Initial Impressions: Throne and Liberty Global Beta

 I jumped into the Throne and Liberty global beta yesterday.  What I was welcomed into was part single player RPG, part MMO, and all beautiful.  Here are some more initial impressions.

 One thing that jumped out at me was the performance.  There are tons of players everywhere in the starting areas and the game looks amazing everywhere you go.  At no point have I had any hint of performance issue.  No lag, no freezing, no odd FPS dips, nothing that I could even call a hiccup in performance.  The game runs like a dream even with tons of players zipping around.

 As mentioned the game looks amazing.  The world itself is breathtaking and the game regularly treats players to fly by overviews of areas offering amazing views of the landscape.  The details are awesome as well.  Rocks look like rocks.  When you go into a house in town it is full of furniture, nick-knacks, and other details; a real sense that "someone lives here".

An in-engine bird's eye view of the first major city Kastleton

 Amazingly this is all on the backdrop of a massive open world where players, at the click of a button, can zip from one spot to a next via the game's teleport function.  Zip being the key word: there is no loading screens.  I was teleporting from areas with dozens of players into areas with hundreds of players and as fast as the teleport animation could animate I was teleported.  Then at one point I hopped on a boat that started moving and again no loading screens; the boat just took me from island to island to island and then back to port.  Whatever magic sauce they have to make this world this seamless needs to be shared with other developers!

A screencap I sent a friend asking if "are there lots of people playing?".  This is one of the starter area event hubs.  Note: I have turned on player names in settings (it is off by default).

 The game also gives multiple ways to traverse the world.  Along with the normal walk/run there is also the ability to shapeshift into a creature that makes you run faster which is the game's version of mounts it seems.  Also there is shapeshifting to glide, which seems to be a standard feature in most games now.  Jump off a cliff and shift into a bird and glide across the open world.  Then there is grappling where you can grapple up to places.

 The only downside of the traversal is that there is no vaulting in the game (i.e. being able to grab a ledge and pull yourself up and over).  A short stone wall may as well be a giant castle wall for your ability to get around it.  This also goes for various rocks that look like you could jump up on them but  the game just doesn't let you.  It's also not consistent: sometimes a jump gets you over and other times its like there are invisible walls blocking you.  This is odd considering if you can figure out a high point nearby you can just glide over the obstacle.

Riding in a boat.

 The game is also full of things to do.  Quests of all shapes and size dot the landscape.  There is a lot of variety to the quests as well.  One quest had me transformed into a rat trying to avoid a cat only to find out the cat is a shapeshifted bad guy that I ended up fighting.  The story quests also have single-player RPG feel to them as the camera zooms in and you get an up close an personal dialogue sequence.  The game also quasi-teleports you into your own private copy of areas like houses where key story elements happen (again without a loading screen!). The story quests are also full of movie-like sequences.  I am skipping most of them now saving that content for launch.

The cat and mouse quest!

 Before I end the initial impressions here I want to talk about the combat.  At its heart it is a tab target combat system.  There is an action mode that can make the combat feel more "action" but it seems the general consensus from experienced players in the Korean version of the game is that you should use the "classic" combat mode that is traditional tab target.  I am torn here as I like the action mode but I can see where in larger fights you will need to be in classic.  The muscle memory between the two is going to be entirely different as well so I don't see it being viable to switch between them in high end content.

 In terms of complexity the combat so far is standard fare.  Put abilities on your hotbar and press the buttons until the enemy dies.  There is not much need for movement aside from just wanting to move.  Most of the early game combat is just pressing your attack button once to start attacking and watching your character do the work.  The story boss fights were a little harder but not by much.  There is some timing required around the defense skill when an enemy flashes the right symbol.  

 

Players need to activate their defensive ability when this symbol appears.

 I haven't gotten too far into trying out different weapons but the game does let you switch them at any time.  You can equip two and switching between them is easy enough. Skills for a specific weapon can also be used at any time regardless if its the current active weapon or not so that was nice not having to switch to get access to the second weapons ability.  There are tons of skills for each weapon so it will take time to figure out what makes sense.  

 One thing I want to note that was disappointing with the massive beautiful open world is that when you get to the main areas they are filled with wandering piles of monsters.  That is fine as there is more than enough to go around for all the hordes of players but it makes the game feel very lifeless.  For as amazing as the world looks that all goes away when there is a field with 100 wolves just standing around waiting to be killed.

 Over all I've enjoyed the beta but I can't say it "hooked" me.  I do want to keep playing a bit more to firm up whether I want to play at launch but compared to games like New World and Once Human where I put 50+ hours into their open betas Throne and Liberty didn't have the same feeling.

Goodbye my little friend.  The game gives you a pet-like creature called an Amitoi.  The one you start with is helpfully named "Helpie" but *spoiler* you do have to say good bye to them.

 Looking into the SteamDB Charts for the beta I was surprised to see a much, much smaller volume of players.  In a year where we've seen random titles hitting millions of players it felt like an open beta for a much anticipated MMO would fly up the charts but it topped out at just over 61,000.  The game is on multiple platforms so Steam isn't the only data point but I'd of expected a lot more interest in this game.

Not as many players as expected on Steam