First of all, I normally do not like to go over early access/Kickstarter style games because their development tends to be influx. However, Warlords Awakening as most people should know by now, is not really a new game (just renamed with some changes made). I originally was planning to play during early access but changed my mind because I refused to spend any money at the start (sending the wrong signal in the process). As noted in that post, I recommended players to try and win a key from any sort of giveaway (ambassadors will be doing that throughout early access).
The only reason I am playing now is because a friend sent me an unused key they had won so I’ll be using this to keep tabs on how PLAYWITH handles their early access and putting them further to the test (they are already in a deep hole with me for not having addressed their closure of the Korean server just a few weeks prior to this early access launch). Note that there will be no wipes (so this early access is pretty much a soft launch; well, a REALLY soft launch per the following).
Launch was smooth primarily due to the start time (Midnight PDT and 7AM GMT in Europe) and the extremely low number of players which was nowhere close to stressing any part of their infrastructure (roughly speaking, most game server configurations will only begin reaching their limits at the 5K concurrency point).
While they did have several different type of giveaway events that amounted to at least 1K keys (not including the hundred plus folks who received the game for free via their ambassador program), I believe a fraction of them were snapped up by code farmers for reselling (there are a few sites selling access $2 cheaper than Steam due to these code farmers). The following is another raffle giveaway (200 keys) that began on August 1st and expires on August 3rd that is a perfect example of these being farmed (6000+ entries) which is pretty much the case for the others and why this isn’t being more closely reflected in the peak player numbers.
The 24-36 hour player count should provide a better picture as to the average counts. I know this is early access but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that these numbers are unsustainably low across 2 regional servers; PLAYWITH will have their work cutout to capture and also retain more players.
As for the game itself, installation was brutally quick (4.5GB since this game doesn’t have a lot of high resolution textures/assets, cinematics, and audio). The game does use Gameguard which is pretty much useless against a lot of exploits but I’ve rarely had issues with it conflicting with other stuff on my system. I pretty much hit Play which ran the launcher (which then downloaded some extra patches), and once the launcher part updated, hit its Play and was at the character creation screen.
Caveat: this is yet another game however that has issues if the display setting in Windows is set to greater than 100% (most folks use the 125% option on 1440p and higher monitors for example). The issue I am speaking about is when you can only see a portion of the game client display (cutting off the lower quarter where the buttons are for character creation as an example). The current fix is setting that option in Windows to 100% while playing the game. I’m running at 1440p in borderless full screen windowed mode just fine (it’s just a little annoying to have to change that Windows setting everytime though). Also like a lot of Korean MMO’s, the only time you can get to the actual settings is once you’ve created a character and connected.
For those who have never played ELOA before, you will either like the color palette of the world environment or hate it (it’s still a garish mix of subdued purple/violet mixed with browns). Myself, I’m kind of indifferent to it to be honest. One of the nice things that I do need to point out about the game client is that it has a scalable UI option (which is really a godsend on 1440p and higher display resolutions). Thus your skill bar and most text for chat and dialog boxes are actually readable (the text on characters, NPC’s, and monsters however do not scale up).
Like Devilian, the game has support for keyboard movement (default mapped to the arrow keys) and the ability to zoom in all the way. It also has the horizontal style health and resource bars (which I find preferable to the orbs used in Diablo or Path of Exile). I mean ELOA was somewhat inspired by Devilian to the point of using the same game engine (Gamebryo) and an enhanced awakened mode of your character where you build up a gauge while in combat. Devilian had a bit more memorable cast of quirky characters though because they were able to pull from TERA’s IP.
The combat itself still isn’t as visceral as Devilian though; biggest change from ELOA is reduction of skills per stance (you can only select six versus eight) though you can freely use any once they are all unlocked. The cooldown between stance changing has also been removed. Skill points can be assigned to skills but there is a cost associated with resetting each point (my suggestion is to just save all your points until you unlock all skills and then decide where you want to put them). The reason is because gold is not very quick to come by; this uses the copper -> silver -> gold breakdown.
The questing in this is serviceable and nothing more. This isn’t a newly developed title where more innovative designs could be incorporated (it is what it is). Main line questing is pretty much the best way to level up (max level during early access will be 40 and that cap will increase to 50 once it comes out of early access in October-ish). After having fully quested through LOST ARK during the final closed beta, it just really brings the point home WHY that game has taken an year each between the first two CBT’s. Nothing else has been able to compare and just feels lame by comparison.
I only played for a short bit across several classes so my highest level as of this entry is level 8 (that is with the Scroll of Awakening active. Only the first 4 levels happen at a rapid clip but after that, the game just gives you small sips of experience and currency. In the grander scheme of things, this is just early access and the ones who have played ELOA a lot before (not me) will quickly run out of things to do anyway.
My next entry will cover the cash shop (I felt that and the perks of the ambassador program needed to be covered in a completely separate post). I will just add right now: unless you really are dying to play this, I would suggest holding off on purchasing this for at least the first few weeks of early access. The key thing I am trying to see is how well PLAYWITH handles actual communications and feedback from those of us who are non-ambassadors. I will clarify this a bit more in that next post which I unfortunately won’t have ready by today.
