TERA - Next Gen MMO
'Oh, not another MMO' you say? Well I will simply answer with, you haven't seen one with this level of visual quality.
MMO's seem to be a dime-a-dozen these days and most don't really seem to deliver to the expectations of your standard and hardcore MMO player. From what I've found, if it's not World of Warcraft, then you're playing the wrong MMO.
However, the talented team over at Korean based Bluehole Studio are raising the bar for visual quality for MMOs featuring normal mapped characters/environments, dynamic lighting and the most fluid and stylised animation I have ever seen in an MMO to date and combined it with a lot of Action RPG gameplay.
The style of the game blends with anime-esque characters, a touch of sci-fi and coated in a fun and playful style. The playable character designs range from your standard busty female elves and brutish male humans to demonic races and even a cutesy teddy bear like race called the Popori that would rival the likes of an Ewok.
GDC 10 Walkthrough - featuring in-game footage
Each race seems to have a distinct armour/costume style to define the race, yet it all seems to tie in so seamlessly. The designs can vary from something crazy detailed to a simple and elegant design and both are superbly executed in the style of the game.
One of the most stunning things I've found with the art are the scope and execution of the environments. The way the scenes are lit to create the right atmosphere to suit the environment. Whether you're out doors, indoors, a magic filled area, an industrial style area or within a giant city. The lighting sets the theme and it's really obvious to the player what the area is like, the technology of the race occupying it and it's visually stunning to look at.
I'll leave you with the Trailer created entirely using in-game assets.
At present the game is scheduled for a winter release.
For more information, videos, concept art and screenshots. Check out the TERA official website.
Seeing as the term "Next-Gen" is thrown around a lot, in your opinion what makes a game "Next-Gen" specifically an MMO?
Replies
I've tried so many of the promising MMO's over the last couple years, AoC, Warhammer Online, and all promised fresher graphics and better gameplay, but came up short. The only one IMO that came close was Aion, but that got very boring very quickly after the initial few parts.
TERA is built on UE3 I believe, so won't be the first MMO to make use of it. APB uses it, and while it looks nice, from what I can see from my time in the beta, the envrionmental repetition lets down the overall look, hopefully this won't be the case here.
In regards to what is 'Next-Gen', technically speaking, if anything, this game is 'Current-Gen' and depending on when we see the next iteration of UnrealEngine, it may even be approaching 'Last-Gen'. I'm starting to think 'Next-Gen' will be the term aimed at games utilising the next generation of graphics tech that we've seen from DX11, tesselation etc. Where currently it is used to describe games that feature technical aspects which were introduced around the time of the 'next generation' of consoles, 360 / PS3.
My two cents!
The trailer looks amazing though!
I should insert some 'I think' and 'In my opinion' to my post since it comes across like I'm the authority on what is and isn't current/next-gen gaming, and that was unintentional!
The reason behind my wanting of a 360 port is that although my pc can handle almost any game I was in the beta for APB and I could run it reasonabley high but It always erks me that I cant get the best out of the visuals. I know that a360 port wouldnt be on par with a top end pc but at least this way the FPS would be stable(hopefully) and I would be getting the same visual experience as every other 360 owner.
Lets just hope it does get a console release and the ability to have all the players on the same server(s)
(looks good)