Originally posted by birdycephon
From what has been shown in this trailer, I'm not seeing much of anything different that AoW hasn't already done.

Well, the similarity is partly due to having a common genre and geography settings.

TYMYD use phasing extensively - there's no traditional instances or loading screens like in AoW. 

A little of the professions and crafting  has been revealed (not released for this alpha test) and appeared quite deep but different to AoW's system.

In TYMYD, players can pick only one "Jianghu role" out of 10. Each role has its unique tech tree of useful skills and crafting.

For example, a trader start with the "setup stall" skill which allowing him to sell things. The next skill he can learn is  "Construct Market Stall"  beginning with a cheap mat and progress to better stalls as his level increases.

Non-trader players need to get a ready-made stall from a trader before they can start selling things - but probably not as effective as a trader, because as a trader improved his "Setup stall" skill, his transaction tax is reduced.

A trader can research the "financial planning" passive skill and reduce the upkeeping cost of his clan, the "Prosperity" skill to improve the monetary rewards from mobs for himself and his group dropped after battle. If he research the "Trading Partner" skill he can take other players with him to trading missions. A higher level trader can eventually purchased a private shop in the trading districts after acquiring the "Merchant Shop" skill.

Finally, TYMYD appeared to be better optimized than AoW graphically and supported higher-end resolutions including ultra wide resolutions (5760 X 1080, 21:9) and surround monitors: 

(above is downscaled from 5760 X 1080)

Originally posted by rodingo
Well if they ever do bring the game to the West, hopefully they learn from Snail USA on how NOT to manage a game in the western market. 

If they want to bring this game to the West, Tencent's F2P model for Blade & Soul China could offer some insight:

B&S China ->  F2P (no content limit) with VIP option (up to 5% buff in stats) + cash shop with cosmetic items only

In comparison, B&S in its original country Korea operates by Subscription model + Cash Shop + additional buffs for players playing in dedicated cybercafe

I  think Tencent is likely to a similar model for operating TYMYD in China as they do for B&S China, and if they do a release in the West, a tweaked (more favorable to Western players) model of the same.

Originally posted by Asheram

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxia And why not?

"Wuxia, which literally means "martial hero", is a broad genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists."

 Agree, and In China this game (TYMND) is consider a "genuine" Wuxia MMORPG.

The 100+ strong team developing it is certainly better lead than most Chinese MMORPG project.

Before joining Tencent, TYMND's producer worked in Ubisoft Shanghai - he was the Level Design Manager for Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow and a associate producer of Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

Originally posted by Fdzzaigl

Looks very similar to AoW indeed, with better animations / graphics.

Wonder how many years we'll have to wait to see this one here though :p

Tencent has never release a MMOG in Western market before and for the moment it appear not overly concern about markets outside China.

OTOH, if  Tencent does want to localized its games they can probably do it much better than most China MMORPG since it has more resources.

Originally posted by denshing

The combat looks alright, but it seems more like a click spam than skill based. Also, I saw nothing on how deep the social, and economic mechanics are. Age of wushu really accels in that aspect.  I don't know, perhaps this has flashy combat but is very shallow in overall gameplay.

I was informed that like AoW it is more skill based, but using a different path/style. Also it can be played competitively using just the keyboard. Some of the difference in combat mechanics made sense in the context of the novel the game is based on.

Unlikely AoW, life profession only become available when characters reached a relatively high level.

Among the professions planned are: Police, Outlaw, Traveling Merchant, Stall Keeper, Caravan Escort, Fortress Guard, Musician, Scholar, Hunter and Ranger.

Because the game is consider to take place 400 years before the era AoW only 3 of the oldest schools are common to both games: Shaolin, Beggar Clan and Tangmen. Wudang clan is replaced by their predecessors who worship the same god.

Originally posted by rodingo
The environments look a little better than AoW's, but that mainly appears to be becuase of higher polycount props.  The gameplay though "appears" to be somewhat the same, just flashier.  It looks they are they are definitly targeting the same people that like AoW though, so should be interesting to see their list of features, localization and cash shop to see how it actually competes.

At least in Chinese market, it is clearly targeting AoW players.

Currently however, Tencent has not expressed any desire for localization to other languages.

The funny thing is with many exclusive cinematic voice-over tutorials - the approach used in TYMYD actually  made it much easier  to pick up  by "regular" Western players than AoW.

Featurewise - the landscaping and enviromental effects of  TYMYD is more impressive - even taken into the consideration the not-yet released improved graphic update versions of AoW known to date.

TYMYD claimed over 600 km2 of open world upon completion and like AoW one can roam freely anywhere in the terrain (developer: "if you can see any structure or terrain - you can jump on top of it").

