Realm of the Mad God
| Realm of the Mad God | |
|---|---|
| File:Build105.png The title screen | |
| Developer(s) | Wild Shadow Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Kabam |
| Platform(s) | Adobe Flash |
| Release | January 2010 |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer co-operative Shooter |
Realm of the Mad God is a massively multiplayer browser game created by Wild Shadow Studios (now acquired by Kabam). It has been in public beta since January 2010 and “officially” launched on June 20, 2011.[1]
The game was released on the Steam platform on February 20, 2012.[2]
The game has been described as a "massively cooperative bullet hell shooter".[3] it is awsome and deserves many pigs... my i eglish is bad..
Players control characters who have been transported to the realm of Oryx (the titular Mad God) to become food for his many minions, which the players must dispatch. When all of the high-level quest bosses are dispatched, Oryx will summon all player characters within his realm to his castle, divided into four "groups", depending on the amount of characters in the realm, where players must work together to defeat high-level enemies. After progressing through the castle, there will be two bosses, named 'Stone Guardians'. The four groups of players must then work together to eliminate the two 'Stone Guardians' so that they will be allowed to defeat Oryx.
The player starts as a wizard, and unlocks additional classes upon reaching certain level requirements. Central to the design of the game is the fact that character death is permanent. Upon death, the player's character is lost along with all carried equipment, although the player may store a number of items for safekeeping in a vault.
The game is free to play, and both paying and non-paying players have access to the entire game. Additional vault chests and character slots can be purchased with real world money, as can various decorative items, including pets. No weapons, armor or other character enhancing equipment can be bought for real world money, giving paying players only a very limited advantage.
This game client is written in Flash. Besides the main web site, it is also available in the Google Chrome Web Store, on Steam, and on Kongregate.
Gameplay
The game consists of players shooting projectiles from their weapons and destroying enemies to earn experience. After a certain amount of experience has been earned, the player levels up and his attributes are raised, allowing him or her to fight more powerful enemies.
Players in a group earn experience while in the vicinity of another group member that earned experience. Experience is awarded in full, not split, so defeating an enemy worth 10 experience will award 10 experience to all group members. Harder enemies such as realm gods and quest monsters are indicated by a red "quest marker" at the edge of the game window and on the game map. At the center of the map is the God Lands. This is where the most powerful bosses are located. Special event bosses may spawn in either the God Lands or nearby Midlands. The God Lands host the Gods of the Realm, which each have a chance to drop permanent stat boosting potions upon death. Accumulation of these potions from gods, dungeon bosses, and event bosses allow the player to raise their stats to a class's maximum. Maxing stats is the eventual end game goal of most players.
Players begin their game sessions in the Nexus, a safe haven which can be teleported to at any time. In the Nexus, players may buy consumables using coins (purchased with real-life money) or fame (earned by reaching milestones in-game and then dying) and enter realms (i.e. game map instances present on the server). Each of these realms are named after a monster in the game. The capacity of each realm is 85 people at once.
Players may teleport to any player by clicking on their name in the bottom part of the navigation pane or the yellow dots on the minimap and selecting "teleport." In addition, players may "lock" another user to the bottom of their nearby players interface to teleport to their location in the future and stay in the Nearby Players list until he/she or the person who locked the person leaves the realm, but will still be locked, but not showing up.
There is a trading system for exchanging items with other players. Permanent stat-raising potions are a common currency among high level players. A character's inventory capacity is very limited, as the player can store only 8 items on a character (beyond what the character has equipped), and 8 items in their initial free private vault chest (and other vault chests that can be bought), found in the Nexus (which allows players to retain items after character death and transfer items between multiple characters on the same account). Many users have solved this problem by creating multiple additional accounts, or "mules", to hold items. However, players are encouraged to purchase more vault chests instead to support the developers.
Upon death, each character is rewarded with fame based on how well they performed, and how many secret bonuses they collected such as their accuracy over the character's life, how valuable the equipment they are wearing, if they are the first of a class to die, and more.
Fame acts as both a scoring mechanism and a currency, as a limited number of bonus items can be bought with fame, including a one time use Amulet of Resurrection (nicknamed the "Ammy" by players) which is the currently the only way to keep your character after death. However, the resurrection item is so expensive that most players will have to play through hundreds of characters before being able to afford one.
