9you, a China developer, is prepping up their inventory with some rather spectacular looking MMORPGs. For now, the developer is better known for the turn-base MMO, Monster Forest SEA, in the English market. If I remember correctly, the Unreal Engine was never meant to be used for developing MMOs, as the source code is just for console games. Companies will have to do some heavy tweaking to make it suitable to develop online games. 9you is also one of the first, if not the first, to announce implementing the 3D feature into all their upcoming Free to Play titles.
2 of the 3 new MMOs using the Unreal 3 engine is in the works, with 1 being in the Closed Beta stages. I will be only briefly looking at the main feature of the games which can be considered unique, so pardon me if information seem lacking.
Well, this isn’t that Transformers, but I should say its quite close since the game’s name is City Transformer Online. This will be a sci-fi MMORPG, one of the rarer genre in the Free to Play market. There are 6 classes available, which you will be able to see in the trailer below. Every player will have their own “Transformer”, which can actually change into 3 different modes. The game is currently in Closed Beta now. Let’s take a look.
a) Guardian mode. Notice the small floating thing on the left. That will be the default mode of the Transformer. In this mode, the player will be given buffs.
b) Vehicle mode. The Transformer now will change into a vehicle, mostly bikes, as a mount for players to ride on.
c) Combination mode. The Transformer will now combine with the player to gain much stronger abilities.
d) Growing Transformer. Well, the Transformer will also level up and change its appearance at certain levels.
Players can also reassemble the Transformer’s parts to gain new abilities, the Transformers will also learn new skills and players wll also be able to customize how the bike looks in Vehicle mode.
The above information will be the main feature found in the game. Below is the current only available official trailer for City Transformer, so have a look!
One of the 2 upcoming titles from 9you developed using the Unreal 3 engine, Weapons of the Gods is based on a popular manhua (Chinese term for comics, manga). Its also the very first MMO in China to be developed using the Unreal 3 engine. There are no specific classes here, but there will be 6 different clans for players to join. Weapons of the Gods… hmn… Let’s just skip to these weapons mentioned in the title!
There are a total of 20 God weapons, with 10 of them being from the Gods (good side) and the other 10 created from pure evil, or you can call them Weapons of the Devils. Being from a manhua, all weapons will have its own story, but I will skip that translation part (I am lazy).
Since the pictures are too big, I will only post one an example. You can view the rest of the weapons here.
The Devil weapons each represent a bodily part of the Supreme Evil who was sealed up. Each of these weapons react to specific negative emotions and will unleash their full power when the wielder has the same negative emotion as them.
Here is one of the official HD trailers for Weapons of the Gods.
The 3rd title will be Butterfly Sword Online, which is also developed using the Unreal 3 engine. I have previously done a brief introduction on the game, so click here to proceed to that particular post. Butterfly Sword Online will be going into internal testing soon (for company staff).
Personally, I do think that City Transformers Online will be much suited for the English market. There is a lack of good 3D sci-fi MMORPGs in the Free to Play market, and Weapons of the Gods seem like a tough bet as most English gamers do not really appreciate the orient theme due to the saturation of similar genre MMOs.
