Dragon's Nest: More Free to Play

Free to play Massively Multiplayer RPGs seemed to be a recurring theme at E3 this year. Last week I mentioned RaiderZ, Perfect World's Korean import MMORPG, which has a WoWian flavor with a tiny bit of hack and slash thrown in. Today I'd like to talk about Dragon's Nest, Nexon's latest in its line of free to play MMOs, which follows closely in the footsteps of Vindictus. It has much less of the traditional class cooperation, and far more hack and slash when compared to RaiderZ. With a cute anime and fantasy style that contrasts heavily with Vindictus, Nexon is definitely craftily appealing to a new potential audience with Dragon's Nest. I spent some time at E3 chatting with the game's producer, as well as trying out both co-op and 2v2 PvP multiplayer. Read on to find out what I learned.

If you have played Vindictus, then you'll find the controls and gameplay in Dragon's Nest to be very familiar. It uses a third person perspective with real time hack and slash combat. You can attack with combos and special attacks which have different ranges and effects. Certain special attacks can only be used in very specific situations. For instance, the Acrobat has move that causes her to do a backflip and smash down on the enemy, but it only works at extremely close range. I did not get to see the character creator, but I was told that it allows you to design your own look, rather than choosing from pre-designed characters. You can choose one of four base classes, one of two specializations at level 15, and again one of two more at level 45. For those of you keeping track at home, that is 16 effective classes. The Acrobat mentioned above is one of the options for the first specialization of the Archer class. As you might guess, it focuses on jumping and flipping while shooting arrows. I tested out the Acrobat in PvP and I found it difficult to play at first. It is important to know the range of your attacks, as they miss if you are not close enough and it doesn't tell you to move closer. It is much easier to run up and start beating on your opponent as a Warrior or nuking them with the Priest.

The world of Dragon's Nest features towns which act as hubs to meet players and instanced dungeons where up to 4 players at a time can cooperate to complete a quest. All areas and content are part of the free to play game. It appears to have a more traditional fantasy theme and anime style. The art is more reminiscent of the Harvest Moon and Rune Factory series. I was told that there is a robust story, and as the producer explained it to me it sounds very interesting. This story centers around a girl named Rose and artifacts called lustres, the power in which she has the ability to unlock. It sounds like your basic damsel in distress to me. You can read more details about how these lustres came into being on the Dragon's Nest website. In the game, this story is told mostly through the use of cut scenes which occur prior to boss encounters in each quest. I saw one such encounter at E3. I like that the cut scene is shown using the game engine, as it gives the feel of cohesiveness of the experience. The downside of this is that the lips of the characters do not move when they talk. Without expressions to go along with the voice acting, the scene seems less compelling. It remains to be seen if this actually does have a negative impact on the storytelling though.

Since Dragon's Nest is a free to play game, Nexon has to make its money somehow. They continue the business model of using Nexon Points to support micro-transactions for this purpose. According to the producer, none of the NX point purchases can impact the game balance, so you won't be able to purchase new weapons, armor, or other advantages over other players. There will be more cosmetic choices, such as character costumes. This does not follow exactly from the model used for previous Nexon games like Combat Arms, in which NX points can definitely be used to gain an edge by purchasing weapons and other types of bonus upgrades.

Dragon's Nest is scheduled for release Summer 2011. Closed Beta starts tomorrow and, while it's already full, Open Beta will start soon after. I've been told that the max level for Open Beta would be level 24. The final release does not yet have a determined max level. Recommended systems specs are light (Dual Core 2.0 GHz, 1 GB RAM, Nvidia 7600), which isn't surprising for free to play games or MMOs in general. Despite that, Dragon's Nest is a beautiful game with a style very different from others in the genre and I recommend trying it out when it releases this summer.