Weapons and equipment are grouped by power level into "tiers". There are also untiered items, which fall outside the regular tier structure due to their extreme power level, or because of some unique feature, such as increased range and fame bonuses. All items originate from some sort of loot bag. Loot can be "Public" meaning that it drops in a brown bag and is accessible by anyone, or it can be "Soulbound", meaning that it can only be seen by the player that earned it by defeating the enemy. Soul bound items have a variety of bags, with purple representing lower tiers, a light blue bag with a white string representing higher tier loot, a blue bag with a yellow string representing stat potion(s) and possibly other loot, and finally, the legendary white bag with a blue string, representing an untiered item.
Minions vary in power, ranging from weak pirates with low health and damage to the strongest monsters, called "gods", that have much more health and deal large amounts of damage. Loot dropped by minions scales proportionately with the monster's power, with low-level monsters dropping basic items and health and mana restoring potions, while gods drop mid-to-high level items and valuable permanent stat-increasing potions. Weaker monsters are found near the outside of the map, near the coast of the game "island", while gods and stronger monsters are found near the middle of the map, in an area called the "godlands". After all gods have been killed, everyone in the realm is teleported to Oryx's Castle, where players have to fight through to get to his lair to fight him in his own chamber along with his minions. After his defeat, he drops an entrance to his personal Wine Cellar, which requires an item called the Wine Cellar Incantation to enter. There, players fight a more dangerous version of Oryx with additional new enemies, and more valuable loot known as "WC tops".
Controls and Strategy
Players move around the world with WASD, aim with the mouse, and shoot monsters by clicking. In this sense, the game is consistent with action role-playing game conventions.
Most monsters of the player's level die in only a few shots, so simple sharp-shooting will suffice against most enemies. If fighting a boss, pairing up with a healing character such as a Priest can make things much easier. A common strategy for avoiding death while defeating bosses or mini-bosses is to circle around them to dodge their attacks, while shooting it with your own.
Players have the ability to teleport to safety, which can be used when the player's health is low to avoid death.
Classes
There are 13 classes available. Players are only able to use the "Wizard" class when they first start playing the game. Additional classes are made available after reaching a certain level with other classes. Each class has its own weapon, armor and ability specifications, base stat averages and stat caps. For example, the Knight currently has the highest potential defense stat out of all of the classes, while the rogue has the highest potential speed stat.[4]
Guilds
As of Build 120, guilds were introduced. Guilds feature ranks including the founder, leaders, officers, members, and initiates, which have different levels of permissions within the guild. There is a maximum of 50 players in a guild. A guild costs a founder 1000 fame to name and create. A guild has a guild hall which can be accessed via portals in the Nexus or the player's vault. Fellow guild members appear as green dots in the minimap as opposed yellow dots. Upon a member's death, guild fame is earned proportionally to the amount of fame that the player earned. Guilds can buy larger guild halls with the guild fame, with other options possibly appearing in the future.
Statistics and Potions
A total of 8 different stats can be increased by either wearing equipment or consuming potions or "pots". Each potion on consumption increases its corresponding stat, or total available mana/life, for the duration of the character's life. When potions have reached full effect and are no longer beneficial to a character when consumed, the stat becomes gold color and is now "maxed" for the specific potion. Maxing is considered to be the end game goal for players after reaching level 20. Potions are also used as currency for community trading.
Death
Unless they have a costly resurrection item on them when they die, death is permanent, resulting in the loss of the player's character. Death can cause a gravestone to appear in the game depending on the characters level and stats, with the size of the gravestone being larger for characters that are further progressed. Gravestones start as a small brown grave lasting only thirty seconds, but characters with max stats will get a giant silver cross that last as long as the realm/dungeon that they died in lasts.
References
- ^ Computer World news
- ^ "Realm of the Mad God on Steam". Store.steampowered.com. February 20, 2012. Retrieved March 6, 2012.
- ^ David Edery's official blog
- ^ "Realm of the Mad God FlashMush Review". FlashMush Reviews.