Rise of Legends is the recently (within the past year) released sequel to the popular Rise of Nations. Big Huge Games and Microsoft collaborated to create a playable, enjoyable RTS game. This game is set in a fantasy world, with three races competing for supremacy. First, there is Vinci. They are the most human-like race, known for their inventive genius (named after Leonardo Da Vinci). Second, the Cuotl race. They are a very high-tech, yet somehow strangely natural, race of powerful cyborgs. Third, Alin. Alin is a zerg-like race with a large amount of low hitpoint units that you can happily fling at your opponent, much to his chagrin.

Gameplay: (7). I was pleasantly surprised that the game runs very smoothly. Compared to the newly released RTS game, Paraworld, it is like being on cloud nine. This game offers a plethora of user-friendly options such as completely customizable hotkeys for nearly everything you can think of, making it easy to adapt to your personal playstyle. There is very little delay in units reponses; micro plays a key role in each and every game of RoL. However, as you can surely guess, compared with our beloved Starcraft and Warcraft III, this game only gets a 7 out of a 10 point scale for playability.

Graphics: (8). If you have a $3,000 alienware computer with a killer graphics card, feel free to turn your graphics all the way up and lean back in your chair as you watch a beautiful movie. This game was very well made, with graphic quality far exceeding that of Age of Empires III or Paraworld. The engine used to make this game seems different from the one used to make Warcraft, making them somewhat difficult to compare in this department, but do note that Warcraft III graphics do not have much on RoL.

Online Competition: (3). This is the true downfall of RoL. At any given time during the day, you will find between only 20-150 people logged on to the Gamespy-hosted server. Gamespy does a relatively poor job as the server, contributing to the low player volume on this well-made RTS game. However, there is a decent sized cult following for this game, made up of some decent gamers, so there is competition to be had. Bottom line is, BNet would smack down Gamespy 3-0 in a best of five series. What would we do without Blizzard?

If you are tired of Starcraft (is this possible?) and Warcraft III, this game should be on the top of your list for new games to try. Below are some links for those interested in checking out the RoL scene or purchasing the game.

GameReplays.org - Main Community Site
RiseofLegends.com - Official RoL site
GameStop - Purchase game from GameStop

As it turns out, I am lucky enough to be playing the Burning Crusade beta. So I’ll probably be blogging a lot about it =)

Anyway, the first thing I have to say, is that it is AWESOME. If you like WoW, you will LOVE the Burning Crusade. Outlands is very large. Just the first zone alone feels like its about 3 or 4 times the size of the barrens. Hellfire Citadel is great. 3 bosses per side, takes about 45 minutes to an hour, and the gear is really nice. Basically, once you get into outland, unless you are in something insane like complete tier 3, you will be replacing nearly all of your gear by level 63 or so. Every zone also has PvP objectives, which is great for people like me who love world pvp. Also, the PvP objectives vary from zone to zone, and they arent lame like silithus pvp.

The new talents are sweet as far as I can tell, everything is different encounter wise. What I have noticed, at least as a druid, is all of the previously easy fights have gotten harder and all of the impossible fights are very possible now. I can’t speak for every class, but as a druid, pvp seems to be way more balanced. Feral is amazing, balance is really good now as well, and resto…well resto does what it is supposed to do I suppose.

Basically, look forward to a great game coming up in January.

Hello, students! I finally got around to working on a new design and this is what I came up with. Many thanks to my incredible faculty and staff for smacking me upside the head and giving me some great advice on which direction to go with this thing. Alot more content will be available this time around, and there will be many more opportunities for the student body to become more involved with the University. As I’ve stated in the forums, I would love it if we got some people uploading some vids to Youtube so we can have more videos in rotation. Also, feel free to leave comments and suggestions in these comment sections or the main forums. Thanks again, and keep looking here for new posts, as most faculty will be posting regularly here on many different things.

So with that said, say goodbye to that old ugly layout and welcome to the future of Starcraft University!