Early Access: Eden Eternal Community Features
By Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-in-Chief
Welcome to part 3 of OnRPG’s Eden Eternal Preview series! As of today, the countdown to closed beta is only a week away! If you were worried about sneaking your way in to test this game early, you can now set your fears aside. Our lucky viewers will be among the first to get into this closed beta. Stay tuned in the coming week for more information on how to ensure your spot in CB!
As promised, today we will be going over the two vital social functions that make Eden Eternal stand apart from most games on the market. They are the guilds and the soulmate system. Now if you know much about MMORPGs, you are probably looking at this line with a quizzical expression on your face. Hold your judgment! It is not the fact that these systems exist in the game that makes them unique, but the way they are implemented.
Soulmate System: Just the Two of Us
Now in my gaming past, showing your love for another player ingame usually meant one thing. Money money and more money! It is no secret that free-to-play games take full advantage of the need for lovers to express themselves by charging them heavy fees for weddings, special rings, and other such love focused items, especially in anime styled games like Eden Eternal. Thus it came as a huge surprise to me when I saw that you can initiate dating a soulmate in Eden Eternal without the use of a cash shop item.
Hopefully this remains as is because the Soulmate System really provides some strong benefits to players that are dedicated to each other. Special lover skills (including the often wanted soulmate teleport power) are slowly unlocked the longer you stay together, along with other buffs and even a soulmate heal. You basically won’t want to go adventuring without your soulmate as the power increases are just addicting. Of course one major argument and poof, all your hard earned buffs and skills go up in smoke! So take good care of your soulmate or face the consequences.
Another great innovation comes in the freedom of sex involved with picking a soulmate. No longer will you have to force your best buddy to roll a female character to gain the benefits of the soulmate system. So long as you don’t mind taking a stroll on the liberal side, two guys or two girls can pair up as soulmates and receive the same buffs! I’m glad Aeria Games and X-Legends have taken the approach that gameplay is greater than society taboos and given its players this freedom of choice.
I think that is enough about love. It’s time to move on to the part organized team gamers are going to be interested in, Guilds.
Guild: A medieval association of craftsmen or merchants, having considerable power.
Eden Eternal takes this definition to heart and brings back what made guilds great in the medieval European era. The primary function of the guild is to pool the resources of its members in order to construct a guild town. This town is able to produce 5 crafting structures out of countless options. Thus a guild is able to specialize constructing epic blacksmiths or potion shops that most guilds will not have access to. And at this point, the guild structure does what medieval guilds do best, charge outlandish surcharges to anyone outside of the guild in exchange for their services!
By using the world map, players are able to visit the various guild towns of the world. This is useful since you can go to a guild town that has crafting abilities that your guild’s town might not, and use their service to advance your crafting ventures. Since crafting has been made to be a vital part of end-game in Eden Eternal, you will find yourself doing this or at least better know someone savvy enough to do it for you. Why do they need to be savvy you say? I’m glad you asked!
Guild leaders in Eden Eternal can assign a tax rate on their guild town’s crafting hotspots. This rate is tacked on to the cost of using one of your town’s crafting npcs to supply the guild with funds. Although early on in the game’s lifespan, monopolies will exist and players will be forced to endure outlandish tax rates, eventually more and more guilds will be able to provide access to advanced crafting facilities. Once the market is flooded with options, supply and demand is going to take over and savvy shoppers will quickly learn which guilds provide the best services for the lowest price.
Of course there is one limiting factor to the spread of guilds. While the first 50 guild towns founded will be for the low cost of 500 gold, any guild town after that is planned to be sold at a whopping 10,000 gold. That’s over 9000 gold! Also if a faction becomes inactive, their town will eventually be disbanded. These two factors combined should keep the guild population to a manageable number while providing just enough free market pressure to avoid crafting monopolies.
Guild Towns and Guild Ranks
Beyond crafting and material gathering npcs, guild towns carry a great number of useful unlockable features. For instance, guilds can construct different sets of obelisks in their town square, inspiring any member belonging to the faction to greater heights by giving them a buff. Each obelisk offers a different buff so there is some strategy involved in giving your faction what they will make the best use of (or you can just use the prettiest one. I like using the prettiest one).
Another cool feature of the town square is guild leaders are capable of constructing massive monuments in honor of various guild members. These statues actually acquire the character model and fashion from the player they are based on and create an ingame statue of them. Nothing inspires guildies to greatness like a statue!
Guilds are also useful for storage, in a big way. While each player’s personal inventory size is decent, a maximum upgraded guild storage bank is outlandishly large. Three separate tabs filled with something like 30 slots each (I can’t remember the exact number and was barred from taking screenshots of the guild interface) ensures that you will not be wanting for storage space for your guild’s rare artifacts.
The guild ranking system is also wonderful and brings back one of the few features I truly enjoyed in Warhammer Online. The guild leader can assign 5 tiers of privilege to categorize guild members. These tiers are customizable to the extreme, offering you the ability to rename each tier and set custom privileges to each tier. There are at least 15 or so privileges you can assign to each tier from changing the guild tax rate, to inviting new members, to depositing or withdrawing items from the guild bank. In short guild managers will have their hands full with a plethora of nifty dashboards and control panels to create a guild uniquely their own!
A fun scavenger hunt event available within guild towns is what I deem the ‘Crystal Pinata.’ This massive blue crystal can be placed within the guild town, with some insane amounts of health and defense. However, if you guild gets together and beats it down, it explodes with treasure chests that fly out and hide all across the world. These chests contain rare unique items that are worth finding, and your guild will be the first to know the scavenger hunt has begun!
Last of all, guilds will have plenty of events and activities in which to compete with each other to earn Harry Potter style house points for their faction. Guild ranking systems will help keep track of the most successful factions in these events. Although not available at launch, Associate Producer Jeff hinted that 40vs40 guild battles were in the works. I can say that will be a glorious sight to behold in this game.
The beginning of closed beta is now only 7 days away! But there is one last article on the horizon I plan to tease you with before you can get your hands on this game. Check out our final part of Early Access: Eden Eternal next Tuesday for a look at reputation, titles, and other tid bits that make Eden Eternal oh so user friendly.
