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Empire of Sports Revisited
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It's been almost a year since we looked at Empire of Sports. Last time we checked it out, the game was in an early beta stage, and the only activities available were a simple form tennis and bobsleigh, which was quite a difficult game to master. The game has come a long way since then.
If you missed our early coverage, here's the short version. Empire of Sports is an MMORPG built around the world of sports. The game is 3D - and has quite nice graphics too. Everything is real time, and in between sporting activities you can walk around the world, explore, and interact with other players. The boring stuff - UIs, lobbies, is done away with as much as possible, in favour of a more immersive experience.
We had the chance to check the game out at Leipzig GC last month, and were very impressed. The game is now in the 'Private Launch' phase, and the demo took place on the live game servers, and ran very well, with no lag while playing games or moving around the cities. That was quite an impressive feat since the internet connection in the GC was less than ideal.
In Empire of Sports, you start of as a beginner athlete, and can train up your skills in a variety of sports - at the moment, Football, Tennis, Basketball, Skiing, and Bobsleigh are playable, as well as general training exercises. There are several more games in the works, including track and field.
Each sport has a number of skills attached to it. You train by playing. There are training exercises which you can do single player to increase your general skills (which affect all sports), and you can practice specific techniques to improve each particular sport, or you can play against other players to earn ranking, and improve your character at the same time.
As you gain skill in each sport, you can learn special talents that give you an edge over other players in a particlar sport. You can also buy equipment to improve your game - each item of equipment has different stats, so you could by trainers to make you run faster, or a tennis racquet that gives you more power, or more accuracy. Some equipment is purchased using in game currency, or even given as a reward for winning a tournament. Other gear can be purchased with real life money. When I questioned the developers about the power of the items bought with real money, they said that the goal was to allow players to buy items that were decently powerful, but that there would not be a massive disparity in power between those who poured money into the game, and those that invested a lot of time instead. It seems like the goal is to give players with real life commitments a chance to compete, rather than to ensure that you have to pay to get ahead.
The controls in the games remain similar to our first experience - you move with the keyboard, and use the mouse for actions like serving / returning / passing a ball. I would like to see if the controls could be re-mapped using something like the SwitchBlade system, since while keyboard and mouse was a very good solution for basketball (it felt intuitive, slightly arcadey, but very fun), I found tennis to be rather frustrating. Simple serves and returns were OK, but finer ball control felt clunky compared to a controller based interface.
Empire of Sports has a guild system so that you can quickly and easily find people to play with on a regular basis. It is usually fairly easy to find humans to play against, and during the quiet times, you can focus on training instead.
As I mentioned earlier, Empire of Sports is in 'private launch' at the moment - if you want to check it out, you can sign up at EmpireOfSports.com. The game is free to play, and if you do choose to use the item shop, we've been assured that when the game launches for real, you won't lose your stuff.
Empire of Sports is a unique game, and I think they've done a brilliant job of capturing the feeling of being a competitive, successful athlete. The game really fills a void for sports fans, and even if you're not a sporty person, it's fun to train up, watch your avatar develop physically, and improve their skills. If you get in a good guild, the feeling of camaraderie is just like a real sports team - maybe it will inspire you to crack out Wii Fit and get moving in real life too! Or maybe it would be more fruitful to just spend more time levelling your virtual skills instead....
Discuss this news in our forums!
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