zwolanerd

Price: Free to download / Free to play.
There is an item shop. You will not be allowed to forget about the item shop.
Client: PC and Mac
Get it from: www.villagersandheroes.com/ or download via Steam.

In any fantasy style MMO, it’s very hard to avoid comparisons to World of Warcaft. In this case, particularly so. I played for another couple of hours after I ended the video and felt some striking similarities.  Many of these are probably from the genre, accepted terms and ideas created over many years that have become standard.

The game is free to play, but you will be reminded about the item shop at every possible turn. I don’t know if there’s a paywall in place to get to higher levels, I poked around a bit and it doesn’t sound like there is, but you will need to pay if you’d like to unlock your inventory beyond two bags, for example. On death, you have the option to use an orb to revive (available from the item shop) or you can be resurrected at the entry to the zone (and suffer resurrection sickness for a short time).  While I don’t take any issue with premium items as such, it does get frustrating to be told you need to pay in order to do something.

One quick example is crafting. If you have the materials to make 5 of something, you can make them one by one or “Mass produce” the item, making all 5. However to mass produce, you need to buy a special premium gadget. A bundle of 10 of these (smallest buyable amount) is 19 crowns, with crowns going for $1.49 per 26 (discounts apply as you buy more).

Having whined about all that, there are some great things in here. The crafting/gathering skills of Bug Lore, Plant Lore, Fishing, Cooking, Woodworking and Blacksmithing are not limited. You can follow all the skills or pick a couple to max out. Players also have housing available in both open villages and guild villages although once a house is bought you need to pay rent on it.

It’s fun, it’s kind of like WoW lite, easy enough to dip into and muddle about in for a bit. I’m not sure if Hunter Dartfrog will be out in the world much after this though, the constant harping about the item shop makes me a bit tense.

Just as an aside about the video itself, I did get some comments last week about the video being low quality. I’ve changed some settings and whatnots for this one, so hopefully it’s a bit better – keeping them in the original HD isn’t really possible as they take between 12 and 15 hours to upload at that size (Australian internet! Hooray!).

Tags: LynPlays

Written by: Lyn