Currently, around the clock, there is a six-figure number of players on Steam in Throne and Liberty. And although the online role-playing game focuses on cooperation and competition, a familiar problem of the MMO genre can also be found here.
What is this problem? Throne and Liberty currently attracts hundreds of thousands of interested players to its servers. At one point over the weekend, there were 336,300 players simultaneously on Steam. And since thousands of characters populate a version of the game world, a wonderful MMO feeling arises on the surface again and again.
The new game from NCSoft and Amazon Games does even more to promote cooperation and competition. Specifically, the events in the open world repeatedly attract dozens or even hundreds of players to a small area. World bosses are defeated, characters are hunted in PvP, or resources are collected together.
The foundation for a great MMO experience is right. However, Throne and Liberty suffers from a deeper problem beneath the surface, which can also be found in other modern online role-playing games: Hardly anyone talks or interacts with anyone.
Within some guilds of Throne and Liberty, there will certainly be interaction. Joining a community is worthwhile for other reasons as well:
I miss the Barrens chat
How is the problem manifested? Although countless characters are located almost around the clock in urban areas such as the town of Kastleton, we almost never observe interactions between players there. Gestures and poses are hardly used among the characters. The chat is almost always only about effectively searching for a group, a guild, or companions for one’s own community.
We’ve even yet to see a longer discussion in the chat about God and the world or even the game. One almost misses the good old Barrens chat from the vanilla days of World of Warcraft, where verbal exchanges happened regularly…
And even in randomly assembled dungeon and raid groups, hardly two words are exchanged. Discussion about boss mechanics? Not at all. Better to leave the group after two wipes. The result of this: Level 50 instances like Cursed Wasteland or Temple of Carnage have only been completed by just 1.1 and 3.1 percent of all Steam players so far.
MMO Rule Number One: Everyone does their own thing
What is the reason for all this? In terms of character progression and player experience, individual efficiency in MMOs has become increasingly important over the years. This explains why large parts of the community repeatedly choose the more efficient but less enjoyable path to achieve their goals.
Or that activities are hardly utilized because they don’t yield sufficient rewards. Additionally, the desire to get through the leveling phase as quickly as possible in order to dive into the endgame is apparent. Anyone who doesn’t fit into one’s own efficiency standards has no place in their guild or group.
This is nothing that Throne and Liberty has invented. Such behavior could already be observed more than 15 years ago in MMOs. It is just unfortunate that the community aspect also suffers in a completely new online adventure that aims to bring back that massive MMO experience from back then. Here is just one sad story of many: Player from Throne and Liberty kicked from guild because he had to work on day 2.
