Sunday, September 29th 2024
Amazon's Free-To-Play MMO Throne and Liberty Launches to Massive Audience Despite $40 Early Access Fee
Amazon Games recently launched the long-awaited free-to-play MMORPG, Throne and Liberty, in early access, and the game appears to have gone down quite well with the community. On Thursday, mere moments after the launch, Throne and Liberty already had a peak player count of 53,884—a figure it likely earned during its advanced access period in South East Asia and Korea, where it has been available since as early as December 2023.
Since then, Throne and Liberty has continued its success, rising to as many as 54,720 concurrent players on Saturday, September 28. While this only places it in third place for current top sellers on Steam, this player count is in spite of the free-to-play game's early access pass costing a minimum of $40 on Steam. Throne and Liberty has also garnered its significant following despite only 60% of its Steam user reviews being positive, making its success even more anomalous.While 60% positive certainly isn't a terrible steam player rating, games that achieved similar player counts, like DayZ, Cyberpunk 2077, and Helldivers 2, typically have significantly higher ratings on Steam. Most of the negative reviews for Throne and Liberty criticize the gameplay mechanics for feeling outdated and sluggish, with others complaining about pay-to-win bundles and microtransactions.
Throne and Liberty has been in development since 2011, and has seen a number of changes throughout its development cycle, starting life as party of the Lineage series, then being renamed as Project TL, and ultimately settling on Throne and Liberty, which appears to mostly be an isolated IP. During its short early access period, Throne and Liberty starts at $39.99 for the Standard Early Access Pack, which includes several Morphs—essentially character disguises with added perks—and skins. Meanwhile, the $69.98 Deluxe Early Access Pack nets you additional Morphs and cosmetics alongside 500 Lucent—the game's in-game currency—and the $99.97 Ultimate Early Access Pack grants you all the benefits of the other packs with an additional 1,000 Lucent on top.
Throne and Liberty is slated to launch fully as a free-to-play game on October 1, and the player count for the game will likely spike even more after that, since, according to SteamDB's store data, the game has over 109,000 followers and a peak Twitch audience of 152,251 viewers. The game's Steam description bills it as a guild-based MMORPG with grand battles against mythical creatures and other guilds as well as massive castle sieges and diverse weapon, character class, and gameplay options:
Sources:
SteamDB, Steam
Since then, Throne and Liberty has continued its success, rising to as many as 54,720 concurrent players on Saturday, September 28. While this only places it in third place for current top sellers on Steam, this player count is in spite of the free-to-play game's early access pass costing a minimum of $40 on Steam. Throne and Liberty has also garnered its significant following despite only 60% of its Steam user reviews being positive, making its success even more anomalous.While 60% positive certainly isn't a terrible steam player rating, games that achieved similar player counts, like DayZ, Cyberpunk 2077, and Helldivers 2, typically have significantly higher ratings on Steam. Most of the negative reviews for Throne and Liberty criticize the gameplay mechanics for feeling outdated and sluggish, with others complaining about pay-to-win bundles and microtransactions.
Throne and Liberty has been in development since 2011, and has seen a number of changes throughout its development cycle, starting life as party of the Lineage series, then being renamed as Project TL, and ultimately settling on Throne and Liberty, which appears to mostly be an isolated IP. During its short early access period, Throne and Liberty starts at $39.99 for the Standard Early Access Pack, which includes several Morphs—essentially character disguises with added perks—and skins. Meanwhile, the $69.98 Deluxe Early Access Pack nets you additional Morphs and cosmetics alongside 500 Lucent—the game's in-game currency—and the $99.97 Ultimate Early Access Pack grants you all the benefits of the other packs with an additional 1,000 Lucent on top.
Throne and Liberty is slated to launch fully as a free-to-play game on October 1, and the player count for the game will likely spike even more after that, since, according to SteamDB's store data, the game has over 109,000 followers and a peak Twitch audience of 152,251 viewers. The game's Steam description bills it as a guild-based MMORPG with grand battles against mythical creatures and other guilds as well as massive castle sieges and diverse weapon, character class, and gameplay options:
"Join the battle and immerse yourself in the exhilarating world of THRONE AND LIBERTY, a free-to-play game that revolves around guild-focused combat. Engage in thrilling battles against dozens to thousands of other players and fantastic creatures in group battles and massive Castle Sieges. Quick thinking and active decision-making are critical because every choice you make in the ever-changing world of Solisium carries weight and directly shapes your gameplay experience.
