Voyage Century Online

Infobox VG| title = Voyage Century Online
developer = [http://www.snailgame.net/ Snail Game]
publisher = IGG
engine =
released = December 22, 2006
genre = historical MMORPG
modes = Multiplayer
ratings = 8.1 [http://mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/overview/gameID/278 mmorpg.com] player reviews
platforms = Windows: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows XP, and Windows Vista.
media = [http://voyagecenturyonline.com/download.php Download]
requirements = Intel Pentium III 500 MHz, 2.5 GB Hard Drive Space, NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX400 or above
input = Keyboard, mouse.

"Voyage Century Online" (航海世纪/王者世紀) is a free nautical MMORPG developed by Snail Games and published by IGG, the distributors of Myth War Online. It is set in 17th century Earth and features accurate historical representations of several coastal cities. Players are not required to choose a career path at the beginning of the game. This gives players a rather varied gameplay in which you can either specialize in one skill and trade for resources, or make use of all the skills. (i.e. You are strictly a tailor and want to make clothing. You can pay someone who can fight to gather wool for you, or you can learn to fight and gather it yourself. etc.) Combat occurs both on land and on the sea, where players risk the threat of pirates when venturing further from the more populated areas [http://vc.igg.com/getting/index.php?ac=81 Game Introduction] . The game profits off of optional cash shop items that are available for players to purchase with real money [http://vc.igg.com/mall/mall.php "Item Mall", payed for items] . Unlike many other MMORPGs where players can only succeed through battle, Voyage Century Online gives players the option of embarking on several unique professions. The game is very similar to Pirates of the Caribbean Online.

History

Prior to its English launch, Voyage Century Online was available to players in China, South Korea, and Germany. An alpha test open to 1000 players began on the English version on December 8 2006 and an open beta version was launched on December 22 2006. A warm-up event was staged the day before the open beta launch where players could take pictures of their characters with the GMs. The game's full version was released April 8 2007 [ [http://igg.com/aboutigg/aboutigg.php A Timeline of IGG Events] .]

hips

There are three types of ships in Voyage Century: the Battle Ship, Raider Ship and Merchant ships. The battle ship is able to hold the most amount of cannons and can take the most amount of damage. The raider is the fastest ship and can hold the most amount of sailors. The merchant ship is the slowest ship of all and does not do well in battle but it has the highest loading capacity. Players are able to own any number of ships. There are 10 levels of ships along with a special, beginner-only ship called the "Dragon Head Gunboat". Each type of ship is leveled up differently. The Battle Ship is leveled by fighting other ships in the battlefields. The raider is leveled up by exploring and spending time at sea and the merchant ship is leveled by trading. Once a ship has met the requirements, players must gather or buy the necessary materials needed to upgrade the ship. The Dragon Head Gunboat is a newly introduced ship which is given to new players. It is roughly equivalent to a level 5 battle ship and can go very fast but has a somewhat limited loading capacity. Also, you can encounter steering problems with the gunboat.

Ranks

The table below shows what ranks are achievable in Voyage Century Online. It also includes what nation, reputation, and silver is needed to gain them. Ranks are needed to wield certain weapons and armor. In order to get to a higher rank, you must have a certain amount of reputation.Reputation plays a great part of Voyage Century. Reputation is achieved by log books (from discoveries), treasures (from treasure maps), completing various quests, and sinking ships. Higher reputation will also cause your name to become more blue than others [ [http://vc.igg.com/getting/index.php?ac=10&aid=94 Description of Noble titles and Reputation] ] [ [http://vc.igg.com/getting/index.php?ac=10&aid=95 List of Noble Titles] ]

"'= In the above image, the Level 0 Pirate is actually Wanderer, not Vagrant""

Logistics system

The logistics system is full of players who produce raw materials or craft goods that can be sold for a profit. These professions include: miner, logger, farmer, fisher, blacksmith, tailor, alchemist, and shipbuilder [ [http://vc.igg.com/getting/index.php?ac=10&aid=83 List of Skills, Description] ] .

kill/Stunt system

Like Runescape, skill levels, or the sum of them, determine a player's level. Each skill is currently capped at 120, and skills, with the exception of Voyage, is capped at level 31 unless promoted into the second phase. Players can promote a maximum of eight skills, after that, players must obtain a skill promoting book (either from the item mall or other players) to promote other skills. Stunts are subskills [ [http://vc.igg.com/getting/index.php?ac=10&aid=316 Description of Stunts, or subskills] ] within a skill, once a skill gets to the end of phase two which is level 100 you can then promote the skill into phase 3, and continue leveling that skill up to level 120.

