Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

As has been noted throughout most of our GDC coverage this year, one of the biggest trends was the rise to prominence of free-to-play gaming and the companies dedicated to advancing it from a second class citizen to a major player in the MMOG universe. One such company is Outspark, a publisher with a strong vision and detailed plan of working hand in hand with the developers of the games they bring to market rather than just being a passive portal that localizes games that have been running for several years overseas.

We sat down with the guys from Outspark at GDC for a quick introduction to their games and their philosophy and we even managed to squeeze in some playtime on two of their games, Divine Souls and Erebus: Travia Reborn. While the games themselves couldn’t have been more different from each other, the core directive behind both is a hand in hand partnership with GamePrix and Zemi, the respective games developers, to shape them into products that would entertain the North American Market.

Divine Souls

A title so new, it doesn’t even yet have its own website, Divine Souls is an action packed game that combines elements of MMOGs and 3D fighting games into an extremely fun package.  Players will be able to choose from one of five classes at launch while our playable version featured three classes, the Mage, Fighter and Slasher, to either band together to defeat powerful NPC monsters or gang up on each other in PvP action.

Graphically the game is stunning for a free-to-play, or any other format for that matter, with crisp textures and attractive avatars wrapped in polished armor sets.  In fast moving scenarios there was almost no noticeable latency allowing for the execution of elaborate combo moves which provide the cool factor in combat.  The controls can be configured for standard mouse/keyboard use, gamepad use, or the amazingly complicated keyboard only setup – perfect for the laptop user with no mouse and 3 hands. The games use of clickable and hotkey triggered combos in conjunction with the more traditional spellbar useable abilities definitely takes some getting used to, but most moves are fairly instinctive and I have a feeling that after a couple hours of gameplay the basics would be second nature and the advanced would only be a matter of time before mastering.

We hope to see more of this game and Brendon Lindsey of Outspark says we can definitely expect a flurry of updates in the coming months as the game moves closer to beta test and ultimately launch.

Erebus: Travia Reborn

Originally launched in Asia as Travia, Erebus: Travia Reborn is pretty true to its new title—a rebirth of the popular Korean Action RPG-MMOG. Instantly recognizable by fans of Diablo, this game has a similar look and feel of the popular Blizzard classic, but with an MMOG style twist. Players will have four basic combat classes to select from that can eventually be expanded to one of 18 unique “master classes” as you advance your character through a staggering 400 levels

Combining elements of the aforementioned Battle-Net game with those of traditional MMOGs, especially that of PvP (which exists in standard, guild and open modes), should prove to be a great combination in a free-to-play. Everything can be accessed quickly and easily using your mouse in a feel that Outspark’s Aaron Krause said “Should feel very natural to the Western gamer” , indeed it seems that the main focal point of the localization has been to give the game a second nature feel so that players can focus on the game rather than the UI or controls.

Erebus has a tentative release date of spring 2010 and beta is already underway.











Thanks again to the folks from Outspark for opening the doors of their booth to us at GDC and allowing us to sit down with them and their new games.