Dragonica Preview

I'll be the first to admit that I get easily addicted to MMORPGs. But like any other addiction, it doesn't come cheap. First you'll pay $50 for a starter pack and then $10 or $20 for the inevitable expansions.

To top it off there's usually a monthly fee of around $15 per month. The worst of it? I still can't play with my friends, which is the whole point of having something massively multiplayer to begin with. If everyone I know is also a poor college student, how can I expect them dish out that kind of money?

Fortunately, this may all be changing. Dragonica Online, THQ*ICE's newest game, is taking western MMORPGs in an entirely new direction. They're making these kinds of games more accessible in two ways: how you pay and how you play.

Instead of the money-driven setup described above, Dragonica has decided to adopt the extremely successful Asian model of payment via microtransactions.

Over in Asia, MMOs are truly massive on a scale that is unimaginable here. People play non-stop on their laptops, DSi's, and even their cell phones. MapleStory, an immensely successful Nexon game, has more subscribers in the tiny country of Korea (14 million) than World of Warcraft has in the entire world (11.5 million).

The reason for MapleStory's popularity is how incredibly easy it is to start playing - it's free to download, and is a simple enough game that it'll run smoothly on even the weakest computer hardware. There's no monthly subscription and no charge for patches or expansions - almost everything is free.

Everything that is except microtrasactions made in the game's 'Cash Shop.' If you want to customize your character's clothes or hair, you pay about a buck for new colors and styles. I've never understood the appeal myself but it has proved to be mind-blowingly profitable for Nexon.

I may not get it, but as long as it keeps the games legally free it's nothing short of a great thing. Dragonica follows the same model here as MapleStory, but the customizations stretch further than merely clothes and hair into areas such as weapons and armour.

For example players can purchase a Lightsaber for their character. It pulls its statistics from your currently equipped in-game weapon, merely changing your appearance to be a little closer to a chibi Jedi when you're playing. Even though changes can be applied to weapons, real cash never gives players an advantage in actual gameplay - only changing appearances.

For many this is of great appeal as they want their virtual character to stand out, and this model is even being experimented with on consoles with Xbox 360's Avatars. Hopefully this is the beginning of a new trend in Western MMOs which will allow more of them to be free to play. If Dragonica proves successful, we'll surely see more Western games copy this model.

All of that is really great, but even a $0 price tag isn't enough to get me to play a game if I don't like it. I did play MapleStory longer than I'm proud to admit but eventually I got wise to the fact that most of the game is spent merely holding down the Ctrl-key.

Dragonica seems like a better version of MapleStory – similar in style and presentation but a lot less rubbish. One big change is that its 2D characters are featured in a full 3D world. When you're out there fighting monsters you'll have access to a full field of 3D vision, adding the complexity of another dimension to the game.

The 3D environments also give you a much larger world to explore, with more hidden areas and passages. Interestingly, the devlopers have kept the towns and cities 2-D. This might seem weird, given that socializing is supposed to be a huge part of MMOs and that towns are historically the heart of RPGs.

In the massively multiplayer genre huge, labyrinth-like towns are a pain. Most players just want to know where the nearest weapons and armor store is, maybe pick up some potions, and get back to their quest. Dragonica is designed so towns are simple and easy to navigate, with the important buildings easy to find.

They want you to spend less time in the town and more time out in the actual game - it's the gameplay that really matters. You begin the standard RPG way, by picking one of four classes any RPG veteran could predict -- warrior, magician, thief or archer.

In battle, gameplay seems to take a turn away from traditional RPG play and more towards an action game. You can beat up hordes of enemies with a standard attack or use a cartoonish special attack such as a giant novelty hammer to damage multiple enemies.

There's also Barricade mode - a dressed up name for guarding or blocking - which has a particular focus on comic relief. Each class has it's own method of blocking - for example, a warrior dons a S.W.A.T. uniform and wields a bullet-proof shield.

Attacks and blocks can be used in any combination to form chain attacks that add up for combo bonuses. It's even possible to create an infinite combo - I saw a guy manage to get a 600 chain attack bonus after playing for much of the day. This gradually adds onto your damage multiplier, which starts at 1.1 times your standard damage and goes up to three times as much.

To make combat controls even easier and more intuitive the game is compatible with an Xbox 360 controller plugged into the PC as well as the traditional keyboard and mouse.

For loot addicts fighting also has some great looting potential. After you beat your first 100 monsters, you're rewarded with a chest. A monster count will then show up on screen, and after reaching the monster count (which resets when you log out) you'll be rewarded with another random bonus item.

Most of your items will come at the end of each section, when you get ranked based on the amount of time and damage it took to beat the level. The better you do, the more items you get, netting you between one and four bonus items. Weapons and armor all have a "soul power" that measures how strong they are. There's also the crafting and even disassembly, of weapons, in which you can extract soul power from an old weapon to upgrade something new.

Like every good MMORPG, there are also PvP opportunities. You can challenge fellow players and friends and customize the setting in which you fight making use of different rooms, rules and maps.

What's the most interesting thing about Dragonica? The marriage system. For many years players have 'married' each other in MMOs with virtual ceremonies, but in Dragonica it actually counts for something.

Married couples in game will recieve a couple bonus when they party up and fight together, dealing extra damage to baddies when you fight together. All the more reason to drag your other half into the free-to-play game!

Dragonica will be released next summer in America, and if you're lucky, you can jump in on an open beta in the coming months.