Granado Espada English

[schild]

Found this in my email box today.

"Hey, jackass, why haven't you posted this yet."

Uhm. Yea.

Run, signup, run run run.

When it opens, I'll be the one hanging out with a little girl character. That'll be Lum. He'll be using his new gaming pseudonym of "Yogurting4ever."

Oh, here's the sweet, sweet, sweet beta link: http://www.granadoespada.sg/sendemail.asp

[Rodent]

Korean MMORPG hits pay dirt in Japan

Well the game can't be all bad, it has musketeer as a playable class. Apparently they are the most fearsome of assassins. Wizards practise the dark arts while Warlocks are most resolute and spiritual class.

A for effort at the very least.

[Soln]

Enter your email address and click send :

I love it already! Now THAT's a signup. 

[Signe]

Enter your email address and click send :

I love it already! Now THAT's a signup. 

It was pretty painless, wasn't it?  There are betas I never even bothered with after looking at how much information they wanted.  And Righ is the worst of all.  He starts to grump out after First Name, Last Name, Email.

[angry.bob]

Huzzah! I thought they'd cancelled this a year ago when the website stopped working.

[Engels]

If the speed of their website is any indication of gameplay, they should rename the game Granado Espada Esta El Stucko En Mi Scabbard y Voy a Morir Porque El Laggo es Muy Godzilla

[Soln]

beautiful language, isn't it?

[damijin]

This is one of the "big three" that was creditted by a korean friend of mine as causing the Q1 2006 decrease in L1/L2 subscriptions in Korea. The other 2 were Sun and Xera Zera.

[stark]

This game is very appealing to Korean gamers because it has bots and macroing built right into gameplay.   

You basically get 3 characters who you play simultaneously.  The characters can be any class combination you want, so you can play warrior, warrior, warrior if you really want, but it'd probably be smarter to choose a warrior, healer, mage combo essentially providing your own holy trinity.

You can only control the actions of one character at a time, but you can switch between them instantly.  Even better, you can set up default behaviours for the ones you are not playing, like "Heal me" or "Attack anything you see", combine that with automatic waypoints and you can just sit back and watch as your little party runs circles in the killing field automatically dispatching everything it encounters along the way.

Of course you can play the entire game with just the mouse, so you can play and smoke at the same time.

The graphics are standard KMORPG, but I did kinda like the way their target highlighting worked (full body outline)

[Strazos]

I'll certainly give this a tree if I am able. Muskateer all the way.

[geldonyetich]

The setting is different, 17th Century New World, but I really care more about how it plays.  The game features look interesting, what with individual players controlling more than one PC and swapping between them with F1-F3.  You'd think that means you get typical Korean-MMORPG depth times 3, but actually the other two characters are on autopilot based on what stance you put them in.  You can't make a Holy Trinity that includes a healer (Scout) right off because you need to earn "family points" to unlock them, from what I've read.

Flare Gamer Review.

Best designer-provided wallpaper selection ever.

[Strazos]

Which were you referring to? Or just all the wallpapers?

[damijin]

This part:

Normally BOTs (AI controlled characters for quickly leveling up or farming items) and sharing characters are not allowed in MMORPGs for obvious reasons. In Granado Espada, it's how players share characters and manage Auto-Hunt (AI) while actively playing that makes the game enjoyable. Furthermore, this deters players from trying to use BOTs because the characters must be managed outside of one simple loop and adaptive strategy is necessary.

Really stood out to me.

Anyone who has played L2 knows botting goes down. I mean, sure you can say any game has botting. But in L2 the way that support classes work, a character who is soloing will take exponentially longer to hit top level than a 9 man party. A semi-experienced botter could run a 9 man with little more effort than running 1 or 2 characters.

What I see from this interview is that GE is taking the step forward. Incorporating automation to some degree so that greater automation will be less beneficial. Sure, having your 3-man party afk botting all day is going to be better than playing legit the whole time. But hopefully it will not have such an exponential time difference between bots and legit players as far as leveling and achievement goes.

Also, by incorporating an anti-bot system into the game design you know that this company is anti-automation from the get-go. That hopefully means that they will be harsh on those who will choose to automate their game.

[geldonyetich]

Which were you referring to? Or just all the wallpapers?

Just the sheer variety of selection of the wallpapers.  EQ2 you're lucky to get 2 wallpapers out of, seems they're too busy creating actual game content or something.  Pah!  This game has dozens available in two resolutions.

What I see from this interview is that GE is taking the step forward.

What I see is that the developer's heart is in the right place, but will he actually succeed in creating gameplay that requires adaptive strategy?  The Auto-Hunt concept he's added, with the two supporting computer-driven PCs in the group, actually sounds counter to his intent.  I'm curious to see the result for myself.

[WayAbvPar]

This is one of the "big three" that was creditted by a korean friend of mine as causing the Q1 2006 decrease in L1/L2 subscriptions in Korea. The other 2 were Sun and Xera Zera.

I am not sure if this is good or bad. Better than L1/L2 might be interesting, but OTOH, anything that makes Korean MMOGers happy is highly likely to make me want to gouge out my eyes with my mouse.

