Chief Rebel Studios has released its new game, Fellowship, in early access. This cooperative RPG takes the most interesting aspects of MMORPGs and removes everything else. The game features classic dungeon runs with a tank, healer, and two fighters, but without the need to spend hours levelling up and grinding outside of dungeons.
I sometimes dreamed of a game built solely around that experience – one without all those obstacles that would be accessible enough for me to join a friend at any time. Much to my delight, such a game now exists – it’s called Fellowship.
As an MMO fan, I’ve always loved dungeons in particular. I enjoy the social aspect of them, the need for cooperation, and the fact that they enable you to truly test your abilities, something that is rarely possible in the open world of modern MMOs. Despite its appearance, Fellowship is not an MMO. It’s essentially a cooperative ARPG with dungeons and an MMO-style combat system.
Each character possesses unique abilities reminiscent of MOBA heroes, adding tactical depth. Success depends on team coordination — you need to allocate roles correctly in order to handle boss attacks that cover the entire arena and deal with groups of enemies efficiently.
Chief Rebel intends to keep the game in Early Access for at least six months. During this time, they will refine the balance and add new content based on community feedback. At launch, there will be a Quick Play mode offering 10–15 minute sessions, as well as Challenge Dungeons where enemies boast enhanced health and abilities. As well as leaderboards, players can progress by upgrading their equipment and unlocking cosmetic items.
Fellowship is one of those rare games that distils the entire genre down to its very essence. Developed by Chief Rebel, it is not positioned as an MMORPG, but rather as a ‘multiplayer online dungeon adventure’ (MODA). The concept is straightforward: take the best aspect of MMOs – dungeons – and make them the focal point of the entire game. There’s no levelling up, no filler, and no endless item collection quests—just you, your party, and a never-ending series of dungeons to conquer.
On paper, this sounds like a dream come true for players who love dungeons and live for the thrill of exploring them. In practice, however, opinions of the game are much more mixed…
Main cycle: dungeons, dungeons, and more dungeons
- Log in
- Join the queue for the dungeon
- Go through the dungeon to get materials/loot
- Join the queue again
- Repeat
That’s the whole game. There is no vast world to explore, no side activities that could dilute the gameplay, no social center filled with entertainment.
If you’re unfamiliar with WoW’s Mythic Dungeons, here’s an explanation of how the gameplay loop works: the goal is to complete the dungeon within a certain time limit, killing enough mobs along the way to fill a score meter. Successfully doing so rewards you with gear that makes completing more challenging versions of these dungeons, which feature additional mechanics and modifiers, easier. However, there are several key differences in Fellowship that make this entire process much less stressful and time-consuming.
For some, it is liberating — there is no time wasted, and there is no need to ‘get to the pleasure’. For others, however, it quickly becomes a monotonous, endless cycle of combat encounters, lacking the connective tissue that brings MMOs to life.
The tank is certainly the least popular role in all MMOs because of how much responsibility it requires, so it’s good that Fellowship immediately takes action to relieve the tension around it.
Similarly, Chief Rebel is concerned about replayability. Fellowship reduces the number of buttons required: each character starts with around 10 core abilities, and new ones gradually unlock as you progress through dungeons. However, you’ll only ever fill one 16-slot hotbar.
Each character can also use situational utilities in the form of ‘trinkets’, which grant abilities such as a two-way portal, resurrection, a party-wide shield or the ability to turn a mob into a chicken permanently. I have personally used the shield and resurrection abilities, which have allowed me to single-handedly save a playthrough, regardless of my role. Similarly, I have seen the portal used very cleverly to skip mobs and navigate boss mechanics more easily. This solves a common problem with MMOs in the past, where groups were forced to favour certain classes due to their utility. This problem is less pressing these days due to class unification, but I believe that these trinkets offer a much more elegant solution.
Fellowship Early Access launched with nine heroes, divided into the ‘holy trinity’: tanks, healers, and damage dealers. Some of these heroes bear a slight resemblance to World of Warcraft classes, which can be somewhat distracting; for example, the Archer and Rogue characters have nearly identical mechanics and animations to their WoW counterparts.
I can confirm that not all of them are like this. For example, Tariq, who is similar to Thor, has a new mechanic where the UI marker continuously ticks upwards at a constant rate. This queues up your primary, high-damage ability whenever the marker approaches a red ‘swing window’, which gives it an almost metronomic rhythm.
I primarily play as Meiko, a tanky monk whose kit is built around three primary abilities: a palm strike, a punch and a kick. These generate a specific finishing move depending on which two I combo and in what order. One provides an evasion buff that I need to maintain; another deals high single-target damage; one buffs my finishing move on a single target; and one deals area-of-effect damage. This seemed overwhelming at first, but after consulting the tooltips, I quickly figured out how they fit into the rotation. Eventually, it became second nature as I developed muscle memory.
I was also impressed by the customisation options in each character’s talent tree, which allow you to enhance your favourite abilities or alter the way you use them. For instance, one talent provided a stacking buff to each empowered punch or kick finisher, which, when maximised, boosted my next palm finisher (normally unable to be empowered).
The decision by Fellowship to use MOBA-style ‘heroes’ rather than customisable characters has caused some controversy, given that the game looks and plays very much like an MMO. As someone who places a lot of emphasis on character customisation, I can see why people are upset. Even the most creative character rosters currently do not justify the ‘hero’ model.
