Warrior Epic - PC Previews - The Armchair Empire


	Platform PC Genre MMORPG Publisher Possibility Space Developer Possibility Space ETA 2009 (Currently in Closed Beta)
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Warrior Epic

When you're looking to break into the MMO field, it's a given that you're not going to be knocking off the 800 pound gorilla that is World of WarCraft right off the bat. Getting people to notice your MMO is going to be the first challenge. Keeping them in your space is the second. Possibility Space's first MMO, Warrior Epic, aims to fulfill both of those challenges.

Currently in closed beta, Warrior Epic casts the player as the head of a mercenary company in the hidden city of Providence , a seed of order amid an age of chaos and strife. By recruiting different types of warriors to your cause and exploring

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the ruins of the civilizations that have fallen, you slowly build up their skills and power. Additionally, there is an element of "city" management as you build structures in your hall which in turn allow for the possibility to recruit other warrior types. You begin with a Pit Fighter, already armed and armored, and are run through a tutorial area to get your

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feet (and blade) wet. From there, you've got the opportunity to explore numerous other dungeons and areas, advancing your character, getting loot, recruiting new characters, improving your hall, and so on.

On the plus side of things, the controls are very Diablo-esque. Right click to move, interact, and attack, left click to clear the currently selected creature/item. As you advance in levels, new skills become available for your character, though I have not yet seen whether or not you'll be able to respec if you've made a mistake. While control and skills are similar to Diablo, character health is reminiscent of Legend of Zelda while weapon/armor upgrades are more along the lines of Japanese-style RPGs. The visual style falls somewhere between the highly realistic detail of Diablo II and the more color saturated cartoon style of World of WarCraft. So far, the sound effects for the game are nice, but not super exciting. For a beta test, so far, the game itself is quite stable and I've not run into any major bugs during gameplay.

On the minus side, there are some issues great and small. One small gripe is the lack of a music score. Yes, yes, nobody plays MMO's for the music. However, good musical scores can help set the mood for a level or an area. Of more serious concern is actually getting the client to download the game. It took almost two weeks for me to be able to get the client to actually start downloading the game, an issue which numerous other people experienced (as indicated on Possibility Space's forums) and for which there didn't seem to be a good solution. It was literally a case of spontaneous functionality, the client starting to finally download the game after two weeks of meaningless efforts to connect to Possibility Space's servers. Hopefully, this technical issue will be fully fixed by the time the game launches. There is also a distinct lack of direction for new players. Poking around and finding out what certain portions of hall management can do is one thing, but Warrior Epic needs to guide new characters better, perhaps putting three or four maps into their "Beginnings" area rather than one map that only covers the basic controls. This leads into a complaint about the way that the challenge level of the maps are scaled and presented. There are maps which no player could reasonably hope to complete being a level 1 character. Dungeons where a bunch of level 1 or 2 monsters are roaming around with a level 14 boss at the end is insane. Dropping out of the map back to the hall means you forfeit all the loot you've picked up to this point. And no, there's not a snowball's chance that your lowly little Pit Fighter at level 1 is taking out the big ugly level 14 boss. The problem is that there's nothing to really indicate what missions are suitable to which levels. World Of WarCraft handles this issue through the color coding of their quests, and a similar mechanic might well be useful for Warrior Epic.

There is one other concern, not of a technical nature but in regards to the model that Possibility Space is pursuing. While it is possible and desirable to improve your character's equipment through the loot that they acquire (which at this point is strictly coins and gems, no item drops), Possibility Space is employing a micro-payment model for other items such as different hairstyles, tattoos, different styles of clothing, and visual elements for the hall. However, this micro-payment model seems to conflict with the stated goal of the game to cater to "casual" RPG players. This conflict is best illustrated by the nature of health and mana potions. Since these do not drop in the game, so far as I have found, the only way to obtain them is to buy them. And the only way to buy them is through the micro-payment system instead of using game loot. Character health and mana do not regenerate in the game and you have a limited number of resurrections in a given map (each of which starts you at less than full health, and less than the previous resurrection). While I can appreciate the need for Possibility Space to make some money off the game, I believe that the current system will turn off casual players completely. Adding in a slow natural regeneration system for health and mana would certainly give casual players an incentive to keep playing, even if it means they spend an extra five or six minutes in the course of playing to let their health come back up. Moreover, having some of the customization goodies currently on the micro-payment system be available through game loot would also be an attractive option for the casual player. Otherwise, what people are likely to see is a bunch of very similar characters wandering around dungeons together because nobody's willing to shell out for something to alter their appearance.

I'll continue to cover this game and report on new developments as they become available.

- Axel Cushing

(July 8, 2008)