1UP COVER STORY
1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JUNE 12 | IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR (SO FAR)
Wizardry Online: The Secret Most Compelling, Crazy, Amazing Online RPG of E3 2012
Cover Story: Gamepot’s free-to-play MMO stood out as one of the show’s biggest surprises.
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ike many of the most interesting games of E3, Wizardry Online was buried in the back corner of its publisher’s booth, dwarfed by a massive display promoting a sci-fi shooter. In the eyes of Sony Online Entertainment, it rated exactly one demo station, putting it even below the Running Man knockoff Bulletrun. But when the dust cleared and E3 packed up another year, it was Wizardry Online that stuck out most clearly in my mind.
As the name implies, Wizardry Online is a free-to-play MMORPG, which admittedly feels like an odd fit for an RPG that has its roots firmly in single-player dungeon crawling. However, it works better than you might think. Wizardry Online weaves in all sorts of interesting multiplayer features into its design, with player-versus-player combat being one of the biggies. While I looked on, for example, the player character–a figure that was hooded and cloaked–ran into another dungeon crawler and engaged in a fight. After a few moments, the player stood victorious, but they had turned red. They were now a criminal, and they were free to access other dungeons that had previously been closed to them.
