During a recent trip through the internet tubes I came upon news of beta testing for a Mech MMO called Age of Armor. AoA is one of the many MMOs being created in Asia that are quickly rushed over to the US to , apparently, cash in with the MMO boom that’s happening now. At the time I was reading the news I had this game confused with another Mech MMO called Exteel, which is one of those free to play but you gotta pay MMOs, so I didn’t really want to go deep into the information but I said what the hell lets see what’s going on and I dove in. And boy did I hit a copper mine.

The first thing you see when the site loads up is a pic (the one above) of a robot with a strong resemblance to a Transformer known as Bumblebee. When I say “strong resemblance,” I mean… damn! that’s freaking Bumblebee, the same color, the same head with the horns, the same car mode, its a VW Bug! You cannot say that this is not “inspired” by certain toy/cartoon series when you see this folks.

After a bit of exploration I found out that one of the features this game will have is the ability to have transformable Mechs. This is a cool feature to have in the game to add some spice to the mix, borrow concepts from every Mech show that has ever been made me no care, but when you are going to promote this new feature you added to your game… don’t make look exactly like the source you are borrowing it from. Now the weird part about this is that they have the word “Transformers” and have pics of Mechs resembling several Transformers characters all over the place, they even talk about Transformers at one point like they have acquired the rights to use all of this, but they don’t make one note of that happening in their news page or anywhere else at all. Wouldn’t that be THE news to put up before anything else? Maybe stuff like this is treated differently in China. 

            Jazzz like Mech.

      "What up my little bitches."

       Jazz, Transformers(2007)

Anyway, lets wait and see if this will actually turn into Transformers Online, stay the way it is with transforming Mechs that look severely similar to Transformers, or they will end up having to change the look in the end. Actually this might be some sort of international rights vs. US rights thing, this company got might have gotten the rights from Takara-Tommy to do it over there so the “International version” will keep the look while the “US version” has it changed if they don’t get the rights when it comes over to the US. If this is actually the way it will turn out and the game gets released here whoooooooo! There’s going to be a lot of American folks that will be looking for the Chinese version rather than the US one when the game is finished. So everyone, get your Ebay accounts ready!

Enjoy some more pics!

                   Dino...mech Slag?

     "Me Slag thinks Slag need to talk to lawyers."

       Dinomech "Slag" Robotmode. 

    They even borrowed the sword...

     F-15 Vehicle mode for a Transforming Mech.

        The even borrowed the laser gunpods!

Age of Armor website.