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''Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted'' is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Virtrium and originally released by Artifact Entertainment as ''Horizons: Empire of Istaria''. Tulga Games, LLC acquired the game and all related assets on January 25, 2005 and sold them to EI Interactive July 2006.〔(MMORPG.com - Horizons sold to Entertainment Interactive )〕 On July 18, 2007, Virtrium LLC (Vi) acquired the rights to the game.〔(Interview - Rick Simmons - MMORPG.com )〕〔(Interview - Rick Simmons - Gamersinfo.net )〕 Set in a sword and sorcery world, the game allows players to be adventurers, crafters, or both, and features a struggle between the "living races" (including the players), and "the Withered Aegis", an army of the undead seeking to destroy all life. ''Istaria'' is unique among MMORPGs in that players may choose a dragon for their avatar. ''Istaria'' allows players to build non-instanced player communities with either multi-level underground dragon chambers or ground level communities. ==Gameplay== ''Istaria'' uses the race/class/level paradigm common to many role-playing games, as well as similar mechanics as other massively multiplayer online games. The goal is to join the forces of the ''Gifted'' together with other players against the evil hordes of undeads the ''Withered Aegis'', to build communities, repair broken structures, and solve lots of quests. Different from other MMORPGs in Istaria the player fight not each other in player versus player fights, only together player versus environment. To measure strength in player versus player is possible in a zone created for player fights, on the ''Isle of Battles''. The charm of the game is the great amount of adventure and trade schools that can be partly performed simultaneously. There are eleven playable races include Dragons in addition to the more conventional biped Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, and Half-giant races. Other races are less familiar, but typical of fantasy games: Dryads, Satyrs, Fiends, Saris (a cat-like anthropomorphic humanoid), and Sslik (an asexual non-anthropomorphic reptilian humanoid).〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Races )〕 There are 28 adventure and 20 trade schools a biped can chose from. The special feature for the bipeds is to be able to learn any amount of schools. Only one trade and adventure school can be active at a time. Each adventure class adds masterable abilities to the character which can be used in all other adventure schools, adding additional powers to the character. It can be changed between the schools as often it is necessary without disadvantages. The adventure schools split up in heal, mage and warrior classes and mixtures of them. Dragons have one adventure school and three trade schools and are totally different from bipeds. A dragon starts as a flightless ''hatchling'', in an epic quest they grow up to an ''adult dragon'' able to fly. In another epic quest series, dragons become older, reaching the point of ''ancient dragon'' with a lot more abilities as well. During the quest to adulthood dragons need to decide between two different factions called ''Helian'' and ''Lunus''. ''Helians'' prefer to magic in combat and are more friendly minded to bipeds. The ''Lunus'' prefer to use melee tactic during fights and are very sceptic to bipeds. The gift of flight is reserved to the dragons in ''Istaria''. The tradeskill system is of a very high grade of complexity. The three dragon trade schools are used to build lairs, scales, spells and crystals. The biped trade school splits up in schools to produce usable items: clothes, armors, weapons, jewelry, scrolls, potions, food, tools, spells and trade schools to build structures like: houses, guild houses, walls, workshops, silos, and consigners. There are about 150 different resources to gather from ore, wood, plants and animals, similar to Ultima Online. With higher levels higher tiered resources could be gathered, for example metal used for weapons and armors: ''Tier I: Copper and Tin'', ''Tier II: Iron'', ''Tier III: Steel'', ''Tier IV: Cobalt'', ''Tier V: Mithril'' and ''Tier VI: Adamantium''. The resources are refined using tools and machines to be crafted into final products. During assembly of the final products the craftsmen can apply techniques to color and for improved quality and attributes. For the production techniques and formulas need to be collected and bought over time. The craftable equipment, which can be of epic quality, is the base of any adventurer or craftsmen and is a huge difference to a lot of other MMORPGs where trade skills often play a subordinate role. There are over 2000 formulas and techniques a jack of all trades, ''Grand Master Crafter'', can register in their knowledge book. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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