 For other aspects of game play features we need to wait longer to see.

Originally posted by Seilan
Wow, assuming it shares the depth and similar interesting pvp systems of AoW, this game could give Snail some stiff competition.

For Western MMO players,  I would described TYMYD as a amalgamation of  AoW and Blade and Soul.

There's no official English title for TYMYD - so if  people want to inquire on China MMORPG forum the proper name to ask is the abbrevation "Tianya" - short  for Tianya  Mingyue Dao   (translation: HORIZON  MOON  BLADE - name comes from eponymous Wuxia novel)

A few lucky players who have good familiarity  with both AoW and B&S has some hands on experience with a early version of the game are quite impressed.

Originally posted by AtliJorund
I think he meant 26 days in game time, which equates to 72 hours real time?

AoW is synch to  the server time, so game time = "real world time". 26 days jail time is probably a mistype or misunderstanding.

I think the "3.6%" NA market share mentioned in this article is just referring to Nexon's global revenue only  and not the global MMOG market as a whole. 

Originally posted by Greyhooff

There's no one making a living playing MMOs though.

Lots of gold farmers made a living through MMOs - through one might argue they are not really  "playing".

Originally posted by AresPL

in future if You are very good  person and die from hand of very evil person he/she will be able to loot and You will need to pay to get it back

Actually it is like this:

If a veteran player that is very advanced in an alignment (good, evil, chaotic, neutral) and is killed by player belong to a different alignment then there's a probability that the defeated player will drop a item, but the dropped item is not looted by the killing player - instead it go into a "lost item" vault - and if the owner want to redeem the item back from the vault he need to pay a ransom in tradable silver.

Currently this feature is only being evaluated on test servers in China.

Originally posted by DarkfallFanatic

Originally posted by bcbully
As long as they don't go "westernizing" ability names..

WIND...FLOWER...SNOW...MOON! 

LUNAR AIR BLOSSOM CHILLY ATTACK!

Here's an example of "westernizing" might change a skill name beyond recognition:

Trivia:

The ability name for "Wind Flower Snow Moon" in Chinese is ???? (Feng Hua Xue Yue)

A more meaningful translation in English would be "The wind rustles flowers under a snow white moon"

In Japanese, this Chinese idiom is often rephrased as (the equivalent) ???? (Kanji)

This is also the original Japanese name of a skillchain in Final Fantasy 11 - in English it is "westernize" to "Cosmic Elucidation"

Originally posted by SavageHorizon

Pretty sure Savage Horizions Bloodlines is using an in house updated graphics engine called Mafate Engine 2.0. We know it's been rebranded to be called Savage Horizions Bloodlines with a beta hopefully at the end of the year. 

Dark&Light was made on the Mafate Engine 1.0

I was younger then but I have played briefly in the original Dark&Light when it allowed free play shortly before it closed .

From the more recent released pictures and videos of Savage Horizon we can observed certain visual features and elements which look similar to Black Gold (which use the upgraded engine of AoW) - even AoW players might recognized a few familiar elements.

Given the significant difference between graphics and presentation of original D&L versus SHB, and also the legal controversy of the original Mafate engine, I doubt any of its codebase is used. So I think naming the SHB game engine Mafate 2.0 is a bit unlikely.

Originally posted by SavageHorizon

Originally posted by bcbully

Originally posted by SavageHorizon

Fuuny thing is that SnailGames don't promote Age Of Wushu/Wulin as their main flagship sandbox MMO that is coming later this year.

Age Of Wushu is  great game but the best is yet to come from SnailGames.

June 5, 2012 US Pacific Time (June 6, 2012 China Time) - Snail Game’s flagship product Age of Wushu 

They refere to it as their flagship on their own site 

This will be their flagship sandbox MMO.

Scroll down to my post.

I'm not putting Age Of Wushu down at all, it's a great game once you get passed the UI but that's being worked on. I'm just saying their is bigger and better on the way from SnailGames with beta at the end of the year.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/376648/page/2

Age Of  Wushu will keep us busy for now but Savage Horizons Bloodline makes Age Of Wushu look small fry.

Snail Game has touted both Savage Horizon or AoW as "the" flagship game at different times. The problem I see is that the company is not large enough  to focus on several products concurrently which is what it is doing now - trying to develop three major MMORPG (AoW, Black Gold and Savage Horizon) at the same time.

Snail often has to shuffle its limited development resources - apparently products which are nearing completion would always have priority. Such a situation occurred in early 2012 for the launch of AoW in China. It was suspected by some that this caused the Product leader of Savage Horizon to become unhappy and partly the reason why he resigned in mid 2012.

