Rappelz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Rappelz | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | nFlavor |
| Publisher(s) | Gala-Net |
| Release date(s) | November 03, 2006 |
| Genre(s) | MMORPG |
| Mode(s) | MMO |
| Rating(s) | None |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Media | Client - 1.67 GB |
| Input | Keyboard, Mouse |
Rappelz (Korean: 라펠즈 온라인) is a free MMORPG published by Gala-Net, the distributors of Flyff, Corum Online, Space Cowboy Online and soon Accro Xtreme. It is based in a fantasy world dominated by three races of separate alignments: The Deva, guardians of light, the Asura, servants of the dark, and the Gaia, the protectors of nature. The game can be compared to games such as Lineage II.
Like Gala-Net's other MMO titles, Rappelz is free of subscription charges; revenue is generated through the sale of special items via the "Cash Shop". Purchasing Cash Shop items is not compulsory, though the FAQ implies that they may offer the player a distinct advantage in-game.
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[edit] History
The Open Beta version of Rappelz launched on October 2, 2006[1], with two separate servers available: "Tortus" , the normal server, and "Pantera", the more PvP/PK-oriented server. Those who had previously downloaded the Closed Beta version of Rappelz were not required to re-download the Rappelz client to play in Open Beta; however, extensive automatic patching is done by the client before Closed Beta players can enter Open Beta. Closed Beta ended on September 26, 2006.
Closed-beta characters were deleted at the beginning of Open Beta; however, characters created during Open Beta survived the game's release.
Open Beta ended with the official release of the game on November 03, 2006.
There are currently five servers in service namely, "Bahamut", "Tortus", "Yeti", "Lydian" and "Pantera(PVP)."
[edit] The Story
According to the game's backstory available on gpotato's site, the oldest race is the Gaia, and to assist them, the gods of Creation and Extinction brought two more races into the world. They were the Deva who represented the Light and the Asura who represented the Darkness. With this, there was a period of peace and stability in the world.
As the ages passed by, there was one among the Gaia who called herself "The Witch". Over time, she grew in tremendous power and with a ruthless ambition, rallied the people of Gaia to rebel against the world.
Not all the people of Gaia heeded this call however and the world was thrown into chaos. It was only through the combined efforts of the three races of Deva, Asura and Gaia that "The Witch" was finally captured and burnt alive. It was a victorious outcome of a unity between the three races.
Now at the present time, the three races continue to co-exist with each other in the world of Rappelz but dark rumors have surfaced about the second coming of "The Witch" and the return of her terrible forces...
[edit] Races
Each of the three races in Rappelz has three classes: a melee-oriented class, a magic-oriented class, and a "summoner" class whose abilities center around their pets.[2] Similar to Ragnarok Online, the character's class is not chosen at the beginning of play: instead, characters are of a generic "all-rounder" class until level 10, whereupon the player can choose how to specialize. Players are also free to select their character's gender at creation.
All characters can have at least one pet or ridable creature summoned at a time, but only the Summoner-type classes gain skills that can improve their pets.
Players are free to adventure anywhere in the game world, regardless of their character's race.
[edit] Deva
The Deva are a light-based race. They are defense-oriented, focusing on the powers of healing and buffing.
- Guide - The Guide is the starting class for the Deva. The skills Smite and Minor Healing are learned by this class.
- Holy Warrior - The Holy Warrior is similar to a Paladin. It is a warrior which benefits from additional healing capabilities and defensive buffs. According to many players, Holy Warriors are the best tanks in the game due to its high defense and hit points. However due to its slightly lower attack, monsters might sometimes attack other party members that are dealing more damage. This can be avoided by using "threat level" increasing attacks.
- Shield charge skill allows them to attack over distances without warning.
- Cleric - The Cleric is the main healer/buffer of Rappelz, sacrificing soloing abilities to aid allies. The Cleric has very powerful buffs that raises party member's abilities and powerful healing spells to save party members from dying. However, the Kahuna class also has some powerful buffs and a healing spell.
- Can get a spell to bring dead players back to life, others must use a scroll item to do this.
