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Sandbox MMORPG Uncharted Waters: Origin set to launch on March 7
Quizzical
Member LegendaryPosts: 25,351
It's time to get your full-rigged ships and tekkousens out of mothballs. Joao Franco, Catalina Erantzo, Ali Vezas, and the rest of the gang are back. The Steam page is here, but not yet updated for the launch date:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574360/Uncharted_Waters_Origin/
It has been officially announced here, however:
https://uwo.floor.line.games/us/bbsCmn/detail/1677582615091019694
This is a full launch, not just a beta or early access. They had an open beta of sorts for a week last month. The game has been released for a while in South Korea, but this is the global launch, with English, Japanese, and Chinese language support available. At least in the demo, the English translation was good.
So what is UWO, anyway? It's a Korean MMORPG made by Line Games that is a remake of Uncharted Waters: New Horizons, a single-player RPG made by Japanese developer Koei and originally launched in 1993. That might sound like a strange thing to do, but the lead developer wanted to remake UWNH because it was his favorite game from his childhood, so he went out and got the license to do it. Uncharted Waters Online, which Koei launched in 2005, was a sequel of sorts to their Uncharted Waters console games, but Origin is much closer to the original game.
Remaking a single-player JRPG as an MMORPG might sound like a huge change, but it's smaller than you might think. UWNH was about as close to an MMORPG as it was possible to come on an SNES that had no network connectivity. The console game tracked 26 AI fleets moving around the world, trading goods, investing in ports, and so forth as the player played the game. Jumping from AI simulated players to actual other players isn't nearly the jump that it would be in most games that didn't effectively have a bunch of simulated players.
Sandbox MMORPG? Yes, it's a sandbox MMORPG. After an initial tutorial to keep new players from ending up completely confused and lost, it opens up quickly to be very open-ended. As with Uncharted Waters Online, the game has combat but isn't primarily about combat. Rather, there are three main activities: exploration, trading, and combat. Players can focus mostly on any one of the three. If anything, trading is the most essential, as that's how you get money.
It's not purely a remake, as while it largely has the features of the original game, it adds a lot more of everything. More ports, more mates, more trade goods, more discoveries, more ships, and so forth. It also adds some new features, from admiral skills to needing to know the local language to communicate in a port. And, of course, the graphics are greatly updated from what could be done on an SNES 30 years ago.
The game will have both PVP and PVE servers. On a PVP server, you can attack other players, though if you do, their countries will block you from their ports. As a pirate, you're the enemy of all humanity, and that's not an easy life. On a PVE server, you can't attack other players. There is probably going to be less direct interaction with other players than in most MMORPGs, as you don't assemble groups for combat.
If anything, the main interaction between players is economic. Trading is about buying goods cheaply at one port and selling them for a profit elsewhere. If too many people buy the same goods at the same port, then the price of that good at that port goes up. Similarly, if too many sell the same goods at the same port, the price that the port is willing to pay goes down.
Additionally, ports will be allied with whichever country invests the most at that port. You can mostly ignore this if you like, but you may sometimes have lower taxes on goods at a port owned by your home country. In the Korean version, whales mostly dominated the investment game.
The game is available for PC (through Steam), Android, and iOS. Android and iOS? Mobile game? Yes, it's also a mobile game. But while most PC ports of mobile games have an interface that screams "mobile game", this one sure didn't, at least in the demo. It is very heavy on mouse usage, but the PC version has a UI that is pretty obviously redesigned from the mobile game. It scales well to very high monitor resolutions, and without being stuck with the giant buttons that you'd expect of a mobile game.
The most notable effect of the game also being available on phones is that it can run well on very weak PC hardware. The minimum required GPUs are a GeForce GTX 460 or a Radeon HD 7750, which released in 2010 and 2012, respectively, and were only mid-range cards even then. The graphics are a mix of real-time 3D rendering with 2D sprites that appear to be pre-rendered 3D animations.
So now you can stop complaining that there aren't any new MMORPGs to play. There's a big one coming next week.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574360/Uncharted_Waters_Origin/
It has been officially announced here, however:
https://uwo.floor.line.games/us/bbsCmn/detail/1677582615091019694
This is a full launch, not just a beta or early access. They had an open beta of sorts for a week last month. The game has been released for a while in South Korea, but this is the global launch, with English, Japanese, and Chinese language support available. At least in the demo, the English translation was good.
