Hero Online

Hero Online is a new fantasy MMORPG with a strong martial arts theme, coming from the developers at MGame USA. The game hit its beta stages not long ago, so without any further ado, here's what I found out.

Story

Starting the game, you are presented with a really long introductory movie that I dared not skip, as it turns out it only plays when you run Hero online for the first time. The five minute presentation was created with the help of pictures and some animations, covering in detail the rise and fall of Qin Shi Huangdi, the legendary hero who put an end to an age of chaos and turmoil by unifying China. The action takes place in this medieval past, where one day, twelve men "demons" came out of nowhere and laid waste to everything in their path, basically issuing an untold challenge to all the powers of the land. In a massive effort to stop the destruction, Buddhist monks rallied all the demon hunters to face the Unstoppable Dozen in combat. It is said that 10,000 demon hunters fought that day, using every weapon and spell known to man, yet when silence befell the battlefield again, only the Twelve Demons were still standing. Where all failed, one hero stood between the demons and their ultimate victory; one man whose mastery of the martial arts was beyond reproach. He devised a cunning trap and lured the demons into a confrontation that brought ten days of carnage. Each demon was slain, as well as the hero's best 3.000 warriors. Years passed as the day when fate caught up with him approached. Betrayed by an unnamed person, the one least likely to do such a heinous act, his murder left the country in disarray. Now is the time for your own story to unfold, as demons have returned from beyond the grave and need to be destroyed once and for all.

Character creation

On to the creation screen? one can pick one of the four pre-generated character types. Be advised that you can't customize them at all, not here anyway. - The Ruthless Blade is the agile Master of Gunn-Gon, skilled with the sword and bow, notorious for his ability to solve problems, pretty much like a nowadays detective - Overseer Of The Sky is the master of strength, powerful and grumpy rod, spear and axe wielder. The only thing he enjoys more than liquor is the thrill of battle - The Elegant Mystic is a holy oracle, a spellcaster that uses her powers to heal, restore the dead back to life and drive the demonic forces back to whence they came from - Piercing Eyes is the Empress of Bo-Ta, the legendary swordmaster that is said to always resurface and protect the land of its oppressors, carrying hidden weapons to strike when enemies least expect it.

There are ten servers to choose from. Since characters are not directly linked to one particular server I guess each server is a reflection of the same instanced game world; once a server is full, it is advisable to choose another, having the exactly same content, albeit different human players online. The developers impregnated the game world with a natural Chinese feeling, characters look like manga warriors and even levels are a measure of this role playing. For instance, 2 Dan 7 Ryu means level 27.

Gameplay

So here we are, in the safety of Dragon Castle at level one, a good time as any to check out character statistics. Pretty straight forward in nature, the main three are: Strength, directly influencing hit points and melee damage; Agility, improving defense, dodge and attack rate; Intelligence, raising chi (mana), needed for the use of various skills. Derived stats have a rather complex formula I haven't been able to discern yet: combat attack, combat defense, resistance and hit potency of paralysis, confusion and poison type attacks.

Skills are obtained through promotion quests, the downside being there aren't that many of them, level being a limiting factor. One can plainly see that Hero Online is a grindfest, where players are required to kill large quantities of monsters in order to get better weapons and advance in level. The rewards usually consist in either gold, experience or items, all in limited quantities that make you wonder why did you put up to this in the first place. Seeing that the few quests available in each area usually imply killing a particular monster or group of monsters, most players will just skip them all together to avoid the hassle. In Hero Online, creeps respawn incredibly fast. This has nothing to do with the game's player population, but more with game concept as one can easily stay in the same spot for hours and hours, without moving an inch. Creeps will just spawn close by so you will always have something to fight. In turn, they most of the time drop some kind of healing potions, which are used by the player to reduce downtime to zero. Not a good thing if you ask me, since developers should be encouraging players to move around and explore the game world.

