Allods Online Preview

I’ll start this with a confession: I’ve never really spent much time with online role-players. Indeed, you count the number of MMORPGs I’ve played on the fingers of a man who habitually files his nails with a chainsaw. Perhaps it’s the subscription fees, or the fact that you’ve got to plough hours and hours of your life into them before you get anywhere. Or maybe it’s just the fact that a guy I once knew ended up marrying a girl he met via World of Warcraft, and I have some kind of subconscious commitment issues.

Still, if I were to suddenly change heart and jump into the sordid world of massively multiplayer adventures, I reckon that Allods Online might be a good choice. It’s totally free, which is obviously an attractive starting point, but it’s also got a number of other things in its favour. There’s a rather unconventional space-opera setting, with a look that occasionally shows hints of Russian mythology and architecture – hardly a surprise, since developers Nival Interactive are based in Moscow. There are also bloody great big space galleons that you can build and pilot with your chums. And best of all, there are classes that use mo-cap work from midget actors.

Allods Online may not cost a penny to play, but don’t let this fool you into thinking it’s a throwaway product. The game itself is a continuation of the Rage of Mages series that Nival created in 1998, and on top of that the project has been given a whopping great budget to the tune of $12 million. Like many free-to-play titles, the whole shebang is funded through micro-transactions, but theoretically you could just ignore that side of things and just stick to the core game on offer. And since that core game is intended to be a viable competitor to the likes of WoW, it’s hard to see why any MMORPGer shouldn’t keep an eye on this venture.

In terms of its basic structure, Allods sticks fairly close to the established conventions of the genre. There are two warring factions – The League and The Empire – and within each group there are three separate races, ultimately giving the choice of 28 separate classes. There’s no good or evil as such; The Empire operate under a dictatorship while The League are a tad more democratic, but players will pretty much have to make their own decision about who’s in the right or wrong. The game’s backstory involves interstellar blockades and supply lines, but the chances are most people will simply be swayed by their preference of race and class.

In addition to familiar choices like elves, orcs and two human races, there are a couple of really interesting options: The Arisen are robotically reanimated corpses, a sort of intelligent, mechanical zombie, while the Gibberlings are little furry chaps who were probably created when a Mogwai got wasted on White Lightening and forcefully made love to your mum’s cat. And if that description hasn’t gotten you excited, consider that you control three of the fuzzy buggers at any given time, operating as a single unit. If you play as a Gibberlings Archer, for example, one creature holds the bow, a second pulls back the arrow, and a third takes charge of the aiming. They’re very cute, although they don’t seem so cuddly when they fire a razor-tipped shaft of death into your eye socket.

The game’s setting is also worth a mention. Much of your adventuring will take place on the Allods – large islands floating in space. There are 16 of these to explore, and between them they should cover a wide selection of environments, from lush grasslands to rocky canyons to forts and medieval cities. But while some of these locations may recall the more familiar fantasy trappings of WoW and co, there’s also the whole sci-fi angle to consider. Indeed, it’s arguably here that the game’s true potential lies.

When you start a new character in Allods Online, you’ll start life aboard a flying galleon – a huge ruddy great ship sailing through the stars. As part of the crew you’ll help defend it from attack and take part in other, familiar-looking low-level quests that ease you into the game. After a while you’ll disembark at one of the Allods and set about building up your character through more questing, but once you’ve reached level 20 the game should get really interesting. Why? Because at this point you’ll be able to start building a galleon of your own. That’s right – you get to build your very own starship, and it’ll take several pairs of hands, too. The demonstrator from gPotato (the company publishing the game in North America and Europe) explained that it’ll take a week or two to put your vessel together, depending on how many people you rope in to help you out. And once you’ve finished your work, with any luck some of your co-workers will be up for helping you sail the damn thing too.

You could try piloting the whole vessel on your Jack Jones, of course, but where would the fun in that be? It seems as if the ships have been designed with teamwork in mind, to the extent that there will be several jobs that need doing at any given time. There are three separate controls for the ship’s altitude, speed and direction, a navigation point that effectively acts as a radar, plus several sets of cannons mounted around the ship. You can get stuck into full-on space wars, fighting as one ship among an armada. You can ambush other ships and steal their cargo. You can even battle enormous space demons, gigantic flying Cloverfield type beasties that dwarf your puny craft. Imagine the fun you could have with your mates, piloting your hand-built craft with Tom, Dick and Harry. Why, you might even forget their unbelievably generic names for a second or two.

On top of this, there should be the usual raids, grinding and questing goodness that makes up the backbone of every MMORPG. To be honest, I’ve only seen a tiny glimpse of the game so far, but the space galleons alone are enough to catch my attention – and as I’ve already stated, I say that as someone who usually ignores these games. I’ve not seen much in the way of combat yet, but I can tell you that when you die you go to a kind of after-world where you have to wait out a brief cooldown period for returning to the action. If you’re the impatient type you can use a particular kind of item to buy your way back to life, but this will probably cost you real-world cash. How much real world cash, you ask? I don’t know yet, says I. It’ll be cheap though.

In terms of other micro-transactions, expect to be able to buy clothes and magic items, along with decorations for your ship (the basic shape follows a single template, apparently). I’m assured that there will be plenty of loot to find in the game world itself, so if you hate the idea of paying for game content you should be able to get by without a problem. Of course, we won’t know about this kind of thing for certain until the game launches, but it seems like a smart move to keep the user base happy.

It’s also worth pointing out that signing up for one gPotato game will get you access to every title on their network. In terms of UK language games, that’s only this and another RPG called Dragonica, which takes a more arcade-like approach to its online role-playing – but there are other games to try if you don’t mind French and German text. In any case, the bottom line is that Allods Online has the potential to offer something really exciting in a genre that often struggles to innovate. It’s due for launch in the autumn, so keep your eyes peeled for more details soon.

Allods Online will launch in the autumn.