f13.net

Beta starts this summer... no exact date.  It looks very wacky and possibly suitable for kids. 

http://www.dofus.com/en/

Nice find. 

I'm still trying to find out a date for Hello Kitty Online but the website is woefully inadequate in terms of beta, dates and so on.  When I tried to subscribe to the mailing list, it sent me a message that it could not find me on the list so could not unsubscribe me.  This does not bode well.

Can I just say that I love, and will always love, 2D games. I might give it a try. It sounds weird but 2D games often feel more alive to me.

They generally allow more artistic expression, in my experience.  Even games that are actually 3D but look 2D, like Paper Mario.

Got an email that Dofus open beta starts today.

Yay. Korean super grind 4tw. Signing up. ^_^

HOLY FUCK IT'S FINAL FANTASY TACTICS THE MMORPG.

Dead fucking serious. 3rd Person Isometric Turn Based battling system. Jesus.

Edit: Please note, that doesn't mean it's good, but my mind is blown nonetheless. This game probably needed an assload of animations. The sort of thing you'd expect to be 3d.

I have subjected myself to the agony of the American MOG but not the Korean version yet.  Might as well give it a whirl.

Beside the general site, I forgot to mention they have a community site with plenty of information that I don't understand:

http://community.dofus.com

If you like furries, you have found your MOG.

Nigga please. Why would you hunt out the forums? If you've been dying to play a Turnbased MMOG, you've found one. It's all flashbased, the overhead is super-low and the animation is pretty high quality. I'm currently converting xvid files to mpv and Dofus is neither slowing down or slowing down the conversion. Slightly impressed with that.

I got mine a couple days ago, too, but haven't bothered downloading it.  I don't know how long it'll be this easy to get an invite, so if you have kids that need something to do on rainy days this summer, I'd give it a go.  Much of it seems to be an interactive cartoon and by just looking at the website, it seems fairly easy to play. 

Once more than 2-3 enemies are on the screen at once, I see children getting frustrated with this game as they'll likely die. Despite the colorful appearance, it's a true blue turnbased tactics game.

Too slow for me.  Don't listen to the lullabye music either... I almost fell asleep.  It's cute, though, and I think older kids would do ok.

Lesson for the day: Squad based tactics games are good. A single unit in a TBS is boring.

I dont know if I am overlooking some things cos the help page wont load but after the tutorial does the game pretty much throw you straight into camping mobs for rare drops?  I need a key from a gobball and a feather from a black tofu which I have only seen once.

Not a good start in my books, I like the grind hidden for the first few levels at least :/

Okay, I'll try almost anything, once.  And I'm a sucker for TBS.

It's painfully cutesy, tho.  (Hrm.  Need an MMO/RPG where 'cute' is a damage type... "Kitten hits YOU for 170 cute damage!")

Alkiera

Pretty nifty tutorial.

The game has been available in France since 2004. The developer is located in France as well.

http://www.ankama-studio.com/studio.htm

I signed up and will probably check it out tonight.

Are you sure this is supposed to be a childrens game?

(http://www.eng.usf.edu/~wjohnso7/images/amazon_doofus.gif)

I always did like Amazons.

I don't think it is, Murgos.  When I saw that it was part interactive cartoon, I sort of assumed.  And it is so freeken cute!

It's just, you know, elf boobies.  Now, granted in mythology Athena went bare breasted and used a bow but when you combine that with the body of what looks like a 14 year old boy it's a little disconcerting.

Ahh, well; Vive la France!

Actually, what you imply is true.  In France, it can be quite adult by American standards, and still targetted towards kids.  That's true in a lot of Europe.  I've seen several children's shows in several countries with some rather dodgy content.

"Dodgy content" ought to be your nome-de-plume Signe....

Will examine...um, beta test, the child elf boobies in a bit.

Xilren

Their feet are bigger then their head.

There is no swear filter as well which I found somewhat strange.  Having a cute cartoon character telling noobs to eat cock and die is more disturbing than I would have originally thought.

Not a problem.  That's ok with the sexually mature Europeans.

Fixed an ugly error for you.

A game called Doofus with kiddie porn? Right.

Can you see that image I hosted? if not:  Click Here (http://www.eng.usf.edu/~wjohnso7/images/amazon_doofus.gif)

Edit:  I also played some last night, created a monk/tank type dude with a big nasty kick attack named Teucor, If you see me around say hi.  Was pretty fun, people can join your fights up until everyone is ready, if you pounce on the ready button as soon as placement starts you can pretty much guarantee a solo encounter.  I haven't tried grouping yet, maybe tonight.

The first couple of quests seem a bit camp-tastic; I sat on a boring ass map for about 45 minutes waiting for a 'Black Tofu' to pop, never did see it.

Only having one character to control in a Combat TBS is a little lame but I could see it being fun with a good group of friends who know thier characters.

Also, no actually nudity in the game that I could see, of course everything is so small there really wouldn't be anything to see anyway.

Somehow I didn't notice the nipples during my first romp through the character descriptions.  I am a big fan of the underboob, but let's see some of that on a woman, not a young boy.

Seems like it could be fun in a relaxed-pace grind way.  The comment about tossing you into a grind right off is fairly accurate.  I'm sure it's harder later on.

I made a cat-guy, they suck untill lvl6, but I think I already messed the character up using bonus points in the early level useless skills.  A quick forum search at work revealed which map tiles to go looking for those newbie quest items, and I should hit lvl8 quickly tonight.  I've found that the cat-guy is pretty pwnage at lvl7, as my 4ap attack does way more damage then the natural attack fire thingy of the mage class I've been in a few group battles with. 

(http://www.f13.net/images/necropost.gif)

Dofus is going live. Seems like it was ready to, so i can't complain. I might pick up a sub once I get settled in.

