逆水寒 Justice Online Open Beta

BlurBleh

This game is another Wuxia themed MMORPG and is the direct competitor to Tencent's Moonlight Blade. It just went into open beta today and I managed to get a few hours of play time. The game actually looks really good and is well optimized (unlike another recent MMO *cough* Bless *cough*). I'd even say that the graphics are almost as good as BDO's. Gameplay wise, as much as I can tell, it's almost entirely story driven. I got to level 27 in 3 hours just by following the storyline, and it mostly consists of fully voice acted cutscenes and autopathing (which is really useful for questing but also makes me feel like I'm playing a mobile game). There are traditional PvE and PvP contents as well, dungeons and arenas and factions whatnot, but as far as leveling goes, it doesn't seem necessary to grind your way to the end game. The combat is similar to Moonlight Blade, action heavy but not as much as BDO. Six out of eight classes are playable right now, with the traditional tank/dps/support design. Also like Moonlight Blade, classes are not gender locked.

So here's some interesting things I found about the game.
-RP and socialization minigames where players RP as patrons or actors in theater arts.
-Players can maintain relationships with many NPCs, which have different personalities, likes/dislikes. To the point that you can recruit them as followers or even romance them.
-Life simulation activities. Basically you can work, gamble, or invest to make money, buy properties, get married, and increase stats like your fame, wisdom, beauty, artistic-ness, happiness, overall health etc.
-Home building like in the Sims.

For those who are interested, this is the official site
https://n.163.com/index.html
Unfortunately the game is only available in Mandarin but at least foreigners can still sign up and play it.

Eldurian

Sounds kind of cool but the big question is, what is the primary content?

Is it a quest/dungeon based level/gear grinder or do other areas of the game have equal or greater focus?

SirBalin

BlurBleh said:

This game is another Wuxia themed MMORPG and is the direct competitor to Tencent's Moonlight Blade. It just went into open beta today and I managed to get a few hours of play time. The game actually looks really good and is well optimized (unlike another recent MMO *cough* Bless *cough*). I'd even say that the graphics are almost as good as BDO's. Gameplay wise, as much as I can tell, it's almost entirely story driven. I got to level 27 in 3 hours just by following the storyline, and it mostly consists of fully voice acted cutscenes and autopathing (which is really useful for questing but also makes me feel like I'm playing a mobile game). There are traditional PvE and PvP contents as well, dungeons and arenas and factions whatnot, but as far as leveling goes, it doesn't seem necessary to grind your way to the end game. The combat is similar to Moonlight Blade, action heavy but not as much as BDO. Six out of eight classes are playable right now, with the traditional tank/dps/support design. Also like Moonlight Blade, classes are not gender locked.

So here's some interesting things I found about the game.
-RP and socialization minigames where players RP as patrons or actors in theater arts.
-Players can maintain relationships with many NPCs, which have different personalities, likes/dislikes. To the point that you can recruit them as followers or even romance them.
-Life simulation activities. Basically you can work, gamble, or invest to make money, buy properties, get married, and increase stats like your fame, wisdom, beauty, artistic-ness, happiness, overall health etc.
-Home building like in the Sims.

For those who are interested, this is the official site
https://n.163.com/index.html
Unfortunately the game is only available in Mandarin but at least foreigners can still sign up and play it.

How's the open world pvp?  Will they have pvp servers where you can open world pvp or will their be limits?

Wizardry

Flying through the air,ARPG type combat,no thanks,exactly what i don't want from a mmorpg.
This looks very similar to another game advertised a year or so ago,likely same game different name.

BlurBleh

Eldurian said:

Sounds kind of cool but the big question is, what is the primary content?

Is it a quest/dungeon based level/gear grinder or do other areas of the game have equal or greater focus?

From what I've seen so far, granted I'm only in the early levels, most of gameplay would revolve around (1) Questing. Main quest and side quests are all instance based scenarios with plots and characters. (2) Dungeons. Clear out monsters, minigames, pretty much the usual stuff. (3) Life activities. Life simulation which is a minigame in itself, crafting (which begins at lv 45 for some reason), housing, RP, immersion.

SirBalin said:
How's the open world pvp?  Will they have pvp servers where you can open world pvp or will their be limits?

There is no dedicated pvp servers. There's organized pvp like arenas, tournaments. Those are small scale, like 5v5 or less. I've not seen open world pvp but it's part of the game. No open world pvp before lv40 though. And also there are peace zones, like in cities, so no fighting allowed there. Once you get past 40 you can enter one of 3 toggled states, good, evil, and peaceful. Good can only attack evil players, evil can attack everyone, and peaceful can't attack anyone but can defend themselves if attacked. There are also toggled options that prevent you from attacking certain types of players, such as those in the same party, guild, faction, alliance etc. There's also an evil value system (like karma), those with high evil value will get sent to jail by the game. The value automatically degrades over time only if you're in a pvp zone, or by spending a currency you gain from dungeons. You gain a small amount of evil value from attacking blue named players (I think it refers to those in the peaceful state), 5x as much if you attack a green name (probably one in the good state?), and an extreme amount if you attack someone who's lower lvl.

darkwolfjay

I also played it, but I experienced several crashes, couldn´t find out yet what causes it. Anyone else? 

Albatroes

Honestly, this game looks exactly like PWI's swordsman online, which is ironically shutting down sometime this year.

darkwolfjay

Albatroes said:

Honestly, this game looks exactly like PWI's swordsman online, which is ironically shutting down sometime this year.

Yeah, kind a like. If you are into Wu Xia MMORPGs I can strongly recommend Moonlight Blade - but there´s no english patch and you have to get a account for it. 

BlurBleh

Albatroes said:

Honestly, this game looks exactly like PWI's swordsman online, which is ironically shutting down sometime this year.

I believe Swordman has a more cartoonish spin to its artstyle, its almost like a wuxia mmo with wow's art direction. But then again, those games tend to look similar, same wuxia theme, same ancient china setting. I also have a hard time differentiating MMOs with similar settings, this looks like a slightly more graphically polished version of Moonlight Blade. Same thing for western MMOs. I can never tell the difference among Ashes of Creation, Chronicles of Elyria, and Gloria Victis.

Kyleran

This title has been in the making for about 5.5 years now, developed by NetEase of Revelation "fame."  

Pretty sure I know how this one will play out. 

Moving on.

BlurBleh

Kyleran said:

This title has been in the making for about 5.5 years now, developed by NetEase of Revelation "fame."  

Pretty sure I know how this one will play out. 

Moving on.

Different developers.
NetEase is the publisher, it has more than a dozen studios under them developing different games. It also licenses and publishes Blizzard developed games.