Once a creature has been slain, loot falls to the ground, usually consisting in one or two sacks of coins, some sort of healing potion and maybe a weapon or armor piece. It is disturbing that you can't loot as fast as you kill - gold lying on the ground is a common sight. Not even spamming "S", the key for autoloot won't help. Items are picked up one at a time, with a one second cooldown in between. When creatures die you also automatically receive experience points and skill points. Experience leads to level ups, increasing hitpoints and providing four character points to raise primary stats with. Skill points on the other hand are invaluable, being the main currency in acquiring and improving skills so experience gains are more common, resulting in situations where you receive no skill points for killing monsters, but still gain experience. Each area has its unique monsters and it won't be long until you'll know them all by heart. First there is the wolf area, then the boar area, bandits, followed by bigger wolves, meaner bandits, most of the time one or two creature types that will bore you out of your skull. Each map is bound to have a tavern where you can find a tavern clerk. He will direct you (read teleport) to the marketplace for a fee. This way you can have almost unlimited travel options throughout the world, including access to areas you've never visited before. I don't think it's such a good idea as players will blindly stumble into situations they can barely handle, like a level 6 warrior wandering aimlessly into a level 36 creature area. The worst part is that two out of the three exits from the starting map lead to these kind of deadly zones and there's no sign, story or warning to help you catch a glimpse at your impending doom. As it is with all MMORPGs, eventually your character will face mortality. When dead, he/she can resurrect on the spot, with only half life, half chi and up to 30 seconds of invulnerability. The alternative means resurrection at the map's safe spot which usually means the tavern. Supposedly there should be a hit in the player's statistics, called internal injury, as a most serious death penalty but I didn't reach that far. I guess no one will, because regular healing potions seem to be reducing the counter for internal injury and players use them in almost every fight.

Players can work together towards their mutual goals by banding together in parties of up to six. There are some notable agro issues, as creeps will always attack the first character they see. It implies agro range exists, but once their target has been acquired, other players can hit the monsters at will, without the fear of ever receiving damage. No agro management leads to raw power groups, limiting team strategy to dealing damage as fast as possible and nothing else, an outdated perception of MMO mechanics. When multiple players hit the same target, experience and skill points are divided amongst the participants, the best damage dealer receiving the most. Somehow this also applies to dividing loot drops among party members so you can't just mindlessly steal everything on the ground.

There is an in-game gambling feature where you have to pay 15,000 gold in order to open rather rare fortune boxes picked up from regular loot.

I found an interesting option available while talking to the guards. One can place bounties for the heads of other players, in the form of large gold amounts and karma. This should spice up PvP a bit, although I haven't seen any in the starting areas; in fact you can't attack players at all while being low level. Ten slots are available for outfitting items and pets, though class restrictions will make most items unusable by your character. It's a huge turn off that one can't properly enjoy finding a rare piece armor or weapon. At latter levels pets become more useful than additional damage dealers, as they can be mounted for a serious increase in movement speed. Shops sell the most useless of items so the only way to improve your equipment is by trading other players. However, this option is enabled only at level 10, when you can also set shop with up to six items for sale. While being away from the keyboard, players could still trade your character by this automated feature. Unfortunately, this trading system involves major real time scouting for the items you need and a lot of time spent online.

I can't help observing poor English writing and typos all over the already limited dialogue options. A lot of quests are available only after a certain level, but the NPC won't tell you this until you've specifically asked him. Since the dialogue options are still available after doing so, I found myself doing the same unavoidable mistake over and over, asking for forbidden quests each time I was in town. Dialogues have been taken lightly by the developers; why would you want to learn more about the game story when you can simply farm for levels? This is a contributing factor to the lack of immersion in Hero Online as the only thing you can delve into is the endless hack and slash stationary fights. Music tracks are short yet enchanting, but combined with limited character sounds lead to a repetitive experience.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, Hero Online pays tribute to the already outdated early Lineage endeavors. Without being able to surpass its former master neither in graphics, storyline, concept or gameplay, Hero Online looks like a second rate game doomed to failure. I would like to say different but I can't, as whatever good ideas the developers might have had got lost on the long journey towards implementing features into the game. However, it seems Hero Online is enjoying a fair amount of positive responses from Asia, but as a European gamer I can't relate to the whole oriental feeling and martial arts fantasy in the same manner, should that be the source of its success.