Palia is a new MMO that mainly focuses on cozy and social aspects. While you can optionally go hunting for animals, your house, your neighbors, and activities like cooking or fishing are the main focus. It is developed by former employees of Blizzard and Riot Games. The first alpha is supposed to start in 2022.
What exactly is Palia? In Palia, you play humans who are a “legendary people” in the game world. At the peak of their creativity, they suddenly disappeared and no one knew why. Now, after thousands of years, humans have suddenly reappeared, and you must create a new home in this unknown world.
Palia offers various activities that you can experience alone or together with other players:
- There is housing with thousands of different items. Your friends should be able to come over and help you decorate.
- Activities like fishing, cooking, chopping wood, mining stones, or building your own farm are part of the core content.
- You can constantly change the appearance of your character and give them cool outfits.
- You can build friendships and relationships with NPCs in the area.
While Palia is supposed to allow for combat against creatures from the surrounding area, this is meant to be completely optional. The focus is primarily on special hunting quests. Instead of classes, a system of various skills is implemented.
If you want, you can completely forgo fighting. There will be no PvP at all.
A first look at the world of the MMO is provided by this trailer from June:
A perfect MMO for fans of Animal Crossing
What content will there be in Palia? The new MMO was first introduced in June 2021. Since then, there have been several interviews and Q&A sessions where the developers have shared more details about Palia:
- Your houses should be located in real neighborhoods, small or large, allowing you to interact with the same players in your area.
- When you leave your cities, you enter the so-called Adventure Zones. There, you should be able to explore various areas and biomes, discover secrets, and also go hunting.
- In the open world, there should be hidden lore items that players can find to learn more about the story.
- You will be able to eat and drink in the game. This is not mandatory, but it offers advantages and makes cooking more interesting.
- There will be mini-games while cooking to create a similar experience to the real world. There will also be crafting content where you simply drag items into an interface.
- Dungeons are planned for the future. How these will look and whether there will be fighting or puzzles has not been revealed.
- Also planned for the future are “various ways” to present your achievements and collections.
- You should be able to have fun alone and complete tasks, but Palia still strongly focuses on cooperation with others.
- Role-playing should be an important part of Palia.
- There will be custom key bindings.
- Over time, the world and the story of Palia should continually develop. Even after the release, many updates are planned, as the game aims to engage its fans for “decades.”
What makes Palia so interesting? The basic idea of the MMO is based on the fact that players have a world they can immerse themselves in without too much work or stress. Palia is intended to be a relaxing balance to everyday life.
The developers aim to achieve this through their unique gameplay. Many content, such as cozy housing, fishing, and cooking, as well as interaction with NPCs and other players in the world, immediately remind one of Animal Crossing. And it was indeed the most successful new game in 2020 (via GamesWirtschaft).
Graphically, Palia also settles in a similar world. So, anyone looking for a relaxed MMO with many opportunities for interaction with other players might find their home in Palia.
What about monetization? There are currently no details on that. However, the developers are confident that players will be satisfied with the model.
Pre-Alpha for Palia was a success, Closed Alpha expected in 2022
How is Palia developing? In July, the developers announced that they had received investments of 25.3 million euros to advance development. Throughout the year, they have also regularly searched for new developers for the game.
In September, the pre-alpha took place, but with an NDA on it. In the summary of the pre-alpha, the developers wrote that players “caught 78,650 bugs, harvested 76,431 fruits, hunted 128,952 beasts, baked 153 cakes, worked a tremendous amount of land, and identified invaluable system bugs.”
Additionally, it is said that there was a lot of valuable feedback, on which further development will build.
Who is behind Palia? The studio Singularity 6 was founded by Aidan Karabaich, a former developer at Carbine Studios (WildStar) and Lead Designer at Riot Games (LoL), and Anthony Leung, former Development Director at Riot Games.
On board they have:
- Evan Hill, Level Designer of The Last of Us Part 2
- Jeremy Fenske, former Concept Artist of ESO
- Jon Davis, 10-year programmer at Respawn Entertainment (Call of Duty)
- Other former developers from Blizzard and Riot Games
According to the developers, not only gameplay is important, but also atmosphere. Accordingly, some first soundtracks have already been shared on Twitter and YouTube.
What’s next for Palia? The closed alpha for the MMO is expected to start in the first half of 2022. You can already register on the official website (via Palia).
With a bit of luck, you will be selected for the tests and can thus test one of the interesting MMOs for the coming years. However, there is no guaranteed access to the alpha, such as through a founder’s package.
The developers have not yet commented on a possible release date. A full release in 2022 currently seems rather unlikely.
What do you think about Palia? Do you find the MMO exciting? Or does it always have to be combat, dungeons, and PvP for you? Feel free to write it in the comments.
