granado-espada posts

Sword of the New World celebrates their second anniversary

by Seraphina Brennan Jul 10th 2009 at 8:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Contests, Events, in-game, Patches, Sword of the New World, Free-to-play

Free-to-play MMO Sword of the New World, the game best known for letting one player control three characters at the same time, has reached their second anniversary. In true MMO style, the game isn't letting the event slip by unnoticed as they release a major content patch and begin a celebration, all in the name of the anniversary.

Nocturnal Sonata, version 2.9, adds a brand new unique player character to the mix. In Sword of the New World, players can control their own characters, their "family," or add in storyline characters called unique characters once certain conditions are met. This update adds Claire, the small girl who can pack an insane punch. Claire comes with the ability to hold a two handed weapon with one hand, and her specialty is... well... cannons. Adding her to your party, however, requires you to earn the trust of one of the game's NPCs and Claire's adopted brother, Claude.

The update also includes the new raid instance, The Secret Tower (as shown above), as well as a new buyable dungeon, Bahamar Ancient Dungeon. For the full details, check out the patch notes available at the Sword of the New World main site.

Tags: 2nd-anniversary, anniversary, bahamar-ancient-dungeon, celebration, contest, event, granado-espada, nocturnal-sonata, patch, patch-2.9, sword-of-the-new-world, the-secret-tower

World of Warcraft and The9 make China's top ranked supercomputers list

by Matt Warner Jul 2nd 2008 at 9:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, MMO industry, News items, Academic

Real-life scientists recently overran World of Warcraft and wrapped their brains around trogs and intracellular signaling. One mind trip from the mad scientist James Wallis intrigued us with his experimental astronomical calculations in Azeroth. However, there is another real science underneath the brilliant theory-crafting bringing these worlds to life and players across the Globe and that is the computer infrastructure.

One entity responsible for this science is the The9, a leading MMORPG operator and developer in the Chinese market, and with over 5.5 million World of Warcraft subscribers that's going to take a lot of computer power to feed the PC baang frenzy. According to the UK edition of The Register, The9 ranked on China's Top 100 supercomputer list taking half the top ten spots with 12 machines overall in the top 100. The 1950–core clusters taking the top spots were built by HP, and when taking all 12 machines into account The9 has a least 18,032 cores of processing power dedicated to keeping MMOG players all across China fixated on: World of Warcraft, Soul Ultimate Nation, Granado Espada, and Joyful Journey West.

Tags: blizzard, china, computer-infrastructure, granado-espada, joyful-journey-west, mmog-server, soul-ultimate-nation, subscriptions, super-computer, the-register, the9, world-of-warcraft

Sword of the New World expands with Nocturnal Sonata

by James Egan Jun 7th 2008 at 3:30PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Expansions, Sword of the New World, News items, Free-to-play

IGN has a scoop on the new 'Nocturnal Sonata' expansion to Sword of the New World, an MMO also known as Granado Espada in Asia. Sword of the New World is a free-to-play title brought to North America and Europe by the K2 Network. Massively has looked at this game in the past and found it to be a quirky title; IGN describes its setting as 'the European Baroque period if it was designed by a modern anime artist'. Sword of the New World becomes even more surreal given that its old world setting is juxtaposed with a techno soundtrack.

Surreal qualities aside, the game has some interesting features, particularly the use of collectible UPCs, or Unique Player Characters. The concept is somewhat comparable to the Heroes in Guild Wars. You control up to three characters at once who are members of your 'family'; certain NPCs for whom you've successfully completed quests offer themselves up to be added to your family as UPCs and called upon to aid you in your adventures. They provide access to special hybrid classes with unique powers to match. There are over 40 such UPCs, and two more are initially being added in the Nocturnal Sonata expansion: Vincent Rio (who inflicts damage with music) and Baek Ho (martial artist extraordinaire). Yet more UPCs are to follow in the coming months, adding new gameplay possibilities to Sword of the New World. The Nocturnal Sonata expansion will be released on June 25, and closely follows the 'The Land of the Dead' expansion released only three months ago.

Tags: collect, collectible, expansion, fantasy, free-to-play, granado-espada, guild-wars, hero, heroes, ign, k2-network, k2-network-inc, land-of-the-dead, nocturnal-sonata, npc, quest, surreal, sword-of-the-new-world, techno, unique-player-character, upc

Sword of the New World gives players their Manifest Destiny

by Kyle Horner Jan 25th 2008 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Expansions, Sword of the New World, News items

If you're a Sword of the New World player who's been looking for more stuff to do in his -- or her -- game of choice, then you're in luck! What's being called "The long awaited expansion" to Granado Espada (Sword of the New World to us Stateside) has finally hit the game. It's name is Manifest Destiny, which also happens to be your families' claim to the new lands by order of Queen Vespanola.

The expansion (which is free) contains more content then you can shake your weapon of choice at and a bevy of tweaks. Most notably are the two new areas Gigante Island and Bellem's Relic, a bunch of new items and an event that is very uniquely titled "Andre's UFC" or "Andre's Ultimately Fabulous Competition" Well, we can't say that Sword of the New World lacks a personality when it so obviously has the quirky thing down pat.

Tags: free, free-to-play, granado-espada, k2-network, queen-vespanola, sword-of-the-new-world

IAHGames changes Granado Espada model again - returning to free-play

by Tateru Nino Dec 27th 2007 at 10:00AM

Filed under: Fantasy, Historical, Business models, MMO industry, Sword of the New World, News items, Free-to-play

After announcing that Korean MMOG, Granado Espada, would be commercial on 30 August, 2007, Asia-Pacific operators IAHGames have announced that the MMO will be free-to-play at some (as yet) unannounced date in the Asia-Pacific region in the very near future (The game is, as we understand it, already free-to-play in North America, having gone free-to-play on 21 August 2007). That's Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam.

Granado Espada (also known in North America as Sword of the New World, where it is operated by K2 Network), won the 2006 Korean awards for Best Graphics, and for Game of the Year. Reviews and responses in North America have been more mixed, but Granado Espada does provide some interesting departures from more regular MMO fare.

Tags: asia-pacific, business-models, free-to-play, granado-espada, iahgames, k2-network, news, sword-of-the-new-world

Sword of the Nude World

by Mike Schramm Nov 2nd 2007 at 10:44AM

Filed under: Historical, Screenshots, Bugs, Exploits, Sword of the New World

You type in your username and password on the logon screen, the game loads, and you see your character... in the buff. No, you haven't been hit by a keylogger-- if you're playing Granado Espada (a Korean MMO known as Sword of the New World in North America), then odds are you got hit by some kind of weird hack or hoax. Apparently, players logged out of the server on October 20th, and then logged back in to find their characters naked (NSFW, even though pics are blurred), complete with.. umm.. anatomically correct graphics.

How incredibly strange. Random Battle suspects that it's a hoax of some kind, but changes like that have to come server side, so either a player was able to dial into the server and change models somehow, or a wayward mod messed with something as a joke. IMC Games, the game's maker, is reportedly looking into the incident. In other news, Sword of the New World's subscription rate among males has skyrocketed. Go figure.

Tags: breaking, bug, censored, exploit, granado-espada, graphics, korea, models, nudity, server-side