Savage Horizon (and the forthcoming Black Gold) was previously both handled by Lu Le - who was in charge of Savage Horizon since 2010 till mid 2012. He once posted a few messages in English to the Dark and Light forum.

The product leader of AoW is Bill Seun - when Lu Le left the company, it was announced that he is in charge of  Black Gold as well.

One thing I noticed is lack of any announcement by Snail on who is overseeing the development of Savage Horizon at present.

Technically, the Savage Horizon client probably uses a more advanced version of Snail's in-house developed common game engine called FLEX of which AoW is considered the 2nd version - the 1st version is the engine used in Snail's first game, Voyage Century. 

The following features haven’t been implemented in the English version yet but a guild that controls both bases in a territory (“scene”) has some special benefits through its leader – which as the result of the conquest is known as a heroic cult leader.

Each heroic cult leader is considered ruler of a particular territory scene and has a unique title. He can issue two edicts (independently) once per day:

• Taxation – Collect a daily tax of official (tradable) silver from territory on behalf of the guild. The tax collection varies according to the actual territory – the territories outside the schools provide only 100 liang per day while the major cities provide 2.5 ding (2500 liang).  A typical territory would provide 500 liang daily.

• Set a Mayhem hour – Once per day, the heroic cult leader has the option to declare a “mayhem hour” on areas within his guild’s zone of control (the ZOC will be shaded blue in the territory map – covering resource nodes and farmland but not the whole map). While Mayhem Hour is in effect, his guild members can kill any outsiders within the guild’s ZOC without incurring any infamy points.        

Originally posted by AresPL

monkey is there already but dunno what it does

The Jiangnan Monkey is obtainable only in game - you trade 20 peaches for one from an NPC.

Note that famous Jiangnan area in Wulin lore in Korean would be "Gangnam"

(the meaning of  the phrase is the same, the source being Chinese - "(Region) South of River")

so the monkey can perform a famous dance sequence most youtube user should know.

The monkey also has a begging skill.

Originally posted by Gdemami

Apparently you never played EVE or you just lack understanding how the game works.

Older EVE players are gaining versatility in terms of ships they can fly but they gain very little, diminishing advantage in their specialization - each ship. There is very little effective difference between "decent skills" character that takes weeks to train and "perfect skills" character that takes months to train.

This does not work for AoW tho - the longer you "grind", stronger you are and with more Internals Skills released and direction the game is heading, this disparity will be stronger and stronger...

But would a new player in EVE who can only fly a frigate stood a real chance in PvP against a veteran with a black ops battleship?

Originally posted by bcbully

There are some serious issues with spawn points at the moment which leads to 40 people in a 2 meter protective bubble with about 80  people outside spamming, waiting for someone from the inside to lose protection. This happens at some point every single war.  

At the moment you are not missing much trust me. I'm sure they will get it right, it's just shocking that everything else is spot on then there is this mess.

Does the current AoW CB school wars involve capturing five flags (initially neutral, each giving different buffs to the side holding it) that play a large part in determining which side would be victorious?  

Originally posted by rdrpappy

So if you as a player have the GUI to affect the code of the game by making permenant changes as you see fit,  you sir are in a sandbox. Anything else is themepark no matter how tedious it is or how many rocks you mine.

So griefers can add permanent  code  "Area effect:  Cause 9999hp dps on newbie as they enter "  to ground area where new players spawn into this "sandbox"  and watch the virtual bodies pilling up...

Next idea please... 

Originally posted by DMKano

Originally posted by Cname

Originally posted by DMKano

Beacuase it is against Chinese government regulations to depict skeletons skulls or anything undead in video games. Was just poking fun at the censorship in China that is all.

Actually this is not the full truth. Quite a number of  video games for PC and Ipad has been released in China with undead content.

Just to name a few better known Chinese MMORPG in the West with undead contentt: Perfect World and Forsaken World.

Another one is Snail Games's own upcoming MMORPG, Black Gold.

China government censorship is more to do with depiction of undead graphically - grotesque or gruesome graphic (as judged by the government) is a no-no.  That's why the client for WoW has to be graphically modified in China .

In short, no undead in video games (false) - censorship (yes)

 

Good correction, but I was talking about graphical representation, you know with exposed bones on undead, and that is illegal in China heh.

Also did you know that sounds of pain or suffering upon killing anything in game is also illegal and censored? 

I think we already agree that censorship is imposed by China government on video games - the term they used is "héxié" (harmonization).

 Was just trying to clarifying that undead theme itself  is not taboo in Chinese video games.