So what is UWO, anyway? It's a Korean MMORPG made by Line Games that is a remake of Uncharted Waters: New Horizons, a single-player RPG made by Japanese developer Koei and originally launched in 1993. That might sound like a strange thing to do, but the lead developer wanted to remake UWNH because it was his favorite game from his childhood, so he went out and got the license to do it. Uncharted Waters Online, which Koei launched in 2005, was a sequel of sorts to their Uncharted Waters console games, but Origin is much closer to the original game.
Remaking a single-player JRPG as an MMORPG might sound like a huge change, but it's smaller than you might think. UWNH was about as close to an MMORPG as it was possible to come on an SNES that had no network connectivity. The console game tracked 26 AI fleets moving around the world, trading goods, investing in ports, and so forth as the player played the game. Jumping from AI simulated players to actual other players isn't nearly the jump that it would be in most games that didn't effectively have a bunch of simulated players.
Sandbox MMORPG? Yes, it's a sandbox MMORPG. After an initial tutorial to keep new players from ending up completely confused and lost, it opens up quickly to be very open-ended. As with Uncharted Waters Online, the game has combat but isn't primarily about combat. Rather, there are three main activities: exploration, trading, and combat. Players can focus mostly on any one of the three. If anything, trading is the most essential, as that's how you get money.
It's not purely a remake, as while it largely has the features of the original game, it adds a lot more of everything. More ports, more mates, more trade goods, more discoveries, more ships, and so forth. It also adds some new features, from admiral skills to needing to know the local language to communicate in a port. And, of course, the graphics are greatly updated from what could be done on an SNES 30 years ago.
The game will have both PVP and PVE servers. On a PVP server, you can attack other players, though if you do, their countries will block you from their ports. As a pirate, you're the enemy of all humanity, and that's not an easy life. On a PVE server, you can't attack other players. There is probably going to be less direct interaction with other players than in most MMORPGs, as you don't assemble groups for combat.
If anything, the main interaction between players is economic. Trading is about buying goods cheaply at one port and selling them for a profit elsewhere. If too many people buy the same goods at the same port, then the price of that good at that port goes up. Similarly, if too many sell the same goods at the same port, the price that the port is willing to pay goes down.
Additionally, ports will be allied with whichever country invests the most at that port. You can mostly ignore this if you like, but you may sometimes have lower taxes on goods at a port owned by your home country. In the Korean version, whales mostly dominated the investment game.
The game is available for PC (through Steam), Android, and iOS. Android and iOS? Mobile game? Yes, it's also a mobile game. But while most PC ports of mobile games have an interface that screams "mobile game", this one sure didn't, at least in the demo. It is very heavy on mouse usage, but the PC version has a UI that is pretty obviously redesigned from the mobile game. It scales well to very high monitor resolutions, and without being stuck with the giant buttons that you'd expect of a mobile game.
The most notable effect of the game also being available on phones is that it can run well on very weak PC hardware. The minimum required GPUs are a GeForce GTX 460 or a Radeon HD 7750, which released in 2010 and 2012, respectively, and were only mid-range cards even then. The graphics are a mix of real-time 3D rendering with 2D sprites that appear to be pre-rendered 3D animations.
So now you can stop complaining that there aren't any new MMORPGs to play. There's a big one coming next week.
Comments
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
If you want to be a pirate on a PVP server and go harass other players, that might be pay to win. Or possibly more like Uncharted Waters Online, where you had to pay to have much of a chance to be a successful pirate, but an alert player who paid nothing could readily avoid even the whale pirates. In UW Online, pirates mostly went after botters, as people who aren't paying attention are the easiest prey to catch.
From some data mined from the Steam page, it looks like there will be some sort of subscription, as well as a bunch of things for sale that I'd expect to be earned by normal gameplay. It looks like they let you buy ships directly, but not the top tiers of them. But it's possible that I'm misreading it or the data mined is wrong or will be changed before the real launch.