Examples of some skills and their stunts [ [http://vc.igg.com/getting/index.php?ac=10&aid=316 Description of Stunts, or subskills] ] :

Voyage
*Alert
*Full Sail
*PursuitSea Battle
*Cannon Fight
*Grappling
*RammingEloquence
*Purchasing
*Negotiation
*Vending

Battle system

While any player can wield a weapon, the battle system creates characters that excel in combat. This system includes combatants on both land and sea, and also consists of pirates. The pirates are not a big threat, unless you are totally ambushed. There is always flotsam and jetsam on the water for you to pick up. Also, as you are on the high seas, there is chance of imperial ship attacks. "Imperial" in this case means attacked by country's ships. Depends on amity, you should stay clear of ships unless you want to kill them. Notice also that the high seas is a PvP area, so you can get blasted to kingdom come by Royal Highnesses, and the super gangsters. So, stock up with the newest stuff you can get!

There are 4 ways to fight a sea battle:

Cannon fight

In arming your ship, there are several types of cannon to choose from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The normal cannon gives a balanced range of attributes, whereas others are more specialized - The howitzer cannon has the greatest firing range but smallest firing angle, the buckshot has the widest firing angle but low range, and the quick-firer has the highest firing speed but lowest firepower. The higher the cannon fight level, the higher level cannons one can equip. Cannonballs differ too.

Grappling battle

Grappling in battle means boarding an opponent's ship. The screen will be switched to a scene of a grappling battle where players can win by eliminating enemy sailors,the captain, damage their mast or they can cut themselves loose. Land fighting performance and sailor amount is vital to winning. If a player fails to grapple the enemy’s ship, there is a 20 second delay before another attempt at grappling is allowed. Putting points in the stunt grapple will improve accuracy and will allow you to equip better grappling guns. Grappling is great for raiders because of their high sailor capacities. However, only the captain and few of his men can board. That means everybody will not board. So, you have to be of a very high attack level to actually survive boarding a ship.

Ramming

The simple process of ramming another ship to do damage. A ram must first be bought from the shipyard boss and equipped. Larger ships and faster sailing speed will increase ramming damage. Ramming does damage to the hull only, and it is very useful when taking out a lower level ship in one blow.

Mines

Mines have the potential to do high amounts of damage to massed enemies, but can also do damage to friendly ships. There are many different kinds of mine, each with different attributes. There is a 20 second delay after the placement of a mine before it detonates.

Land Battle

There are four different types of weapons you can use for land battles:swords, axes, falchions and guns. Each has its own special abilities and advantages, one is often suited for one type of battle more than another, but unfortunatly axe and gun users cannot compete with falchion and sword users at higher levels, although a sword user will be reluctant to admit it, falchion is widely excepted by high level players to be the best weapon in both 1v1 and group battles.
* Sword has the lowest attack but has the hardest hitting ultimate skill, and is the most accurate.
* Falchion has average attack but has low accuracy, with 20% more defense.
* Axe has high attack but is quite slow, with -20% defense.
* Gun has extremely high attack but low accuracy, with -70% defence.

