The Pantz Blog

 Ventyra is a diceless, play-by-post roleplaying board set in an original fantasy world. Sounds pretty standard, right? Well, not so much. Ventyra has a few unique systems in play that set it aside from the rest. There is a level system with a cap at 10. Every 100 or so posts (for the moment), you will level up. You will notice that as you level up, more unique features will become available to you on the board.

There is also a currency system. With every post (in selected forums), you gain some gold. When you have enough gold, you can visit the Marketplace to purchase vouchers that will improve your character. These vouchers include new weapons, spells, armors, mounts, and everything you will need to develop your character to be whoever you want to be. Roleplayers can choose to take part in the main campaign of the board, or do something completely off on their own. This is your world, this is your story. Now come tell it.

Ventyra is not released just yet, but it will be located here when launched: http://www.ventyra.cjb.net

 For a summary of the first main plot, see below:

 It is the Age of Lost Hope in Ventyra as once again tradgedy strikes. Now a secret society of sorcerers have invaded the country of Avria, slaughtered the High King and turned his best man against him and the country. Now with the treacherous Lord Gavusir on the throne and his ruthless Order of the Black Flame terrorizing the country of Avria, who will step up to bring peace once again to the lands?

In just one day a lot has been done. Aside from some CSS rendering issues with the profiles every is going well. Most of the board's "look" is in a decent state which brings me into the next stage: Writing. Yes, now I must write all of the rules, guidlines, character limits and sheet templates, and all that other good stuff. Fortunately I have a few good hands if I need some help with story plots and such. A look at the board's features, below, will show you how different it will be than your average play-by-post:

- A Working Marketplace w/ Bank (Yes, to buy things that will improve your stories and characters. Epic, I know.)

- Inventories (See above)

- Member Reputations (To be taken seriously, if a character is a bit of a hero, give him some points. If not, demote him to a villain! Or just leave him an average justmejoe.)

 - User Created Groups that will serve as Guilds for roleplaying (The Order of the Black Flame are the villains in this tale, and you can join them.)

- Life after Death (Something I've never seen any board do before. If your character dies, they will go to the Underworld. Here they could make a deal with the Keeper of Death and become a Grimling that walks the earth at a deadly cost.)

- Custom Races and Classes (Avria will feature it's own races/classes to fit the story, but that will certainly not restrict users from being who they want. It will just further their options.)

 - Finally I'd just like to point out that with the Marketplace there will be different special abilities players can own or create their own. For example, the "Black Flame" is a story element used in Avria, but also a weapon. Users can obtain this ability here. Thieves may also have a chance at robbing the Avrian Bank. There are many little things found on this board that make it different than any other. Keep reading for more updates and expect to see the site officially launched within the week.

Well it's been a well since I've done some roleplaying in the medieval fantasy genre so lately I've begun work on a new roleplaying project called "Avria". Avria will be a play-by-post forum rpg that I hope will be like nothing else available online. After many failed attempts at keeping my "Ventaiuh" rp series alive, I've decided to encorporate all of my crazy ideas into one project, along with some new ones of course. Anyway, the rpg will take place in Ventaiuh but the main story will focus on the country of Avria. The synopsis below,

It is the Age of Lost Hope in Ventaiuh as once again tradgedy strikes. Now a secret society of sorcerers have invaded the capitol city of Eraglow, slaughtered their King and turned his best man against him and the country. Now with the mysterious Lord Sirus on the throne and his ruthless Order of the Black Flame terrorizing the country of Avria, who will step up to bring peace once again to the lands?

There is much more to Avria then this simple plot, however consider this a basic preview of the first main campaign of the board. A much more vivid post with more updates can be expected from me soon, which will also address some help I may be looking for. Anyway, the teaser poster is below:

 Opener:

 So I enter the world of Deicide and the first thing I'm presented with is this opening sequence. A figure is running inside a church, cloaked by some sort of clothing similiar to an assassin's. The figure suddenly haults and rips off the cloak, revealing to be the default character model. We now switch over to the character creation screen. I liked the opening, I was impressed right off the bat. Character creation is nice, choose gender, choose hair, choose face, choose color of armor. While the only race you can choose to be is a human, the game's story doesn't talk much about other races aside from being monsters, so I suppose Deicide is a human-dominated world. One small problem I had with character creation was the lack of any (or a diverse selection of) color for hair. While it isnt too much of a problem, the standards of today's MMOs are simply more advanced. Next I'm randomly dropped into the town of Vail. The entire map of Deicide is just a group of small towns separated by trails, some towns being off limits until you reach a certan level. As I explore the small town of Vail, I must admit the audio for this game is amazing. When you walk passed a dog it barks, past a horse and carriage you here gallops, and passed a group of ducks you hear faint little quacks. Impressive to say the least when considering the lack of good sound in many games. The town is also set up very nice, I noticed a pig pen where a group of little piggies were sucking on their mother for food. Dogs walking by barking, and the NPC population in this game makes up for the small player population. Random NPCs walking by and riding on horse and carriages are all over town and are definitely a realistic site I was very pleased to see. There was no tutorial in the game however they gave me a little pixie called May that would follow me and give me tips and useful information that I was told with stick with me until I reach level 10. The game was made in Korea and so the translations over to English are a bit rough at times however you get the point of what they mean.

Game Dynamics:

So I talked to numerous NPCs throughout town but no one would give me a quest. I then decided to head outside of town and do some test fighting. In my inventory I found a training sword, training bow, and other training gear such as armor and gloves. They give you a bow and a sword because of how skills in the game work. Instead of directly picking a class, you have to earn that class depending on which skills you build. You have 4 default attack types such as dark magic, white magic, ranged attack, and close combat attack. These four skills also have levels of their own and depending on which you build up, you can eventually earn an official class. For example, I decided to train my close combat attack and dark magic, which ultimately can lead me to be a Blade Mage. If you were to train close combat attack and white magic, you could eventually become a Paladin. I liked this system because it lets you decide who you want to be, however makes you actually train and learn in your profession to really become it. Low level monsters in the game consist of Beholders and Carnival Cats (which resemble rats but sound like pigs). They were relatively easy to kill with my sword, even easier with my fire spell. All seemed fun until I decided to explore some more. There weren't many players online and it was the middle of the day so I assumed the population was generally small. While I was training a player riding a horse road by and killed my monster. He cursed me out and called me a newb, which was kind of a turn off considering it was the first person I met in-game. He didn't stay long and road off while I continued training. Leveling wasn't too hard and combat was generally fun. It was simple but the movement and sound effects of the game gave you that, "this rocks!" feeling. I got to level 6 pretty fast and decided to head back into the village of Vail looking for a quest. After some failed attempts at finding a quest I met an older player who informed me that there weren't any quests. Well there were, but because the level cap on them were so high it felt like there weren't. Not even she was high enough a level to do any of these quests which I believe the minimum level were 30. Don't quote me on that, but she seemed like a very experienced player seeing as she had a horse which costs at least 1 mil. I continued on training and reached level 7, keeping my combat levels equal as I go. I traveled to another town called Miras which was highy unpopulated and had about 2 NPCs. Everything else were just Hatchlings and Zombie Dogs. Two monsters that at level 7, I couldn't take on. Hatchlings (baby dragons) were incredibly annoying and spit fire balls at me that did a ridiculous amount of damage. Being it that I couldn't kill them too fast yet, I then realized how difficult it was going to be to get to the next level killing Carnival Cats. I eventually did get to level 8 with the help of another player, and had quite a nice time doing so. My fellow player wasn't a newbie but was restarting and our combined spells looked quite cool hitting the cats. 

My Complaints:

My only general complaint was the lack of anything to do. On the website they advertise being like no other MMO in having much more to do than the usual hack and slash. This confused me because without being able to do any quests until who knows when pretty much means the only thing to do is kill monsters. Especially with the lack of any mining. smithing or crafting. The girl I was talking to said she quit because she was just bored with the game. Now on the website they talk about castle seiges and epic battles so I assume it gets better with the more levels you increase. However with the large groups of monsters taking you on, it's pretty hard to survive at low levels without a friend. One question that comes to my mind is money. The in-game currency is called shild and the only way to earn it is really selling equipment you pick up from monsters and gold as well. Both of which is in relatively small amounts unless you kill high level monsters, which takes time. With prices for horses being so high as 1 mil and the strong anti-cheating policy the game has, I can only assume a lot of players exploit their way to being rich.