- Breeder - The Breeder is Deva's summoner. It concentrates more on creature defense buffs and raising creatures quickly.
- Holy Warrior - The Holy Warrior is similar to a Paladin. It is a warrior which benefits from additional healing capabilities and defensive buffs. According to many players, Holy Warriors are the best tanks in the game due to its high defense and hit points. However due to its slightly lower attack, monsters might sometimes attack other party members that are dealing more damage. This can be avoided by using "threat level" increasing attacks.
[edit] Asura
The Asura are the dark race of Rappelz, concentrating more on fast attacks and evasion.
- Stepper - The Stepper is the starting class for the Asura. The basic skills Charge Swing and Deep Evasion is learned by this class.
- Strider - The Strider is an assassin-like class that uses high evasion and attack power.
- Gets upgrades for the cross bow and good with fast attack weapons like dual-wielded daggers, but not as defensive as the fighter or holy warrior.
- Dark Magician - The Dark Magician uses spells that drain and weaken the enemy. Has a life drain spell, and gets the ability to transfer their hitpoints to others. Dark Magicians use spells that can do more damage than any other classes in the game.
- Sorcerer - The Sorcerer is a summoner that uses buffs that increase the attack power of their creatures. Sorcerers are commonly regarded as the strongest players in the game, able to solo entire dungeons with a good pet.
- Strider - The Strider is an assassin-like class that uses high evasion and attack power.
[edit] Gaia
The Gaia are a neutral human race who generally have mix of defensive and attack skills.
- Rogue - The Rogue is the starting class for Gaia.
- Fighter - Fighters generally do heavy amounts of damage at slower rates than the Asura Strider and have better defense. Along with the Holy Warrior they are the best at with standing getting hit. The Fighter generally does more damage than the Holy Warrior but has lower hit points and defense.
- They use "Spiracles" skills which require "Spiracles charge".
- They get long bow and spear skill boosts.
- Kahuna - The Kahuna is somewhat of a hybrid between a fighter and a spellcaster. Their attack spells are mediocre when compared to a mage's and must rely on melee for most damage. It is more similar to the Deva Holy Warrior than the Dark Mage in terms of damage dealing. Unlike the Holy Warrior, however, the Kahuna class lacks a high amount of hit points, instead relying upon bluffs and party members to remain alive. The Kahuna class lacks the same prowess in healing abilities that the Deva Cleric has, though several bluffs and a single decent healing spell allows them to sometimes replace Deva Clerics in the support role of large groups.
- Spell-Singer - The Spell-Singer is a summoner that has some attributes to help their pets, but has many abilities and attack spells similar to Fighter and Kahuna allowing it to fulfil many roles in parties. However it has no healing abilities, and unless able to be managed correctly, may be a difficult class for soloing.
- Fighter - Fighters generally do heavy amounts of damage at slower rates than the Asura Strider and have better defense. Along with the Holy Warrior they are the best at with standing getting hit. The Fighter generally does more damage than the Holy Warrior but has lower hit points and defense.
[edit] Game features
[edit] Action Icons
Generally most MMO's have generic actions built into the mouse clicks, for example attacking and picking up loot. Rappelz however optionally provides the use of icons for those actions; thus allowing them to be assigned to a hotkey. Some actions though are not available any other way and must be used through the use of icons (those available in the control window [3]) such as toggling PVP. Emotes, traditionally used through the chat window via commands using the syntax /command, are optionally available through hotkey usage.[4]
[edit] Force Chips and Soul Chips
Chips are items that players can use to significantly affect a battle by increasing the amount of damage the target takes for a limited amount of time. They come in two types, force chips and soul chips with different ranks which allow different levels of users to use chips while not overpowering them. Force chips increase physical damage (melee and ranged for example) while soul chips increase the amount of magical damage. (Healing is considered using Magical Damage and thus soul chips would improve healing.) They can be obtained by using rupees (in-game currency) or exchange of laks from NPC's.[5] However, it is much more cost effective to obtain force or soul chips via Laks.A Lak is the spirit from monsters and can be obtained by killing monsters while wearing the appropriate necklace.
