I was able to have a sit down with Scott Hartsman to discuss their upcoming game: Trove. Trove has been a tightly held secret at Trion for the past year or so and details have just begun to leak the past few days, but we’re here with the big scoop on what exactly Trove is and why you should be excited.

The first question many of you are probably wondering is what is Trove? What is this new game that Trion is coming out with that has been characterized only with a single Minecraft like screenshot on Twitter. Well I have exciting news on this front - Scott has let us know that this is a voxel based online free-to-play adventure game that is fully constructible and destructible. You’ll play an adventurer who can jump through various worlds, all of which are randomly generated to achieve goals, find loot, and have a ton of fun.

Trove Image

To start off with some trivia, this game very much started as a passion project at Trion, much like Hearthstone was, where a group of developers began work and it’s built out to a full fledged game that Trion is ready to give a chance. It would also be good to note that Trove is not an MMO, it’s an adventure game first and foremost, but it will be online and will be free-to-play.

The Diablo II Effect

The game world will be randomly generated, much like Diablo and Diablo II. Thousands of worlds will be available for play and each of them will have randomly generated terrain and objectives. Now a special note: details about the game are thin and nothing is in stone, but we’ll get to that a little bit later. You, the adventurer, will remain static world to world, bringing with you your home and your character. You'll be able to create a world, hop in and play it until the world is finished, and begin again.

Trove

Your objective could very well to kill a boss in a cave, requiring you to spelunk your way to victory. Another example of how random the game could be is that maybe the boss is in a tree and you’ll need to construct a ladder to get to it (while it wasn’t mentioned - I’d probably prefer to explode the tree and bring the boss down to me, which very well may be an option).

All of this is to create a sense of mystery and excitement as you explore the world. Nothing is static, everything can change, and the worlds together are bigger than all of the gaming worlds out there. Truly Trove sounds epic.

The Alpha Effect

The game will be an alpha at the start, allowing small groups of players to come in and give the game a try. They are really hoping to crowdsource feedback on the game in order to make it a successful product, versus the tried and true method of launching a game with little feedback before it’s finished so that everyone can watch as it dies on the vine. Instead, Trion is going to take feedback seriously and allow players to come in and help them design how the world works. That’s one of the reasons that concrete details about the game are scarce, because they’re hoping that the players themselves will help them to develop the game.

Trove

The example given to me was that when you play an MMO beta there is always these glaring flaws with the game. You fill out the survey highlighting them, but then the game goes live with them in, and everyone is upset and it really hinders the progress of the game. Trion is using this approach to help bridge that gap between players and developers, allowing their feedback to have serious consequences on the development of the game.

Similarity

One thing I did note about the game is that it’s very similar to Everquest Next, which is another Voxel based MMO on the horizon. Scott mentioned that the games are only similar in the sense that they both use Voxel technology, but the direction that each is going is completely different, with Trove focusing heavily on its constructible / destructible worlds.

Which is good to hear, because as I’ve wrote before one thing that I dislike is copycat games and one thing that I love is innovation, and it seems that Trove is continuing the trend of utilizing Voxel technology to innovate the MMO industry.

For more info on Trove, be sure to check out the official website and we’d like to thank Scott for taking the time to share this amazing info with us.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Trove Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

Comments