Jade Dynasty Impressions

Free online role-playing games are becoming more and more popular, and why shouldn't they be? The possibility of free gaming is tempting, though the quality of these games varies wildly. We had a chance to check out another player in the free-to-play market, Jade Dynasty, at E3 2009. We got to see the game behind closed doors, and we're here to bring you our findings.

Who's Making This Game: Perfect World Entertainment is bringing Jade Dynasty over from China and is known for several free-to-play online RPGs, such as Perfect World and Ether Saga Online.

What The Game Looks Like: The spotty Internet connection at the Los Angeles Convention Center made it difficult to see a large amount of this massively multiplayer online RPG in action. However, what we saw looked extremely impressive for a free-to-play online game. We saw a female Modo (one of the game's classes) in action in a desert-like environment crawling with lizards with horns on their backs. Her spells and attacks filled the screen with attractive particle effects and vibrant bursts of light. After she performed a buff, a flag floated about her head to signify that the buff was active. The environments look lush and colorful, exuding the sun-drenched vibe common to Asian-themed games. We also saw a mount in action, an armored horse with a flaming mane and tail. It looked fantastic and made us eager to ride around on the dramatic-looking beast.

What There Is To Do: In some ways, Jade Dynasty is a typical MMO. You will group up with friends, kill monsters, and level up. You can do so in player-versus-environment or player-versus-player servers, and you can move to different servers with ease using the same character (no cloning necessary!). And as you'd hope, there are raid dungeons--10 of them, as a matter of fact. They will have a 15-level range and of course allow players to get together and take on enormous bosses. And if you like, you can join a clan (similar to a guild in similar games), and in turn, clans can join alliances, which is a collection of clans. Joining a clan gives members additional benefits, such as extra buffs, attack boosts, additional missions, and more.

Jade Dynasty takes place in ancient China and gives you 10 large areas to explore and hundreds upon hundreds of quests to take on. You can also create your own player store to sell whatever you like, which is a common feature in Asian-developed MMOs. However, you will be able to search open player shops for what you want rather than have to walk up to individual shops, so the system will work more like an auction house, which is a nice convenience. And if you want other goodies, you can visit the retail shop from directly in the game and purchase in-game items for real-life money. However, every noncosmetic item available in the store is also available in the game using standard methods of buying and looting.

How The Game Is Played: Jade Dynasty features a lot of fascinating-sounding features, many of which are tied to leveling up. First off, you have meditation. When you meditate, you get in a safe bubble within town and level up, letting the player walk away and do something else. That's right: you can gain levels while doing absolutely nothing. In fact, you can enter a dreaming state (as long as you have the appropriate scroll) before you log out and earn experience while you're offline. One scroll equals 60 minutes of experience earning, and you can stack scrolls, so with enough scrolls, you could earn experience for hours and hours. This might sound crazy to experienced players (it certainly did to us when we first heard about it), but it's designed to give you flexibility. Doesn't it stink when you go on real-life vacation and return to an MMO, only to discover that your friends have all leveled past you and have no need for you? These design elements are meant to diminish frustrations just like that.

It's easy to think of Jade Dynasty as the game that plays itself for one other reason: you can actually make it play itself. Let's say you go on a quest, and you have to kill a certain number of monsters, but you also want to make a sandwich. Well, use the invigorator option, and the AI will do everything for you, though yes, it can get you killed, so it isn't an automatic quest-fulfillment mechanism. We've yet to see these mechanics in practice and how they're implemented, so we'll let you make up your mind on whether or not the invigorator, dreaming, and meditation are good ideas. As always, we're cautiously optimistic.

Another concept in play is ascension. Should you choose to ascend, you drop back to level 1--but a very powerful level 1. You start from scratch, but when you reach higher levels, you are more powerful than standard players of the same level. This may be Jade Dynasty's most intriguing concept, because it essentially gives you a reason to start over, perhaps to explore the various skill trees in a different way than before. Of course, you could always start a new character if you want to reexplore early levels, and there are five different classes to choose from, though you won't make a selection when you first start the game. Rather, you begin as a class-less paladin. The game's five factions (Jadion, Lupin, Vim, Skysong, and Modo) will try to recruit you, and you will make a final decision at level 15.

What They Say: In traditional Chinese martial art myths, flying upon a sword is the ultimate sign of a powerful warrior. Jade Dynasty brings this fantasy to life.

What We Say: How is the possibility of flying around on a sword not awesome? Whether or not the automated leveling options are great additions to the genre or just developer-sanctioned exploits is unclear, though either way, it looks like Jade Dynasty may be one of the most attractive and appealing games to come along in the free-to-play realm in a while.

There are other features we haven't touched upon, such as daily in-game events and crafting. Luckily, if you want to check them out for yourself, it won't cost you a dime, nor will you need to wait long: Jade Dynasty goes live on June 15, 2009.