[edit] Equipment Upgrades
Equipment in the game have their own level and can sometimes level up by means of upgrading. Items that are able to do this display a section at the bottom of their status window showing the upgraded status affects, allowing players to know ahead of time the quality of the equipment. By visiting a blacksmith, players are able to upgrade their currently equipped (and upgradeable) equipment for a fee. Thus a weak weapon or armour can be formed into a stronger item without having to sell it and buy a brand new one. The benefit to this process is when you can upgrade your current item to a purchasable item at a weapons trader, thereby saving money lost when selling and buying.[6]
[edit] Item Combinations
Rappelz has a system of item combining and reducing that incorporates both items and skills to make it work, usually involving an upgrade cube and the upgradeable item.[7]
[edit] Pet System
One of Rappelz's defining features is its Pet system. Pets are creatures that adventure alongside players, aiding them in battle. They come in many varieties, and can be made to fulfil numerous roles. Additionally, pets have many of the properties of player characters: they gain levels alongside their owners, learn different skills, and can make use of equipment.
Pets can be used by all races and classes: the only requirement being two skills, Summon Creature and Creature Control, which are available at level 5 for a total of 60 job points. The basic classes (Rogue, Guide and Stepper[2]) and fighter classes have little emphasis on creatures through the availability of creature affecting skills while the others, especially summoner classes (Breeder, Spell Singer and Sorcerer[2]) can affect creatures more greatly.
The game includes three basic pets, which can be purchased in any town; other pets can be acquired in-game by capturing them inside magical cards. Once captured, pets can be summoned and banished at will by their owners.
Upon reaching a certain level, pets can "evolve" to a different type. A pet evolves twice during its lifetime. Additionally, it is speculated that pets may learn skills in the future that will allow them to be used as equipment, augmenting their owner's power. There is also a feature known as "overbreeding" which requires a considerably longer time to achieve. Overbreeding grants pets with more/better skills than the ones learned before the overbreeding stage. Overbreeding begins after your pet can evolve but not allowing the city tamer to evolve it.
Some pets, like the Ornitho and Lydian, can be mounted by a player to increase movement speed. This is known as a "hired ridable pet". In the case of Ornithos, they cannot aid the player in battle and players are limited to a few hours of ownership, whereby the pet can be purchased again, similar to all ridable pets. For Lydian, they can only be purchased in the "Hidden Village", cost 20,000 Rupee's, last 3 days, and can not attack.
[edit] Current Pets
These are pets currently implemented or found
Basic: Basic pets are the easiest to acquire. Their card can be found in NPC vendors and their type can be found around Trainee's Island.
Common: These pet are harder to find. The cards are found in the loot of a creature's corpse.
- Orc: A goblinlike monster with a club
- Yeti: A white bear-like monster with a mask
- Red Pixie: A small fairy that glows red
- Blue Pixie: A small fairy that glows blue
- Siren: A beautiful woman
- Skeleton: A skeleton knight
Uncommon: Uncommon pets are not yet completed, however cards and creatures have also been found.
- Hawkman: A aracoix with a giant hammer
- Salamander: A red bipedal lizard (similar to the Lizardman)
- Angel: An angel
- Kentauros: A centaur equipped with a spear
Rare pets: Rare pets have not yet been implemented in the English version. However, they are present in the Korean version.
Ridable Pets: These are pets that cannot be permanently owned. Ridable pets are only accessible through a NPC vendor. Ridable Pets cannot attack but can be attacked
- Ornitho: A Horse and Raptor hybrid. These are the most common ridable pet available. 1,000 Rupees for 6 hours loan. The hidden village version is golden in color and lasts for 3 days.
- Lydian: A Lion with elvish ears and armour. These are more rare and are found only through the Hidden Village. 20,000 Rupees for 3 days loan time.
[edit] Game Masters (GMs) and Volunteer Game Guides (VGGs)
Game Masters (GM):
Rappelz's Game Masters are responsible for the day-to-day administration of the game, including tasks such as planning and running of events, bug tracking, testing, solving customer service issues, and answering player queries.
