There’s a huge new patch coming to Square Enix’s Wakfu, a beautifully rendered MMO from Ankama games.  The game’s still in Closed Beta, but that didn’t stop the team from talking to us about what the testers are seeing added behind closed doors to make sure Wakfu is chock-full of content before it launches later this year.  Taking place in the same world as the cult favorite Dofus, Wakfu’s story picks up over 1,000 years later.  In the time of Dofus, an ogre named Ogrest managed to collect the six mythical Dofus eggs for the sake of someone he loved.  But she spurned his advances, wanting only the eggs, and Ogrest killed her in a fit of rage. Later, perhaps sad for what he'd done, he sulked off to the summit of a mountain and cried for 1,000 years.  Now, much like Dofus before it, the goal of Wakfu is to defeat Ogrest, but also to find out about the world and the lore as you go about this herculean quest. 

The big patch coming to Wakfu, hinted about in their dev blog, is going to be adding not only a ton of new enemies and items, but a slew of new islands to explore and locales to adventure in.  The Hoodlums themselves are a mysterious band of brigands making their way into the lands of Wakfu and harassing the local population.  They disguise themselves, making it hard to spot them, but the rewards apparently outweigh the risk of fighting them.  Intended for players of mid to high level ranges, the Hoodlums drop a bevy of items when defeated… if defeated.  With over 40 varieties of these new combatants to face, and with so many new items to uncover, something tells me people will be bopping Hoodlums on the head like whack-a-moles or piñatas once the patch lands.

The new islands themselves serve an interesting mechanic as well.  Intended for players of all levels, the Sadida Forest a brand new ecosystem to the game, along with an interesting mechanic where players have to gather together and work together to gain access to the forest itself.  The Stasis and Wakfu Islands are altogether different.  There’s a lot of mystery and puzzles surrounding these islands and the developers can’t tell us much on how they’ll be presented… mainly because they don’t want to ruin the surprise.  Hey, the internet will do that itself once the patch goes live.

There’s a whole bunch of additions to the game’s extensive crafting and ecosystem features, as well as some nice cross-media references in some of the show’s characters making lore appearances and sprucing up the non-combat part of the game.  In all, Wakfu’s “Hoodlums” update is looking like a winner for fans of this beautiful and unique take on the MMORPG.  The game’s still in the Closed Beta phase of development, you can sign up and try to pop into the beta here.  Due out later this year, with plenty of unique features (including a player-driven ecosystem), Wakfu just might surprise people willing to take a chance on something different.