The new MMORPG Throne and Liberty can rightfully be called “long-suffering”: several restarts, a change in the development team, players’ dissatisfaction with what they saw in the first tests, a lot of rumors, leaks and forecasts of the most varied reliability and reliability. Many projects go through similar stages during their development. But in the case of TL, the situation is somewhat aggravated by two factors: the game is being developed by one of the largest and most popular gaming companies in South Korea, and initially it was a continuation of the legendary Lineage series of games. A few thoughts about the current situation with MMORPG Throne and Liberty and the near future of the project
Now, after the release in South Korea, the project is gradually losing its audience, and the global release is unknown when it will take place. And against the backdrop of current events, I would like to answer a few questions from readers of our portal. The author’s opinion may not coincide with the opinion of the portal administration, the developer and publisher of the game, as well as with common sense. Everything said below is based on open sources and my attempts to understand the logic of what is happening.
Why was the second closed test of the global version under NDA?
Perhaps one of the most popular questions about the global version in the last couple of weeks. If the players reacted with understanding to the NDA in September 2023, then the second time there was little understanding both among the Western audience and among the CIS players. I’ll try to predict the thoughts of the publisher and developer point by point:
- Fear of game errors that could alienate players even before launch. The closed test featured an “experimental build” designed to test the operation of the game’s basic mechanics. The publisher openly announced that it plans to test different levels of the game, open world events, castle siege and a ton of other elements in just a week. Could something break in an unexpected place and cause “hee-hee-ha-ha I’m deleting the game” among the mass user? Quite possibly. In addition, the game was launched for the first time to tens of thousands of players in five regions on several gaming platforms (Steam, PlayStation 5, XBOX X/S). One of the Amazon Games, NCSOFT, XBOX or Sony employees didn’t finish checking something, and we get “What’s the queue? What kind of connection error? I’m deleting this bugged game!”
- The CBT version does not correspond to the real content at the start of the global version. Content in the game is presented within the Milestone system, in which new events become available gradually and are tied to the completion of game tasks. For example, the siege of the castle in the Korean version took place 2 months after release, and dozens of events, world bosses and arch-bosses appeared throughout the three months of the game. At the CBT, the publisher tested a lot of this in just a week. Show players all three months of content, and at release there will be people unhappy with the fact that there will be three events and two world bosses in the first week.
- Some of the current mechanics will be changed for the global release. A month after the Korean release, it “unexpectedly” turned out that all events are held on the principle of “kill a mob and bring its tail to the desired NPC.” Each of them has its own small peculiarity, but the global meaning does not change. As a result, players very quickly became tired of events in the open world, and the decrease in the value of rewards made many players completely forget about them. The developers have announced global changes to events, which should appear in April 2024. Big changes will also affect the war for Riftstone and Boonstone. Now the question is: will the global version start with the old rules or the new ones? Does Amazon Games want to show some rules to a wide audience, but present completely different ones at release? The questions are good, but something tells me that the publisher, in principle, does not want to show anything ahead of time.
- It is necessary to maintain the intrigue about the game itself until the global release. Outside of South Korea, very few players know about the game. This is mainly the core of gaming communities and MMORPG fans who are able to purchase a Korean account, resolve issues with game ping and adjust to the timing of game events. The profile reddit has just over 10,000 subscribers. The largest English-speaking discord consists of 30,500 members, and a year and a half ago it was a server with 15-20 thousand people, in which people played different projects, for example, the MMORPG Elyon. And you don’t even have to remember about online on twitch or youtube. The mainstream international player doesn’t know much about the game right now, and it’s safe to assume that Amazon Games doesn’t want to start showing audiences limited tests, in-game bugs, and crumpled content that might not even make it to release.
When is OBT or the release of the global version?
There are a lot of assumptions: from May 2024 to spring 2025. At the moment, it is difficult to predict when the developer and publisher will decide to launch a global version. Surely they have some kind of plan that they adhere to. It is possible that this plan does not include showing the game before the release of the global version. If I’m not mistaken, the global version of the MMORPG Lost Ark also did without mass open beta testing: they spent a long time preparing, conducted a closed beta test, started selling sets (with three days of early access), after which the release took place. Correct me if I forgot about the massive MBT of the western version of Lost Ark.
The longer they delay the release of the global version of Throne and Liberty, the more effort the developers will have to spend on bringing the two versions (Korean and global) into a single assembly. Delaying this is not beneficial for all parties.
Is there any reason not to release the game to a mass audience?
There are a couple of assumptions about this:
- No matter how much the developers want to create a “game for everyone,” it is still very much “not for everyone.” The PvE audience will find in the game a story story for 10-15 hours, side quests for 10-20 hours, a dozen cooperative dungeons and a pack of similar events that will quickly become uninteresting. PvP players can stay a little longer, as there are battles for Riftstone and Boonstone, as well as a siege every two weeks. But they will get tired of this too. People will get tired of any project and they will leave it. The Korean version of Throne and Liberty experienced a massive exodus of players about a month after release. In the following months, although the decline stopped, the audience did not grow. Amazon Games knows this very well and does not want to reveal all its cards to an international audience.
- Users want to play something new, interesting, and exciting. If a person sees something that he has already seen before, then his interest in the project will decrease. Not everyone wants to go through leveling up their character to level fifty all over again (even though it is now simplified). But if “today they launched an MMORPG with cool graphics and optimization, and all the streamers on twitch have just started and are creating characters for themselves,” then interest will only push a person to install the game and buy a battle pass for only $4.99. Initial hype often pays for projects.
What happened at the second CBT and what do Western players think?
We tested all the content reported by the publisher: events, world bosses, archbosses, two sieges, and tax delivery. On reddit you can find a lot of laudatory reviews about the graphics and elaboration of the game world. Many were surprised that the game works stably when hundreds of players in one place, be it a city during rush hour or a large-scale siege.
Users of consoles, at least PlayStation 5, were also satisfied. Although they were not very unhappy after the first CBT. However, I could be wrong on this issue.
Discontent is mainly expressed towards combat system, lack of “something new” And “terrible P2W, where whales will buy top equipment on the first day.” In addition, they recall scandals related to bot farming and macros. But the players have so many wishes that they don’t even want to read. But here our powers seem to be all.
If you have questions, remarks and comments, you can leave them under this topic. And also join with a Russian speaker discord servery by Throne and Liberty. If we get a lot of interesting questions, we’ll create another similar topic.
