Free MMO Throne and Liberty Drops $40 Early Access Fee at Full Launch, Review Scores Slide

[Cpt.Jank]

Last week, it looked like Amazon's Throne and Liberty would largely turn out to be a commercial success when it exited its early access period—a perk that would cost gamers at least $40. Although, as player counts spiked on Monday's full release, so, too, did negative reviews, with the game sliding from a little over 60% positive reviews on Steam to 55% at the time of writing.

Mere hours after the game launched as free-to-play, concurrent player counts jumped massively from around 45,000 players to 326,377, according to SteamDB. That player count puts Throne and Liberty in fifth place, just behind Banana and PUBG: Battle Grounds in SteamDB's 24h peak player count rankings. That said, as far as all-time peaks go, Throne and Liberty only comes in 33rd place, with everything from Starfield and Monster Hunter: World to Baldur's Gate 3 surpassing it handily.



That said, Throne and Legacy launched on a Tuesday, and player counts for the new game have held fairly steady since launch. It wouldn't be surprising to see player counts increase again over the coming weekend as gamers have more time and the word gets out about the launch. Baldur's Gate 3 is an excellent example of just this type of increase in popularity. It launched on Steam on August 3, a Thursday, and player counts rose to 814,666 the following Sunday, with another spike to 875,343 players the following Sunday.

As for Throne and Liberty's user reviews sliding by around 5% on Steam, most of those issues seem related to combat and gameplay, rather than the typical complaints of microtransactions and pay-to-win mechanics—although those are present, too.

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[TheLostSwede]

Installed it, picked a not too busy server, started creating my character, got kicked off the server, uninstalled.

 

[EatingDirt]

Installed it, picked a not too busy server, started creating my character, got kicked off the server, uninstalled.

That's the experience of every single MMO that comes out these days. Why would you be surprised?

 

[wNotyarD]

That's the experience of every single MMO that comes out these days. Why would you be surprised?

I mean, Amazon is renowned for their servers. Guess they don't use them for the game

 

[neatfeatguy]

I played about 15 minutes.

It plays like a poor version of Aion, which NCSoft created years ago. Combat felt bland and controls feel clunky on the mouse/keyboard. I really liked playing Aion, I thought it was well done - of course any hardcore WoW player would just claim it's a crappy "clone" of WoW, but they say that about any MMO that's come out after WoW.

Perhaps changing some control options might make combat feel better, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I may not return to the game and it's not just because of the controls. My understanding, based on some posts I've read about the monetization in the game, sounds like the direction Aion went once it left the subscription pay to F2P. I hated what they did to Aion at that point so I stopped playing it. I put in a good 1200 hours into Aion, but the direction NCSoft took it in terms of monetizing it is how it sounds Throne and Liberty is handled and that's not something I'm interested in. It's basically a mobile game, plain and simple. Free to play, but costly to advance in - either in money or time.

Sure, you can advance F2P games without paying, but you hit high walls you can't hurdle. Yes, you can overcome them and make it over the top, but it takes a ton of playing to get there. Whereas those willing to pay to bypass the climb, they get a key for the locked door to let them pass through. I've been playing Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes for the past couple of years - I've not put a dime into the game and about 30 minutes a day over the past few years I still lag way behind those that pay to win. Sure, I'm advancing my characters bit by bit, but I'm so far behind someone that drops hundreds of dollars on the game that it's not even funny. So I know that long play can get you a good way into these F2P games, but I'm not interested in sinking a ton of game time where I'll significantly lag behind those that are willing to pay, pay, pay.

 

[Space Lynx]

It interested me a little, but ultimately I decided to pass, I'd rather be playing one of the 400+ indie games on my backlog. FFXIV and WoW both offer single player AI experiences in dungeons now, there is reason they do, the social aspect of MMO's just is much harder to pull off in this age of short attention spans and the information highways all vying for our attention. WoW in 2004 was a blast, because there wasn't much else to do back then, so you were naturally funneled into the social, and our brains still worked normally back then before smart phones existed, so we could you know, actually focus and enjoy the social component more fully... wait i have to go scroll reddit for bit, check this thread later...

last part is a joke... just fyi...

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Installed it, picked a not too busy server, started creating my character, got kicked off the server, uninstalled.

There hasnt bee a game ever that didnt have launch day problems, some more major than others, server issues are hit and miss.

 

[A&P211]

Installed it, picked a not too busy server, started creating my character, got kicked off the server, uninstalled.

Stop posting nudes of yourself, next game you wont get banned.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Stop posting nudes of yourself, next game you wont get banned.

Probably posting some of that gigabyte snatch got him banned....

 

[A&P211]

Probably posting some of that gigabyte snatch got him banned....

Some prefer that Asus snatch, I like MSI but I'm not racist, I like all brands of snatch.

 

[Super Firm Tofu]

Stop posting nudes of yourself, next game you wont get banned.

Probably posting some of that gigabyte snatch got him banned....

Nah, @A&P211 was right. I was there. Got a screen grab.

 

[freeagent]

You can tell that one is built for speed

 

[A&P211]

Nah, @A&P211 was right. I was there. Got a screen grab.

View attachment 365777

Shit!!! THAT'S ME!!!!!!
who took this nude of ME!!!!!
I demand justice!!!!!

 

[the54thvoid]

Back on topic, please.

 

[_roman_]

Not everyone uses steam. If they really want players they would have cared to release it on other platforms and stores also.
I mostly refuse to use steam because of the bloated updates and bloatware and mass advertisement. Other launchers do not distrupt me while I want to launch a game.

 

[Vayra86]

Not everyone uses steam. If they really want players they would have cared to release it on other platforms and stores also.
I mostly refuse to use steam because of the bloated updates and bloatware and mass advertisement. Other launchers do not distrupt me while I want to launch a game.

Interesting. Which launchers do you speak of that do not have this? Steam never disrupts my gaming, so I'm very curious. Also, updates are some order of 100's of MBs... and I don't see advertising on it other than the store but you can even default Steam to always start in your Library. You can tweak your library 'feeds', too.

As for the game itself... this is obviously a shameless MMO - MTX ridden clusternude that was cool in the year 2000. I'm sure some naive souls can enjoy themselves and lose themselves in it. I'm past this and I don't even need to play it to know this, the initial review scores tell the best story really: nobody really needs this.

 

[TheLostSwede]

There hasnt bee a game ever that didnt have launch day problems, some more major than others, server issues are hit and miss.

Sure, but when you've spent a bit of time with the character creator, since they have a million options and it's a bit fiddly, you get kicked out by the server and everything you did is lost, you just kind of lose interest.

Not everyone uses steam. If they really want players they would have cared to release it on other platforms and stores also.
I mostly refuse to use steam because of the bloated updates and bloatware and mass advertisement. Other launchers do not distrupt me while I want to launch a game.

Get with it already, most people that game have a Steam account, an EA account, an Epic Games account and even a Ubisoft account, plus GoG and most likely something else...

 

[nguyen]

Game got 300k concurrent players on Steam, not too bad.

 

[NoneRain]

Gonna try it this weekend. Missing some new MMORPG.

Nah, @A&P211 was right. I was there. Got a screen grab.

View attachment 365777

can I pet that dawg, tho?