I have been looking forward to a social MMO since… I dunno… since 2009’s Gatheryn came and went. There were a bunch of social MMOs back then – Neo-Steam, Free Realms, of course, Second Life, a bunch more. None really had the impact of a World of Warcraft or even an EverQuest, both games which were just as open to socializing, but also had dungeons and raids to pass the time between dinner parties.
Free Realms, in particular, I miss. Like Gatheryn (which won’t really mean anything because I doubt few ever actually played it), Free Realms was a collection of minigames that were based off popular arcade games and casual PC/Mobile games. They would have racing games, hunting games, match 3 games. You’d put on, say, miner’s clothing, find a mining lode, and then play a minigame. You could then use what you mined to purchase certain things – new outfits (which often meant new jobs), better outfits, goodies, pets, and so on.
There were even dungeons, if you had adventurer’s clothes on. They had a stage where bands could play (pre-recorded, but you could dance to it). Lots of different places to go. It was pretty cool.
Palia is similar in a lot of ways. You changed outfits to change classes in Free Realms; in Palia, you change tools. Equip an axe, you gain experience in Foraging for every tree, bush, or old wrecked barrel you salvage. Equip a pickaxe, and you gain experience in Mining when you teach a lesson to that rock over there that looked at you funny. Equip a hoe, and you gain experience when you garden. Fishing rod, fishing. Bow, hunting. Smoke bomb, insect catching. You get the idea.
Where Free Realms was pretty open-ended, Palia has the traditional MMO quest trappings. The early game (which is all I have played to this point) is structured as a tutorial that ends with you having cleared a plot of land and built and decorated a house there. Housing is instanced in Palia, but you can visit the houses of friends at the entrance of the housing area if you’ve been given permission.
Finishing that house will require me buying the blueprints for a sawmill and making lots of planks with it, and then buying another crafting station to make bricks for the chimney. I didn’t get to that tonight, but I will.
Again, I am very much at the beginning of Palia, but here’s what I assume the gameplay loop will look like. Through exploration, you gather more and more exotic resources, and can build more and more elaborate buildings. You can buy additional deeds to expand your plot to fill all of the instanced housing area, with many buildings, animals (well, at least bugs) roaming around, decorative plants and so on. We know there will be caves with treasure to find, and activities best done with many people. There’s never a downside to working with others; everyone always gets equal rewards.
The basic lore is… in the far, far future, humanity is a memory and purple skinned, pointy-eared people have taken over. You have been created by a goddess and sent back to Earth to, presumably, show the modern day people what the ancients look like. They don’t think much of you yet, but they’ll like you better when they get to know you.
In the meantime, they are eager to show you the basics of all the skills. It’ll be up to you to keep checking up on them, now and again, and if you can’t help them with something, you can at least chat them up and be all neighborly.
As you build up trust, they will let you into their private lives, give you gifts, and maybe even develop feelings for you. (The devs have been coy on whether romance will ever be an option between player and NPCs).
I have only spent a couple of hours in game and it is way too early to be passing any sort of judgement on it. I’m sure things will get more exciting once the game goes live (in closed beta at the moment) and communities – Palia’s guilds – begin to form, and we unlock the group and community content.
But right now, just a couple hours in, it reminds me most of EverQuest 2’s crafting. You go outside and mine, gather, fish and hunt, then do some crafting. EQ2 only allowed each character one crafting class, but they were separate classes, and you could get specific quests for each class, an idea built upon and expanded in Final Fantasy XIV.
Part of the joy of crafting, for me, in other games, is making stuff that I can put to use in dungeons and stuff. I do like gathering and crafting, but I don’t see it as an end in itself; I want to be working to a goal. What that larger goal is in Palia, I have yet to find out.
This is NOT a review of Palia. I definitely haven’t played enough of it to see anything but the barest fraction of what they have to offer. This is just a first impression. And I like what I see enough to come back for more.