Spotlight On - Zentia, Blade Wars, and Dragon Oath

Blade Wars

Blade Wars is a free-to-play game based on kung-fu fighting in ancient China. The game will let you play as one of five different character classes and fight monsters and gain experience levels while perfecting your mastery of the martial arts. As a matter of fact, once you hit level 30, you'll be able to bring a lower-level character under your tutelage as an apprentice (both you and your apprentice will earn bonus experience from the association). While the game will require real-time input from you to attack (left-clicking your mouse to perform a weak attack and right-clicking to perform a strong attack), you'll be able to "macro" up to four different combinations of attacks to assign to hotkeys. Some combinations will work better against monsters; others will work better in competitive battles against other players. As a matter of fact, the game will let you flag yourself for "peace" (non-competition) or for "war" (to openly compete with other characters). While flagged for war, you can attack and kill characters flagged as "peace," but you will suffer a severe "morality" penalty that will accumulate with each successive peaceful player killed, and should you die with a sufficiently low morality, your character will be trapped in the dreaded Forbidden Village until you can buy your way out. Blade Wars will also have a cash-op where you can buy in-game items with money out-of-pocket, to also purchase minor consumable items and apparel, rather than any unbalancing weapons or armor. Blade Wars was originally released in China some time ago and is being localized for a Western release later this year.

Dragon Oath

Projected release date: Q4 2010
Platform: PC

Dragon Oath is also a free-to-play online game that is set in ancient China, but it sets itself apart by offering not only the same kind of hack-and-slash gameplay you expect from this type of game, but also tons of in-game events that happen monthly, weekly, daily, and even hourly on a fixed, automated schedule. These events may include anything from a sudden attack by monsters to a player-versus-player (PVP) battle to control a magical cauldron that will grant the winning team a powerful "buff" enhancement effect. The game will offer nine different playable classes and will focus a bit more on player-versus-environment (PVE) gameplay, though it will also have support for player guilds, including the ability for guilds to build their own cities and for other guilds to lay siege to those cities with catapults. Like the other games, Dragon Oath will have a cash-op primarily for consumable items and apparel (and maybe the odd weapon or armor piece here and there), though we're told that many of the effects of the consumable items can be found in-game for free--for instance, while you can purchase a potion that doubles the rate at which you gain experience, the game is already designed to give you five hours of double-experience gain every week. Dragon Oath was released in China in 2007. It is being localized to appeal to Western audiences and will launch later this year.