Outwar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Outwar | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Rampid Interactive |
| Release date(s) | November 2002 |
| Genre(s) | Web-based MMORPG |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
| Platform(s) | N/A |
Outwar is a web-based massive multiplayer game developed by Rampid Interactive, a company based in New Hampshire. Since its beginning in 2002, there has been controversy surrounding the game and its means of gaining popularity. This controversy has since been subdued and the game has garnered a fanbase that has sustained for almost 4 years.
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[edit] General
Outwar currently has over 140,000 active players. Players create an account (a monster, gangster, or popstar) and gain power using various methods. Receiving clicks from a "secret link," unique to each account, was old method of gaining "experience." Today, the secret link has become relatively obsolete, and its direct involvement in gaining experience has been removed. Instead, most experience comes from character item attachments (ie. Elemental Set(s), God Items).
Once an account has gained power and advanced in levels, it will earn a specific amount of money per turn (every 60 minutes). Character items may also affect the account's money bonus. Money may then be used to purchase weapons, armor, or special skills (extra power), thereby increasing the player's strength. With the equipment, their chance to succeed when attacking other characters increases.
The traditional Outwar game counted each month as a new "round." This was accompanied by a "Competitive League," in which users competed for the top position each month and received cash and item prizes. However, the Competitive League was ended after the 23rd round. Eventually, Outwar dropped its round count altogether and chose instead to use a theme corresponding with its expansion pack. The current (unofficial) round as of December 2006 is Round 50 (since November 2002).
[edit] Crews
Players may start or join a "crew", a group of characters. Crews have hierarchical ranking systems, with a single leader on top and new members generally at the bottom. Ranks indicate crew management privileges and priority, usually determining the items a crew will grant its member. Privileges can be granted to any rank in the crew, allowing more than one omnipotent leader to exist. Crews provide players with protection, because they aid in attacks and allow raids that drop items in order to complete "sets" and gain "god items."
[edit] Outwar Terminology
Acronyms and terms are used on the Outwar site.
- EPT (aka CPH): Experience gained per turn.
- RPT (aka Rage): Rage gained per turn.
- Max Rage: The maximum ammount of rage you can have at the same time.
- Critical (aka Crit): Percentage, the higher the more chance you have to do a Critical Attack, which increases the damage you do.
- Rampage (aka Ramp): Percentage, the higher the more chance you have to steal twice as much money and exp in player vs player attacks.
- Block: Percentage, the higher the more chance you have to block an attack. There are skills (Protection, Fortify, Tome Of Shield Wall) to increase this stat. Altough it can't get any higher than 45%.
- Mob: A reference to a single player enemy within the explorable areas of Diamond City. Mobs range in difficulty and level depending on the area you are exploring.
- Crew: A collection of players working together in a small community consisting of up to 200 players. Crews are able to attack the after mentioned gods and boss spawns as a group and are able to war amongst each other. Crews can obtain several benefits which can aid individual crew members and the entire crew while raiding.
- Points (aka Pts): The basic currency of Outwar. These can be bought from Rampid Interactive through the Outwar site at rates of anywhere from 444 points for $20.00 USD to 6,666 points for $300.00. These points can be used to give your character boosts to various in-game aspecs, can be used to upgrade your crew, or to gem items (see the following on gemming). These points can also be traded for items with other people. A player can also receive points from bounties (see the following on bounties)
- Gem (aka gemming): To gem an item is to spend a given amount of points to increase the stats of game items by a pre-set percentage. The first gem (green) increases stats by 10% for a cost of 20 points, the second gem (blue) inceases the stats an additional 15% at the cost of 50 points, the third gem (red) increase the stats by an additional 25% for a cost of 120 pts, and the fourth gem (white) increase the stats by an additional 10% for a cost of 200 pts. Items can also be ungemmed, refunding a percentage of those points to the person ungemming.
- DCer: A player who explores the area of Diamond City and attacks Mobs to gain character experience. There are many players willing to offer items or points for people who get them experience when they otherwise could not play the game.
- Sets: Sets are combinations of certain items that when equipped provide a boost in attack and defense statistics to the player. They can obtain these items through attacking spawn mobs or by raiding and turning in artifacts dropped by the boss that the crew has raided. Sets include Berserking, Dissimulation, Extremity, Cobalt, Gangland, Symphony, Oblivion, Octave, Osteology, Government, Elemental, Champion, Decay, Training, War Hardened Armor, Holy, Destruction, and Noc.
