PVP:Yes | Distribution:Download | Retail Price:$29.95 | Pay Type:Subscription
Desktop Client | System Req:
Irth Worlds News - Our Exclusive Beta Preview
Posted by Craig McGregor on Aug 04, 2005 | 46 comments in our forums
Our staff writer Laura Genender had the opportunity to spend the last few weeks inside the beta test for Irth Online - the fantasy MMORPG being developed by Magic Hat Software. She has completed her preview of the game so far. A snippet from the article is below:
;)
Combat procedure is pretty standard for an MMO, with a few good original tweaks — and a few bad ones. For instance, whenever the player is hit their screen flashes red. This effect is pretty cool as long as you are not hit very often, but if you have two or three monsters attacking you it becomes a real eyesore. One solution to this (and to the loss of hit points in general) is to use spells such as Nuke or Divine Touch to kite monsters. Cast a spell on your target, turn around and run a bit, then turn and cast another spell. Most of the monsters in the game are your speed or a tiny bit slower. Another good reason to use spells is combat distance with melee weapons. Getting close enough to a monster to melee it feels like parallel parking a car while blindfolded, and if you or the target moves you have to start all over again. The next hurdle to overcome is actually hitting the monster. As mentioned above, even when fighting easy creatures like puppies, goats, and cows new players will find themselves racking up more misses than hits. |
To read her full preview, click here.
Very good and honest preview.
well considering itrh still in development, (not in retouching like wow eq2 betas) i must say as an active tester that, irthOnline has a great potential i had only seen in games like The Old Uo , and the dissapeared Wish, a great addition to all role players that dont kile childish or grinding leveling games
pd: combat, spell, economy ,crafting,pvp, routes are far from finished now the devs are working togheter whit players as they can see in live the progress and evolution of the game , in form of periodical patches that adds new content and improvements to the entire world
I'm glad this isn't yet another suckup fangirl written preview. I'm tired of 100% happy happy joy joy previews/reviews.
All I can think to say is the word "tweak" sure can be stretched in meaning these days.
This was a very fair and balanced review, and as the writer said, the game is still in Beta in need of some tweaking.
Cheers for a good honest review!
This article left me with a few questions.
1) Are the races intermingled with the civilizations? There are 3 races and 4 civilizations according to this article.
2) Do you gain combat xp by going on quests/missions from npc's? Is there anything special or is this another game that uses the common methods?
3) What's with the non-pvp civilization? Are they the crafters of the game or do they just not combat with other players?
4) Is there any reason to look forward to this game over other games? Why would someone buy this game over the many games that are already out there or are coming out soon?
Good article anyway, seemed to be a very balanced review siting both positives and negatives of the game.
I'll try answer using what has already been given out through public channels.
1) Are the races intermingled with the civilizations? There are 3 races and 4 civilizations according to this article.
There will be different ethnicies(sp) but also more races coming.
2) Do you gain combat xp by going on quests/missions from npc's? Is there anything special or is this another game that uses the common methods?
No XP, you gain skill points from f.ex. the amount of successful strikes on opponent...the more you use skill, the better you become with it...I can't go on details of quest system yet but it rewards you by other means.
3) What's with the non-pvp civilization? Are they the crafters of the game or do they just not combat with other players?
they're exactly that, non-pvp...they cant attack other players, neither can they be attacked by other players.
4) Is there any reason to look forward to this game over other games? Why would someone buy this game over the many games that are already out there or are coming out soon?
seamless world of 39 000square KM, villages inhabited and governed by players, travel by sea, air and land, unique advancing system giving more freedom over your character than any other, pvp against other pvp-civilisations anywhere, loot your foes...thats just the main points not covered by NDA.
*claps*
Good reveiw... Now, if only i could somehow get the beta to work ^^ stupid freezeframe's..
Yes these are the issues I bring up when a thread is opened about Irth Online. They've been pointed out with a richer vocabulary by Staff Writer this time. I absolutely agree with her about all the points above. But the underlined sentence in the quotation keeps me interested in this game. I took a break from it now, my graphic card gets really old and it's torment to play the game with a blurry and cloudy environment when everyone speaks about fasnicating sunsets and exceptional landscapes
I will wait the client gets more stable, I will try to play it again. Lastly I made an elf and chose dodging archery for combat skills. Except healing I was told those were all bugged. I know the game needs time and I will have the time to track the news.
