Hands on with Reign of Guilds - Preview
Making an MMO as your first major title as a studio is no walk in the park especially for your first major title as a studio, this has not stopped small Russian based studio Atlant Games from their goal of producing the medieval sandbox MMO entitled Reign of Guilds. Reign Of Guilds describes itself as a game where “one doesn't need to survive, build cabins, or cultivate cabbage. Here, nobody values blisters from a pickaxe or a shovel, but what considered as value are interaction skills with other players, be it either combat or diplomacy, trade or craft.”
With Everquest being my favourite game of all time, I cut my teeth on the MMOs of the late 90s and early 2000s, back in those days the universes of most MMOs were harsh places that didn’t hold your hand, they were places where you were penalised for dying, massive communities formed around games such as EQ, Asheron’s Call and Ultima Online simply because it was much easier to progress through being in a group or guild than it was to try and complete objectives playing solo, unfortunately it is this sense of community that I feel is missing from modern day MMOs. Reign of Guilds hopes to bring this type of community back to the forefront of MMO design with its classic old school fantasy-based gameplay where you can choose the way you want to fit into the world and become successful through fighting monsters, crafting or slaying other players, there are no real storylines here and it is up to the player to craft their own destiny.
I recently got to take part in the latest play test for Reign of Guilds and I can safely say that if you prefer to have your hand held when starting off in an MMO then this game isn’t for you, if you enjoy a challenge and prefer to forge your own path through a games world then step right up and sign on the dotted line. When you join the game you spawn in an inn and are taken through a couple of quick tutorials showing you how to engage with NPCs and accept quests and how to use magic and weapons and then you are dumped into the games starting island which also serves as a tutorial of sorts as you need to accomplish a list of requirements before you can leave the starting island and truly forge your way through the games world.
There are a large amount of quests in the starting village, with some of them being repeatable, that are designed to help you plant your feet in the world, some of these quests are the usual stuff like having to kill 10 monsters and then return to the quest giver for a reward whilst others have you collecting various items that you then need to refine and give back to the quest giver for a reward, along the way you will level up your character and earn money that you can then use to buy better equipment so that you can then take on tougher opponents. If you like grinding then you will feel at home here, the major goal of the starting island is to gather enough money and become a high enough level that you qualify to leave and join the main map, this is not a task for the faint of heart, after 15 hours of gameplay I still hadn’t come close to leaving the tutorial island.
Graphically the game looks pleasing to the eye, and it is easy to become immersed in the games gloomy forests and spooky abandoned ruins and castles, enemy design is also well done with a variety of different opponents to test your mettle against as you explore the games landscape. Exploration is genuinely fun yet also instilled with a sense of dread that keeps you on your toes as dying has consequences like losing experience or even items from your inventory, this is the type of risk vs reward gameplay that I grew up with playing some of the very first MMOs released, and I am very pleased that Atlant Games has implemented this into Reign of Guilds.
It is not all sunshine and rainbows in Reign of Guilds though and unfortunately in its current state the combat is quite frankly terrible, some of this blame lies with the games lack of Oceanic servers but not all of it. The combat lacks feedback whether using melee, ranged or magic weapons and most of the time it is incredibly hard to tell whether you are damaging your opponents or not, and dodging their attacks feels like an impossible feat to pull off, swapping weapons or prepping magic spells is also an incredibly clunky undertaking that does not feel satisfying at all. I stuck to using the crossbow nearly exclusively throughout my gameplay simply because it felt the most satisfying to use and I could keep most opponents at a distance whilst fighting them. You gain levels in both combat and magic by defeating opponents whilst using these particular skills, however the game never really explains to you what gaining levels achieves or what any of your particular stats do to increase your chance of survival, there are no skill trees where you earn points every level and then customise your character through choosing skills, the combat side of things just feels very dull and repetitive once you have spent a few hours in the game.
I did have fun exploring Reign of Guilds but producing an MMO for a first title, especially for a relatively small and unknown studio is a massive undertaking, especially when it is a game that is only going to appeal to a relatively niche audience, an audience that is made even smaller by the lack of server coverage with the game only having European and American servers currently it makes the games combat very hard to enjoy if you are located in other parts of the world as the high ping to these servers is a real detriment to the games real time action based combat. Reign of Guilds promises a lot, such as a player driven economy, massive PVP battles where victory results in capturing territories where players can reign as counts or kings and then rule over their subjects and kingdoms, however I saw none of this sort of depth during my time with the game, but this is most likely due to the low player count during the games playtest.
A lot of what Reign of Guilds promises will heavily rely on how many players decide to pick up the game and how large of a community Atlant Games can build around the game, if they aren’t willing or able to invest in more servers in different locations across the world then they will be hard pushed to entice enough players to take a chance on the game, especially since they have plans to make the game buy to play and then implement a subscription service once the game leaves early access, this is an absolutely baffling decision to me and I think this will make it even more difficult for the game to develop a large enough player base to make the world anything more than a barren wasteland. Reign of Guilds is the type of game I really want to succeed simply because I enjoy MMOs that have consequences when you die and where exploration is a dangerous undertaking, unfortunately though Reign of Guilds feels more like an idea at the moment than a fully fleshed out game and I just don’t see how it will attract enough players to realise its full potential. Atlant games have a lot of work ahead of them before the games release if they hope to make it successful, I will be watching intently to see if they can fix some of the games major issues, Reign of Guilds is flawed but also intriguing especially if you are a fan of old school MMOs.
The game can be wishlisted now on Steam, or if you want to try and get in early, you can request access to join the next playtest. Our access was provided by Atlant Games.
