First Impressions: Alganon
by Eliot Lefebvre 
Jan 11th 2010 at 5:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, Game mechanics, Launches, New titles, First Impressions, Alganon
Today's First Impressions could use a little bit of external reading before you go too deeply into it. So I'm going to start by linking an article that's nearly seven years old but still excellent -- Fantasy Heartbreakers.
Now that you've all clicked "Back" in some confusion or just avoided the link in the first place, some explanation. The article is the origin of a term that pen-and-paper RPG fans have come to use to describe a certain type of game referenced in the article. It's referring to the countless game companies who thought they could make a game that was better at being Dungeons and Dragons than, well, Dungeons and Dragons. Many of the games in question weren't bad games -- sometimes even good ones -- but they were built on the fundamental premise that they would be "like D&D but with X."
Some of you probably see where this is going, or got it as soon as you saw the term. Because we're all very aware of how predominant World of Warcraft has become in the MMO marketplace, to the point where it's the essential standard that other MMOs are judged against. Alganon, then, could be seen as our genre's first fantasy heartbreaker. Because it's genuinely tough not to play the game and see that there's some really good stuff in here.
Let's make no bones about it: if you've played World of Warcraft (which at this point means something like 90% of the MMO playerbase at worst), you will feel very at home with the game's controls and classes. You can look at this as a bad thing, if you want, or you can look at it as a thing. There's little to no learning curve, which is a good thing, but there's less variance and nothing that jumps out as being refreshingly original. Of course, it also helps one to zero in on what's different from the game from what we'll affectionately call its big cousin.Further reinforcing the whole "fantasy heartbreaker" notion is that much like the pen-and-paper games under that moniker would try and distill the best parts of D&D from an earlier point, Alganon tries to take several of the endgame systems of WoW and bring them into the game from the beginning. Reputation grinds and token exchange systems are in your face from level1 onward, although the latter sadly take up bag space instead of residing in a separate bank of currency. You get talent points from level one instead of level ten, giving you a bit more room to specialize. And, again, there are two ways to respond to this. They could be seen as improvements on the way that WoW does things, or they could be seen as irrelevant changes. It depends largely on the player.
The biggest element of the game that sticks out are the studies, which are (as many people noted) similar to the execution of skills in EVE Online. What's noted a bit less frequently is that it's also very, very satisfying. For those not familiar with the way the system works: there are a list of studies. You double-click on one, and a timer begins counting down. When it finishes, you've completed that study and gain access to the benefits of that particular study. Individual benefits are generally small, but they add up in short order, as well as the fact that you can take the same study more than once for increased benefits and ranks.
It might sound a bit complicated, but in execution, it dovetails several aspects of play into one point. Planning out your character in advance is helped by the fact that you can queue up your studies far into the future -- you know where you'll be improving before it happens, after all. It allows for tricks like weapon specialization without burdening a character's talent selection. And the whole thing provides a carrot to keep getting you into the game -- you log in just to see how your study is progressing, and then you find yourself still playing half an hour later because you figured that you'd just get one quest done, and then another...Unfortunately, while the studies seem to work well enough, the game suffers from bugs. A large number of them, in fact, and a symptom of how quickly it moved to release. I would sometimes find that a buff I'd applied would keep counting down past zero seconds remaining with no indicator that it had worn off. Other times a new casting of the buff would add another application of it while the original kept counting down, which often dovetailed with the timeless buffs. Certain spells, notably mounts, had a casting time listed but no actual casting time in-game -- either a tooltip bug or an engine bug.
The in-game knowledge base seems to work well enough. At the low levels, there wasn't a great deal of opportunity to stress-test it, but it ran well enough.
In the same category of bugs, to an extent, are the sometimes jerky or short animations. The models of smaller-than-human creatures occasionally exhibit some problems with gliding across the ground, and some animations seem to be a bit too short or too long for the actions in question. On the other hand, the landscapes are excellent -- vibrant and diverse, with an almost surrealistic color palette. Looking around at the game world was a treat.
