory of Light (last book of Wheel of Time)... instead of doing my taxes...
    HK47: Now do you understand the travails of my existence master? Surely it does not compare to your existence but still...
    You: I survive somehow
    HK47: As do I. It is our lot in life I suppose master. Shall we find something to kill to cheer ourselves up?

    -KotOR

  8. #8
    Moderator CrazyT's Avatar
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    I thought about entering game development but those guys put in crazy hours and I'm just not that hard working. Instead, I'm working in the Oil & Gas industry. I develop mostly project management software (i.e. cost management, document management, forecasting, etc) for million dollars projects. It's not as glamorous as creating the next Halo but the money is good and the work easy. Heh.
    I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code.

  9. #9
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    pay to win game ?

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