Sword of the New World, a New Pirate MMORPG

Sword of the New World only became available in the United States this month. When it comes to purchases things involving pirates or even if they might involve Pirates, I do have a weakness. I picked up AEG's 7^th Sea despite its unnecessarily complex rules because it was one of the few games out there, besides White Wolf's The Sorceror's Crusade that took place in a renaissance tyhpe setting. Well, 7^th Sea is still published and while the rules have been improved, they are still somewhat hard to understand unless you pick up the d20 version manufactured a few years ago. This love of mine extends to online gaming as well. I picked up the popular World of Warcraft MMORPG simply because there was a potential that it might indeed contain pirates. While it does contain some types of technology you would indeed find in the Renaissance and Age of Exploration eras, the feel is not very piratey and can only be described as trying to capture the mood of the popular real time strategy game.

When someone linked to me the site for a game that was then in Beta called Sword of the New World, I knew I would want to try it out. Unfortunately, I had forgotten the name for several months and was surprised when I found the game again in Wal-Mart. From the box I was not quite sure whether it was a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game or merely the standard desktop role playing game with an online component. Fortunately it was sorted out as soon as I opened the package. It does fall into the MMORPG genre, but you do not need to pay to play it. You merely have fewer options than those who subscribe to the service. You cannot trade and can only advance until level 20 until you purchase a subscription.

The subscription is not expensive at $8.95 a moth, about $7 less a month than most other online games with a subscription right now, what will determine whether or not it will be successful is whether the game's target market finds it fun enough to continue. Sword of the New World has some amazing artwork. Artists clearly spent a lot of time developing the background scenery but it seems like the story behind the game could have used a little more work. At times I am not sure if the game was meant to be serious or if it was meant to contain light-hearted humor. It seems that it may be a mix of both, but a lot of the jokes leave something to be desired if that were the case.

The way the controls work is somewhat reminiscent of Ultima Online, which may now be forgotten by most people since Everquest set the standard for 3d graphics. This should not confuse the person purchasing the game though, it does have a three dimensional graphics engine, but games like City of Heroes, Everquest, and World of Warcraft do a better job of implementing it. Rather than this being a flaw however, it seems to fit the mood of the game in much the way that the humor does not. Once you master mouse movement you can use the mouse entirely to move around.

It seems that one thing lost on the designers is that these games are supposed to be social and the chat system, at least in my limited experience of it needs to be reworked to encourage communication between players. This will likely be addressed in future patches. While earlier games in the genre suffered from too much downtime to encourage the social aspect, the combat in Sword of the New World is fast paced and over quickly. The game tends to throw a lot of monsters at you however. While this can make for easier leveling it can also lead to a lot of deaths if you're in the wrong area. Fortunately, as the game merely knocks the players out, if all the members of your 'family' get knocked out, you can simply return to your quarters while unconscious.

The controls of Sword of the New World are a bit difficult for a new player to figure out but once you get them down they actually seem somewhat more intuitive than the earlier versions. The fact that you are able to play 3 characters at a single time may cause problems for the easier confused, but the advantages of this system is that it discourages a technique known as dual-boxing which tended to slightly favor players who had more money to spend on the game and makes it slightly more solo friendly. You can experiment with various combinations to see what works best for you.

As the game has only been out for one month, it would be unfair to be too harsh on it. Due to the nature of online games it is likely that the programmers and designers will improve it in future patches based on player feedback. For those into the Renaissance era or pirate style games with lots of sword play and the ability for characters to wield a musket - even be a musketeer - it is certainly worth a look. Players wishing to check it out can download a trial copy at www.swordoftheneworld.com