I hope the game has a chance to get itself more firmly settled and fix the issues it has. The positive aspects are there, but the game gives a first impression that's weaker than it should be. Given some time and some polish, it has potential, and it's clear that the staff working on it certainly has the energy and enthusiasm to make it excellent. It's not going to appeal to everyone, but it will appeal to some people, and it has some genuinely good execution of the concepts it's using as selling points over WoW. Whether or not that's enough to sell you on the game is a matter of preference, but either way, it doesn't make the game deserving of hatred.
Those were my first impressions, but that's not all we have. Our Managing Editor decided to give his own first impressions as well. Follow along below for Shawn's thoughts on the first 10 levels in Alganon.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Daletron said on 5:17PM 1-11-2010
Wow has destroyed the mmo community and the developers making the games. This is upsetting.
Reply
ethereal.wolf said on 9:44PM 1-11-2010
no, the bar is just alot higher now. not necessarily a bad thing. means you need to put out a good product to profit.
Graill said on 6:50PM 1-11-2010
First, some quality WOW bashing to limber up the fingers before discussing Algonon.
Rubbish, WOW hasnt done anything to anyone other than create voiceful gremlins, for the game and against it, i am one of the gremlins against it and the french company that runs it with an iron fist.
There isnt a game out there that has copied WOW in anyway, graphics or mechanics wise. What other games are doing are using the same things available to all MMO makers that have been around for over twenty years, Wow was not the first to dip into the resource pool of ideas and implement them and they wont be the last. And we can all assume the same lousy trend will continue for some time.
Let me be clear, i dislike wow so much i could use the term hate. The graphics, mechanics and the social experience of MMO's were around long before wow showed up and will be when wow is rolling around in its own filth, not that is isnt doing so now.
The french created a mechanic that was popular with another company they had a stake in, AOL. Make it simple to play, automate it, make pretty colors, associate them with numeric symbols and you have the AOL of games, WOW. Simple things for simple minds, very smart frenchies.
People on average will not get rid of things they have invested time in or try to attempt something more difficult, the mechanics of WOW help this along, easy wins over new. Now many more MMO's later folks see things like Algonon and Allods and cry, "they are copying WOW". Algonon has similarities, leveling, trying to attain a piece of gear at a time in mindless raid grinding (allods too) but graphically and playwise they differ to much to quantify the statement "its just like wow".
Algonon does not interest me, the graphics are blocky and very dated as is combat, you still level in the game, you grind quests and have to run through multiple times to get gear...........omg, just like wow!!!!!
Reply
Ash said on 7:21PM 1-11-2010
Wasn't WoW created by Blizzard? A company based founded and based in the US, yes they are now owned by Vivendi, said French company but this is a little later on, and after WoW's release date. (Merger was 2007), previous to that Blizzard was owned by Activision, based in Santa Monica CA, also not in France.
If you're going to go on a rant please at least make sure you get the facts somewhere near reality.
WoW is ultimately the iPod of MMOs, nothing new or particularly innovating, but everything polished to a blinding sheen and done very well. To dumb it down to say simple things for simple people is to be totally blinded to the reality of Blizzard's creation, they made it accessible, but complex at the later stages, some of the boss fights are hard to complete without excellent knowledge of your class and proper coordination, you can't just face roll through the tougher raids, conversely getting the maximum level is just a grind, skill makes it quicker. The progression is quick enough to prevent a lot of people getting bored. WoW really doesn't get to where it is by being a crap game for morons, or people who don't like depth, it gets there by doing what it does well, but keeping the fundamentals easy to understand and making the game accessible, especially at early stages.
I don't like the fact that it's made expectations from MMOs unrealistic, that everything has to be a WoW beater, someday WoW will fade and something else will come along, until then accept the fact that WoW is the bench mark, and if you personally dislike it there is plenty of choice out there, but of course they're all "failed" mmos, because instead of millions of subscribers they have 100ks.
