Announced back in late 2016, Royal Blood is an ambitious mobile MMORPG being developed by Korean games company Gamevil, which is more well-known as a mobile games publisher. For this project, Gamevil established a development team of around 200 employees. Earlier today, a media event was held in South Korea to announce new gameplay details on Royal Blood, and also reveal the launch plan. Will Royal Blood be able to attract the mass gamers?
Q: When is Royal Blood launching?
A: Royal Blood is launching in South Korea on 12 January 2018, with a global launch (currently without China) scheduled for March 2018.
Q: Is the system requirement for Royal Blood high?
A: Royal Blood will run smoothly on Apple iPhone 6S for iOS, and Samsung Galaxy S4 for Android.
Q: What does global server actually mean?
A: All players with access to the global server will be playing together, with a similar build version. From the game’s development stage, the team has analyzed the habits and behavior of each country. A lot of attention is also being put on localization, and an optimized service is being prepared Royal Blood feels like a local game for each country’s users.
Q: The network connection of some countries is not really stable. How will Gamevil overcome this?
A: The game app will select the most suitable network server for each region to connect to Royal Blood.
Q: What is the quest system like in Royal Blood?
A: In current mobile MMORPG titles, players follow a static quest line. This is different in Royal Blood, as unexpected, event-driven quests can appear in the area at any time for players to clear. Clearing these quests and completing the achievements, players can proceed to unlock new areas. When an event quest appears, players can gather together to work on it (most likely a boss raid). This sounds similar to the system in Guild Wars 2, which is a good thing.
Q: Will there be automated battle system in Royal Blood?
A: Yes, there is automated battle in Royal Blood, but the team at Gamevil has tweaked it. The team listened to what other gamers have to say about such a system, and was informed that automated battles are usually more efficient than manual controlled combat. Feeling that this is not right, there was a need to balance automated and manual battle.
According to a rough translation, the “Power Bubble” system is introduced. During manual combat, players will be able to lower their skill-cooldowns by attacking the right monster. However, during automated battles, this system will not be in effect. With lower skill-cooldowns, manual players will be able to fight more efficiently. Sounds like a good system!
Q: Is there boss raid content in Royal Blood?
A: Yes, there is. Raid bosses will display several different attack and behavioral patterns, along with immensely powerful attacks. To overcome the complex conditions, it is essential for players to work together cooperatively. Players are not scored according to just damage output, but also how active players are involved in the raid.
Q: What about the massive PVP battles?
A: The ultimate goal in Royal Blood is to become the sovereign of the realm. To enable this, the team built a seasonal RvR system and a large-scale guild feature. RvR is held 2 times a day for 2 weeks, where 100 players from a guild battle against another 100 players from another guild. The guild with the highest score wins. However, due to other features such as monarch points and potential for players to betray their guilds, politics also come into play.
For politics to work within guilds, a large number of players are needed. Hence in Royal Blood, each guild is allowed a max of 500 members, which is probably the largest maximum cap for a guild in recent games. This will allow more members to actively participate in distributing important positions, authority delegation, distribution of dividends, and more.
Q: How about the player growth system in Royal Blood?
A: There is no “failure” options in equipment and character growth, and the growth of each character has a higher value than the growth of items. Gamevil stressed that while players can still gacha for powerful items using cash, this is just to shorten the growth time at the beginning. The most powerful equipment in Royal Blood is only available through gameplay.
