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For a lot of MMORPG players, there are certain keywords that prove to be deal-breakers if we hear them in conjunction to an upcoming project. Let’s see if I can rattle some off: permadeath, full-corpse looting, gacha, open-world PvP, and — oh yeah — hardcore.
The term “hardcore” has become shorthand for stripping away a lot of user friendly elements and intentionally making an MMO more obtuse, group-centric, and unforgiving. It’s not for everyone, although for some it’s an awful lot. Yet when I read that Eternal Tombs is hardcore, I am not immediately turned away because there’s something past that which may make engaging with this MMO worthwhile for even casual gamers.
If you’re unfamiliar with Eternal Tombs — and I assume that a lot of people are — just know that it’s an upcoming action combat sandbox MMORPG that’s in pre-alpha and used to be called War of Dragnorox back in the day. The developers stated that they are creating an unapologetically “truly dangerous world where exploration and traveling can be difficult but highly rewarding.” So yes, a bit hardcore in nature.
Assuming that you can get past that to keep investigating, Eternal Tombs is loaded with some very interesting ideas. For example, the studio is completely against microtransactions and says everything can be earned through gameplay. It’s also loaded with lots of sandbox-like options, such as player-run shops and castle sieges.
Honestly, it looks like a small-team MMO with somewhat generic visuals and not much of a hype footprint. However, Eternal Tombs does sport one truly ambitious idea that it’s hanging all of its hopes and aspirations upon. And that are assigned game masters — or “Tomb Masters,” as they put it — who will shape gameplay experiences in a live setting.
As the studio puts it, “Tomb Masters are live staff members who will help shape your experiences with dynamic and unique events. They build out events in real-time and help shape solo, group, guild and server play.”
To make this anywhere near functional, Triune Studio is building out a set of tools that allow the Tomb Masters to activate a variety of scripted events and modifying the world around the players, making every game session an unpredictable and potentially exciting time.
This is, of course, not an original idea. It’s drawn from tabletop RPGs, where a game master personalizes and guides the gameplay, creating a back-and-forth with player characters who also have a high degree of agency.
This idea’s been attempted in theory or limited scope in various MMOs over the years. The appeal to break up the static gameplay world with a personalized touch is huge, but the logistics of being able to do this for thousands of players is prohibitive. With rare exceptions, usually what we see are GMs that activate certain events for a large number of players, the exceedingly rare one-on-one interaction with players, automated zone events, or potentially putting players themselves in the GM role.
While I know that the studio said that it’s got a robust toolset to let Tomb Masters flit about the world and keep players on their toes with all sorts of mischief and challenges. Assuming that they can do this without becoming overwhelmed while keeping up the same level of interaction and intensity, then… yeah. Yeah, this could be something to put this game on the map.
Right away, my mind goes to two different places. The first is how RIFT dumped a lot of resources into creating an automated yet interactive zonewide event system with rifts, invasions, and even boss encounters. The second is the unpredictability of spontaneous player ambushes on any server with open-world PvP. The combination of those could make for some really cool stories and memories, which is what I assume this system is really about.
If the developers can liven up the game world, then every day has the potential for being fresh — even if you know all of the zones and quests. You wouldn’t be able to anticipate when a GM will spy you running down a road and suddenly launch a troll or kick off a quest series to liven things up.
Eternal Tombs nabbed my attention with this concept, and the more I read about the Tomb Masters and the full scope of the game, I am intrigued.
It’s all about whether or not Triune can deliver on this vision – because if it can’t, Eternal Tombs will be fast-tracked to oblivion. I do have some concerns about the long-term viability of a modern MMORPG that will always need live GMs to keep one of its core features running, but that’s perhaps only a problem that a launched game far in the future has to handle.
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