Sword is 2nd only to falchion for 1 vs 1 PvP. It might be for captain duels, but you'll get mugged by the others. Falchion is best for killing mobs and boss's because you can hit all targets around you with the soul of sabre skill (get it at level 61). Otherwise, you can go "hyper" and destroy all enemies. Axe is best known for its special skill Rage Of god which does a hit on the enemy with 50% more damage with a 100% strikeback, which is a lot of damage if you have high attack, and falchion give a bonus 20% defense. However, it has some setbacks like accuracy. The axe usually hits stationary objects, objects walking away from you, and objects walking sideways. The gun is best for the runners and is best to use it when you are in a team of people where you know you are protected, because you will die easy when you have gun out because of the -70% defence. You might want to shoot someone and then turn and run for your life.

Skills chosen for each weapon also effects the style it performs best in. Weapon skill has four subskills for each weapon type and three for barehand. Bare hand experience is gained by fighting normally, preferably with or without a weapon. Barehand level affects a character's hitpoints, dodge (when a weapon isnt equiped), accuracy and running speed. Experience is gained by causing damage to enemies and a bonus is given for finally killing the enemy.

iege

The game hosts a number of port cities that are able to be "sieged" this means that your established guild, can own a port, and level it up by puting materials into it and it will give your guild the ability to buy materials or cannonballs and sometimes items from the item mall, depending on which cities and how high you level it up to. the siege day includes a bidding process in which the day before you have to talk to an NPC as the leader of a guild and place a monitary bid, at some point before the next day a prompt will come up letting you know if your bid was accepted or if someone else bid higher, making yours obsolete. If your bid is accepted, you and everyone in your guild will automatically have a "Guild Task" in which any hostile guilds can ruthelessly attack any member from your guild, no matter how dramatic the difference in level is, as long as both parties are above level 32 in seabattle and barehand. this is when your guild takes action, banding together to protect each other, This is the time period, up to an hour before the sieging starts, to set the deopt ship, a destroyable team spawn in which to gather forces on the high seas and bumrush the port city's offshore. Guild ranks Director and up start inviting allies to help in the siege during this time as well(3 directors, 1 vice-leader, 1 leader per guild)but be careful, if you're not, you might accidentally invite an enemy, who will die, spawn at the depot ship, and tell the rest of your enemies where it is, once the flag on your depot ship is destroyed, you lose the siege and the previous occupants of the city keep it. When the siege starts, all of the attacking forces meet the defending forces when they go into the offshore scene, the defending ships will be waiting for the attack, they fight it out in there until the attackers get some people on land. This is the land battle portion of the siege, when you run up a barbette for the city's flag and destroy it, if you succeed, you capture the city. Be careful though, the defenders can enter this scene and try to kill your attacking forces off, sending them to the depot ship, making another offshore scene necessary to get back to the flag.

Exploration system

The exploration system is one part of the game which has a lot of content and a huge scope for the player to explore. The exploration system is the long, vast, ocean inside Voyage Century Online. Thus, the exploration system holds a large amount of the file. This is because the ocean is much larger than the land in Voyage Century, a more realistic figure compared to other MMORPGs which may have little or even no seas. Voyagers may come across islands, passages, and many other interesting obstacles while sailing the seas. Some of these obstacles are storms, pirates and even other players. Luckily, there are also patroling NPC ships and privateers to help you. The ocean is actually a scaled down map of the earth's oceans with some variations.

Discoveries

In order to get discoveries, players need to sail on the high sea and look for sparkling spots near the shore, which means that something special is hiding nearby. Players can begin their exploration by clicking the explore button in the operation menu and input the number of sailors dispatched. Equipping higher level telescopes will help to find more findings. Players will acquire the discovery logbook of their findings if they find something. By giving the discovery logbook to the authenticator, the players can get some money and boost their reputation. Higher level discoveries offer more money and reputation, reputation is your social standing in the world. Reputation is used to gain higher noble titles, higher level noble titles allow a user to wield equipment that is stronger than a regular equipment. For example, an ensign command falchion that requires 11 falchion and level 2 noble title, is much stronger than a weapon that requires 17 falchion.

Criticisms

Although it has been given an overall positive rating [http://mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/overview/gameID/278 mmorpg.com Game Review] , there are still a number of problems that plague the overall game.

