With Throne & Liberty headed for a December 7th Korean release and making a big splash at this year’s G-Star with gameplay demonstrations and class videos, the MMORPG has garnered plenty of attention and even more questions, which brings us to an interview from Inven KR with the devs about the game’s updates, monetization, systems, and global launch aspirations.
Many of the answers at the beginning of the interview focus on the cash shop, where the devs reaffirm that while additional mount transformations and pets will be added to the cash shop overall, they will not have any statistical benefits or be required to fill out the collection log, nor will they add pay-to-win items. On the subject of getting pets and transformations, the devs say that at launch 80% of them can be earned from the game, 5% from events, and 15% from the cash shop.
The studio further talked about the end of automatic hunting and how it changes the game, discussed how the weapon swapping system affects combat, and elaborated on striking a balance between dynamic boss fights and making sure they’re not too static. The devs also confirmed that PvP events like caravan routes will not overlap with PvE events and PvE hunting areas, and that NCsoft is hoping to strike a balance between PvP and PvE activity while acknowledging that other games have tried and failed.
Finally, several questions are asked about T&L’s global launch. None of the answers provided by the devs give any update to the global launch window of sometime next year, but they do talk about how the MMO was designed from the ground up to consider western player interests, how feedback from both Korean and western players was similar in many ways, how the devs have tried to learn from previous NCsoft global launches, and how the western version will be “basically the same” as the Korean version.
