Naysayers be damned: Gameloft has posted on the upcoming Order & Chaos (O&C) patch, despite the fact that most critics insisted that Gameloft’s lazy attitude on updating previous titles would negatively affect O&C. The bullets:
- New quests will be added in the last two high-level regions
- A server migration system will be implemented, allowing you to change your server
- The cost needed to teleport from one city to another will be adjusted
- The amount of money lost upon dying will be adjusted
- All cemeteries will become non-Player-versus-Player areas (non-PvP), meaning no player will be able to attack another one in a cemetery
- A teleport will be added in Greenmont
- Additional content and several bug fixes will also be implemented…
What this does is confirm that the game was pushed out the door without being fully done. That is to say, the lack of quests at certain levels was suspicious, in that it felt like Gameloft didn’t spend as much time on quest content as they could have, and just wanted the game out to start generating money. If the lack of quests in the mid-20 level range is any indication, the high-level tiers must be truly quest-sparse, which the update should address. Same is true for dungeons1 and PvP.
Presumably, the server migration system will be RMT-based2, and is of questionable worth; after starting our first character, we realized that the Goons were on another server, so we briefly considered re-rolling. Switching servers would be useful, but since guilds have a max capacity of 60 people, most people who’d use this feature would switch servers to play with a smaller group of friends, rather than switching to play with larger groups.
We wonder if the likelihood of cheaper transportation3 and less of a death penalty is any indication that Gameloft expects to make adequate money via other RMT, or if they’re afraid that the complaints about these things will drive off new players. The teleport hub in Greenmont is a logical addition, and it’s amazing that it wasn’t added already.
Overall, it’ll likely be a couple patches down the road before O&C feels like a complete MMO, if things beyond solo PvE are important to you. We’d start to get more enthused about dungeons if there were a parallel announcement about a good group-finding system, but there hasn’t been one as yet. The arenas don’t intrigue us too much, as we’re skeptical that they’ll work well given the small amount of abilities, specs, and classes the game offers. But at least Gameloft is trying, and they do still have a veritable lock on the genre right now on iOS.
-
To us, Gameloft’s wording suggests that we’ll see instanced areas after all, unless the term is meant literally, and Gameloft means that there will be indoor, subterranean areas to explore. ↩
-
Server transfers are RMT-based in World of Warcraft, and we don’t see why Gameloft would do this any differently, via in-app purchase. ↩
-
We realize that Gameloft said that the amount to teleport and resurrect will be “adjusted,” and not “decreased,” but we can’t imagine that these costs will be increased. If they were, the backlash from players would be significant. ↩