Why host a game that was closed? Read the post.
Story Line
Ares, the Greek god of war, hatched a scheme to increase his power by spreading his influence to foreign lands. In the midst of this plan, another god, Kulam, gathered his people to thwart Ares. As a result of this heavenly conflict, the people of the continent of Arabic plunge into war.
Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8mGHSN-gIQ
Gameplay
Its a F2P MMO. We have two factions: Holy Emipre and the Religious Alliance. The difference between them is the looks of armors and weapons and skills they use. The game offers 4 classes:
- Knight - a class that deals high damage and possess good defence. Considered to be most powerfull class in game. They can use a variety of weapons: (sword knight) 1h swords + shield, 2h sword, (blunt knight) 1h blunt weapon + shield or 2h blunt.
- Spearman - another mele class. Able to do solo well but better in party. Was very underrated, mainly because many people didn't know how to play it effecively. There are two ways to build them. Throwing spear and AoE spear. First one deals damage to 1 target only second is AoE. When knight dueald a spear, well the first one was usually victorious. However, when 3-4 spears encountered 7-8 knights, the knights were usually AoE'ed to death quickly. Spears could only use 2 types of weapons: 1h spear + shield or 2h spear. Sorry for writing so much about them but they were my favourite class:)
- archers - obviously range attackers. Deadly when played by a skilled players. Only weapon they could use are bows.
- sorccerer - four types of them: water and ice (Holy Empire), fire and earth (Religious Alliance). Unlike in other MMO's they were not very squishy and able to deal very good damage. Apart from attacking they can also heal. Weapons: rod + shield or 2h staff.
LoA is PvP oriented. You can PvP almost everywhere, except a map for lvl 1-10 for begginers (shared by two factions), separate maps for both factions where you can get from lvl 10-35. All other maps and dungeons are shared by two faction which means PvP everywhere except a few safety zones.
Apart from regular PvP there were two events oraganized 2 times a week:
- Warfare - A big battle between 2 factions. When you kill enemies your factions get points. The faction who gets more points win. Another way to get points for your factions is to destroy enemy altars and catapults. Also when you kil your rivals you get special coins for every kill. You can exchange them for special items.
- Territorial Warfare - simply kill the other faction WarChief.
When talking about PvP I must mention honor points system. When you kill you get honor points that slightly increase your character power. When you die you lose them. As simple as that.
Apart from PvP, you also have to do what all players love so much grind. I won't say that it's easy because it's not. At higher lvl it is really hard. Let me just say that the lvl cap is 160 and during the few years the game was on no player reached it. My highest lvl char was 122 spearman and it took me almost a year to get there.
Of course there was a guild system. You could give ranks to your guild memebers, do guild battles and choose your own guild logo, which is visible above your character name as well as your guild rank.
What I liked about this game was the way you build your character and enchantment system.
When it comes to character build it was all about getting skills and better gear. No adding stat points per lvl. You statistics incereased automatically evry lvl. THe only thing you had to decide is how to distribute your skill points. Every skill could be increased from lvl 1 to 20. There were 3 types of skills: passive skills + buffs, normal skills (attack skills) and master skills (never introduced to the interantional version).
You character stats could also be improved by a special 'certificats' you could obtain when you reached requred lvls.
Enchantment. It could be done in two ways: either by speacial stones (which added stats to your gears, max 2 stones per 1 item) or through scrolls. There were two types of them: scroll of destruction (for weapons) and scroll of protection (for armor). To enchant items from 1-3 all you had to do was buy regular scrolls at NPC. Up to 3 enchntment never failed. When you wanted to enchant higher you had to use +1, +2 or +3 scrols which increased the enchntment for 1,2, or 3 lvls respectively. When you failed to enchant to for example to +4 your weapon wasn't destroyed, it just stayed at +3. After +6 failed enchntment your weapon was destroyed but you could use a crystal of ressurecton to get it back with +6. Max enchantment was +15.
What is importantis that +1,2 nad 3l scrolls could only be dropped from mobs (from any kind of mobs) or exchanged for coins you could get by killing you rivals in territorial warfare.
Items were divided into two categories: normal and unique. Normal were all those that were dropped from regular mobs (weapons, armors, regular jewellery, scrolls, special stones). Uniquw were Bos or mini-bos drops and included, weapons, special jewellery which increased attack or casting speed, capes, scrolls, crystals of resurrection, caro balls.... .
Unique weapons and armors were permamently destroyed when enchantment failed at +6.
There were also interesting items called Caro Balls. Those were special items thanks to which players could summon bosses but in weaker version, thus easier to kill.
What i loved about that game were so called 'leech weapons'. They were the best option for PvE. When you hit a mob with it it's hp decreased and players hp regenerated at the same time. When you had a good leech weapon you did not have to use hp pots for grind almost at all.
However, the biggsest advanteage of this game was that it was not like most F2P MMO's - F2P, PayToWin. All equipment could be dropped in game, none was sold in the item mal. Item mal just offered exp boosters, some buffs itemes, special hp/mp pots, party summon scrolls etc. Generally the item mall just offered help for palyers but never gave them any irrational advantage over players who did not spend money on the game. To be the best you had to work hard and grind long.
What I wrote here consist only a part of features that the game offered.
Game play video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tbS_RPb8kE&feature=related
War!!!!!!!!
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Killing Ocean Dragon
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Fighting another boss
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Just me with some friends:)
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It all looks good so why the game failed?
Well there were a few reasons. First of all the game was run by the worst company ever. I won't say the name to not advertise it, so lets just call them EpicFail. Through the first year the game was a blast and had 3 very well populated servers. Afterwards it was just getting worse. The game was using old verison of x-trap for protection so anyone with minimum skills could hack. And that is waht happened, the game was overrun by hackers and the market was flooded with duplicated items.
But that is not the whole problem. With time the game offered zero support to players. No tickets answered, there were even times when the game had no GMs just a few Fates (Fate = GS). Fates were another problems. Unlike GSes in Aeria they did have powers that gave them advantage over regular players. For example they could send players who were a threat to their friwnds, guild or faction or players who they simply did not like to GM Land (a temporary prison where exploiters were send) for no reason.
The alst reason was the lack of updates, lots of content was not released in the International version and it was not the fault of developers.
To sum up, with no support and lots of hackers the game was closed. I write closed becouse it never died. Simply, the game was closed because the company hosting it was not able to handle it. Even when the date of clousure was announced people kept playing and buying items from item mall till the last day.
So here is my suggestion to Aeria Product Managers. Consider hosting Legend of Ares. If You will be able to handle and maintain it (and I know you can) you will make very good money on it as the game still has a deveoted player base, and with good advertising (something that the previous host did not have a clue about) many more will join.
If any of LoA players are now the part of Aeria Community please show your support
With regards:
Vintersorg, lvl 122 Emipre Spearman / Phoenix Server
Mod edit: moved to suggestions