A Star is Torn: THRONE AND LIBERTY Begins

In a faraway realm, the Star of Sylaveth—a source of unimaginable power—is shattered into fragments. Finding those fragments is key to your world’s survival, as Kazar the Wraith of Conquest advances… 

Welcome to THRONE AND LIBERTY, the exciting new release from Amazon Games and NCSOFT—a free-to-play, cross-platform, massive-scale MMORPG. Merv Lee Kwai, Regional Franchise Leader for Amazon Games, dropped by Intel Gaming Access to talk magic and MMOs.

“I’m a lifelong MMO player,” Lee Kwai happily admits. “Professional, and enthusiast. My role is to ensure that players around the world get their hands on the best possible version of THRONE AND LIBERTY … Over the last decades, NCSOFT have created and published timeless franchises like Lineage, Blade & Soulそして Guild Wars. THRONE AND LIBERTY is a continuation of that legacy, and aims to build upon the success of these previous titles.”

So, who is THRONE AND LIBERTY for? “The game is for players who enjoy exploring vast fantasy worlds with their friends,” says Lee Kwai, “and for those who like meeting challenges head-on. Solisium is an immersive game world filled with dangerous PvE dungeons and open-world capture points claimed through PvP battles … All players will follow the game’s main story arc as it leads them to explore the beautiful game world. Players will delve deep through open-world dungeons—some are six layers deep and can support over 1000 players simultaneously. We have massive-scale world bosses, with versions of those bosses as guild challenges, and we’re constantly adding more content!”

Express Yourself

In a vast world, how does the game keep things personal? “The player character is highly customizable,” Lee Kwai explains, “down to the smallest details, allowing for freedom of expression and a wide range of cosmetic choices including the ability to morph into different creatures. This is the game’s version of mounts and gives players options to express their individuality while getting around the world in style. We’ve spent a lot of effort increasing the depth of the game’s combat options … they feature a class-agnostic, dual-weapon system in which players can choose to wield two of seven weapon types simultaneously. On top of that, players have three to five options on how to customize every single ability granted by a weapon type. As a player, the thing I’m looking forward to the most is the ability to explore the game end-to-end with my close friends and the guild we create. We’re recruiting by the way, if you’re interested…” Sign. Us. Up.

Making the Dream Work

Now we’re on the team, any tips on collaboration from the Amazon/NCSOFT partnership? “From the onset, we prioritized a ‘One Team’ approach. We collaborate closely, transcending the traditional division of developer and publisher, which allows us to be in lockstep as we listen to our players and evolve the game over time.” And one of the best parts of this? “Our Castle Sieges are a hallmark feature and to make them work at the scale intended, many hurdles must be overcome,” Lee Kwai recalls. “The tech needs to stand up to the vision first and foremost, the in-game menus must be comprehensive enough to summarize happenings and convey status, and players need to maintain character control while having the expected amount of agency … In order to test the feature, we need to replicate the scale of battle with real people. One of my fondest memories during the game’s development was participating in my first siege at NCSOFT headquarters. The whole team showed up to do battle!”

Performance for PC

At such a scale, you need performance to match. “On the hardware side, you can imagine how cool it is to have a burly machine rendering thousands of characters brawling it out together, with magic and golems and feelings,” Lee Kwai says. “We won’t reveal our secret sauce on how we make all that work but there are a bunch of in-game settings that players can use to customize the right experience for them. Of course, all of it looks and feels even better running on high-performance PC hardware. Intel® X^e Super Sampling (X^eSS) was immediately appealing as we’re always trying to raise the bar for in-game graphics. Intel provides an X^eSS plugin for games made with Unreal Engine and the documentation was rock solid and easily accessed. I’m looking forward to how our players make use of the feature!”

Players won’t have long to wait. October 1 is the release date, and there’s more to come. “We have a huge post-release roadmap which we will reveal during the weeks following release,” Lee Kwai promises. “Most importantly, we remain committed to working with our fans to keep the content flowing. Thanks for reading, and see you on October 1!”

Pre-order THRONE AND LIBERTY on Steam