9Dragons Beta Key

[Signe]

They're giving them away at MMORPG.com if anyone is interested.  DON'T SHOUT AT ME!

Here

[Falconeer]

9Dragons has some interesting bits. Like the unusual leveling system (You gain "steps" in your path to kung fu mastery, and those levels are not numbered but named.. as in "The path of Serenity" and stuff like that instead of a less exotic level 8 ), or the minigames needed to actually level up, including a minigame about learning to breath right before you can actually learn new moves. Looks to me less tragic than Archlord for example. At least this tries some originality, like having 9 kung fu schools/styles instead of the usual bunch of races. Finally, it has the whole kung fu tradition as "lore", so no kidding.

To me it is worth a rainy evening of messing around. Maybe even two if you feel like trying some more schools. It could gain up to a week of my time if they clarify noob quests objectives.

No idea about PvP yet but 9 factions could do for some interesting stuff...

[damijin]

THANKS SIGNE. 
I'M REALLY THANKFUL THAT YOU WERE ON THE LOOKOUT. 

I WILL GIVE IT A SHOT. 

[WindupAtheist]

stuff

That actually does sound really interesting.  I shall have to keep an eye out for this.

[Falconeer]

Remember the 7 days at best rule, WUA! After those, the game will turn into a freckling pile of asian lineage-clone grindy poop. But for the first 1 to 7 days you should be ok :)

[damijin]

Remember the 7 days at best rule, WUA! After those, the game will turn into a freckling pile of asian lineage-clone grindy poop. But for the first 1 to 7 days you should be ok :)

Oo, lineage-clone grindy poop. That's exactly what I've been looking for.

[Lanei]

Well, first strike against it for me is that it doesn't actually, you know, run.

[Signe]

Well, first strike against it for me is that it doesn't actually, you know, run.

Well, they're off to a jolly start!

[d4rkj3di]

One thing it has going for it is shared group XP, so AFK Shadowbane leeching is alive and well. I didn't find it to be as eye-bleeding as Lineage II, maybe because the loot drops are more frequent and I can actually have something of worth to sell to NPCs.

[Nonentity]

I made a little monk guy. When you train a new skill from an NPC, you have to do some little button mashing minigame against a spiked training dummy before you can actually use it.

Quite strange. The graphics remind me of Guild Wars, bloom and all.

[Venkman]

Very interesting concepts in this game. Different. The minigame idea is particularly unique, at least in MMO afaik. Not much to them really, but different enough.

Skills building seems analogous to UO++. You build up based on use, apply specialty (Mastery) points, a twist on skills-based games. "Levels" are only one type of gate to advancement, not the whole one.

I like the environment, NPC interaction system (think KOTOR) and music/ambience.

[Venkman]

Among six titles in the U.S, 9Dragons will have ingame advertising from IGA Worldwide, in a deal signed with Acclaim. Massive Entertainment's contract with Acclaim expired for the U.S., but they'll still be doing it worldwide.

I'm interested to see what they can advertise in a historial Martial Arts setting. The game is very pretty and self-consistent to the time and space. There's a few interruptive things I could see them doing before you get into the game. But once you're there, unless they're selling remedies and the services of Kung Fu Sifu, it'll feel really odd.

But I'll wait for screenshots. I won't be buying this title nor paying into it. It starts out strong, feeling interesting and fresh. But once you get past the theme, it's like playing a Scrapper in CoX with new abilities coming about once every 10 hours. They have some interesting ideas (like the hyrbid class/skill/tier thing), and man, it runs like a dream. But that probably contributed more to making it easy to port to U.S. I don't feel it's a particularly relevant title, and the advancements just come to slow. Typical "it's hard so you feel more heroic" stuff.

If anyone cares, I'll post more details about the experience.

[damijin]

Among six titles in the U.S, 9Dragons will have ingame advertising from IGA Worldwide, in a deal signed with Acclaim. Massive Entertainment's contract with Acclaim expired for the U.S., but they'll still be doing it worldwide.

I'm interested to see what they can advertise in a historial Martial Arts setting. The game is very pretty and self-consistent to the time and space. There's a few interruptive things I could see them doing before you get into the game. But once you're there, unless they're selling remedies and the services of Kung Fu Sifu, it'll feel really odd.

But I'll wait for screenshots. I won't be buying this title nor paying into it. It starts out strong, feeling interesting and fresh. But once you get past the theme, it's like playing a Scrapper in CoX with new abilities coming about once every 10 hours. They have some interesting ideas (like the hyrbid class/skill/tier thing), and man, it runs like a dream. But that probably contributed more to making it easy to port to U.S. I don't feel it's a particularly relevant title, and the advancements just come to slow. Typical "it's hard so you feel more heroic" stuff.

If anyone cares, I'll post more details about the experience.

Could it just be ads during loading screens and stuff? I didn't bother to read your link and see if it had to be actual like racing game style Coca-Cola billboards or not to meet the criteria.

[Venkman]

Yea, that's where I was headed with "interruptive things". They have a loading screen for the game, a loading screen prior to character selection, that screen and then a loading screen before the game loads.

They also have the afforementioned NPC dialog system (like KOTOR, you interact with NPCs in a dialog tree within a viewport that takes over the screen). It's letterbox, with the bands even on my 16:9 widescreen monitor. Ample space for ads.

I don't think it'll be a big problem for the other territories in which 9Dragons launches. I just think it'll be jarring for the NA crowd. Maybe that's not a big deal though, except to Acclaim who expects to make their money here.

[WindupAtheist]

When I say it's interesting and I'll keep an eye out for it, that basically just means the concept didn't sound like total ass so I'll keep reading the thread.  Zeus knows I'm not going to actually PLAY one of these oddball games Feet posts here out of sadism.  That would be insanity.

[Falconeer]

Sigh, another one bites the dust.

This just came in with the mail:

Announcement
 January 2007
 
 
 
You will have noticed on the front of the 9Dragons log-in screen that The Persistent Worlds Company Ltd has ceased to trade.  This is extremely disappointing given the obvious support the game has.  However a lack of future funding has meant that the company has to stop operating. In due course the servers will be shut down and the forums withdrawn.
We would like to say that you have been a great community and it has been our honour to serve you. We wish you good luck in your gaming future and hope that you find a game where you can all be re-united.
With great regret,
 
The Persistent Worlds Team
 

[UnSub]

Just to confirm: the ironically named Persisent Worlds Team are the dev studio for 9Dragons?

[Nonentity]

Just to confirm: the ironically named Persisent Worlds Team are the dev studio for 9Dragons?

Yeah. Sad, really. So many games with great looking art assets go to waste.

Hopefully they'll be able to pawn character models, textures, etc. off to some other company.

[d4rkj3di]

This is only the EU partner for 9Dragons. Acclaim says that the North American version is fine. Expect someone else to step in to take over the EU part. Either Jolt or the Germans who just picked up Ryzom would be a good bet.