- Gods: This group of items is obtained by raiding and defeating Boss or Guardian spawns.
- Boss spawns, which yield superior items, are: Chancellor Fangore, Lord Sandelman, and Blackhand. Guardians are separated into levels. Level 1 Guardians are Synge, Rancid, Terrance, Zertan, and Quiver. Level 2 Guardians are Garland, Tylos, Threk, Jazzmin, and Sigil.
- Potion Gods: They are known as this because a player can use the appropriate potion and do double their damage in the raid (stated in parentheses next to the corresponding Guardian). They are: Lord Varan (Holy Potion), Lord Narada (Arcane Potion), Lady Ariella (Shadow Potion), Lord Suka (Fire Potion), and Great Lord Ganeshan (Kinetic Potion).
- There are also 5-man-raid Guardians. These have a maximum of 5 people in the raid, making them very difficult to defeat. They are: Smoot the Yetti, Lord Sibannac, Bloodchill the Grizzly, Ganja the Stone Golem, and Ag Nabak the Abomination. Older Outwar players will recognize the first 4 as old monsters in the Wilderness before it was removed.
- Bounties: Any character can post a bounty with paid points on another player/crew. Others will then proceed to attack the player, and earn points, if the hit is good enough. Many times, a powerful account will bounty the accounts ahead of them in rankings to bring them down, thus giving them a better chance of catching up. Bounties are based on a system; 50% of successful attacks will yield 1 point, and 20% of attacks resulting in a "Rampage!" will award the player 2 points. The last attack on a bountied account yields 3 points to the attacking account.
- Skills and Skill Trees: There are three skill trees- Ferocity, Preservation and Affliction. Each school has 7 skills. Once a tree is chosen, you are limited to learn the skills in that particular tree; unless you "reset" your skills, which can be done either by visiting a mob in Diamond City, using 100 charges (received by having people click on your unique link), or by paying 400 Outwar points. There are also 7 main skills, three that change by profession (Monster, Gangster or Pop Star) and 4 that are the same for everyone (Empower, Stealth, Teleport and Indestructible Bag)
- Skill Points: These are the basis of skills. Starting at level 10 and continuing in level increments of 2, you gain 1 skill point that you can put towards any skill that is unlocked for your level.
[edit] Servers
Servers are represented as subdomains of outwar.com. The game originally began on a single server (www). Since then, there have been 2 other servers added, torax and fabar. The original server has had its prefix changed to "Sigil." Tensions and competition exist between players of different servers, but conflict is often overshadowed by separate intra-server problems.
Though none exist now, there have been alternate "mirror" servers. Mirror servers, instead of providing a separate game, were preferred because of their superior speed. Past examples include console.outwar.com and svr#.outwar.com.
A beta server was created following the launch of Outwar's "preferred player" program, with the intention of providing exclusive previews to updates. However, the beta.outwar.com fell out of usage, and eventually was taken down. Now test.outwar.com is used mainly by the Outwar administrators to test new features and additions to the game.
A new server called "Zimbob" will be released within the next two weeks (as of October 26). More information on this at the bottom of http://www.rampidgaming.com/war_of_zhul.php.
[edit] Controversy
Outwar's secret link phenomenon has gained it a very bad reputation. Players of Outwar will oftentimes go to forums and try to trick people into clicking their secret link. Some forums, including those of Winamp.com and newgrounds.com, have made Outwar into a banned word, so that people would not be able to link to it.
On the Outwar site they provide examples of how to trick people into viewing an Outwar website, such as, a 'Meta Refresh' tag in HTML and entering a fake link in an instant messenger chat and making it look as if it would lead to a different website.
To overcome this, users will often create a page which redirects to their Outwar page. It is also commonly seen in AIM chat rooms by bots, posing as links to pornography. Due to this, it is common procedure to use a Windows hosts file to block the website, in order to prevent the player from gaining experience.
In previous versions, gaining clicks was the primary means of power and influence on Outwar. Yet, the importance of gaining clicks has been eradicated since the introduction of items, which increment experience automatically.
