Skyforge: free-to-play MMO space

It’s not easy to break into an MMO space that’s becoming more competitive with every passing year, as publishers both new and old look to carve their own niche within the lucrative genre.  But My.com is one publisher with a few tricks up its sleeve, each of which  is aimed at helping the free-to-play Skyforge to stand out from the crowd.

Chief among these is a combat system built around executing combos with speed and diversity. Whether you’re launching a standard attack with a mouse button, or opting for something more extravagant using one of the number keys, the move you perform changes with the context. Two left clicks followed by a right, for instance, results in a different set of strikes than left, right, left. Pressing the E key at the end of a combo changes things again, initiating a class-specific finisher with the potential to deal enormous damage.

Switch blades
The idea is to make the combat feel closer to that of a console action game, while retaining a familiar MMO framework around it. Further fluidity comes from the option to change class whenever you like, so long as you’re not engaged in combat. This allows you to pummel a dungeon’s weaker enemies as a Berserker, before opting for ranged attacks as a Gunner when you face the dangerous boss.

just how deep and worthwhile this system is, with different abilities buffing and feeding off of one another, will only become apparent once we’ve had a more extensive hands-on. Class switching on a whim, plus those combos, will surely entice casual, less patient players, but MMO veterans will need some convincing.