Throne & Liberty could support “hundreds versus hundreds” of players in a single battle

Amazon Games' upcoming Throne & Liberty promises beautiful graphics and huge battles in our interview with NCSoft

“Throne & Liberty is an open, persistent world, and servers support thousands of players simultaneously,” Throne & Liberty’s regional franchise lead Mervin Lee Kwai tells GLHF at Amazon Games’ Summer Games Fest booth. “So really, the game is able to support hundreds versus hundreds, simultaneously, if they happen to be in that area.”

We played Throne & Liberty just before talking to two of the developers from NCSoft, lead producer Jongok Ahn and game design director Moonseop Lee. Throne & Liberty is a shockingly detailed and lush world for players to jump into, but the only thing we were missing was thousands of other players to inhabit the world alongside us.

“Guild versus guild competitions range in the 50-to-70 versus 70,” Kwai explains. “But it can be upwards of hundreds versus hundreds.”

Throne & Liberty's battles will bring dozens of players together / Amazon Games

But placing hundreds of players in a zone together isn’t going to guarantee that they’ll start a fight – they need a reason to go into battle, and Throne & Liberty provides that with Castles.

“There are large cities for each of the continents in the game, and there’s also a Castle for players to take control of, and there is currently one per server,” the NCSoft team says. “The guilds will fight over the castle and own it.”

“The Castle is a point of interest in the open world,” Kwai chimes in. “All players, whether on the leveling track or happening through that zone, will be able to see it, and whatever group currently owns it has taken it by force. There’s a vulnerability time in the in-game schedule, and during that time other guilds can declare a siege against it.

“When that happens, those two groups of players face off against each other, and the winner takes control of the Castle. When we say ‘Claim the Throne’ in Throne & Liberty, that’s what we mean.”

Teaming up to fight monsters is a key component of the game :: Amazon Games / NCSoft

One of the things that stood out most in Throne & Liberty is that your player character can morph into a variety of creatures for traversal, such as an eagle or a wolf. “I think Western players will love the morphing abilities – it’s a really fresh take on the traditional MMO mounting system, and it’s not just for travel,” Kwai explains. “We have the Ultimate that turns you into boss creatures – you do that infrequently, but it’s very powerful when it happens.”

“We have around 40 transmorphs that we have prepared for the game, and we will continue to add more,” NCSoft tells us. “We have an additional type of morph which is an Ultimate power you can use, which turns you into a kind of Guardian. And there will be seven in the game at launch, but we’re going to add more than that.”

There are crabs :: Amazon Games / NCSoft

Throne & Liberty will be going up against a stacked MMO market when it releases, but it does enough right to justify giving it a try at launch. You can sign up to be a tester on the Throne & Liberty website now.