General Discussion

While at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, News Manager Keith Cross had the opportunity to speak to the folks from Lockpick Entertainment about Dreamlords: the Reawakening, an MMORTS that is waking people up to a relatively unexplored branch of the MMO genre.

One of my first interviews at the GDC this year was with the team from Dreamlords. Dreamlords is one of those games that it's good to pay attention to if you're a fan of MMOs because it's doing something different from the mainstream that will probably make it into the mainstream a few years down the road. If you're unfamiliar with Dreamlords, it's a fantasy MMO from independent Swedish developer, Lockpick Entertainment. If you're wondering what sets Dreamlords apart from the rest of the pack of fantasy MMOs, it's a real time strategy MMO.

So far, developers of MMORPGs and virtual worlds have made up the bulk of the developers who have capitalized on making games in persistent online worlds. As the MMO genre grows and diversifies, many games have found success beyond the standard fantasy RPG. Fantasy is arguably less dominant every year, FPS style game-play is seeing a rise in implementation, but the realm of MMORTS is still more or less virgin territory. Now that I think about it, I don't see why the idea of MMORTSs is still an underdeveloped portion of the gaming market. The concept of transferring an RTS to an MMO space isn't really that complicated. The basic idea behind Dreamlords was explained by describing the formula for an RTS then adding a few MMO ingredients. In an RTS you start with nothing, you build a base, attack your enemies, and finish the game. On the next map you again start with very little, and lather, rinse, repeat. Lockpick wanted to shake up that cycle, so they added the MMO element of making the world persistent.

Read more here.

Definitely worth a look.  RTS are always fun, and one that is 1) FTP and 2) has a persistent avatar, should give some players some reason to keep returning.  Sadly, I suspect that the game will turn into a resource grind-fest to compete in pvp.  I've never played though, so what do I know...

Fancy, gonna look into it.

 Why bother it's a damn pay to play game.

Originally posted by asasenpai

 Why bother it's a damn pay to play game.

It says they are switching from a p2p to a f2p model.

I wish they would have two diffrent kinds of servers. One where there was the f2p model that they talked about and the other the p2p model that I feel more secure with.

The game sounded awesome until I came down to the item-mall bit...

Why, oh why oh why? The game will fail because of this. The very idea of item malls is a travesty and especially so in PvP games - your power relative to other players depends on how much money you spend on the game.

This is the dogs. The very bottom of game design. And it will fail epically - just like the f2p/premium membership schemes. One of the primary motivations for playing competetive games is proving your worth through skill... And with item malls loosers can always say "Meh you won just because you paid more" and winners may just say to themselves "You know he might be right..."

It is so sad that this quite original idea is doomed to failure along with other western titles that are riding along with it on that rickety bandwagon heading merrily towards the nearest cliff.

i will search for it..

I played this in the original beta and a little when it got released. From what they are saying about having the item mall, you just are able to pay for stuff that you'd be able to get through crafting or using in game money originally.

Also, for what the game was, the $10 a month wasn't worth it, unless you played Thul and got your research through battling, otherwise everything you can do is web based and is not really worth it...

It's a niche game, a lot of people will hate it, and there'll be some that things it's great

played the first beta. Web  based as stated. Was seriously disappointed by the fact that the world wasn't a big world model, but rather little matches..It took way too long to make anything. I was hoping to see a world view with my city, with many subjects working where i could control them and set up army's patrolling my boarders ETC.  It was boring, i thought to myself, Why would i pay to play this when i have Supreme commander, or  Stronghold 1 and 2...

The game doesnt offer anything spectacular like a persistant world model, nor a real time in game city building system. The time frame for playing is limited not by winning the world, but by egg timer. Its boring.

I have just uninstalled this game. After 2 weeks of play it just seems limited and dinky. The graphics are decent when zooming in, but /shrug, who plays a Warcraft style game in 1st person mode ?

It is not an easy to understand game,initially, it has limited play options and,as I said above, it's another Warcraft style game.

It will be a "trial and error" game as structuring point placement will be random and disorganized until hundreds of people have tried and screwed up to finally figure out "builds" based on effective game play. the game needs a comprehensive manuel if you are still interested in playing.