It's notable that Uncharted Waters Online had a series of publishers who actively tried to make the game pay to win and mostly failed at it. In most games, dealing 50% more damage would be hugely unbalancing. In UWO, it actually wouldn't be that big of a deal, as that will rarely be the difference between winning and losing.
https://uwo.floor.line.games/us/bbs/guide/guide_us/1
Do note the page numbers at the bottom, as there are three pages worth of feature guides.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I played through part of the tutorial of Origin during the beta, and it was well-designed. The tutorial has a ton of hand-holding, so it doesn't really show you how open-ended the game ultimately is. But it explains things massively better than the tutorial in UW Online did.
What do you think, Quizzical?
I'm waiting for monetization info, though.
Once upon a time....
We don't know the full monetization info, but I've seen some pieces. It looks like there's a heavy dose of pay to progress faster. Maybe a free player can make some amount of progress in 200 hours of gameplay, and a whale can make the same amount of progress in 100 hours. I haven't seen any complaints of hitting a wall where you must become a whale to proceed as happens with some other games.
One thing I saw in the documentation is what happens with disasters. Suppose that you're sailing around and get some rats on board. At that point, you have three options. One is that if you planned ahead and have some rat poison on hand, you can use it to kill the rats. This will be readily accessible without paying real-life money. Another is that you can just accept that the rats are eating some of your food, so your food supplies will drop more quickly than normal until you reach port--which is not necessarily a big deal if you're already near a port. The third is to spend some red gems (bought with real money) to eliminate the rats.
Getting new admirals (main characters to play as) is normally "grind-based". But if you don't want to wait until you've earned an admiral through normal gameplay, you can buy one and have access to the particular admiral you want immediately. It looks like that costs $55 each. That's a lot of money, but it's also whale bait, and not something that they expect normal players to buy. They expect most players to unlock admirals from normal gameplay.
Recruiting "mates" (who can function as captains of other ships in your fleet, act as language translators, and some other things) normally requires buying them drinks, giving gifts, and so forth to improve your relationship before they'll join. You can ask one to join you, and if your relationship is high enough, he will. If not, he'll refuse, and you can't ask again for a while. The cooldown depends on the rank, and can range from 10 minutes to 6 hours. (This doesn't mean "can't play the game for six hours". It means that unless you were going to log off for the night anyway, you should go do something else and check back the next time you're in that port.) But if you don't want to wait, you can spend gems to skip that mechanic and get him to join you immediately.
I expect that to be a common theme. You don't really have to spend money anywhere, but there will probably be a zillion places that you can speed something up by spending some money on this or that. I'll be surprised if it turns into "you must pay up or get stuck and unable to progress", or even "you must pay up or get ganked endlessly", even on a PVP server.
Asking for a friend.
Years ago people said one basically needed to spend about $90 in BDO to get a few important costumes which had stats and extra pets for gathering.
I think these days I've read the costume and pet purchase really aren't necessary in BDO anymore as there are plenty of free ways to obtain them in game, more or less.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I could easily believe $150 to buy a large package of red gems, or even as a batch unlock for a bunch of admirals. But there's a huge difference between having to pay a ton of money to have a chance versus flagrant whale bait that just lets you skip some stuff that would have been unlocked by normal gameplay anyway.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
I'm trusting @Quizzical , it will definitely at least be worth trying.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
To my eyes, the ships when sailing around at sea look good, as do the characters that you talk to 1 on 1 in what is almost certainly Live 2D graphics. Characters running around in port are ugly, and combat that has to draw a lot of ships or a lot of people doesn't look great, either.
Imagine if WoW still allowed you to get gear by the normal methods, but also offered loot boxes that would give you a random, bottom tier raid epic for your class for $50, as well as a different loot box that gives random level 50 blue for your class for $20, and yet another that gives a random level 40 blue for your class for $10. Would that be pay to win? Maybe, but since you can get good gear just fine by playing the game, I wouldn't see it as a problem. That's roughly what I'm expecting to see in UWO.
This is going to be a slow leveling game, though. Don't expect to see anyone max everything out in a week, or even a month.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
We'll find out in a little over three hours.
Imagine if some developer who thought that Warcraft 3 was really great but didn't work for Blizzard somehow got Blizzard to give him a legal license to remake Warcraft 3 as an MMORTS and added a bunch of new features and content to it. That wouldn't really be WoW 2, as WoW wouldn't be the nearest comparison. It's in roughly that sense that UW Origin isn't really UW Online 2.