[Lantyssa]

I'm registered.  The comment in the article that there was no customization worries me, but it still seems like some nice variety is possible by collecting characters.

[stark]

17th Century New World

New world as in new planet, not America.  Unless the early settlers fought giant 6 legged spider slugs in the newbie killing fields.

[damijin]

I think I saw giant slugs in Pocahantas.

If disney's adaptations of pre-colonial america are wrong... well.. I don't want to be right.

[JoeTF]

Looks like hordes of betalusted gamers craashed the website.
Or I'm unlucky.

[Cadaverine]

Nope, it done crashed.  Guess my plans for shooting slugs with muskets will just have to wait.

[caladein]

Nope, it done crashed.  Guess my plans for shooting slugs with muskets will just have to wait.

Working just fine (if slow) right now.

[Hoax]

Yeh as of midnight PST seems to not suck balls in terms of slowness (I R drunk leave me alone)

[MrHat]

Is it fun?

[LC]

You can sign up and play in the japanese beta right now.


1. You need japanese input: http://www.declan-software.com/japanese_ime/#XP
2. Visit this page: http://www.clubhanbit.jp/member/join.asp
3. Look at this image: http://www.exploiter.org/l-c/misc/ge/ge_signup1.jpg
4. Click on the link in the email they send.
5. Click left button to agree to the terms.
6. Look at this image: http://www.exploiter.org/l-c/misc/ge/ge_signup2.jpg
7. Look at this image: http://www.exploiter.org/l-c/misc/ge/ge_signup3.jpg
(You should get a confirmation screen with account details after clicking the left button a few times.)
8. Go to this page and login: http://ge.clubhanbit.jp/database/client/index.asp
9. Pick "Powered By 4Gamer Game Loader" option. Then click the big blue button to the left.
10. Run the ge_loader.exe to download the game. (Uses bittorrent or http if the default bittorrent ports are closed)

For people with an excess amount of free time.

[Falconeer]

Is it fun?

[LC]

Is it fun?

Well I know very little japanese so it's difficult (very slow) to play. I have noticed a few things so far.

- Character creation is very limited. Your only options are class and gender.
- The game uses zones. (It's just like FFXI actually.)
- Leveling is really fast compared to the usual korean game. I was level 8 after 10 minutes of gameplay. (not including the tutorial)
- The music is probably the best I have ever heard in a mmo.
- I talked to a npc with a red [!] over his head and was instantly zoned into a small dungeon.

 

[damijin]

Guess I'll give it a shot. It's no Second Life, but at least it's a Korean company trying to break the mold to some degree, eh?

Oh jesus... I just got a really scary vision of an asian metaverse game.

THE END IS NEAR.

[damijin]

Well, my entire party died and I couldn't figure out how to bring them back. So I went and killed myself. But then my character just stood back up after 30 seconds. I guess they have some "you don't actually die, you just get knocked out" roleplay reasoning or something.

But I must say this is not anything like the traditional Korean grind game. Not only do you level fast, but it seems to be heavily based on story, more like a single player RPG. However, I can't say for sure because it's all in crazy japan speak. I couldn't even figure out how to get outside and kill things for the first half hour or so.

Also, I accidentally accepted two duels without knowing what the pop-up window said. I got owned very badly. However, it seems like the PvP would be really fun even though it's strictly consensual. To me, it feels more like maybe a Korean Guild Wars type experience, in that most of the game is treated like a single player story-driven experience, and then you can go into PvP arenas for 1v1 and team duels. But then again, I haven't played enough yet to know.

I really like it though, it's a much closer hybrid to a single player RPG than any other MMOs that I've played, and as simple as a concept as that seems, it feels fresh for some reason in a sea of Koreans trying to copy Lineage and Americans trying to copy WoW.

Oh, and any game with a dodo bird cuntpunt has to be cool.

[FatuousTwat]

Wow. When I first started reading this thread, I figured it was a joke... But now I'm pretty excited to play this! I'm sure my dreams will be broken though, I've never played an Asian mmo that I didn't hate with a passion.

[LC]

I read somewhere today that the japanese beta ended already. It seems we are playing a seven day trial instead.

[Margalis]

But Zera/Xera has much better boob graphics.

Know your priorities!
---

It is interesting that in Korea they make Golf MMOs and Racing MMOS and games like this while in the US it's all Orcs.

[Yegolev]

The avatars in this thread have given me eye cancer.

[Simond]

Sounds painful.

[Strazos]

Just got an email today about the closed beta. They may be taking in people soon, so be on the look out for a message if you are interested in this game at all.

They have you fill out a questionnaire. I filled mine out, but I'm still on the fence as to if I would actually "participate" if I was selected.

[damijin]

Got that e-mail too, but between WoW (which I just started playing for the first time), Dungeon Runners, and another beta , I can't find the time to play GE.

I really did like the style though, and maybe the English version would be worth checking out to see if the story has any appeal (when playing in Japanese all I could do was grind, and that got boring after 3 days).