Star Wars Combine: Web RPG review

With the success of The Force Awakens and yet more new movies in the offing for the popular space opera franchise, this website should be just about due for something of a renaissance.

Creating a character is a fairly easy process, with a short wait for approval required. Once inside the game proper, though, things become a little more involved. The game community is frankly excellent, but the main criticism of this game relates to its accessibility. It is very difficult for a newbie to get started in the galaxy.

Remedying this a little is the fact that many factions will actively petition the player to join them, offering incentives to do so such as credits, ships, training. This helps a great deal as advice is offered in abudance, it can all be very overwhelming.

The thing to bear in mind is that the factions need new players more than players need new factions. Even players who idle for months on end will rarely be kicked. Factions need members and so kicking new players from their rosters only hurts the faction itself in the long run.

This can mean that some factions will simply recruit and leave the new player to their own devices. This, of course, has its good and bad points. Others will take a more active interest in their new members.

While it is not necessary to be online for hours each day, or even to log in every day, the game as a whole will work better (and factions will be more receptive) to those who can log in regularly and are active. Go idle for too long and you might find your character lost without much in the way of resources. The perils of relying on those early new players handouts from factions.

There are three main aspects to the game. It is possible to wander around the galaxy or individual worlds, interacting with the game and earning credits, xp and equipment. Anohter option is to roleplay on the games forums and earn rewards that way. Finally, a large community has grown around the game, which includes roles for artists, graphics designers, etc. In addition to this latter option are a number of jobs which the game designers contract out to players for appropriate rewards.

All in all this makes for a very interesting game, but it is harmed a little by the aforementioned accessibility issues. This is the root cause of a high attrition rate amongst new players. In turn, this high attrition rate fosters a high percentage of long term players who view 'noobs' with disdain.

As most of the new characters are old players, they already have a network of contacts and cliques with whom to interact. This makes finding roleplaying opportunities harder still for genuinely new players.

All in all an excellent game with incredible depth. This is, however, a game that will demand a great deal of new players. Having said that, a proactive attitude and a willingness to work hard to carve a niche for a new character can go a long way to fixing any issues.

Weblink: www.swcombine.com Rating: 4/5

RPG review: Trisphere

Type: Web RPG URL: http://trisphere.net

Trisphere is a browser based web role playing game. Essentially, the player creates a character and hunts monsters or engaging in gathering and crafting activities.

Fairly standard fayre for web based role playing games. What is not so standard is the excellent character creation and development system.

Players create a character by selecting two classes to combine together. Selecting Rogue and Wizard, for example, creates a 'Shadow Mage'. A Mage and Knight creates a 'Spellblade'. Each of these combinations has its own skill tree which can then allow the player to improve their character as they gain skill points upon levelling.

This is a simple, yet deep and powerful system, allowing players to tinker with their characters as they wish. Being able to spend gold to reset the skill tree encourages experimentation.

If there is a criticism of this game, it is twofold. Levelling is a grind as players are required to kill monsters repetitively in the same areas to level up. And second there is very little opportunity to interact in any meaningful way with other players - other than an item market and chat bar.

With a larger player base that might encourage further development from the creator, this could become one of the best web rpgs out there. At present, though, the developer appears to have abandoned this game in favour of other projects. Some die hard players remain, still taking great joy from the well programmed engine.

Verdict: 7/10

Check for Traps: The Roleplaying blog...

Okay, so why have I created a roleplaying blog?

I am a middle-aged guy (in my 40s) who used to roleplay (tabletop style) every week with his friends around 10-20 years ago. Then we call kinda settled down, and getting everybody together to abuse dice became much harder. Not to mention the fact that some fools had given the hobby up entirely, citing it as 'for kids'.

So, I began to roleplay online. MU*s were my thing back then. I worked shifts and had lots of spare time on my hands when the sites were most heavily populated (2 hours roleplaying a scene at 3am (GMT)? Sure!). Having no girlfriend made me sad, but gave me a lot of freedom when it came to arranging my life around my (then still very active) roleplaying hobby.

Then I found a girlfriend. No matter what some might say, that is a million times better than roleplaying. Sorry.

Even now I am a married father of one, I still have a little spare time, and I do miss roleplaying. So, I tend to do a bit of forum-based roleplaying and the odd few hours on my console.

Really, that has all given me some really broad-spectrum (if a little dated) experience of the roleplaying hobby in general. As such, I have decided to share my copious, but perhaps slightly outdated views on the subject with whatever roleplayers decide to read this blog.

Welcome.