On April 23, 2024, the new alpha testing phase of Pax Dei has started, and MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz and author Cedric Holmeier are on board. In this preview report, they will tell you what they experienced in the first hours with the sandbox MMORPG from Mainframe Industries.
What do I need to know about Pax Dei? The MMORPG is developed by the Finnish studio Mainframe Industries, which includes veterans who have previously worked for CCP, Blizzard, Ubisoft, and Remedy. Early access on PC is scheduled to start this year. The developers are adopting a model with a purchase price and subscription, similar to WoW and Final Fantasy XIV.
The player experience of Pax Dei focuses on housing, crafting, PvP in contested provinces, dungeon exploration, and a player-driven economy. The game world is presented with the graphical power of Unreal Engine 5.
However, what is not present: NPCs providing you with quests, a clearly defined leveling phase, a story campaign, or any instanced content. You can expect a so-called sandbox experience where freedom is paramount, and you have to set your own goals.
The Sufferings of Young Karsten
Colleague Benedict Grothaus had already highlighted in an interview with senior UX designer Jasmin Dahncke in April 2023 that the developers of Pax Dei consider the indie hit Valheim as a role model and therefore also implement systems in their MMORPG that are more commonly found in the survival genre.
Nevertheless, I was surprised that Pax Dei in the first hours of the alpha feels like a typical survival game like Conan Exiles, Rust, or Enshrouded, except that other players are constantly jumping into my view in the starting area and I stumble over the construction sites of other survivors every few meters.
The first minutes consist of finding a good spot for my plot and collecting a few stones and branches along the way. With that, I can then build the first axe, which allows me to fell smaller trees for even more wood. With the pickaxe, I break down specific ore formations. The inventory fills up.
Each newly crafted item and every newly discovered resource provides me with additional recipes. However, at some point, I will need an anvil, charcoal furnaces, and specialized workbenches for construction and further processing, for which I will need to gather completely different materials. And suddenly I was deep into the genre-typical routine of gathering and crafting.
Survival yes, but it lacks the struggle for survival
Anyone who has played a survival game before is likely familiar with the grind. However, in Pax Dei, this surprisingly feels relaxing from the first minute. I rarely had to fight for survival in the expansive starting area – for instance, when I was surprised by two boars and a pack of wolves in poorly equipped.
Most of the deaths in the alpha will likely be due to the high cliffs. I passed by the corpses of characters who had obviously fallen while climbing and jumping. I do not need to worry about typical survival parameters like hunger, thirst, or exhaustion.
There is food that can be collected or prepared, but it regenerates health points and activates buffs for maximum health and stamina.
Adventure in Pax Dei will likely become significantly more dangerous only when you consciously venture out of the safe zones into PvP territories or dungeons. So, Pax Dei is not a hardcore survival game.
I have been playing MMORPGs since I can remember, spending over 2,000 hours in Swords of Legends Online. Group activities like dungeons and raids define the genre for me.
Actually, I was very much looking forward to the alpha test of Pax Dei. An MMORPG where I can build my own castle or town with my guild sounded like a childhood dream come true.
Unfortunately, the game is still not an MMORPG. It felt more like a Rust set in the Middle Ages for me. Collecting materials and crafting items dominated my first hours of play, and overall, I found myself spending more time in menus than in the game world.
When Pax Dei is finally released, I will probably take another look at it. But everything I have seen so far has not convinced me.
How much MMORPG is there in Pax Dei?
Although I chose an area with a low population from the many starting zones of the vast world at the beginning of the alpha, it was not easy to find a good place to stake my plot.
In attractive locations with flat ground, nearby water sources, and useful resources like berries, clay, and flax fibers, players were already working on their campfires, workbenches, or houses. The start of the early access phase and the final launch could still be exciting.
However, this is a known problem in testing survival games, as our survival expert Benedict Grothaus explained to me. In alpha and stress tests, many players are often on few servers – much more than there would be in the finished game later. Consequently, it becomes quite crowded. It’s more pleasant when there are private hosts like in Valheim or rented servers.
Pax Dei relies on these individual plots gradually forming entire villages and cities over time – with players who serve as blacksmiths, weavers, traders, gatherers, and adventurers. In the alpha, of course, none of this was noticeable.
However, the developers have laid the social foundation. There is a chat system, you can form clans, connect plots, and as a fixed group, disrupt the game world.
Light Role-Playing
What comes in Pax Dei is less than expected: the role-playing aspect. Although you can equip your hero with clothing and various weapons (and take on roles like tank, healer, and damage dealer by choosing the equipment), there is no typical experience point system with level ups and talent trees.
Instead, you level up crafting and combat skills by using them. For example, my character has reached level 4 as a carpenter and level 6 as a lumberjack because I felled dozens of trees and spent hours processing wood.
Leveling is necessary to have a better chance of successfully crafting the products of each activity – and so I can try my hand at more advanced recipes. Crafting items in Pax Dei can sometimes fail, causing you to lose the resources invested.
How Alpha is the Alpha?
The MMORPG looks great with high graphics settings. Specifically, the draw distance is excellent, and the water is wonderfully blue. The next season of 7 vs. Wild could take place here. But please without the server issues and numerous bugs.
After building the first chest, I couldn’t use any more crafted boxes or baskets as storage for a while. Interacting with the oven was also temporarily impossible. Many placeable items have difficulties with slight inclines, and fights against wild boars, wolves, and deer still lack hit feedback.
Thus, the alpha is not a marketing test phase, but a real alpha that will provide the developers with significant homework.
Karsten’s Preliminary Conclusion on Pax Dei
I like the beautiful game world of the sandbox adventure and the initial flow from gathering and building. It just irritates me that Pax Dei feels like a survival game but completely lacks the feeling of struggle for survival and constant danger in the first hours, which I had, for example, in the first hours with Conan Exiles.
At the same time, Pax Dei does not feel like an MMORPG during the test so far. My most social experience was when neighbors used my workbenches without asking, as they apparently didn’t want to do the work themselves.
However, I do see potential. If the community indeed comes together to build entire cities from the ground up, with a functioning economy and supply chains, it would be cool to be a part of that.
But even then, Pax Dei will likely not be the big revelation for every MMORPG or role-playing fan. This seems, based on my current impression, to be a niche title for sandbox lovers that wants to compete with World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV with its payment model (with purchase price and subscription).
I found it bold before the alpha. Now I consider it almost hopeless, also due to the strong competition in the survival genre, which offers a largely comparable player experience.
Perhaps I am wrong and Mainframe Industries will use the time until the release to significantly differentiate itself from other games with additional features and thus attract a large number of subscribers to the servers. I will keep an eye on Pax Dei for you.
