Call me a fool because once again I’ve duped myself into playing the latest DLC content that was released for Myth of Empires. Based off my experience playing MOE the last go-round, you’d think I’d know better. But here we are: I’m disappointed, and I have no one to blame but myself.
It may seem ridiculous, but I might have been the only person within the continental US genuinely looking forward to playing MOE’s Persian DLC. I can’t help it! I’ve got history and background with the region, and I’ve always loved playing games with even a hint, a sniff, a catch-the-light-just-right-and-it-looks-like-a-ghost bit of Persian themes. I loved them in the old Age of Empires games, and don’t even get me started talking about the Prince of Persia games! The most recent Lost Crown metroidvainia was so incredible!
Yet the number of MMOs where I get to play as such is a bit more limited. In Guild Wars’ Nightfal,l we had the Dervish class which runs just close enough that I had to play it. It sure was nice that I also loved its playstyle, and it even became my main.
So yes, I was hotly anticipating the Xizhou DLC (better known as the Persian DLC) that released on March 20th, which as my editor realized was also Nowruz, the Persian New Year! You have to love that. So let me tell you just a little bit about the features, how it actually felt to play, and why I’m a glutton for punishment.
There’s a handful of cool features brought into MOE with this update. Most significant to me are the gear, the map, and some of the quests. The map is critical for adding that feeling of being in a more middle-eastern Persian environment. As incredible as the Dervish was for Guild Wars, it would’ve felt a bit out of place dropped into classic European fantasy surroundings – not that I wouldn’t have still appreciated it! But ArenaNet, as Angela Game did here, included the Elona maps, which were absolutely gorgeous.
Then there’s the new gear sets, which just look awesome. We don’t just have just one or two either; there are nine sets of armor and 16 new weapons. Now, not being very familiar with MOE, I don’t really have a read on whether that’s a large increase in the new sets or a small one compared to previous DLC, but it’s more than just one and more than I expected. So if I wanted to have the new gear, at least I won’t look exactly like everyone else.
Lastly, there are quests that feature many areas and bosses in the zone. Not being a longtime player, I don’t know whether quests like these where you’re directed to go fight certain bosses are new or not. I know generic tutorial-style quests were in the game before; I just don’t know about these. Either way, I really always thought of MOE as much more of a pure sandbox game without any real boss battles. Really strong mobs yes, but not legit bosses. It certainly places MOE higher up as more of an MMO-lite than I considered it before.
Now we get to the part of the story where I tell you just how miserably I failed in my personal quest to experience a lot of these features. I’d only played for a week previously, so my hero was going to be a baby in a new world, but it was a world I wanted to experience.
So back into the depths of MOE I descended, and lost is where I began. Truly lost. The interface for MOE is kind of completely terrible. I recall feeling that way a bit before, but as I began to play again, I really struggled to find how to even start the DLC. There weren’t popups or any arrows telling me how to start like I kind of expected being an MMO player. I mean, in GW2, you have the bouncing little green icon on your UI telling you, “Click me! Click me!” and upon doing so you’ll get a whole lecture on where to go to find the new content. Here, I didn’t see anything plainly calling out where to begin.
Past the title screen, there are four main options for the official servers. None of them have a flashing light or hover over that reads “Click here to begin the Persian DLC.” So I chose the New PvP Season – seems reasonable – and realized I needed to create a new character.
After this, I’m just looking at a giant map of servers to join. It looks basically just like it did before. I filtered it down to NA servers hoping that that would guide me, but I wasn’t seeing anything obvious, so I simply chose a modestly populated-looking server and began. The area I chose to spawn in looked kind of familiar to how it went last time I played, but I figured once I got a few levels, maybe then I’d locate the trigger to start the Persian DLC.
Well, after a night and a half of gaming, I returned to the internet for some help. I had leveled up and was beginning to build my first home with the new character without anything indicating where to go to start the DLC. A couple YouTube videos later and I realized the error of my ways: Apparently I needed to literally find a server setup to use the Xizhou map. Then, the new quests would be available, and I’d begin to actually get to play out this new DLC. Maybe gamers more familiar with these survival-style games as opposed to true MMOs know to look for that stuff off the cuff, but I did not.
Even with that knowledge, the going was slow. There were only a couple of PvP servers available that I could join, and they all had a warning that I’d be in big trouble if I wasn’t already level 50. I suppose it makes sense for new content to come in as endgame content, but I wasn’t expecting it. I can’t fault Angela Game for it, but I just wasn’t prepared for it.
I didn’t let that completely slow my roll, though. I was able to get myself a nice little nook on the map and began to chop some trees and level up. I was also able to see some animals that might even be unique to the map. Maybe not, since the DLC didn’t advertise them as new, but seeing a couple elephants clobber a tiger who thought he could mess with them was pretty entertaining.
That’s where my tale ends for today, but I don’t plan on giving up yet! I’m going to do my best to power over this hurdle and pick up some of the Persian gear. Hopefully next time I’ll be able to talk in detail about the quests and boss fights too.
Every other week, Massively OP’s Sam Kash delivers Fight or Kite, our trip through the state of PvP across the MMORPG industry. Whether he’s sitting in a queue or rolling with the zerg, Sam’s all about the adrenaline rush of a good battle. Because when you boil it down, the whole reason we PvP (other than to pwn noobs) is to have fun fighting a new and unpredictable enemy!
