I told you all in my previous column that I was going to get to the Persian DLC in Myth of Empires or die trying (my character, not me, obviously), and lo and behold, I actually stuck with a game for more than a couple weeks and got my hero into the Persian DLC… sort of.
See, I knew from my last go-round in MoE that the Xizhou DLC, as Angela Game calls it, is endgame content. Depending on the game, that could mean that in terms of gameplay I’m anywhere from a day to weeks away from getting my character to high-enough level to actually be able to experience anything relevant.
That was when I remembered that MoE offers players the ability to roll custom servers. Now, there’s nothing entirely unusual about this for a lot of these survivalbox sort of games. But it’s just not something that I’ve ever had a real interest in exploring. However, depending on the capability of their custom servers, I though I might have a shot at powerleveling. Let me say this upfront: I was blown away by the amount of control users have over their custom servers.
The vast number of controls for tweaking the server’s game is gobsmacking. It’s absolutely incredible. I legitimately had no idea all of these features were just here for the taking. In fact, if I were to actually attempt some serious playtime and turn this into my game, I might actually make it a private server like this.
MoE has so many features that it leaves me a bit speechless. I talked about most of them in the past, but this is like a true-life game. You could nearly play this like a sim. Basically every game mechanic you can imagine has been implemented in some form or fashion here. The interface is awful, though; there’s no sugarcoating that. But the number of ways to play is wild.
Do you like housing? Well, in your own custom server you don’t have to worry about actually gathering all these materials. Just spawn the materials or the items you want and then get to building. Fishing, hunting, and gathering all have their own systems. You can build your own farm and even tame animals and create your own ranch. Then if you build it up enough, you can hire NPCs – or spawn them like I did – and have them do most of the work for you. Maybe you just want battles. Well, there are some full systems for siege warfare and officiating it with guilds. Now, the guild battles and all these features I basically knew about, but I still found myself impressed.
Honestly, I “lost” a night of my primary mission of looking for more ways to interact with the Persian DLC because I wanted to play with all the new toys I found. And did I mention modding? The game apparently has a ton of modding support, and you can download and use player mods right from the Steam Workshop. Some of them are cosmetic changes, but some of them appear to even change the gameplay too.
Putting all of that aside (but not really because I wasn’t going to get anywhere of significance without it), I restarted my quest for the DLC. Now that I was massively OP (*wink*), I was able to gear up and enable the quest in earnest. I turned on the quest, found the marker, and started to make my way to the boss.
Looking at the map and the relative position of the boss, I realized the best course of action would be to climb up these hillsides because I had spawned in a valley that would’ve taken a long time to naturally traverse. Luckily the game includes some climbing gear and climbing skills. I leveled those up to a point that was feasible, downed a stamina potion, and began the climb.
It was a pretty impressive sight, to be honest. Climbing in MoE kind of reminded me of climbing in Legend of Zelda’s Breath of the Wild. It’s a lot rougher, and there isn’t the little hop action, but otherwise it was close. I fell a few times to my death because even with my stats maxed out and the potion enabled, I was pushing the limits of what the game likely intends players to climb.
However, once I reached the top, a wave of relief washed over me as I had finally located the enemy NPC base. The starter quest was at last within my reach. Charging into the zone, I was prepared to simply slaughter the enemies with some kind of personal invincibility while dealing unlimited damage. But then I was one-shot by the mobs. Aghast, I began to search through the server settings to see how I can nerf these baddies – and yet I couldn’t. There’s a tuner that adjusts all damage, so I could ensure neither I nor the NPCs could be hurt. But I couldn’t find the one I was looking for.
It was probably there. Somewhere. Again, the UI in this game will make your eyes bleed, and I was running into a time limit to get this piece out to all you fine folks. My editor is often standing over my shoulder with a ruler in hand prepared to smack at the keyboard should I begin to run-afoul of the deadline (Editor’s Note: a metal ruler, even).
I really got close this time, though! You know, by cheating and spinning up my own personal instance. Still, there’s just too much in this game for a basic boy like me.
Honestly, when I consider all the different survival style MMOs out there right now, I have to say that this one just takes their lunch money, snatches their seat from under them, and then dates their crush.
When I was playing Pax Dei some months ago I did point out that I couldn’t understand who was looking for a new survival game like this when we already had MoE at home – and I’d stand by that. Probably the best way to play MoE is in a private server so that you can do anything and everything, but the fact that all these features exist under one roof is a compelling enough reason to play and learn the proper game as well.
It’s another game that’s probably not for me, and I think this time I’ve settled on that fact. But if you were the type to play a survivalbox with all the features, you’d be hard-pressed to find one that does more.
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!
