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By Khimera
Imagine a fantasy world of magic with hundreds of lands, where clans fight to survive and to rule magnificent cities spread across five different empires. Now, imagine that these cities that are guarded and controlled by dragons. In the second quarter of 2002, Codemasters is scheduled to introduce this fantastic world to PC MMORPG players. The world of 'Dragon Empires.
The concept of dragons is exciting and fascinating to many players. There are to be three dragon races, each with a different function. One race will act as the "police force" of cities - attacking outlaws and making rules by which the players must abide. Another race will act as a part of city defenses, and the third race will serve as regular monsters.
All players will play human characters, and will be able to personalize their appearances with thousands of alternatives from which to choose. At this time, it is believed that players will be able to maintain four or five characters per server.
The economic focus of 'Dragon Empires' is cities. The control of a city will bring great power to a clan, but great responsibility as well. Rules for the takeover of cities are moderated by dragons, and can involve a mixture of politics and physical battle.
When a clan gets control of a city, it can set taxes and fees as it will. The clan must balance the fees it charges against the popularity it may gain or lose. How long a clan rules can depend not only on their fighting skills, but on their popularity as well. Clans will have membership limits placed upon them, to help avoid the forming of uber-clans that would be able to terrorize all the other players in the game. Codemaster representatives indicate that it will be possible to play solo, but only clans can own cities. Clan stats will be recorded and published to keep the player world fully updated on what is happening in the game world at large.
Dragon Empires is being designed to support a "balanced" PvP system. To this end, players cannot harm a player in their own clan, and if they fight someone with which their clan is not officially at war they will almost certainly invoke the wrath of the dragons.
Dragon Empires is using a skill-based character development model. According to game representative Ted Caron, "Characters spend experience to learn skills and then improve their proficiency in skills…It's very difficult to go round just killing monsters to max out your character. Our behaviours are much more player to player based rather than player to NPC. "
As a character develops, it will gain interesting abilities and skills as rewards for progression. The game developers hope that by the time players have developed their characters to a point where there are no new abilities to gain, the players will become more involved in the "higher" level game involving clan leadership and politics.
The game economy will encourage trade and travel, as the taxes and fees of each city will be different. This scenario, of course, encourages bandits, which will in the natural course of things encourage bounty hunters.
The Dragon Empires world will be mostly "seamless" (no zones!) and filled with many different types of monsters to fight, both above ground and in dungeons. Each game world will be able to host approximately 1,500 players at a given time. Players can elect to play from either 1st or 3rd person view.
There will be a system of teleportation from city to city within each empire, but the developers have indicated that teleportation will not be entirely unrestricted. Also, there will be ships that can carry many people, and must be must be sailed between islands. Ships can be used as vehicles of war as well, with players being able to fight other ships, ram other ships, etc. Players can even choose to be pirates!
Of course, in any MMORPG, there will be death and penalties for death. A unique feature of Dragon Empires will be a "wheel of death" that characters will have to spin when they die. The ultimate consequences of death - for example, the loss of equipment or inventory - depends on the wheel. Sometimes there may be no penalty at all, and sometimes the losses may be great. Each character is provided with a house at start-up, and players will likely be transported back to their homes upon death.
Currently, the Dragon Empires development team is split between California USA and the UK. Codemaster will operate both North American and European servers. The software will be sold as a boxed product, with players paying a monthly fee to participate.
This is definitely a game to watch! If you're interested in signing up for the beta, you'll find the sign-up form here: http://www.codemasters.com/dragonempires/beta_form.php
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