Throne and Liberty is a new free-to-play South Korean MMO game being developed by NCSoft for publishers Amazon Games. It’s scheduled to launch on September 17 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series
The beta will open at 10 AM PT (5 PM UTC) on July 18 and will run until 10 AM PT (5 PM UTC) on July 23.
Players in Europe, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan can participate in the beta testing by simply downloading the beta from the game page on Steam, PlayStation, or Xbox stores.
Important note on Throne and Freedom website It reminds players that progress from the beta will not carry over to the full version of the game, so don’t invest too much in your beta characters.
What is throne and freedom?
Throne and Liberty is a free-to-play MMO set in the newly created world of Solisium. According to the game’s website, it will place a heavy emphasis on guild-based combat, encouraging players to work together to achieve large-scale objectives: “Engage in exciting battles against tens of thousands of other players and fantastic creatures in massive group battles and castle sieges.”
One factor that potentially sets Throne and Liberty apart is that players don’t have to stick to a specific class when creating a character and isolate themselves from the majority of combat styles. Instead, the weapon the player uses will determine their moveset.
What about New World, Amazon’s other MMO?
It’s probably safe to say that Amazon needs Throne and Liberty to be successful to make up for the disappointing performance after New World’s launch.
New World launched in 2021 with an all-time peak player count of over 900,000 players, but that number quickly declined. Now, the average number of concurrent players is around 5,000, and fans feel cheated by the lack of bug fixes and post-launch support, aside from the expensive DLC.
Although Steam reviews for the game have never crossed the “mixed” category, recent reviews fall firmly into the “extremely negative” category and appear poised to stay there, with players describing bugs and glitches severe enough to wipe entire characters out of existence.
New World wasn’t a free-to-play game, so the monetization strategy allowed it to fall by the wayside after launch, but Throne and Liberty is following a different strategy, which will probably force Amazon Games and NCSoft to provide better post-launch support.
Featured image credit: Amazon Games/NCSoft