LancerX92 said on 9:02PM 1-11-2010
You got that wrong Ash. Vivendi Universal was Blizzards backer and then they merged with Activision. Not sure why this other guy its ranting about them. My is guess he used to work for Blizz and got canned maybe. Seems pretty bitter for someone that just played the game.
Alan said on 10:15PM 1-11-2010
I think this article takes "looking at the cup half full" to a whole other level, to the point of ridiculous. Did the Alganon staff pay for this article?
Reply
ethereal.wolf said on 11:04PM 1-11-2010
i take most of the articles on here with a big grain of salt.
theremover said on 1:00AM 1-12-2010
No matter how frustrated I became with the WoW approach to a lot of MMO mechanics, gameplay and otherwise,
Blizzard will forever be the company that brought a meaningful game to Mac OS X.
I realize most avid PC gamers just LOVE to bash macs, but regardless of where you stand, there is a large market of mac users who love games and don't have a lot of choices. Blizzard seemlessly launches products that run on both platforms out of the box and it brings them business and loyalty.
I'd wager this has a lot more to do with it's success than people think, and it's one area where a lot of the up-and-coming games would gain a lot of traction.
Reply
Dread said on 4:33AM 1-12-2010
Is Massively now contracting out to Paid for Advertorials?
I was disappointing the first time this author shilled for Alganon a few weeks ago and mentioned it at the time but this is just plain blatant and insulting. I thought Massively was all about honest articles about MMO's by those passionate about the industry and playing the games? Thats why I come here daily to see whats being discussed. I don't come here to read advertorials not even trying to disguise themselves as opinion or review pieces.
Can Massively please, from now on, place a prominent banner across the top of shill articles like this one warning that this article is a 'Paid for Comment Advertorial' rather than an actual opinion piece or review.
It wouldn't be so bad if the game in question wasn't such a fraudulent copy of existing IP's and their innovative systems.
Reply
Pingles said on 6:10AM 1-12-2010
Alganon has subscribers. SOME people like this game.
The author is one of them.
Enough with all of the accusations.
Berg said on 3:29PM 1-12-2010
How is this a positive review?
The author talks about the game trying to one up WoW and failing, talks about bugs, uses language like:
"nothing that jumps out as being refreshingly original"
"it's not a spectacular game at this point"
"it doesn't have the strengths it should have front-and-center"
"weaker than it should be"
So you think the developer would pay for that? Reading comprehension FTW!
electrobix said on 6:28AM 1-12-2010
OMG someone did not slag something off. They must be being paid.
Reply
wufiavelli said on 8:25AM 1-12-2010
Seems the main thing with this is that it is a bad rip off of wow. not to mention that fact it is a very close ripoff of wow. lotro, allod, and countless others games also ripped wow off and they are fine. For one they do offer something a tad different weather it be setting or features, for a second those are both fun games.
Also being a wow rip off is not really the big of a deal. Its not like wow was that big of an innovator to begin with. They basically just ripped off, polished and streamlined most of their features from other games. Hell even the UI, which they are credit with creating, was actually first used in AC2.
In the end i really do not see a niche for this game.
Reply
Seffrid said on 9:54AM 1-12-2010
Strange way of presenting a review in my opinion. How it comes across to me is that the main reviewer penned an unbelievably rose-tinted review that the management knew wouldn't stand examination by those here who have been commenting adversely on the game and so they added in a few qualifying comments of their own by way of an attempted balancing exercise.
A more honest and unbiased review in the first place would have done the trick rather better in my view!
Reply
Alan said on 8:02PM 1-12-2010
Do you realize that this "not a bad game by any means" is averaging around 30-50 people per server at prime time? 30-50!!!!!!! Do you think even an average game would have those sort of numbers. Even the Alganon forums are filled with frustrated posts from even the most heartfelt fanbois. This "article" is a joke if it paints any other picture than the honest truth about how terrible this game is.
Reply