NCSoft, the prominent South Korean publisher of massively multiplayer role-playing games like Blade & Soul and Guild Wars, recently entered into an agreement with Amazon Games to bring its highly anticipated title, Throne and Liberty, to North America, South America, Europe, and Japan. The game will be available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and will feature cross-platform support.Throne and Liberty was originally planned as a next-gen sequel to NCSoft's other prominent MMO, Lineage, and was to be called Lineage Eternal. However, five years ago, it underwent a complete transformation with the implementation of Unreal Engine 4 and was given a new name, Project TL, at NCSOFT Director Cut private event.According to the developers, Throne and Liberty will not assign player roles based on traditional classes, but rather on the weapons they use, which can be combined to maximize their strength and offset any potential weaknesses, and this system is known as the Free Class System.The game aims to be highly inclusive of players worldwide, with various guild bonuses and convenient PvP mechanics tailored to each region's background, as well as a robust character creator that even allows you to use real-life photos as models. The user interface is also designed to accommodate all gaming systems, including mobile and streaming services.“Amazon Games is one of the most reliable partners for publishing massive live-service games globally, with proven expertise in operations, localization, marketing, and community support,” says Moonyoung Choi, Principal Development Management Officer at NCSOFT. “For our next-gen flagship title, we’re confident they are the right publisher to bring THRONE AND LIBERTY’s inimitable value and its dynamic, immersive MMO experience to players around the world," he concludes.The MMO will also introduce new strategies to increase player immersion, such as weather systems that will affect gameplay. To name a few examples from the gameplay demonstrations, lightning attacks can become area-wide abilities during rainstorms, and the environment will also change dynamically after rain, flooding certain areas to make them inaccessible and forcing players to think differently about how they proceed with their missions or infiltrate certain locations.
It is also reported that players will have some abilities to change the weather themselves. (via MMORPG.com) The most notable feature, however, will be the players' ability to transform into animals and travel around the game world, even getting to pick up other players along the way.
Amazon Game's portfolio has been bolstered with the addition of Throne and Liberty, adding to their strong lineup of games such as the popular Lost Ark. In addition, they have an agreement with Bandai Namco for Blue Protocol and are also working on the next major Tomb Raider IP from Crystal Dynamic.