THRONE AND LIBERTY captures the essence of classic MMORPGs while introducing new gameplay elements, adding depth and excitement at every turn. Choose your dual-weapon loadout to customize your approach on the battlefield, or morph into creatures of the land, water and sky to traverse the vast and seamless world, or even take temporary control of a defeated boss to turn the tide of battle in your favor. Prepare for an unforgettable adventure where you'll need to gather your guild, prepare for battle and claim the throne."
21 Comments on Amazon's Free-To-Play MMO Throne and Liberty Launches to Massive Audience Despite $40 Early Access Fee
Ashes of Creation is the only mmo I am really looking forward to, but that is also going to be iffy.
I love mobile gacha mechanics in my desktop oriented MMO games, this sounds delightful. /s
and for free it was still garbage and I never touched it again.
The one 'Vindictus' I was playing for ~7 years is from 2010 and that game had a limitation of 1 run of each Raid/day 2 if you had a VIP. 'paid item or from events'
In such games what you usually do is play more than 1 char.
That sounds unbelievably obnoxious. I don’t know about other, especially Asian players, but the moment a game starts trying to limit me or decide how I get to play is a “quit moment” for me personally.
Personally I've never cared about it since I always play more than 1 char in MMOs or I simply play it casually and that way its a moot point since I wont even reach the limitations most of the time. 'this was never an issue for me in that said game over the 7 years'
I'm also playing 2 Mobile/PC gachas currently and its also a non issue in those games since I play those for the long term so eventually I will reach the same end game as anyone else. ' in one of them I've reached the end game already and the other one I'm close to while being a Free2play player'
Sadly I don't really have the time to play full scale MMOs anymore nor have the patience for them 'hence why I play gachas instead' so I doubt that I will be playing Throne of Liberty 'might give it a quick look tho'.
I log into EVE every once in a while just to check markets and peruse patch notes, but I haven't played an MMO seriously in about a decade. It would have to take something very, very different from the current offerings to lure me back.
Aion was my all time favorite. I started off playing as a Spirit Master - which was the most under powered class when the game launched. Even when under powered I could still survive any 1v1 encounter and win or escape. Once they revamped skills/powers for this class I could 1v3 any group that didn't have a SM with them. For a while there were very few SM players because of how crappy they were. The revamp got people playing them and you were highly sought after for everything and after a month or two there were SMs everywhere.
Anyway, I tried Amazon's New World - had a few buddies that started playing it and said I should join them. So I did and it was boring as hell. I gave it about a week's worth of playing (couple of hours a day) and it just wasn't interesting. It's early access and if you have people willing to pay $40-100 just to play the game early, I wouldn't scoff at 55K player base as being weak. Most people are waiting it out for being free to play.
I mean, they paid for skins and to be able to play early. The game is free.
I guess a lot of players bought things in the in-game shop too.
I prefer games less flashy and overly fantastic. WOW is the best example of a MMO done right. SWTOR also is good story wise, not for the 20 years old graphics.
Maybe Im rather simple minded but the nostalgia of GW1 kicked in and I actually found myself enjoying the tutorial. I really need to tweak the movement system as i cant WASD and activate skills (numbers 1-8) at the same time.
I feel that T&L honestly should have been the real successor to GW1, But even if it wasnt and NCsoft called it Guildwars 3. It would still fit in with the GW universe. Although you'd probably need to re-write the T&L story to fit with the lore of early GW games.
Very early days so far but the game does look very very good. NCsoft have used (and reused) a lot of the same textures and art assets from GW2 and that was instantly apparent. Character creation system was almost identical.
I'll have to sink some more time in before I can say if Im going to stick with it or not.
Really looking forward to the castle sieges also! Wow, what an ignorant thing to say. Weird thing to say, as this has absolutely no 'gacha mechanics' at all.
But don't let that stop ya from complaining.