During Summer Game Fest 2023, we had the chance to sit down and chat with Amazon Games' Merv Lee Kwai as well as NCSOFT's Design Director Moonseop Lee and Lead Producer Jongok Ahn about the upcoming MMORPG, Throne and Liberty. While our conversation didn't cover nearly everything I wanted to ask them in our limited time, we were able to touch on some of the aspects of how the companies are approaching the various versions of the MMORPG, namely the differences betweent he Korean and Global iterations of Throne and Liberty.
Throne and Liberty has been six years in the making, going through iterations from being a direct sequel to NCSOFT's Lineage MMO series to what it is shaping up to be today. While NCSOFT has experience publishing MMOs here in the west, most notably working with ArenaNet on the Guild Wars, it has turned to up and coming MMO powerhouse Amazon Games to publish Throne and Liberty in the Western regions of the world.
'There have been many reasons why we took this amount of time for preparation," Jongok Ahn, Lead Producer on Throne and Liberty told me in an interview at Summer Game Fest through an interpreter. "And one of the primary reasons is because we wanted to make an ample amount of content before hitting the market."
Ahn describes a situation that often occurs with live service games, especially MMOs, where players will get through content and then just leave the game, sometime never coming back. There are also situations where there just isn't enough content coming out to keep players happy. As a result of these issues, Throne and Liberty's team wanted to take the time to ensure that there was an ample amount of content in the MMO to keep players invested right after launch.
"So that's why we prepared content, enought content, diverse content, and then hit the market. And the developers feel that it's almost ready."
The recent Korean version Closed Beta Test just occurred as well, giving an unfiltered look at the state of the MMO right now. Because there was no NDA, Korean steamers, as well as creators from across the globe, descended upon the world of Solisium to give their thuoghts and try this highly anticipated MMO. And the results were mixed for some, with many upset at the inclusion of mechanics such as auto play, auto combat and even the ability to keep your character leveling when you weren't even online anymore each day.
Others seemed to take issue with the combat, a crucial part of any MMO to get right, as the way the game handles its auto-attack felt a bit off compared to the standard tab-targeting MMO, while some felt the progression just didn't feel good.
While many MMOs, when they are localized, we see features from a region either removed or downplayed, we also tend to see very different versions of the same game. Games like Black Desert for example don't have content parity with its Western version, with the Korean release seeing content months in advance. Part of this is localization for sure - it takes a while to localize a game in myriad languages versus the developer's native tongue.
However, when speaking with Amazon and NCSOFT about Throne and Liberty, it seems that their vision is a bit different here, instead approaching T&L as one unified global version.
"So one of the things that's been really important with our collaboration has been approaching the global version of TL," Amazon Games' Franchise Lead for Throne and Liberty Merv Lee Kwai says when asked about the differences between the Korean and Global versions. He continued, "So you'll know that with Korean MMOs, it's often that it's released in the origin region for maybe two years or a year and then we publish it in the West. And in the West, maybe Westernization changes occur to the game. We've been trying to minimize that as much as possible. So it's been working with NCSOFT to create a global version of [Throne and Liberty] rather than siloed versions for different regions.
"[...] So we've been in lockstep working towards a global version. Now, that means coming out of the Korean CBT, players provided feedback, and we are iterating against that. The NC team is addressing that player feedback directly."
This means, according to Kwai, that when Amazon Games brings the upcoming technical test to their consumers, it's going to have incorporated the feedback the developers gathered from the most recent test - from all sources.
Ahn concurred with Kwai, stating that NCSOFT is not looking at the Global and Korean versions as separate, but rather looking at one unified version of Throne and Liberty. He also highlighted two of the major pieces of feedback the team is working on from the first CBT that will influence changes in the MMO for all regions: combat and progression.
Related:
Summer Game Fest 2023: Hands-On Preview Of Throne and Liberty
While these answers didn't go far enough in explaining whether the Western release from AGS would include the auto-play features that turn off so many consumers here in the West, hopefully the global, unified vision of the game doesn't mean Western players will be saddled with features that just don't jive with player wants or needs.
Combat is one key area that players provided a wealth of feedback, and while our test only gave us the tutorial area to play around within, it did leave some to be desired. However, the idea of being able to combine different weapons - one in each hand - and sort of build your own class this way is intriguing.
Effectively, each weapon has its own style and skills, from the tanky sword and shield to the DPS-heavy daggers. You can equip a weapon to each hand and it will influence the skills you have available. Later on in the MMO, you can actually equip two different types of weapons, one in each hand, to really customize your combat style.
This means we could see dagger and staff weilding melee wizards or a tome and crossbow weilding warrior. These combinations allow for some interesting gameplay opportunities, something that Moonseop Lee adds depth to the combat beyond the traditional class model.
"Weapons are considered a class," Lee says through an interpreter. "So you can swap your weapon in real time, and you can swap your weapons all the time. There is also this feature inside TL where your weapon set has your skills for the weapon." Lee continues, describing a feature where you can swap between the equipped weapons by using their skills on a unified bar - something Lee Kwai chimed in about as well as a way to create a bar with a global cooldown for your skills, regardless of weapons. You can have skills from each weapon on the same skill bar and use them as normal, swapping between weapons seamlessly as you use them.
"Let's say you're using daggers and crossbows as the two weapons you have," Merv Lee Kwai illustrates further. "On the dagger hotkey bard, we can equip crossbow skills. And when we activate those crossbow skills, we switch to crossbows using one global cooldown, and you can do that vice versa. So the skills from a weapon of the two you have equipped are interchangable."
My concern over the meta stagnating once players find the best weapon combinations for the different archetypes might be proven to not be something we need to worry about either, if Moonseop Lee's vision of improving and adding new weapons to the game to shake things up comes to pass.
"Constantly we are encouraging users to find the fun in the skill combinations of the various weapons, this will be one of the ultimate [sources] of fun inside our game," Lee tells me in our interview. "Right now we have seven weapons, but we plan to add more and more weapons. So that means more and more skill combination fo weapons, right? So through this, we hope that the players feel that there is depth inside Throne and Liberty."
"I really think NCSOFT hit it on the head," Merv Lee Kwai said, speaking about the long-term sustainability and balancing of the weapon skill combinations. "Because everytime a new eapon comes to Throne and Liberty, there's all of the combinations and the synergy it has with allof the existing weapons, so users can further customize and fill the role they need for their guild based on whatever weapon comes in and what they intend to use."