Enjoy the game
Dregard, Send me a PM on the Irth forums and I'll see what I can do to help you out. :)
Game looks great!
Im in beta, and though it needs work, the potential is all there.... Open PvP Yeah hoooooooo
Try it!
Irth Online has no single gimmick to attract attention to itself but I can tell you the combination of features which will attract many to this game.
1) Character development is purely skill based. There are no levels, no xp, no classes. You just do the things you enjoy and your character will get better at doing those things. Because of the NDA I can't get specific but there are MANY non-combat skills for those who like to do other things.
2) PvP is based on war between three of the civilizations. To steal terminology from another game it is Realm vs Realm warfare rather than random killing of whoever walks by. Those who dont like PvP can join the Avarian civilization which is never at war.
3) Three server types are promised: Regular, RP, and hard core RP.
4) A HUGE world which will allow dedicated explorers to spend hours doing what they love and rewarding them with rare, undisturbed resource discoveries.
It may be that none of these features is unique to Irth Online. But no other game offers all four (or even three) together. The devs may never say so but to me it seems clear that they are targetting the old UO crowd (except for the people who like random PK, but they will be playing D&L which will actually allow that sort of thing). This game is not for everyone. But for those who seek real depth and not just faster flashier combat, Irth Online will be something worth waiting for.
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 128 MB. I saw a thread about video cards and my card was listed in there. According to list, my video is card second lowest video card that is able to run IRth Online. Yes really lowest. Let the other people test skills and such, cause with the settings I shoud tune, I can't even see one step forward lol and also FPS doesn't fullfil my satisfaction. So I don't turn its beta event into a torment, you have enough nice people that are capable of giving nice feedbacks. However, it's not only me having this issue. I'm really sure it's about my video card only and there's nothing to do except changing it.
IMHO this game is gonna SWEET.. roughly one year after release.
Still no info on their view about "High End" and raiding or no needs to raid.
I will keep looking until they settle this point.
The PvE civilisation (Avarians?) is the civ I am looking forward personnaly.
This is from last dev chat:
[18:11] Incoherent: <Sabbath|SMC> Is there a skill cap? (ie) 100 skill in say swordmanship is top? and does your character have a skill cap like 1000 skill points or something?
[18:12] Jared: Well we have no real cap actually.
[18:12] Jared: But eventually it becomes statisticly impossible to continue increasing your skills.
[18:12] Jared: Every time your skills increase, it becomes more difficult to increase them farther.
[18:13] Jared: Also at high levels there are diminishing returns. The difference between a 5 and a 6 skill is much larger than 1005 and 1006.
[18:13] Jared: But as for a specific number, no.
About "raiding"
[17:08] Incoherent: <Traxer> Will there be alot of large creatures ( larger then Elder wyvern) ?
[17:08] Tony: welcome everybody to the irth online dev chat
[17:08] Tony: yes, there will be alot of large creatures..there will be creatures even larger than the elder wyvern
[17:09] Tony: infact over the next couple of weeks you will see no less than 26 new monsters appear ingame
[17:09] Tony: new reagents will be created for monster spawns
[17:09] Tony: and you'll see larger and tougher monsters as you would venture beyond the town limits
[17:10] Tony: mob bosses have been added will special loot, the monsters that we will implement soon
[17:10] Tony: will be quite extrodinary
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This has been discussed on Irth forums and elsewhere quite alot...Uber rare items will give you advantage but not make you singlehandedly dominate (This games name is Irth Online not "Trials of Irth")
Also Beauty of skill based system is that the game will not punish you for grouping with your friends no matter the differences between your characters.
Really intelligent, objective preview, Kudos Laura! I really couldn't have said it better myself.
Constant tweaking is going on and the game is shaping up. While it's by no means there yet, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! Lineage 2 could have been so great, now I have Irth Online to look forward to and I am really enjoying helping with the beta
.
Screenshots definitely have been looking better in the last few weeks... Is this thing really going to launch on the 13th anyone know?
I like the concept of being able to change your profession/skills basically anytime you feel like it.. Should cut down on the # of people making more characters.
