Summer Game Fest: Throne and Liberty Hands-On Preview

mmorpg.com:

During Summer Game Fest Play Days, we were able to go hands-on with an early build of the Western version of Throne and Liberty. The upcoming MMORPG from NCSOFT and Amazon Games aims to provide large-scale battles, cinematic visuals and a class-less system in a dynamic world. We played the first hour or so of the MMO, toying around with the character creator, tutorial and engaging in a large battle in a first look at the long-awaited MMORPG.

After sitting through an incredibly cinematic CG cutscene showing the evil witch Calanthia destroying the Children’s Island — an island inhabited by children orphaned by the many wars in the world of Solisium — I was taken to the character creation tool to build the avatar I would spend my time playing as.

I’m very happy with the sheer breadth of options here, as NCSOFT has spared no expense in the amount of sliders, color options and more you can use to truly create the character of your dreams. While it stops short of allowing you to customize the very curls of each lock of hair like Black Desert , it doesn’t disappoint on the whole.

There are presets to give a starting point, and from there you can adjust everything from cheekbone height to the very color and pattern of your irises. This is all stuff that should be standard in every MMORPG nowadays, but oftentimes we still see cookie-cutter character creation tools that just don’t offer the level of freedom of something like this. If I’m going to spend dozens of hours staring at my avatar, give me full control over its looks, and Throne and Liberty does not disappoint.

While I toyed around with the character creation tool (I could spend hours honing this down to the exact space between my nose and lips should I want to do