Great Concept, But a Terrible First Impression
I’ve been a huge fan of MMORPGs for about 20 years. I remember the golden age of the genre, and I clearly see the stagnation it's been in for the past decade. That’s exactly why I’ve been following this project for a long time. I genuinely want to see a modern MMORPG that still carries the spirit of the old-school games — with open-world PvP, free trade, and tons of exciting features.
And so, after years of watching YouTube videos about the game, I finally decided to join the alpha test… and my first impression honestly shocked me — in a bad way.
Let me describe what shaped my first impression — literally within the first five minutes of gameplay. I understand this is an alpha, and I can see that a lot of work has been done in other areas. But a new potential player joining the game will see this first — not the grand vision that reveals itself later.
1. The movement feels really bad. The character instantly snaps to face the camera with no turning animation at all… I get that this was a thing in WoW and other older MMOs, but in 2025 it just looks awful. If I were to compare, the hybrid target/action mode in Throne and Liberty was implemented much better — at the very least, it doesn’t make your eyes bleed.
2. The walking animations are really poor, and the animation blending is terrible. When changing direction quickly, the character snaps and jitters as their body angle shifts instantly — it all looks extremely rough. This could be easily fixed by properly setting up the blendspaces in Unreal Engine.
3. Additive animation. When the character is holding a weapon, it looks like an additive pose is being applied to the arms on top of the base animation. But it feels like it’s being applied very roughly — maybe to just a single bone (probably the clavicle). As a result, when this is blended with the running animation, the arm movement looks extremely unnatural.
4. The same issue applies to blending attack animations with walking or running. It looks like a simple Layer Blend Per Bone is being used based on a fixed bone like the spine or pelvis. This often results in very unnatural movement — the character bends or twists awkwardly when attacking while moving.
5. The combat system feels really clunky. When casting a spell, you can turn your back to the target near the end of the cast, and the character will still play the casting animation forward — but the spell will fly backwards toward the target. Melee attacks are also very awkward — they just deal damage in an area around the character. You can be standing sideways or even almost with your back to the enemy, and still hit them, even though the sword swing animation goes in a completely different direction.
6. The camera behaves strangely during jumps, and especially when climbing over obstacles. It feels like the character capsule teleports onto the obstacle, while the character model stays below and plays the climbing animation — during which player movement seems temporarily "frozen".
7. Enemy AI in the starting area. I get that you were aiming for the feel of an outpost under attack by goblins, but in practice, the enemies just run around chaotically. Honestly, it would’ve looked better if they were simply standing around in improvised “camps” on the field.
Sorry for my English — it’s not my native language, and I used a translator in some parts.
I really hope to see a revival of the genre in your project, and I’m looking forward to improvements not only in the depth of the mechanics but also in these kinds of “small details”.
