While the title might come off a bit abrasive, Ember Sword is an upcoming MMORPG that is has been compared with Albion Online. At first glance, it makes sense. Both are isometric online games with MOBA / ARPG style combat and a focus on player-driven economies. However, after spending time with the relatively short Ember Sword Alpha Test, I don’t foresee it making too many waves even if it ever officially releases.
Before we get into the comparison of the core mechanics between Ember Sword and Albion Online, it’s important to point out two distinguishing components of the upcoming MMO. The first is that Ember Sword is a browser-based MMO. While this definitely opens the game up to more potential players, it also puts constraints on performance and graphical fidelity. The second is that Ember Sword is built on Ethereum blockchain, utilizing the Immutable X (IMX) platform, which will be used in the ownership of land and cosmetics, which I’ll touch more on later.
Diving In
Immediately upon clicking the ‘play’ button on the Ember Sword website, I was transported into the game world. There was no character or class creation; I was just given a generic avatar with a basic sword and shield. While the lack of class design didn’t surprise me since this is supposed to be a ‘classless’ MMORPG, I was a bit shocked that there wasn’t even the most basic character customization option. That said, it’s a 3-day Alpha Test, so it can slide as I won’t get too attached to my character.
Unfortunately, one of the first things I noticed after being transported to Solarwood was the presence of texture pop-in. The game already uses bright, stylized graphics to distract from the lack of detail in the world and its inhabitants, but the texture pop-in really adds insult to injury. Hopefully, it’s something that can get fixed, or at least improved upon. With this being a browser-based game none of the in-game assets will be stored locally on your PC, so this will rely more on the connection to the server and how much load the game’s server can handle.
Now, graphics aren’t everything. Albion Online also doesn’t necessarily have the most beautiful graphics either, but at least the visuals look clean (until you have 100 players on the screen). Having seen some of the concept art and in-game videos produced by the development team, I do think Ember Sword has the potential to create beautiful towns and environments.
The color pallete and artistic style reminds me of one of my favorite single-player games, Bastion, but what I initially saw in-game was very basic and not as beautiful as the promotional renders. Perhaps I didn’t make it to the more detailed areas during the limited time I was allowed to play or they weren’t ready for testing. For the record, each play session was limited to 30-minute intervals, but it was possible to start this experience over, and progress further after a short survey.
Another key similarity between Ember Sword and Albion Online are the robust crafting systems and focus on player-driven economies. At the moment, crafting is relatively simple in Ember Sword, but at its core it is very similar to Albion Online. Essentially, you walk around and interactive with nodes in the game, such as lumps of ore to be mined or trees to be chopped down. These raw materials can then be used to craft better crafting gear, weapons, armor, or potions. Certain items can also improve how quickly your character gathers. At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be the additional complexity that Albion Online has, such as enhancement levels or refining bonuses, but there are crafting levels that should increase proficiency.
De-Classifying it
Despite Ember Sword forcing me to start out with a sword and shield, I quickly unlocked a censer and staff after completing a handful of quests. Although the game doesn’t feature a traditional class system, you can essentially create your own class through the choice of your weapon and armor slots, which provide unique benefits depending on whether they are heavy, medium or light. Additionally, characters gain skill levels whenever they use a certain weapon or perform an activity such as mining.
This classless system is incredibly similar to Albion Online and seems to follow a similar formula. The higher tier the weapon, the more skills it will unlock but it will retain certain base skills. This was at least the case with the two staffs that I received. Both had teleport, fireball, frost nova, but the second, stronger staff also had a strange-looking beam attack that I assume is some type of energy.
There is one key difference between the combat in Ember Sword and Albion Online. The latter uses a more traditional MMORPG auto-attack system where your character will attack any enemy you click on with a pre-determined speed while Ember Sword is more similar to other action RPGs and requires manually inputting basic attacks. This can be seen as increasing the skill ceiling as it creates more opportunity to miss attacks or dodge enemy attacks, however, latency will also play a larger role.
The combat and gear mechanics might be similar to Albion Online, but the quality of delivery isn’t. At the moment, the combat feels floaty and unresponsive. Having spent way too much time with ARPGs and MOBAs alike, responsiveness is one of the most important factors in isometric combat.
This is likely a symptom or limitation of Ember Sword being a browser-based game, but that doesn’t excuse it from feeling quite bad at the moment. Furthermore, the importance of smooth-feeling combat is that much more important in a game with a PvP focus, and Ember Sword features Outlaw Territories with full-loot PvP. Now add in the potential to drop items worth real-world money and I start to feel wary.
NFT Land
Developers and investors have been trying to find a way to incorporate ownership into MMORPGs for a long time. Recently NFTs have been the focus, but most of the games that rely on them have been relatively simple, such as Axie Infinity where players have grown unique, tiny creatures sometimes selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In Ember Sword, players and investors were given the opportunity to buy plots of land within the game with initial prices ranging between $40 and $80,000. Price dictates the size of the plot, what can be placed on it and the types of things that can spawn on it. While land is not supposed to grant players any type of in-game power, the owners do split portions of the profit from cosmetics. According to the developers, there will not be any sort of pay-to-win mechanics, but players will be able to find, trade or buy cosmetic items with real-world value.
Additionally, the blockchain technology in the game will create unique and scarce items. Only a certain amount of each cosmetic will ever be available in the game and each item will have a unique history recorded on it, such as any achievements its wearer has accomplished.
While this does sound interesting, ownership of key gameplay components, such as land, cities, or crafting plots tends to lead to problems. In Albion Online, players can own crafting plots within cities and large territories in the Black Zones. This makes it easier for individuals and groups to influence market prices or who can access high-end content. If this creates problems with in-game currency, I’m more than cautious in a game based on Ethereum. Additionally, in-game items being tied to a constantly fluctuating currency with no basis other than supply and demand sounds problematic to say the least.
Worlds Apart
When we look at how far Albion Online has come over the last few years and where Ember Sword is today, there’s really no comparison. Ember Sword still feels more like a concept than a game. You can fight enemies and monster, craft basic equipment and do a few quests, but the game is both visually and mechanically clunky while lacking character. At the moment, it feels more like a vehicle to sell investors pixels with the promise of future returns than an actual game. When the monetary system comes before game development, it definitely causes me to worry. Albion Online, on the other hand, doesn’t need to.
