Thursday, January 22, 2009

Alganon - New Years Update

David Allen has posted an update this week regarding the current status of Alganon. While they have been keeping things somewhat quiet over there to avoid too much hype too early on, they have now begun releasing more details.

Release is scheduled for this year, with beta to begin this Spring. In February, they will be releasing the MyAlganon community system. It looks to be something similar to MyLOTRO, where you can find members, guilds, blogs, etc.

One interesting feature will be a grand library located in both capital cities. While you must visit the library in person to contribute information, you will be able to access the library's information from anywhere in game. Here is where you go to look up a quest, item, or creature information. Also, there is a studies system that progresses your character even when you are offline. However, you can only have one character studying at one time. The studies system will apply to both adventuring and crafting. There are abilities that can only be gained this way, so that long-term players will have an advantage even if they only get to actually play a few hours a week.

Although the core game revolves around PvE, there are two factions and there will be battlegrounds on both PvE and PvP servers. Neither side can group or guild with one another; however, you will be able to create characters on both sides on the same server.


The graphics are not as high end as some may be accustomed to based on some of the more recently released mmo's. But I usually don't have too much issue with graphics, as long as my character looks reasonable. I still haven't had much of a good view on the female avatars, so I'll have to wait and see how they've turned out.

I've been following the progress of Alganon for three years. I'm not letting myself get overly hyped as I did with Vanguard, but I definitely plan to be trying it out.

4 comments:

Thallian said...

you seem to have a lot of feelers out for interesting things. This looks promising.

Anonymous said...

-I was going to comment on how you actually could have multiple characters study at one time, but it appears they updated the FAQ in the last couple of days on that point.

I'm a fan of your blog, i haven't played an MMO in over a year other than dabbling in LotRO (good writing) and am also cautiously looking forward to Alganon along with a couple other small dev team projects. Thanks for your blog, keep me informed on Alganon!

Lars said...

I like a lot of the ideas they have for this game. But I wonder why its so under the radar. I worry they just don't have the budget to really pull it off.

Aspendawn said...

Thallian - hehe I'm always looking for new things. I think the bigger companies are going to stick with something safe. New ideas will likely come from the smaller companies.

Anon - I definitely plan to post as soon as I know more and glad you enjoy your time here!

Lars - Yeah I'm not sure what sort of budget they're working with. And I haven't heard anything about a publisher yet, which can really influence how well a game does.