I’ve discovered that when it comes to my online gaming, I’m kind of like a kid driving to the candy store with my parents. I want to try everything even though mom and dad said I need to pick just one. So I tell myself that when I get there, I’m really going to focus down and pick one thing that I know I’ll like. But that’s not what happens. That’s never what happens. It’s going to be Throne and Liberty. No, wait there’s a new season of New World. Oh, did the new Persian content in Myth of Empires drop?
Well, this week it’s Havenhold – a unique MMO that seemingly dropped out of thin air. In my research on the title, I found that Havenhold is apparently a retooling of Starkeepers, a game we reported on in the innocent days of 2022. Other than the developer, Wolfpack Games, there seems to be very little in the way of a connection between the two, yet Starkeepers has all but disappeared in the news since then – and the most telling sign of all is that the Steam link for Starkeepers actually redirects to Havenhold – so something happened there!
On paper, Havenhold checks just about all the boxes I’m looking for. It’s a PvP-oriented game that’s even billed as an action sandbox MMO. The game is set in a version of the Far East where you play as monks who can take on powerful avatars and gain new abilities all while attempting to claim the world for your faction.
The game even plays on 14-day cycles; at the end of the cycle, the war culminates in a final battle to determine which faction will be the victor. Not to mention there’s a “sinner” stat, which I think is kind of like a marker for tracking player kills or something similar. The tooltip indicates that the higher your Sin the more likely you’ll draw Heaven’s Wrath. Sign me up!
While the sheer number of features doesn’t hold a candle to Myth of Empires (very few games could to be honest), everything on the feature list is perfect for me. On top of what I mentioned above, there’s also crafting and trading. Everything you gather and craft in the game is tradable, so it seems ripe for a strong player-driven economy. A lot of times in MMOs the best loot and gear ends up being character- or account-bound, so the potential for everything to be traded sounds great. It’s not a unique or original idea by any measure, but it sure is a good indicator of the sort of MMO Wolfpack Games is trying to make.
So when I saw that the beta was quickly approaching, I gathered four of my closest friends (one of whom is my sister and the other my wife, so really two friends and two people I guilted into playing with me) and logged in. Wolfpack Games was kind enough to offer me some keys to get the crew together, but the playtest was seemingly open to anyone who used the Steam feature to request access to play. In fact, a couple of us just played that way.
To say my party was a bit let down by me might be an understatement. I reiterated to my squad that this was just a playtest, and I’d no doubt that a lot of the features would be firmed up before a real launch, but there were a number of core systems that just didn’t click for us.
Starting out in Havenhold is a completely acceptable and normal experience. You begin by creating a character and watching a short video detailing the world and a little bit about why we’re all here. After a few “WASD to move” and “click to attack” pop-ups, you arrive at a spiritual altar and gain your first avatar. I was thinking that this was the moment when we’d basically choose our class, not not exactly. It’s more that you just choose what you want your first one to be, but there’s nothing preventing you from learning the other avatar transformations later (and there were only three).
Next, we coordinated to join the same faction and plop into the world together, team up, and then head out into the unknown to knock out the first quests. And this is where things began to go off the rails. In what is a quite bizarre game decision, we found that the initial gameplay quests are all solo instances.
Exiting to the open world feels just like any classic 2000s-era MMO. You run around the zone and see other players harvesting mats and killing mobs. But when we got to the quest marker and click to enter, we were pulled into a solo instance, even though we were all partied up. So our very first experience as a team was really just solo play. I’m not saying I would in any way suggest the game force group play; to the contrary, I love that the instances can be solo’ed. However, if players are in a party, the instance should scale up a little and let us play together.
Despite that, we continued to play alone together and level up, only the leveling system is not your traditional MMO leveling scheme at all. I can’t put my finger on where I’ve played something like this before, but I know that I have. Essentially, as you fight and gather mats, you’ll earn experience for your Taichu level, which is basically your overall character level. However, within that you actually have to level up your attributes individually.
So you gain XP for individual attributes through gameplay, but those can be leveled up only to your Taichu level. In other words, even if I have enough attribute XP to advance my strength to level 4, I have to wait until my Taichu has reached level 4 before my strength can level up to match. It felt odd because I wasn’t exactly sure what activities were leveling up which attributes.
The next thing that really started to feel off about the game was that I never felt as if I was getting stronger. Unlike in many traditional themepark MMOs, we don’t really have classes here, so everyone was basically the same monk. But I also wasn’t gaining any new skills. In fact, I hadn’t gained any skills up until level 5. The game slowly taught me how to do more with the basics, but I wasn’t doing anything cool yet. In Guild Wars 2 and similar level-oriented MMOs, you’d have at least the beginning few abilities, like casting a fireball or performing a whirlwind attack or something. But not here; we’re all just left clicking, right clicking, and dodging. All of which is great! But I want more.
By this point, we were a full evening through playing, and not one of us had gained much of anything exciting. We’d ground our way through the beginning levels, and honestly it doesn’t take that long, but it felt longer than it was, which is not something you want to say when you’re playing a video game. It really felt grindy because you are literally just re-entering those same solo instances four, five, six or however many times until you’ve finally reached level 5. It was just dull. Not to mention that we still didn’t have any skills other than the initial avatar transformation, and there was no gear (at least at these low levels?).
Finally, at level 5, we were able to enter a more proper dungeon-style instance. The problem was by this point I was the only one left playing as my friends had all tired of the rinse and repeat content. I made it through to the boss of the instance, but I didn’t have the strength to defeat him. If I’d been more prepared and ensured I had some consumables and saved my avatar for the fight with him, I don’t think he would’ve been too tough to beat. However, I was losing my patience for the gameplay. Supposedly, my first unlocked skill was on the other side of the fight, but I just didn’t care at that point.
I won’t completely write off Havenhold; I’m still interested in the concept itself. But unless there are some big improvements to that early experience to convince players that the gameplay will get interesting, I don’t think it’s going hold my attention much more. I’ll certainly log back in a few times during this coming week since the 14-day cycle hasn’t ended yet. Even if I’m not able to be a useful participant in the end of the server, I want to be there to see how it all plays out.
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!
