Amazon Games just called time on the Throne and Liberty Beta, giving us a sample of the chaos we’re all about to unleash on an unsuspecting world.
Just over a week ago, players spawned into the Throne & Liberty Open Beta, taking a few tentative steps closer to a September 2024 launch. The recent wrap-up of Open Beta gave us all a closer look at the latest adventure from Amazon Games and NCSoft, as well as a chance to explore the vast world of Solisium. Now, the outfit behind Lost Ark and New World has mountains of metrics and plenty of decisions to make before unleashing this upcoming free-to-play MMORPG upon the world, while we can mull over all the hype.
The Numbers Look Good
SteamDB tracked a peak player count of over 61,000 players during the testing phase, and it’s unsurprising that Throne & Liberty Open Beta was well attended. From the early trailers until today, NCSoft’s latest doesn’t just present well in trailers. The Unreal engine powering this brand-new title builds a stunning set for our latest quest. A sweeping cinematic opens proceedings, dropping players into a non-descript town, a haze of memories, and an intuitive tutorial. It’s a common opening refrain from any NCSoft MMO but this iteration proceeds to throw your avatar into an utterly stunning, if generic, depiction of a fantasy town.
Cobbled streets stretch towards the local center, leading newcomers into crowds of NPCs and player characters going about their day. This all exists in an immersive world that doesn’t skimp on the details. Superb graphics might, again, be no surprise. Blade & Soul took my breath away when it launched, but the intricate audio direction and elaborate visual design set a precedent for the rest of the story. Even character creation manages to be both gorgeous and wildly detailed. Some back-of-the-napkin math brings up millions of possible combinations. Height, weight, eye color, chin width, cheekbones, wrinkle depth, heft, and hair all ensured I spent far too much time piecing together an adventurer before even swanning into the town of Kastleton.
That gorgeous façade sometimes slips a little when you look closely. Heading out to take on a variation of Kill Ten Rats results in bashing scarecrows and mollusks in a countryside that sometimes feels a little flat. All the while, the echoes of a hidden power ring in your ears, while you collect rainwater and jog mercilessly down a country road.
The size of this world and the superb environmental design don’t always make up for the mobs and monsters suspiciously scattered in wait or NPCs just loitering in place for a helping hand. It’s a design philosophy that I’d largely thought we saw the back of when Guild Wars 2 attempted to push us into a living world, but not so stilted that it draws you out of the immersion.
Dynamic Events and Combat Considerations
Despite the sometimes odd mix of cutting-edge graphics and aged design choices, there are clearly some fresh ideas in the mix. You can expect to see some dynamic events, from bashing mobs to larger-scale field bosses that require plenty of coordination to kill.
Combat, in particular, has a satisfying mix of options and seems to feel far more dynamic than I expected. Class archetypes are tied to weapon choice. While a small selection of stats influences how effective each is in your hands. Stack up Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, and Perception as you level up. Pick a weapon. The likes of greatswords, swords and shields, staff, crossbows, daggers, a wand, and more are available, by simply placing it in an equipment slot. Even better, switching between primary and secondary weapons is as simple as pressing a button, moving players quickly between class archetypes with no gating. Simply pick up and swing away.
The limited range of stats and free weapon swapping is decidedly reminiscent of Amazon’s New World. So, it’s no surprise that the action combat option leans towards this too. Throne & Liberty offers up an action combat and a classic walk-and-tab MMO combat scenario. The classic format is reminiscent of MMOs like Lineage, World of Warcraft, and Aion. Action combat feels like a well-intended rework. Players will remain burdened by a menagerie of skill bars, options, and attacks that come tied to particular weapons. The options are not overwhelming, but they remain cluttered in a way that reminds me of a decade ago. Movement is, thankfully, much more fluid. While NCSoft seems to have ditched the dynamic hotbar systems from Blade & Soul, getting around using the action combat controls makes Throne & Liberty an enjoyable hack-and-slash.
Movement isn’t just WASD and mouse triggers. Despite having to be dragged into the modern age in combat mechanics, movement in the free world is a genuine joy. Outside of combat, you’ll ditch the mount system for a transformation that makes travel a wondrous experience. Over wider reaches and open water, players can morph into birds, wolves, otters, and other critters to traverse the routes between new areas. It’s an opportunity to get out across a huge new world and experience it without having to acquire mounts. Aside from becoming an adorable little otter, you’ll also find it provides an opportunity to explore through a series of environments that feel interconnected. Leaping off a cliff edge and simply soaring isn’t new, but somehow the chance to become your own mount opens up the world in a new way from the outset and makes content like open world encounters far more accessible.
Progression
Getting out and leveling up in Throne & Liberty is helped immensely by the relatively small suite of tweakable character stats and a questing system that feels polished. Taking plenty of inspiration from modern leveling systems means power levels remain relatively consistent throughout, and well-paced quest lines meant nothing felt obviously out of kilter during the latest testing phase.
I’d note that the cutting edge of the power creep seems to be shunted into weapons and their aligned skills. Weapon upgrades in NCSoft games are notoriously punishing at endgame. While weapon upgrades and advancement systems didn’t feel excessively punitive during a few days in early zones, I highly doubt that will continue to be the case. That’s a worry that treads into the free-to-play business model that Amazon has selected for Throne & Liberty, and I can’t help but fear I might end up paying to guarantee that my next weapon upgrade won’t automatically fail.
That said, we haven’t seen a ton about monetization yet from Amazon or how endgame is going to play out. Throne and Liberty endgame seems to largely focused around PvP engagements and territory wars. Whether that’s huge castle sieges or PvPvE dungeons. While the scale of PvP Conflicts in Throne & Liberty might feel entertaining, what we’ve seen still lacks some of the flavor that ESO or even Aion did, at least quite yet. There is more to come and I’m intrigued to see how Sieges will end up unfolding, even if we don’t have really definitive factional differences at play.
Unfortunately, performance might need work before unleashing that content on the player base. Huge volumes of players weren’t always necessary to crash out Throe & Liberty, cause disconnections, or simply bug out the login screen. While we didn’t get the delayed actions or lag spikes that other players saw, It took days to get more than a few minutes of action before we got kicked out of Solisium, and I’m sure other players had it worse.
New Ideas and Old Foundations
Throne & Liberty is a mixed experience. Taken at face value, this expansive MMO is a stunning fantasy experience with tons to do and a solid set of systems behind it. There are plenty of things to love about the massive world, the detail, and the in-game systems that benefit from NCSoft’s genre experience. Graphics, audio direction, UI, character creation, and movement all just work seamlessly. Despite this, some design feels like it’s being dragged into the modern age. NPC interactions can be stoic and combat isn’t perfect. I’m left intrigued but still not convinced. Throne & Liberty is likely going to live or die by its endgame content, and that will rely on the guilds that choose to conquer Solisium. Hopefully, we will know what that entails soon, but for now, I’m prepared to keep an eye on Throne & Liberty. Find out more before Throne and Liberty comes to conquer your desktop over on the official website now.
