Listmas: 2015 in MMO’s

Welcome to a 2015 list of all that is awesome and mmo, and maybe a little PvP as well.. you know, I needz me my killing. I should preface by saying that star citizen won’t be included… it won’t be released this year, or probably the next unless of course the sacrifice a few more virgins to the god of feature bloat and development hell. Either that or get him out of the scrooge mcduck style money bin he’s currently swimming in long enough to get the development on track.

Ahem well, enough with the pleasantries for now and lets begin with some more Listmas cheer

Albion Online

I have no idea why I’m interested in this title. It looks kind of Ultima online threw-up on a tablet and that somehow metamorphosed into a playable game. It has a full player driven style economy with gathering and crafting as well as localised markets to trade between. Personal housing system as well  as the creation of towns and selection for buildings. PvP control mechanics around buildable space that will be continuously contested. There is also an open class building style system with progression around completion of an achievement system. Combat style… ehh, not great. Top down and clicky but that is fun in it’s own way.

Of course due to its tablet vomit lineage it is available on a range of systems… pc of course but also mac, linux, ios and android… mmmmm…mmo playing in bed on a tablet sounds so wrong but I bet feels so right. and no… clash of clans doesn’t count for them feels.

Black Desert

Dat character creator…. *drools* wait, there’s a game too..

So, I’m guessing if you’re into mmo’s you’ve heard of Archeage. Lets take that, make it not suck, and you have Black Desert… hopefully. Large world with housing areas already built that you get to buy and rent from as well as some kind of instanced housing.

There is some kind of questing mechanics where you, obviously fulfil the needs of those with the shiny exclamation points but, it isn’t exactly tied into levelling here. Questing is more about maintaining a reputation balance between certain factions which reward stuff. This leaves levelling to be the domain of grinding mobs, endless killing the worlds inhabitants and… I’m actually happy with that. I’m over the restrictions of constant questing and at least this way you can get a group together to kill mobs wherever.

Castle sieging is there, looks competent and you get to rule over people in that province. Some kind of Trading system about gathering and moving around materials also lets people try to steal from the caravan. And yes, basic crafting although there is a localised market and storage style system that sounds interesting

The combat looks rather good too with the action combat style and minimal skills but varying ways to build your character. A combo style system as well to link abilities and create new, more awesome particle effects.

The issue is that it’s just unfinished so far, lacks polish and a bit buggy. It’s currently in Open Beta in Korea, the land of mmo’s lately, so it might be a while before it gets here. the development company is doing all the translation and regional publishing which is probably a good thing though so I do expect to be playing it later in the year… hopefully. If not I might be learning a little Korean..
My main question now is what the ftp implementation is like… should find out soonish i think, at least in the korean version. They have said it will be entirely cosmetic but I’ve heard that song and dance before.

The Repopulation

Another sandbox but this time in a sci-fi environment and from a smaller studio…. much smaller… with much less money and much less resources. And well, the visuals look like thats the case.

Anyway what they are doing is basically the successor to Star Wars Galaxies. Open PvP environment and progression system in a large growing world, just one planet at the moment but more planets are planned. Large nation and city building with mechanics around their operation and growth. An absolutely huge range of skills to learn from and use and a large player driven economy of a large number of crafting styles.

It’s your basic sandbox from an indie company, interesting concept but just coming down to execution. should be going into beta early 2015 and then release.

Camelot Unchained

I have been a backer of this project from the beginning and it’s great to see the progress it’s made over the year and just how open they have been with the process on the forums, twitch and through a lot of interviews.

About the game well, what’s more to say than it being the spiritual successor to DAOC. A new Realm v realm v relam mmo, solely made and designed around pvp with an open yet horizontal progression system about options rather than just power. It also focuses on a player economy with many systems around it that sound interesting. And of course there is a territory control system that is around owning and linking up land, building castles brick by brick, and then defending your claims.

It is the PvP messiah although, while me might see some kind of alpha/Beta/whatever modes during the next year I don’t believe we’ll get the actual release.

Shards

yeh… .. it’s … something. What it is, and will be I really have no idea but it sounds interesting. It’s basically a whole heap of personal instances where the person has created the environment, mosters, buildings and well, everything else as well as the mechanics that run the shard. It then mashes them all together so technically, the game is everything … but also nothing. I imagine many hours spent decorating my own place as well as exploring many others although, I’m guessing it will be wading through a lot of crap to find the few well designed shards.

Project Gorgon

The theme for 2-15 so far has been sandboxes for me, that’s just want I kind of want at the moment and Project Gordon is the sandboxyest of all the sandboxes. The one box of sand to rule them all.

There’s like a bajillion skills that all train individually and a bajillion inter-connected crafting skills that do so as well… like cheese making. Seriously, cheese making is something that might be planned that needs both carpentry and some kind of cloth. Then there is a weird mechanic around finding words of power through the combination of phonemes that have some huge effects.. like killing everyone around you.

Now it is incredibly indie, small company producing this huge idea sooo I don’t expect too much from them in the year to come. Maybe another kickstarter that will probably fund this time. Oh and it seems this one is entirely PvE.

Skyforge

Now what would the year be without one weird Asian Import and this one seems to be the standard style with amazing characters, effects, costumes and environments. They do like their games purity and who am I to abstain from that.

So far it does look like a standard themepark with the features there but where it diverges is the character progression style. It is a character bound, but global progression done ion such a way that you can progress your character to get more powerful whole leaving it flexible enough so you can switch into a variety of other classes when out of combat. The progression style while allowing this global development also has specialisations; you can take different paths to unlock new classes, or maybe a few passives or focus just your class and gain new abilities and options.

The combat looks fun and flashy, as it should with plenty of pixel effects to blind the retinas. Annnnddddd yeh…. Standard other stuff; dungeons with magnificently huge monsters, pvp arenas to suck at and grinding out mobs over, and over, and overrrrrrrr again.

Warhammer 40k: Eternal Crusade

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH

What’s to say.. a 40k AvA style mmo with several factions battling it out… let me just wipe the drool from my face and surroundings. I love 40k, LOOOOOVVVVVVVVVVVE and being able to romp around as a space marine, join the horde as an orc or just wonder at the idiocy of these mortals as an Eldar will be magnificent.

The combat so far looks tight and there are a good amount of classes as well as loadouts to pick from. So far in development it looks like a rather instanced style affair of fighting over individual maps but eventually I’m guessing this will connect up to a larger, and amazing awesome mmo of territory fights and of course  killing some Tyranids… who I wish I could be. Seriously devs, I would pay a lot to nom people…

Anyway, I’m not sure if the release will happen this year as it still looks rather early in development, hopefully though we can get some awesome modes to have fun with during the year.

Shittiest of the Year

Civilization Online

The once great Jake Song but now corrupted by the bowels of microtransaction hell has been in charge of the development of this project over the last few years and yeh, probably bitter that they seemingly abandoned Archeage, turning it into a  cash grab bonanza and hackers delight to focus on this title instead. Of course it looks terrible. You can already see the facebook style design within the title and the pay to progress style of play. It also reminds me of Age of Empires online, a type of game no one wanted, no one liked and no one will hear from again.

ehhh… at least it’s not coming to the west.

• 2015
• Listmas
• mmo
• mmorpg
• pvp