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

Magic World Online (MWO) is a free-to-play massively-multiplayer online game (MMOG) development by Goldcool Games in Closed Beta Phase II. The story tells of the struggle of humanity against the encroaching demons of Hell. Readers who think that description sounds a little like Diablo are in the right frame of mind about much of the rest of the game.

The central story of Magic World Online is not the most original, but it gives players a primary goal.

The Download and Installation: Bring a Book
The MWO downloader barely breaks 1 MB, but the client itself is 2.2 GB Don't expect to download this game in a hurry and start playing. During peak time, I got between 67 K/sec and 330 K/sec on my download with my DSL connection. It took roughly two hours to finish the download.

Installation wasn't difficult. One aspect worthy of note is that the MWO installer does not choose Program Files as the default location of the download. It instead chooses whatever folder the downloader resides in. If your browser or Windows happens to point to some place in your My Documents folder (or Documents in Vista) or on the desktop for the downloader, and you let the game install to that same location, you may experience to some ill effects, such as lengthy wait times at Windows login due to the operating system resolving a profile with over 2GB worth of data. This does not pose a real problem; simply be sure to choose your install directory carefully. I just thought it was worth mentioning.

Installation took maybe 20 minutes from start to finish, so I'd invested roughly two and one-half hours in MWO so far. It was finally time to play.

Arpad looks like every other Dynasty Mage.

Character Creation: An Exercise in Minimalism
Magic World Online features two factions (Empire or Dynasty) and four classes: Archer, Warrior, Mage, and Summoner. Honestly, I did not look into the differences in the factions. I inherently don't like the sound of the "Empire," so I chose Dynasty. Good thing I wasn't interested: there was no data to be found in the client. Of course, I could always go read the extensive wiki on the official MWO site. As for my class, I knew I wanted a distance fighter and that I preferred magic. I assumed the Mage was the class with more raw magical power, so I chose that for the first of my three character slots.

Customizing Arpad (the name I gave my Mage) was a snap. I had no customization options. I later found out that I could find dyes and pay a non-player character player (NPC) to change my hair color. Also, by the time I got to level 9, I had enough cash to purchase a robe that made me look slightly different.

The User Interface and Graphics: Humble Beginnings
The user interface (UI) was familiar enough. A skill bar at the bottom of the screen serves as the placeholder for skills and items tied to the F1-F12 keys. A character portrait at the top of the screen has with red and blue bars represent hit points. Later, when I tried my hand at combat, I saw that the monster I targeted got its own portrait and life bar on the screen, too. I noticed that the text could be a little hard to read.

Speaking of graphical issues like reading the text, I expected some pretty flashy images on my screen when I started playing with a client of 2.2 GB. That was not what I got. Character models were small. The backgrounds were simple. And many things had a somewhat grainy look. While this surprised me, it wasn't a deal-breaker. I wanted to see some action before I made any snap judgments.

Find out what the combat in Magic World Online is like. Keep reading.