My main issue with Fellowship at the moment is that the loot isn’t particularly rewarding, which means there’s little external motivation to progress through the more challenging levels. One dungeon yields one reward, with a slim chance of a second. Each character has 15 equipment slots, so at best, you’ll need to complete 15 separate dungeons, each of which will drop a single piece of green-quality gear. Even then, the quality can vary from blue to purple to legendary.
The community is also beginning to emerge. Once everyone else has died, the tank or support can leave the game with impunity. Someone who doesn’t understand the mechanics says ‘good luck’ and leaves. Then comes one of my favourites, which has happened two or three times: you’re playing as a tank; the DPS deliberately aggroes additional mobs; everyone naturally dies; they say what a bad tank you are; and then they leave. Given the timed dungeon mechanics, time passes and that’s it — minus one. That’s the kind of community we have here. Either play with someone — preferably a tank and a healer, or two DPS — or don’t play at all. Otherwise, you have to accept that people will come and go, and if someone dies, you can’t choose to recruit someone else — it’s either three of you or start over.
However, there are some advantages to this. Firstly, you won’t have to deal with constant rejections from LFG — everything is matchmade, except for the hardest difficulty league. Most Fellowship dungeons only have one boss, so they’re short and sweet. Multi-boss encounters are reserved for the “Capstone” dungeon of each difficulty league, which must be completed within a limited time to advance to the next league.
Aside from unlocking the next league, you don’t have to complete the timer — you won’t be reset to a lower difficulty level or have your chances of getting loot reduced, as happens in WoW. You’re always guaranteed to receive gear; if you don’t complete a dungeon in time, the gear you receive will simply be one level lower. This isn’t a major issue, as it can be upgraded relatively cheaply using gold earned in dungeons and from turning in unwanted gear.
Another issue that Fellowship addresses is playing with friends. For example, if my item level is much higher than that of a friend in Fellowship, I can still play with them and receive a reward of gold or items that can be scrapped for gold. This is useful until you reach the maximum item level. I can also simply select a character I haven’t played yet without having to level them up or complete the tutorial. I can use the gear that dropped on that character or use the resources on my main character.
Maybe we only have time for one quick run? No problem — there’s Quickplay, which gives everyone strong gear at the same level. This allows you to complete the dungeon and earn resources that can be used with any of my other characters. Thanks to its quality-of-life design and affordable price, Fellowship lets me play with friends without stopping my progress or asking them to invest a lot of time in the game first. Thanks to its quality-of-life design and affordable price, Fellowship lets me play with friends without holding them back or expecting them to invest a lot of time in the game first.
As for the dungeons themselves, they’re very reminiscent of WoW in terms of visuals, layout, and mechanics, but significantly less complex, which makes tanking much less stressful. There are no mazes or gimmicky gameplay here — each dungeon is fairly linear with a couple of optional paths along the way. You might think this would make them boring quickly, but I think their simplicity actually allowed me to focus on what was important. I had a lot of fun experimenting with slightly different routes, learning the nuances of each mob and doing it all organically without resorting to online guides.
The boss mechanics are also excellent: moderately challenging with a few scary spells to watch out for and interrupt, and one or two core mechanics that everyone should learn. My favourite boss was called ‘Siren’: she had a mechanic where two players had to tether to each other and stick together, and a break phase where we had to tether to the mast to avoid being lured off the platform. At the next difficulty level, an additional mechanic was added in the form of a wide explosion targeting the player and knocking back anyone caught in it. This could be countered by hiding behind a mast or quickly returning to the platform with a movement ability.
The important thing is that it has a compelling quality: each dungeon offers an opportunity to find a faster tanking route, use your abilities more effectively and learn to adapt when things go wrong. As I got closer to beating these timers and then completed them with increasingly longer times to spare, I felt a palpable sense of genuine improvement — an addictive sense of mastery that is rarely experienced in MMOs unless you’re playing on the hardest difficulty. With Fellowship, however, you get that experience right from the start in its most seamless form for just $20 — that’s a month and a half’s subscription to WoW!
I don’t mean to overstate it. I truly believe the lack of genuine innovation is holding it back from being truly remarkable. With its familiar art style, class archetypes and progression, it will always be compared to WoW. I fear that, as Blizzard trims classes and speeds up the levelling and gearing process (as they have already done and plan to do in the next expansion), the differences between the two games may become increasingly thin, especially since the issues with Mythic Dungeons seem to be next in line for trimming.
But there’s nothing quite like Fellowship right now. Even in Early Access, I believe they have already achieved their goal of creating a more accessible version of WoW’s mythic dungeons. It offers a cooperative PvE alternative to all the PvP-focused games. Of course, it won’t appeal to everyone, but it’s something I’ve wanted for a long time, and judging by the successful launch with over 40,000 players online at its peak, I’m not the only one.
Final Thoughts
Final thoughts: Fellowship is bold, focused and mechanically robust, yet at the same time it’s shallow and repetitive. It’s a game that knows exactly what it wants to be, but whether that’s enough is entirely up to the player. Each run requires coordination between the classic trinity of tank, healer and DPS, and the difficulty of encounters varies to keep things interesting. If you’ve ever wanted to skip the tedious levelling-up process in games like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV and jump straight into endgame dungeons, Fellowship offers just that. You don’t have to invest dozens of hours to experience the best content.
But there are no downsides. The problem is that dungeons alone can’t carry the entire game — at least not for everyone. After less than an hour, dungeons become repetitive. There are no secondary systems, such as crafting, exploration or PvP, and there is no meaningful downtime in the hub world. As a result, the experience feels empty. As one early player put it, ’52 minutes and I’m already refunding my money.’ This sentiment reflects disappointment: Fellowship is polished, but repetitive.