GM's are easily recognized by their [GM] name tag and their glowing aura.
Volunteer Game Guides (VGG):
Rappelz also employs unpaid volunteer players who have a vast working knowledge of the game, its environment, characters, races, bestiary, terrain, cities, items and more. They aid new players with directions, answer questions and escalate account or world problems up to GMs for resolution.
[edit] Reviews and Community reaction
Windows Vista support was added during maintenance on February 13th 2007, allowing all XP and Vistas OS's to easily run the game.
The main download file is rather large (approx. 1.66 gigs compressed) which may take up to twelve hours to download on a dial-up connection. A slight disruption in internet connection may end the download sequence. However, this problem can be simply rectified with a download manager.
Some users may encounter problems with the patching system. The patching process may freeze which requires the patch to restart from the beginning. Some users might not correctly get their version of Rappelz updated after a new patch is released. This may result in getting sent to the Abyss because the system mistakenly detects a cheat/hack by using outdated files. This may sound bad but in reality it only affects a small number of users and a reinstall of the game will fix the problem.
Characters may not transfer from server to server. As a result, characters from one server can not easily interact and battle with characters from other servers. However, this is similar to most MMORPGs.
The game also has fairly high (as of 2006) minimum system requirements, similar to other games such as World of Warcraft (see WoW's requirements for comparison). This can cause significant lag, especially in town areas, even on relatively high-end systems. New updates to the way the client loads characters have been added to help reduce lag under these circumstances.
The client apparently suffered from poor memory management, generally happening after an extended period of play, in most cases causing slowdown (or lag) so bad the user is forced to restart the game. This is reportedly fixed.
It has been suggested that with an 800 by 600 minimum resolution, the lag will virtually disappear. 800 by 600 resolution may currently only be obtained by editing a game file. (The minimum resolution that may be selected via in game menus is 1024 by 768.)
[edit] Soundtrack
Many fans of Rappelz agree that the ingame music is one of Rappelz's strengths. Like many other MMORPGs, Rappelz has its own soundtrack. However, Rappelz offer their soundtrack without charge. The Rappelz OST (original soundtrack) is found on the Korean main site: Rappelz OST Download page.
The music is in MP3 format and free to download.
Tracks:
- RAPPELZ: The main music of the game
- Pioneer of the Distorted Land: Music played on Trainee island
- An Epic of the Absolute Creature: Music played on the Horizon login screen (first)
- Breeze of Old Forst
- Morning Breaks of Rondoh: Music featured in the login screen of the beta.
- Crystal Mountain: Music played on the night Rondo login screen (second)
- Sleeping Ruin in the Bleak Land: Music played on the Laksy loging screen (third)
- Mythical Desert
- Dusk Kahthan: Music played in the Asura capital: Katan
[edit] External links
[edit] Official
- GPotato Game Portal
- Rappelz English Website
- Rappelz Korean Website
- Rappelz Japanese Website
- Rappelz Hong Kong Website
- Rappelz Original Soundtrack
[edit] Unofficial
- AlizarinHQ.com (Formerly known as ChannelNone and Rappelz.us)
- Rappelz MMOSITE
- Rappelz Fan
- Rappelz HQ
- Rappelz Online Trading Market
- Rappelz Fansite, where you can see pictures of armors
- Rappelz Forum for French-speaking community - Forum pour la communauté francophone de Rappelz
- Rappelz @ Spartan Command - Your #1 source of Rappelz downloads as well as the home of the Live Chat!
[edit] References
- ^ *News archive for gpotato.com, who only keeps current information available on their website.
- ^ a b c *http://www.rappelz.us/Classes/
- ^ * http://rappelz.gpotato.com/gameguide/begin_guide_control.php
- ^ *http://rappelz.gpotato.com/gameguide/player_guide.php
- ^ http://rappelz.gpotato.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=767
- ^ http://rappelz.gpotato.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=767
- ^ http://rappelz.gpotato.com/gameguide/player_guide_enhancement.php
