The GateWars (MMORPG) Review
The GateWars (Previously known as “StarGateWars”) is an Free Text-Based, MMORPG that has been live since early 2005. At first glance, this game doesn’t look very entertaining do to its lack of Graphics and Sounds. However if your addicted to games that allows you to upgrade, upgrade, and upgrade even more, in a variety of ways in the game, like Attack Power, Defensive Power, Covert Ability, and so on, this game would be pretty decent.
I have joined The GateWars in 2006 mostly because it was based on the series StarGate. For those that isn’t familiar with StarGate, it first came out as an Movie in 1994 with Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson, and Viveca Lindfors. To sum it up as little as possible, the ‘StarGate’ was discovered in 1928 Giza, Egypt. In the present day, Daniel Jackson, an Doctor of Archaeology, has been ask to translate the Egyptian hieroglyphs on the stone ring’s cover stones, amongst with other researchers. Ultimately the characters in the movie discovers that StarGate is a device that establishes a wormhole that allows people to travel between Earth and a planet called Abydos, which ruled by an alien posing as the ancient Egypt god ‘Ra’. A team has been assembled with Daniel and ‘Use-To-Be-Retired’ Colonel Jack O’Neill to go to Abydos and explore the planet. The popular show StarGate SG-1 picks up where the movie has ended, the Plot episode of SG1 explains that the StarGate doesn’t just travels between Abydos and Earth, but the Stargate is a devices that connects to thousands, and thousands of planets that supports life.
Mostly why StarGateWars has been change to ‘The Gate Wars’ do to legal issues with MGM owning the rights to the StarGate Series. During this time of changing the game do to this issue, the Admins has to given the players a more flexible ability to customize their own race. So instead of just picking a Race, like Tauri, Asgard, Replicators, and Goa’uld, players can choose their own Race name, Technology Path, Character Personality, and Social Structure. Ultimately this change made this MMOs theme very generic.
This game does truly takes the phrase ‘Text-Based’ quite literally. The only big ohhh-ahhh part for the graphics is the log-in page, header image and the navigation menu, everything else is in plain text. This is where I think this game might become very weak, it’s with the lack of graphics, it’ll become a disappointment to players if they are looking for full blown graphics like World of Warcraft, or L.A. Noire. I personally don’t think the graphics in this game is a bad thing, but it may be an acquired taste for some gamers. It’s very easy on the eyes with its dark theme, which I really like, especially if you are logging in and playing every day. I think it could handle a little more pictures in the game, but it’s nice and clean the way it is. I rate this 2 out of 5 Stars.
There are NO sounds what so ever in this MMO, considering this is a Text-Based type of game, it is quite nice not have any sounds or music. It’ll make the game more annoying when you are reading some of the in-depth parts in the game if there is any kind of music or sounds.
For the type of MMO this is, I’m giving the Sound: 5 out of 5 Stars
The Controls are quite easy and simple, you just need a Mouse and Keyboard. The complicated part is figuring out what to do in the game. There’s nothing much to say but easy controls, 5 out of 5 Stars
Like many other RPG games out there, The Gate Wars may be a little daunting and confusing of how to play it at first, so familiar yourself with the rules, updates, and official forum. This game is very generic and simple once you familiar with this game, and may be quite boring at times. I think the type of game may struggle for the kind of game it is, it’s mostly text and numbers after all. I personally think it gotten worse when MGM pinned this game for copyright issues with the Stargate series. However I seen there are at least 200 players online, and there’s a great community on the official forum so there is signs of life in this MMO.
In the game you generate Naquadah (the in-game currency), Untrained Units and Attack Turns every half an hour. You spend Naquadah (Naq for short) on just about everything in the game, you can get more naq every half of hour by training your untrained units to miners. You can get more untrained units be upgrading the production through the training page.
Attack Turns can also be generated along with Naq and Untrained Units every half an hour, its pretty obvious, to attack other players to get their Naq or Units with these turns. But do keep in mind to train some units to Attack type units and build Attack Weapons before using Attack Turns. There’s no point to attack someone with nothing. Of course other players can attack you back, so be sure to build up your defence units and weapons. Building Covert and Anti-Covert units up is also essential for building your account so you can sabotage other players Attack and Defence weapons as well as preventing other players to sabotage you.
It’s not just about attacking other players, you can create and join alliances, so that way, instead of one on one attack, you can have a war with other players, not mentioning helping each other in the alliance to recover and/or grow. Another feature is that you can become somebody’s commander or officer. As an officer, your Commander can give a percentage of his or hers Naq income to you. You can give some of your income to others to if you are wanting to become a Commander yourself. Some Commanders actually sees if your active by private messaging you, and if you don’t reply in a time frame (like 2 days) they will ‘dismiss’ you. If you don’t want to become a Commander, there is a feature to stop anyone to become your officer. There are a few other cool features in this game, but this is the majority of the important key features of this game.
Now you may be having questions about system requirements for this game, the beauty about how simple this game is it doesn’t need a high performance PC and an high-speed internet connection to play this game (although it may help), you just need a good web browser. There is no downloading or service fees. The Gate Wars works great for dialup internet users (I use to be one) and works with most web browsers like Internet Explorer and Mozilla FireFox. I’m giving the gameplay 4 out of 5 stars.
As stated before The Gate Wars is REALLY simple through the graphics and sounds department, and the theme is generic, however it is PC and internet friendly, and simple to play once you figure out the rules, you may get addicted to games (like this one) if you are into upgrading a lot of aspects throughout the game. But if you are looking for something like World of Warcraft or Runescape, this game isn’t for you.
In a overview score I’m giving this game 4 out of 5 stars.
Written by Dillon Flueck
Link to The GateWars: gatewars.com
Published on July, 11, 2011