Overall View:

Despite the difficult nature the game seems to present I have only been playing for a day so I'd say that it likely gets better and I will (hopefully) begin to see the difference this MMO has from others. After playing for the small amount of time I have I did enjoy it and will continue to play. For those looking for a self-developing system and nice graphic-complementing sound effects, I'd definitely recommend Deicide.

Biggest Cons:

- Lack of any profession skills (crafting, mining) to make money with.

- Lack of any quests to do until insanely high levels. 

- Small population and major cheating problems.

Biggest Pros:

- Self-developing system of combat classes.

- Ability to ride mounts without donating. (something I love)

- Nice multiplayer combat.

- Very good sound quality that works fine with the graphics.

Twitter. Yes Twitter. It bothers me, worse than MySpace ever could. And why is that? Because despite harsh criticism MySpace constantly recieves, it actually serves a purpose. Yes, I like MySpace, quite a lot actually. Though this Twitter thing just bothers me. It bothers me because it actually does have 2 purposes.

1) To allow other people to stalk your life.

2) To force feed information into people's minds that they could care less to know.

 I mean look at the description of Twitter on thier homepage. "Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

ARE. YOU. SERIOUS?!?!?!

Okay, maybe that was a little too much of a reaction, but seriously, they just described useless and made it sound ... useful! The average Twitter post consists of this, "Eating.", and that's about it. I mean if I actually had a Twitter I would probably post something like this:

7:30 AM - "Eating Breakfast."

7:31 AM - "Still Eating Breakfast."

7:32 AM - "Yep, still eating breakfast."

7:33 AM - "Nearly done now. Then I think I'll go get seconds."

Actually, that is a pretty vivid example of the common Twitter page. They basically took the "Moods" of Myspace and Facebook and made an entire website based on it, without the cool little smilies. I mean you can apparently make photo albums too but hey, what site doesn't allow that? Heck even here on my NEaBlog I can do that! It just bothers me how easily entertained our people are becoming in this day and age. When it comes to the point where people are just posting what they're doing 24/7, that's pretty bad. I mean you honestly don't have anything better to do than inform people on your every move? They even have these people called "Twitter Addicts" that spend the majority of their day updating their Twitter. So let me get this straight, they sit on their computer and update their Twitter with the same thing all day? I can imagine it'd look very similiar to this:

12:00 PM - "Updating my Twitter."

12:01 PM - "Updating my Twitter."

12:02 PM - "To be in more detail, I'm sitting on my computer, updating my Twitter."

Imagine this continuing for 8 straight hours and you've gotten the general view of a Twitter Addict's average day.

I mean seriously, how did these people get this site so popular? Maybe I should go make a site where you can sit around clicking an update button all day to satisfy your needs to click buttons. Now that'll be fun, eh? Oooh ooh and you can even decorate your button to be customed to you! Now THERE's an idea! Man, the next time you guys see me, I'll be famous!

- Thanks for Reading!

You know what bothers me? Ancestries. No, seriously. It's like in American if someone asks you "what you are", you may reply, "Oh I'm Irish and Italian". Wrong! That is incorrect! Unless your parents were born in Ireland and Italy, you are not half of each! People born in America, are American. That's your nationality. If your ancestors came from Ireland and Italy, then that is your ancestry. I myself have told people that I'm Irish, German, English, and Polish and they call me muts. Why is that? Because they think that my parents were prostitutes just experimenting with their DNA. But no seriously, it's seems like this is just an American thing. Seeing as America is the country of immigrants, however, I guess it'd make sense. If you ask a person in England what they are, they'll most likely tell you English. If you ask somebody in Scotland what they are, they'll most likely tell you Scottish. Though if you ask an American what they are, you can pretty much get anything. However, people should remember that it's not your nationality, it's your ancestry. Of course this doesn't always apply, but you get the idea. Okay so I'm done that little rant, yes it probably bored you to death but hey! Remember, we're all human! (except for GraBug)

Look. At. The. Eyes. (They're telling you to keep reading my blog!)