Soooo.....
What's the purpose of pvp in Irth? Is there one? Do we develop a character and then go running around killing each other for no reason? Is there control of resources or territories at stake?
One last question...
Why do developers even bother making new games if they don't offer anything new beyond what was made 4-5 years ago?
Well..according to press release, this *beta phase* ends on 13th...
actually theres control of resources AND territories according to devs
Yeah, after reading her review, I get a sense that she was trying very hard to be diplomatic. "Tweak" in this context seems to be a euphemism for "needs a lot of fixing".
The Graphic card issue is a really bad one. Any Nvidia 4200, 5200, 5500, 5600 and 6200 have serious issues with this game. Showing FPS of 10 and lower in the most cases! I'm not sure about the Ati 9200, 9250, 9500, 9550 and 9600. Quite funny that the old Ti4600 have much less troubles than the newer FX 5600 card!
This is not a beta. If this is a beta, give up on this game.
It's a good effort, but it's so far behind that I'm far from impressed and I believe any experienced player who tries it will agree.
The Graphic card issue is a really bad one. Any Nvidia 4200, 5200, 5500, 5600 and 6200 have serious issues with this game. Showing FPS of 10 and lower in the most cases! I'm not sure about the Ati 9200, 9250, 9500, 9550 and 9600. Quite funny that the old Ti4600 have much less troubles than the newer FX 5600 card!
FX cards basically are Nvidias worst product line since the MX series.
FX cards are so noisy its not even funny and the Ti4xxx series line beats them all any day in all but dx9 rendering (what Ti4xxx cards doesnt have)
FX cards basically are Nvidias worst product line since the MX series.
FX cards are so noisy its not even funny and the Ti4xxx series line beats them all any day in all but dx9 rendering (what Ti4xxx cards doesnt have)
Sorry Kishe, but with my current video card, I have such a dreadful framerate only in Irth Online. May be technically your claims are true, but what if the series of graphics card companies you listed as "these are able to run Irth Online" would fail to run Irth, then you would call them as "worst products"? I know my card gets old, but I shouldn't get such an dreadful FPS in the game, there're other issues than blaming the video cards, literally. I know I'm able to run all the games around with a tolarable FPS, I'm pretty sure
FX cards basically are Nvidias worst product line since the MX series.
FX cards are so noisy its not even funny and the Ti4xxx series line beats them all any day in all but dx9 rendering (what Ti4xxx cards doesnt have)
Sorry Kishe, but with my current video card, I have such a dreadful framerate only in Irth Online. May be technically your claims are true, but what if the series of graphics card companies you listed as "these are able to run Irth Online" would fail to run Irth, then you would call them as "worst products"? I know my card gets old, but I shouldn't get such an dreadful FPS in the game, there're other issues than blaming the video cards, literally. I know I'm able to run all the games around with a tolarable FPS, I'm pretty sure
I second that. The fx 5600 is not so bad as it sounds everywhere. Only Irth have a huge issue with it.
My Fx 5600 is below the min requirement for Battlefield 2 but that game runs better than Battlefield Vietnam with this card! And B2 is really well playable!
The preview is a good read - and the comments in the forums are partly very positive. Only thing is I seem to be excluded from the fun. The graphics are unbearable >> might be my graphic card Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4200 64 MB (?) and I felt very lonely on the server (pegasus).
. Also the support is great (got a decent reply from helpdesk within 2 hours) and the community I met in the forums is quite cool.
The concept of character development still attracts me so I stay around for more
Laura was very generous in her review.
I received an email for the free Irth beta, downloaded the game, played it one evening and deleted it the next. Bottom line is the game is simply to buggy to play right now and the dev team made a mistake by sending it to open beta at this point. Given the state the game is in right now they would have been better served by staying in closed beta with friendly testers who have high tolorance for major game-play and performance bugs.
BM
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Boris
Nice informative article. With a mid Sept release date proposed I was tempted to try this beta as a trial. Your review has made it clear IRTH is truely still in beta.
Thanks,
R
I am a member of the beta.
If they release in september this game will never make it off the ground. It's not ready. Thankfully the devs appear to realize this and have said it won't release till it IS ready..
