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

As we slip-n-slide our way into the summer months, Perfect World Entertainment has been hard at work preparing a major content update for Ether Saga Online, a free-to-play MMO based on the Chinese literary classic Journey to the West. To coincide with the update hitting live servers in the coming weeks, the open beta period will draw to a close as ESO officially goes live. Taking more of a ‘soft launch’ approach, current players can rest assured that their beta characters will remain intact during the transition as we recently learned in a brief interview with producer Craig Beers.

Some of the most impactful changes coming with the update will include not only an increase of the level cap from 90 to 105, but players will also gain access to 13 new base class skills which effectively doubles the current number of base skills available in the game. This will include a good mix of both passive abilities as well as some geared more towards the PvP aspects of the game. Some of the examples we discussed were a new Ranger ability that will temporarily increase its range, or a new skill available to all classes which allows you to knock another player off their mount.

In an earlier interview we learned that players are able to ‘fuse’ with one of their pets, which allows you to effectively increase your overall HP by diverting half of any incoming damage to your pet. One of the cooler new PvP skills in the upcoming patch will certainly keep fused players on their toes, as it will allow you to break that fuse for a short amount of time, so that your target won’t be able to fuse with another pet for 20 seconds.

When asked about the diversity of pets currently available in ESO, Craig explained, “There’s no one pet that’s better than everything else. Every pet is just as valuable as another, so all the level 80s or 90s monsters will be just as good. The fun part is just running through a city and seeing everybody with a different pet; it’s not just all cookie-cutter.” Currently there are nine different monster types in the game, four of which can be tamed. While there won’t be any new monster types added in the upcoming patch, that’s one of the big things on Craig’s radar to work on once ESO goes live.

The early leveling experience has also undergone a revision with the new patch not only in the starting areas, but with a number of new quests added to the 30s and 40s level range as well. Another interesting feature of ESO that we discussed addresses the difficulty level of content in ways more commonly seen in single player titles. Along with the default difficulty level of PvE content, players can also select a mode that drops things down a notch and makes content much easier to manage. For example players who might need to kill a particular boss for a quest will have a more manageable time in this mode if they attempt it in the normal gameplay mode and find it a bit too challenging. While the bosses will hit for less damage, the tradeoff here will be that they also drop less items which makes sense from a risk vs. reward perspective.

For higher level players, a number of new ‘elite’ monsters will be added to the game world. The elite monsters are world spawns which drop items that players can then refine to help guarantee their gear upgrades. So for example a type of dust might drop that you can then refine into 20 of a specific item that will guarantee that you can socked one of your items. Before, there was a failure rate associated with socketing, but these refined items will guarantee a success.

"This is another way to show players that they don't have to pay in order to upgrade their gear in our games. You can do these world events and get these items separately and be able to do the same thing as purchasing a similar item from the cash shop."

In the coming weeks, be on the lookout for images of some of the new monsters coming to Ether Saga Online with the upcoming patch, as well as full details on the official launch date!