The Online Gamer Diary tells the tale of the online gamer and the online games he encounters on his travels. RPGDot wishes you lots of fun with this diary. Feel free to comment, ask questions or suggest new topics on this diary via RPGFool or mail us.

This time we feature:

The Gloaming
Some time ago a new online massively multiplayer RPG was brought to my attention. The name of the game is The Gloaming and you can get some info from their website. The game promises what any other new online game also promises, to give you more value for your money, with the slogan: It is The Gloaming you were thinking of when you wished there was a better place to be...
I've contacted the developer and was presented with a surprise. I will tell you all more about this in one of the next issues of the Online Gamer Diary.

Fighting Legends
There is a new wacky online world in the making and it goes by the name Exisle. It's not your everyday common world as this one consists of planes. Three planes to be precise, where the colors are bright and the creatures look odd. This is where Fighting Legends from Maximum Charisma Studios takes place.
Fighting Legends tries to combine role-paying with real time strategy and Maximum Charisma invented the term RPS to describe it, which stands for Role-Playing Strategy.

The Planes
The three planes are located above each other and are actually very big. It would take you hours to travel from one side to the other.
The planes are named, The Underplane, The Surface Realm and the Sky Realm. I'll leave it to your own imagination to figure out which plane is where.
The planes are divided into more than 150 zones, not including the hidden zones that are ... uh ... hidden so that you can discover them. To travel between the zones and the realms you can use a gate system.

The Clans
Exisle is inhabited by 9 different clans and each call one of the three planes their home. Each clan has it's own specifics and thus it's pros and cons when they go to battle. Also each clan has an advantage over an other clan, but there is also one other clan with an advantage over them so this should balance things out.

The Arachnin clan resides on the Underplane and are creatures that look like mechanical spiders that are very fast.
The Bearkat clan are catlike creatures who can stand great cold and reside in the cold hills of the Surface Realm. The speciality of a bearcat is techniq.
Another inhabitant of the Surface Realm is the BioMecha clan. Bio-mechanical creatures who try to survive in the swamps and jungles and are well known for their missile attacks and terrific armor.
Also on the Underplane dwells the Bone clan who bring forth diseases and plagues. What they lack in speed they make up in m-power attacks.
Humans are the third clan residing on the Surface Realm. As usual, humans are not good in anything, but then again they are not bad in anything either. They are the most balanced clan.
In the Sky Realm you will find the M-Clan. They excel in the use of magic and are a force to be reckoned with.
Another inhabitant of the Sky Realm is the Pyron clan. They like to use fire in combat and with it create chaos and doom.
The third clan living in the Sky Realm are the hollow-boned Rin. A wise and humble clan that use the nature force of Exisle and strive to bring their noble ways to all who seek knowledge. Martial arts and their talent for archery makes them fierce fighters.
The Wee reside on the Underground Plane. They are tiny blue creatures that just love to party. They can wield a sword like nobody else can, making steel and a good brew their best friends.

Each clan has 9 different units, which results in 81 different types of characters that you can encounter in Fighting Legends and you can choose from. Each unit will have some capabilities in either m-power (magic), melee attacks, missile attacks, speed or techniq and will excel in one of them. This makes sure that there will always be a unit to your liking.

About Strategy and Role-Playing
At the beginning of the game you select your base clan and your avatar from that clan. You start in the first zone which belongs to the clan of your choice. Your avatar has a special position in the game. It gains an extra bonus on all statistics and it can be resurrected when he or she dies. However the avatar is still able to die of old age as it will get older in the game.
Once the avatar is created you can start getting some units in your tribe. This is done by first creating a unit building structure from your base, which then creates units from your own clan only. Besides that you can also create defending structures, upgrade your units and research new abilities. When you decide it's a good time to leave the place you can pick up your base and place it somewhere else. However the structures you created will not be moving with you. Like in all RTS games your base needs to be fed with some resources. There are three of them in Fighting Legends: power oar, wind crystals, and shadow magma, which automatically accumulate when the base is build.

You can get units from an other clan only by trading units. So the brutal hack&Slash approach is not always the best way. If you can find someone to trade with then that might be very good at times. You can also trade items and other useful goodies from the game. This requires you to get into touch with other parties, which might even end up in the two of you teaming up to fight a mutual foe. But then again, when the other party is in no mood to talk then you could end up in a fight also.

At the moment you can control up to 16 units, but depending on how this works out in the game the number might change. From your units you can select three who you want to turn into a hero. Like the avatar, heroes can not die. They can be resurrected also which makes sure that you will at least be left with four units in total. Well that is when you actually decide to resurrect them. If you don't like your hero then don't resurrect him and choose another one. The same applies for your avatar. Once you do that and choose another unit as your avatar then you get the freedom to select an avatar from any clan. But you are still limited to be able to create new units from you starting clan only.

There will be a lot of questing in Fighting Legends. There is 1 big quest for each of the clans. But there are also smaller quests, rewarding you with items and experience and even your statue as a reminder for everyone else to see how good you are. Units level up because they finish quests and because they killed other units an or NPC's in the game. You can also gain relics from quests, which are a good way to improve certain abilities of your units.

When you decided that there is nothing left to do in the zone your in now, it's time to pack your bags and move to another zone. The NPC's get harder and eventually PvP, which is not possible in the first zones, will be possible also.

What's next?
Fighting Legends is scheduled for release at the end of the year. At the moment the anticipated pricing is $9.95, with the first month free. Before that time there are first some beta stages of which the first starts in June with only 1000 contenders. After that they seek a vast amount of testers so be sure to register at their site to be one of them: http://www.mcszone.com.
Every online game in the making promises to be different from that what's already there. Fighting Legends has enough elements to actually be different and might offer a fresh approach to online gaming. Now we just have to wait and hope that these elements will all fall in the right places and enriches us with an excellent game.