I really really want one of these artbooks (http://www.dofus-shop.com/article.php?id=6) but I think getting furniture is a necessity. Sigh.

I forgot all about this game.  Downloaded and installed it on the laptop, messed with it one night and forgot about it.  I'm not sure if that speaks more to my attention span or the game itself.  I don't remember hating it, and the classes LOOKED fun.. I think I just wasn't jonesing for a single-character TBS game.  That other one you guys posted earlier where you get to handle the squads looks a lot more fun.

Anywho, if you're getting the art book Schild, just get that artbook + 1 year sub deal that was there. $83.90 for the package ain't too bad a deal since the book costs $30 as it is.

What is this "furniture" you speak of?

I really didnt like this game, its potential was completely and utterly destroyed by the complete reliance on a loot system to pad out the content. I got a character up to level 10 I think and never found one equipable item as loot, as far as I see all you do in the game is camp mobs for rare items.  I tried a little of the mining, which consisited of running around a very small mine and trying to get to the resource node before the 5 other people running around doing the same thing...and you have to do this for 10 levels before you get to compete for the next type of metal.  Every quest I took either had you trying to jump one sole mob that spawns before the group fills up or killing tonnes of mobs for a 'rare' drop.

Add in the morons that join battles to team kill you, and the pretty annoying community the game has, and there really is very little to redeem this game at all, even as an amusing distraction.

I'm going to pretend to be an expert here considering I did take a character to 23...

The best thing about Dofus is that it actually has open pvp, but with a consent system, but not in the lame as hell /pvp on sense we are used to.  At any point in your character's career you can complete a realitively easy quest and get your "wings" from either the good or evil city.  Once you do that you can no aggro other players with the opposite type of wing as you.  Or something like that...

The worst thing about Dofus is without a spoiler site you can't figure out how anything works, in-game documentation is for pussies or something, according to french philosophers.  (btw the fact the game is french is definitely top3 on the worst list  :-P  )

The loot system unfortunately is fairly stupid, mostly due to the fact that their fairly amazing crafting-system is completely fucked by the following:

a) crafting is annoying at lower levels when your rushing around trying to beat 3+ people to the low tier resource spawns.
b) some crafting jobs are aparently useless (per forum complaints) but are needed to provide components for other crafters
c) people are idiots
d) you can only have 6 players in store mode per map, and people will often take useless items and set a 999,999,999 price so they will never stop being in store mode...

This combined with the fact that the only non crafting component drops you are likely to see are ethereal weapons that can be used for 10 fights then break (and thanks to the lack of documentation I'm not even sure what your supposed to do with them) and set items.  Set items are fucking rediculously good at least for the first two sets.  This means there is indeed allot of loot camping.

Combat is slow, but can be fun, against other human beings.  It is a bit of a chore versus AI, but still not as bad as one might imagine. 

If you really need something to take up your time, buy a 2 month sub for something like $13 but you will quit this game within 6 weeks.  Unless we had an actual organized guild that met all our crafter needs (and just pooled mob-drop resources).  Not too mention with organization you could take much harder mobs, which might be fun.  Oh and the pvp would be sweet.

Without a guild your relying on a half french game pop to not be fucking morons in a MG where a person can grief you hard just by going afk.  Does that sound like a good idea to you?

I just moved into a new house, I can't afford to buy an artbook instead of new furniture.

Kids these days.  When I was young a few cinder blocks and 2x10s stolen from a construction site as a bookshelf and a $20 beanbag chair and $30 coffee table from Wal*Mart was some damn fine living.

You don't need a coffee table.  Buy a book.  You could probably get nearly everything you need from the stuff people leave sitting on their patios, anyway.

*blink*

I knew that. ;) Gotcha!

But as Signe said, just keep your eyes peeled on bulk day. It's amazing how much antique furniture gets set out by the side of the road. Just find a nearby affluent neighborhood (if yours is not) and go cruising. A little refinishing goes a long way.

And of course the most important thing... you'll also have a nice coffee table book to set on your "new"-found furniture.

Sweet I liked Dofus but not enough to pay for it, wonder if they wiped the accounts and if I have time for it now that I'm working through the GW missions, playing Gunz still and dabbling in M&B when the need to hack-n-slash things arises.

Hrm.  Even at free, I'm not sure if DOFUS is a value for my entertainment dollar.

Alkiera

I played it. So did my 7 year old son.

The complete lack of an in-game help system and the fact that so many, many people will team kill you or kick you from an encounter when you are just trying to complete whatever silly quest you picked up coupled with the really odd level power disparieties (level 2 mob of one type is easy, level 2 mob of another type is quick death) made this game too much of a pain in the ass to play. Add in that once you choose a profession, you can't learn another one or drop the one you just learned (unless a player chooses potionmaking and sells you the Forget potion) so that you get stuck doing something you really didn't want to do. In my case, I wanted to make swords, so I learned swordmaking. I needed wood for that so I tried to learn lumberjacking and found out how the system worked. They essentially force a player economy through the loot drops and the tradeskills. Grind is too kind a word for this game.

My son liked it, but he started running into problems when he couldn't figure out what to do next. And when he asked for help, most players refused or killed him when he joined their groups to fight stuff. Considering that I played with him and saw that he understood what to do and could play his class (the summoner guy) reasonably well, it told me that the people were the problem.

What ultimately decided me against this game was the forums. Developer responses on the forums to bugs or in-game situations that made the game unfun were almost always "Well, the French players have no problem with that, so we are not changing it." or the dreadful "Working as Intended". When you have a level 30 mob right in the path of the class temple you are supposed to visit at level 6 (I played a Sacrier), you have a problem that needs to be fixed, not handwaved.