Throne and Liberty was released in early access on September 26th, 2024 with full free release happening October 1st, 2024. The MMORPG is a welcome sight for a genre begging for more hits. After suffering collosal player count drop-offs from similar games like New World and Lost Ark (which both happen to also be published by Amazon Games, of which the former was developed by them as well), MMO players continue to pine for the "next World of Warcraft".
Throne and Liberty was developed by NCSoft and had been live in Korea since December 2023, so it has had some legs, hype in the MMORPG community and lessons learned before its North America release. Today we dive into my experience over the first 25 hours played of the game. In this time I have reached the max level 50 and participated in the various dungeons, world bosses, PvP, etc that the game has to offer. While truly seeing the full potential of an MMORPG could take months, we talk today about the initial feeling of this game and if it will stand the test of time.
Impressive Campaign Story
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While staying away from the details of the main campaign questline to avoid spoilers, I can say without a doubt that Throne and Liberty had my favorite story for MMORPG standards compared to others in the industry (and this is coming from someone who has been playing MMORPGs almost exclusively since he was 13... and is 35 now... damn I'm getting old). Most MMORPG storylines are incredibly dull and I find myself skipping through them as fast as I can. With Throne and Liberty, I found myself actually watching all the cutscenes and following along with what was happening, and even caring about the NPCs I interacted with.
The story from the beginning had me wondering "who am I supposed to be here?", "what happened to that person?" and many thoughts of "ok this person seems to be up to something sinister". These thoughts alone are much more than I've ever really cared about stories in past MMOs, so I'll give NCSoft that. The voice over and many cinematics were a great touch to help keep me intrigued and interested in what was happening, rather than reading long quest logs and subtitles.
Freedom of Choice
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Most of Throne and Liberty character customization and Liberty is forgiving if you want to play the game your way and worry about optimization later. When it comes to stat point distribution, it's entirely free to reset your stat points and reallocate them as you wish. You can experiment with stat setups or you can put them where you want until you hit max level and really want to optimize your character for performance.
The same goes with Skill Specialization. These are tweaks you can make to your skill to enhance them or give yourself additional buffs such as +15% Attack Speed as long as you have that skill. Other changes allow you to completely change the way the skill works and even what the skill is called. These specializations can immensely change the way your class is played. The fact that it's completely free to reset and change these at will is a huge plus. On the other hand, Weapon Mastery points are not able to be reset, so you should know what you want to invest into before spending these points, as they take a long time to unlock.
While you **can __ ** change which weapons you use, it's not advisable unless you are doing it within the first 10 or so character levels. You need a lot of skill books to continue upgrading all your skills to the highest levels, and a huge chunk of these books comes from quests while you are level up to 50. If you are at level 50 and want to change which weapons you use, you will need to gather thousands of these books again to help level up the skills of the new weapon, and they are much harder to come by vs. just completing main story quests.
Combat Is A Huge Win
In the first 20 levels of Throne and Liberty expansion and Liberty, the combat is underwhelming. At this stage in the game I was sure I wouldn't be into it. It's worth nothing this is only about 2 or 3 hours into gameplay. As I gained levels past this level 20 threshold and unlocked more skills, and started upgrading those skills, however, I found myself more and more enamored with the combat style of the game. I finally **actually read __ ** my skill descriptions and understood how they might synergize with each other. Rather than look up guides online I wanted to experiment a little on my own first.
Creating my own skill rotation as I levelled to try to optimize how I wanted to play, made me feel like my choices mattered. Other mechanics such as using the "Q" bound defense skills to dodge or block mechanics felt satisfying when landing a _perfect block . _ Between the effortless flow of skill use, the skill upgrade, mastery, and specialization systems, I can confidently say that I love the combat in Throne and Liberty .
Longevity of Interest
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My main concern when it comes to Throne And Liberty Character Customization and Liberty is my longevity of interest. While I enjoy all of the activities, PvP, dungeons, etc, I don't know how long I will stay completely interested in getting better and obtaining better and better gear. I do like that the gear looks unique, as it means getting gear upgrades could matter from a visual perspective too.
When I play I like to see my DPS (damage per second). I like to see it pitted against the other players in my group to see how I'm performing (Hi damage meters in WoW!), but more importantly and more essential for me is to just at least see my own DPS, I don't even need to see other people's. Seeing my own damage output allows me to set benchmarks for myself and set my goals on improving that number and continuing to optimize my setup to push higher and higher. Without something like this, I'm not sure I will remain hooked on the game. Not knowing how much I am contributing to the group makes it feel like I'm just along for the ride and I may not be an important part of the effort.
_Closing Comments: _
With impressive storytelling, amazing combat and interesting upgrading systems, Throne and Liberty excels where many MMORPGs fail right off the bat. My main concern is that I just don't know if there is something there to keep me coming back and wanting to improve my character. If I don't know how well I'm performing and how much I'm contributing to the group, how will I know I need to improve? Furthermore, if there are further ways to optimize my character, how will I know the changes I make are making a large difference, other than a "gut feel" when attacking enemies.
