The world view of
Atlantica Online is the Earth as we know it -- in outline, at any rate -- though the third-person view is a parallel universe of gleaming-high fantasy in the
grand tradition of Eastern role-playing games. Neon-glimmering towers; double-stacked, three-story mushrooms; cliff edges swallowed in clouds, and pastel-painted skies reaching dreamy distances. And even though Atlantis is nothing more than a dream, a memory, it's also the resting place of the greatest power: The Memory of Atlantis. I'm not exactly sure what that's supposed to mean, but everyone begins here, in this misty, bloom-lit realm of etched stone and snowy hills, which simultaneously serves as the game's theoretical endpoint. Master the worldly realm, and you're promised to master the memory of Atlantis. Plus the three lovely ladies tutoring you at the beginning will, um, serve you. I'm hoping the extent of that service is negotiable. Or at least as pubescently-gratifying as the text would suggest. But I'm not holding my breath.
Atlantica hasn't been entirely forthright on what it's meant by "turn-based MMO." Is this a strict
Galactic Civilizations type of turn-based movement? Perhaps the hybridized turn-basing of a
Total War game? Actually, it's neither. It's pound for pound a JRPG (Japanese Role-Playing Game) -- yes,
Atlantica is Korean-built, but JRPG conventions are typically understood -- with real-time movement in the overworld, while instanced combat cuts to a battle effectively invisible to anyone not involved, and a front-and-back-row strategy likened to
Lost Odyssey draws up the battle lines. (You typically have to defeat the creature in the front row before you can attack the creature in the back; magic and arrows notwithstanding.)
I only got a tip-of-the-tongue taste of
Atlantica during its recent stint of closed beta time (the next round starts up again on August 25th), but I'll concede that the gameplay is a pleasing shift from typical MMO standards, but not altogether unfamiliar as far as JRPGs go. But perhaps I was enjoying
Atlantica for the wrong reasons, considering its MMO foundation. Despite being massively-multiplayer,
Atlantica very much trundles along a "massively-singleplayer" experience, a complaint similarly leveled against
Sword of the New World: Granado Espada, which entrusted each player with a party of three. In
Atlantica, the main character can hire up to seven player-controlled mercenaries. In persistent online worlds, where individuality comes at a premium, it seems even easier to get lost in the shuffle when every player, gold farmer, and their mother is inflating the server population eight-fold. Granted, you only see your main character while traversing the world (your party only appears during fights), but MMOs tend to feel very lonely if you're not initially required to interact with anyone. The chat channels were expectantly hushed.
Regardless, there's a lot of high-level game content waiting beyond these initial get-to-know-you levels. The Mercenary Advancement System keeps you vested in your party's growth for the long haul. A Town Control System will have guild calling the shots on everything from security policies to culture, industry, commerce, health, and civil engineering with the planning and construction of buildings. I think an excalamation point goes at the end of that sentence. A Government System will have players forming their own nations, crowing themselves kings and queens, and reaping rewards reserved for that upper echelon. Plus the Economic System is completely player driven, with crafting components dropping almost immediately among the scattered piles of loot, and those components creating nearly every craftable object in
Atlantica.
Even if
Atlantica only scratches the surface of each of those objectives, it'll be leaps and bounds more ambitious than your typical MMO tray. The grind is present and accounted for, but by now, "grind" is comfort food for millions and millions of MMO players worldwide. It's arguable that there's less here or more there, sure, but at the end of the day it's still all amounts to grind material. There's no longer any point in denying it or getting defensive about it. Even with new-fangled turn-based combat,
Atlantica's grind is something we should embrace as readily as
World of Warcraft's, or
EverQuest's, or
EVE Online's.
The time-ticking rounds of combat, weapon-based combat tactics, roulette-wheel randomness of certain loot drops, and controllable pacing of the early levels made for a pleasant stay. That is, until one sees videos of NCsoft's eminent
Aion Online, and then the draw to advance a single character to
winged greatness tugs at least one MMO player's heartstrings. Still,
Atlantica may se