Consider the turn-based MMO with Atlantica Online

by Shawn Schuster Oct 28th 2008 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Culture, Game mechanics, MMO industry

There are turn-based games, and then there are MMOs. The idea of mixing the two doesn't seem like the greatest of ideas, does it? Turn-based combat would take away from the high-action immersive fighting that we've become accustomed to through our favorite online games. This is most evident in the recent popularity of FPS-style MMOs. Yet, despite this, the RPG side of MMOs began with turn-based strategy.

Over at MMORPG.com, Atlantica Online's Producer, Kim Tae Gon, explains the reasoning behind the decision to make this highly-popular game turn-based. Going back to the fundamentals of games like chess, Kim Tae Gon believes that this type of game mechanic is more approachable for a larger audience, especially considering the popularity of games like chess across the world. "With casual games and FPS games well established, it's time for something new, like turn-based games. I honestly hope Atlantica will be the starting point."

Tags: atlantica, atlantica-online, chess, free-to-play, kim-tae-gon, mmorpg.com, turn-based, turn-based-mmo, turn-based-strategy

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

brandon said on 4:51PM 10-28-2008

Actually now that I think about it, this sort of makes sense. In most MMO battles you can't text chat at the same time as fight. Granted voice chat helps, but not if youre multitasking on the phone at the same time or something.

John said on 5:42PM 10-28-2008

Been playing this for the last 4 days. Its actually very fun. It reminds me a lot of playing a PS2 RPG game but with better graphics. I recommend everyone give it a try.

Bigfoot said on 10:30PM 10-28-2008

My first MMORPG(The Realm Online) is turn-based. So this game interests me.

Kaoy said on 1:00AM 10-29-2008

I played it for a week in CB(but had to go out of town after that), and it felt very random. Double and triple hits were a very common thing, which you had no control over. To put that in more clear terms, sometimes, characters would hit 2 or 3 times, doing full damage with each attack. Also, with there being a sever lack of mana for each character, you can only use skill 5 times at most if you had them to a level where tehy are actually effective. When you add that every skill had a pretty large cool down, and no in fight regeneration of mana, you come to a game where you will hardly ever be able to use a skill with out having to sit down for a minute afterward to regen the mana you lost for it. The play felt quite clunky and highly based on luck, ecsecially when fighting ranged mobs, which could aim right for your squishies, like the archer and kill them in a single tripple hit attack(which happened far more often than you would think it should).

Party play was no better, as it felt as though you weren't really playing together at all. You use a heal that recovers a line of 3 characters, if you cast in on your far right front row character, rather than it healing him, your character to his left and the party mates character to the right, it still would only heal your front row. The same rules applied to buffs, and in special situations where a new mob of monsters would come for each party member, your attacks follwed the same rule. As a result, the only purpose of partying was to vastly out number your opponent, which made the game go from hard and tactical to far to easy and nothing but spaming.

The game could have been quite good, but it seems as though they missed the point of party tactics, and tactics in general(hints the absolutly random double and triple attacks).