Hopefully the marketting folks behind it agree with them :)
Be honest guys.. release that ? I tried play the beta.. I did force myself to pass the 90's style graphic somewhere before Baldur"s time.
The game has nothing, it is buggy, it is empty.. it is horrible.. it is unfriendly.. I would say if it was released at the time of DAOC went out and compete against it.. yes .. keep it beta a bit, fix the bugs.. then polish (don't talk about polish when there is nothing).. why do they give a NDA... they have nothing new.. they do that just because they hope to attract poor chap by surprise..
even Horizon.. I quit after 10 months (to tell you my high level of acceptance) was more fun, more beautiful, more friendly - GUI was great...and more revolutionnary than IRTH...
God guys how can you decently say this is a good game with potential??? you must be running that game on a IBM 8080. ???
I'm in the beta -- and my opinion is it sucks. The enviornment is very pretty; the models of the characters and the mobs, as well as the animation is horrid.
The skill system isn't really very intuitive.
Combat animation isn't very good.
Character models all look alike.
I do give them credit for their enviornment. There is actually grass, but only if your angle of view is just right will you see it. So for close in detail you can see it; but full back action view you don't.
All in all, I think the score indicated for the game is too high.
This game doesn't have potential and won't survive the market unless a major overhaul is done.
It's in open beta (or limited open beta). A product is in that stage when it's getting ready for release; not "in development".
Is there a law that open beta must mean just that and nothing else?
Sorry to spoil your fun there, but we did not open the game to everyone as an indication the completeness of the project. We opened the Beta up to get more people in and to get feedback on what people want to see in the game. You can take the action to mean whatever you would like, but you have to remember, the game IS still under development, and even after released most MMORPGs are still technically developing, content is added and changes are made. A prime example I can cite would be Anarchy Online. After the game was released more than 4 years ago they are still adding new systems, such as the LFT (looking for team) interface, and the crafting interface, which are not parts of an expansion but added in features to the basic game. I'm not sure if the "Dressing Room" for WoW is planned as part of an expansion or just an added in feature, but thats another perfect example of what I mean.
Thanks for the info. I guess this settle my interest for Irth however.
If that answer come to change (which will not happen), they needs to make sure to capture the interest of the peoples who are now turning their back on the game.
See, I NEEDs to work on been the best on what I do (succeeding or not is beside the point, I NEEDs to work on it and hope to succeed however)...and I wont raid no matter what, this remove most MMOs right from the start. I would not care to be weak in the raid setting if I didnt raid, but I will care a LOT if a raider is better then me in the grouping or soloing setting.
But thanks again for the info and good luck with Irth, 1 less Avarian wont be killing the game.
No offense... well, maybe there is I guess, but that comment is purely asinine. YOu can make up whatever test schedule names you want for whatever stages you want; but industry practice means something different, and professional developers that create true products tend to follow a standard cycle. Yes, there can be deviation, but success in the release of a product dictates ceratin factors.
If a product is made available to "open beta" the tend is to focus on stress testing to get the product ready for release. While there may be some last things added, the majority of the focus is still stress ratings.
To use anarchy on-line as an example to show that these products are "always" in development is not only ludicrous but also a perfect example of a product that had a very rocky release because they didn't follow the patterns.
If you do honestly work for this product then you should be able to see that there's no way in hell it can compete. It's not very good on a lot of levels. While the mmorpg customer base may be growing thanks to such polished and well developed games like World of Warcraft, it's still a limited base with products competing for even more finely tuned niches (City of Heroes, Auto Assault, Priates of the Burning Seas, etc).
If this is a labor of love, and you're having folks come into your "open beta" to share in your garage project joy then hey, have fun.
I still feel that you might Magic Hat will be hitting the November 1 deadline with a beta quality product. The main gripe I have with this world is that it is too big. Running around in the beta I found myself alone for 90% of the time; hardly community oriented. Perhaps I wasn't in the right spot, but with giant black spots on the map (literally) and no road signs or helpful NPC's or even other players I found it difficult to navigate such a vast world. It would have been good to have the world half sized, or a world that required skill to explore. If the world fills come November 1 then the game might be pretty good for a while, but if doesn't then alot of people will be running around looking for people to meet and finding none.