Good Morning Folks! I could do a blog post about my meager progression in Path of Exile, but I will be honest that gets boring over time. Instead I am going to talk about a few games that stumbled into my awareness over the last few days. First up YouTube actually served me something interesting in the form of a video about a new MMO called Spirit Vale that is from a one person development team. Essentially the game is free right now and exists in a sort of permanent open play test state. It is very Ragnarok Online inspired, which I only know by the appearance because when folks were playing Ragnarok and Runescape… I was playing Everquest because I was gainfully employed and could afford the subscription fees. There is an entire era of MMORPGs that I have no real experience with, but the video I linked above interested me enough to give it a shot.
I’ve not done much in the game yet, but essentially you roam into the low level zone and play murder hobo for awhile until gear and upgrades drop, and then take that gear and the levels you gained… to the next zone and repeat ad infinitum until you get bored. I like killing things, and while I don’t have much in the way of abilities yet there is something deeply satisfying about the sounds of combat in this game. I am not sure how much I am going to be playing it, but it might be worth a look, especially if you were ever a Ragnarok kid. Definitely plays on the cute side of MMORPGs, and there are little quest NPCs in zone who will craft gear for you if you gather enough items from killing baddies. That is how I got the charming bear hat. Supposedly the content stays somewhat evergreen because there are items that drop from even low level NPCs that can be used as upgrade components in later gear. If curious you can pop over to the Steam page and join the play test now.
Next up we got some new gameplay footage from Hytale, which is a game I was deeply interested in when it was first announced… but then promptly forgot about its existence. Originally this was a Minecraft-alike that was started by the folks behind the popular Hypixel Skyblock Minecraft Server. It then got picked up by Riot Games, and eventually cancelled by Riot Games, and most recently was sold back to the original developers who are attempting to pick up the pieces and keep it moving forward. Essentially the promise of the game is Minecraft but with good combat, and the gameplay demo seems to show that it is making good on that concept. Will this ever actually release? Who knows! However I am still fairly interested in seeing the development progress. I have a friend on Mastodon who is also making a Minecraft-alike that I am watching closely but I am not sure if even they have any idea what the core gameplay loop of that is going to be. Minecraft as a concept is still something fairly compelling for me, so I will probably always like breaking blocks.
Yesterday we got a bit of a mic drop from Arena.net as they announced that Guild Wars Reforged is a thing… and that it is coming really freaking soon. Reportedly it is releasing on December 3rd, and everyone who already owns copies of the original Guild Wars games… are going to get copies of it for free. There is not a lot of information available yet on the game, but essentially it seems like they are targeting a Steam release that is going to be SteamDeck compatible and will bundle all of the existing Guild Wars Trilogy content into a single package but with updated graphics and graphical engines. It also reports to have full controller support, which will be interesting… and might honestly become the best way to play this game. There are a lot of articles on this game but most of them are largely regurgitating the original press release.
My favorite Guild Wars 2 creator/streamer Laranity is hosting a Developer Q&A today at 11 am PST, after which I am hoping we have a better idea of what is coming. Weirdly the original release did not mention anything about Eye of the North and I am really hoping that was not an intended exclusion. I am legitimately pumped about this because I want to experience all of Guild Wars 1… but the engine is pretty damned clunky. I doubt they will give me the ability to jump… but one can hope. I would love for the game to have the option of a more standardized MMORPG control scheme rather than click to move and click to attack. If they support Direct Input… there is the possibility of someone creating an interpretation layer that will support a friendlier keyboard control scheme. I will definitely be watching today to see this discussion, but look forward to the various articles that will likely summarize the details.
That is all I really have to talk about this morning. I’ve also heard that there is a resurgence of folks playing Rift again, but I need to do a bit more research on that before I feel comfortable talking about it. What games are on your radar in the MMORPG space? Drop me a line below.
The post Games to Watch: Spirit Vale, Hytale, Guild Wars Reforged appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
