Sword2 News & Events & Guides

In typically condescending games writer fashion, I will now pretend that I know what you're all thinking. "Aha," you're almost certainly not thinking, because you're not Alan Partridge, "that's all very well Rob, but it's still a Korean MMO, isn't it? Grindy grindy grind? Grind grind grind? Then grind some more?"

Well, yes, it's a Korean MMO - so the progression system definitely deserves some attention. The standard formula for Korean MMOs is one which many western players find it difficult to get absorbed in; as a rule, they have great Player vs Player systems, but the actual progression in terms of levelling up your character is utterly, utterly tedious. The kind of interesting quests and opportunities for solo play you get in the likes of World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online are alien to most Korean games; instead, they are indeed all grindy grindy grind until such time as you're big and strong enough to start blatting the other players about, at which point they become interesting(Sword of the New World Vis).

Thankfully, Sword of the New World looks like it will avoid the worst of this problem, thanks to a number of factors. For a start, the minute to minute play when you're roaming through a dungeon (many of which are solo play friendly, thanks to the whole three-character system) is extremely fast compared to most MMOGs; you'll routinely be fighting multiple monsters at the same time, and hacking through several foes in the space of a minute, which gives the game a certain flair compared to other, rather more ponderous MMOGs. Combined with the complexity introduced by controlling three character classes at once, it looks like this will take much of the sting out of the grind.

However, the other element of good news on this front is that Sword of the New World won't be quite the same game when it launches over here - with the developer (incidentally, it's the same chap who created the incredibly cute and surprisingly compelling Ragnarok Online) making a number of changes for the western release. Striking what's described as a delicate balance between cutting grind and not trivialising the time taken to progress through the game's 100 levels, they have added more quests and more story elements to the mix - making Sword of the New World into a game more in line with western expectations of what an MMOG should do, which sounds good to us(snw vis).