Stability Issues

Although it is updated regularly with bug patches and new game content, major bugs still exist [http://forum.vc.igg.com/viewthread.php?tid=14174&extra=page%3D1 Possible Game Fixes] . It is thought that the majority of these issues steam from the client being poorly coded and/or ported to its English equivalent, as is seen through random game crashes and run-time errors. For example, there have been cases of unintentional guild disbandments [http://forum.vc.igg.com/viewthread.php?tid=15743&highlight=Disband%2B%2B Guild Unintentionally Disbanded] which have been triggered by accessing certain parts of the game, and even entire character deletion to active players, without warning.

Customer Support

Customer support from the developers is both good and bad in different respects. One bad aspect is that there is very little and/or very confusing documentation on IGG's site as of to how to play the game and slow-if any response to inquiries and complaints. In particular, accounts that are hacked/hijacked are rarely recovered, even though IGG maintains an IP log of account activity. The game also suffers from poor translation into English (with dialogues and notices) both in-game and on the IGG website ( [http://vc.igg.com/support/faq.php Example, the FAQ is written with poor English). On the flip side, IGG does award those who invest heavily into their game with a priority support service representative available via MSN Messenger in their VIP program [http://vc.igg.com/news/newscon.php?aid=1087] . In addition, players who cuss openly on the game's public chat are often silenced if screenshots are taken of such activity.

Item Mall Overuse

The use of the tagline, "Navigate your way to adventure "for free" (Previously "Forever Free and Forever Fun") isn't necessarily fully accurate given that there are a number of items required for advancement in the game (example: Phase 3 Scrolls [http://vc.igg.com/mall/item.php?item_type=8&p=1] [http://mmorpg.qj.net/Voyage-Century-Online-Phase-3-skill-manual-now-available/pg/49/aid/113302] ) that must be payed for via the Item Mall [http://vc.igg.com/mall/mall.php "Item Mall", payed for items] , generating frustration and anger by players of whom may not necessarily have the monetary means to purchase such equipment. The Item Mall system in general has also been criticized as upsetting the balance of the game and wreaking havoc on the in-game economy [http://forum.vc.igg.com/viewthread.php?tid=7313] . In particular interest are double-XP scrolls (which give the player one full hour of experience points gained at twice its normal rate) [http://vc.igg.com/mall/item.php?item_type=8] , refining tools (which allows the player to add extra bonuses to armor, weapons, etc.) [http://vc.igg.com/mall/item.php?item_type=9] , and auto-scrolls (which allow the player to level skills without actually playing the game) [http://vc.igg.com/mall/item.php?item_type=8&p=2] . Refining tools are however limited in terms of probability of success based upon extent of refinement, thus giving some sort of upper limit on refinement [http://forum.vc.igg.com/viewthread.php?tid=26146] . IGG has partially made up for these criticisms by offering these items for free via its in-game tournaments and events (even at times simply awarding all accounts with various items) [http://forum.vc.igg.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=80] , making the items as rewards from killing certain in-game bosses, and by offering promotions where items are at a significantly reduced cost. Nonetheless, a simple observation by players remains that those who invest into the Item Mall have an advantage over those who do not (commonly referred to as "super toons") [http://forum.mmosite.com/topics/187/200709/04/46,1.html] [http://forum.vc.igg.com/viewthread.php?tid=20598] .

Racism

There has been in the past versions of the game in which several NPCs make what some could consider as racist remarks, such as usage of the phrase "The niggers here just make me sick!" [http://forum.vc.igg.com/viewthread.php?tid=6069] [http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/8164/jimkkkhp2.jpg] , and several quests which cannot be completed if the character has a Japanese-based noble title [http://forum.vc.igg.com/viewthread.php?tid=12235] (which may just simply be an offshoot of modeling an Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea). New patches have since corrected some of these typos and errors.

External links

* [http://www.igg.com/ Official English site]
* [http://vc.woniu.com/ Official Taiwan site - Simplified Chinese]
* [http://mmohub.org/2008/voyage-century "Voyage Century" Review on MMOHub.org]
* [http://vc.igg.com/getting/index.php?ac=81 Game Intrduction, English Site]

References