At E3 this year, I stopped by Perfect World Entertainment to see their assortment of free-to-play MMOs, especially Jade Dynasty. I had an opportunity to sit with Andrew Brown, the game’s product manager, to discuss the open beta and upcoming release. Jade Dynasty is a Westernized take on Zhu Xian, one of China’s most popular MMOs. As a warrior trying to learn his/her path to immortality, everyone begins as a nondescript paladin for the first 15 levels. Decisions you make affect character development as you make a unique warrior, not a cookie cutout that looks like everyone else. At level 15, you choose one of the five factions where your paladin then becomes that class. You can choose from the Jadeon (Mage), Lupin (Rogue), Vim (Tanks), Skysong (Healer) and the Modo (Warlock / Necromancer). With 150 levels to achieve and 14,000 quests to choose from, you will definitely be able to explore what your faction has to offer.

   

Along with the enormous amount of quests comes a large landscape of a world that would take you 45 minutes to cross from the north end of the world to the south end on a mount. Don’t let hundreds of levels, thousands of quests and a large world make your path to immortality seem like a daunting task. Perfect World has put in a few very cool features to help those who may only be able to spend quality time with the game and perhaps not a huge quantity of time. On top of the usual pet you can purchase / tame, you can also have what they call an “esper.” An esper is like having another pet that fights along side you, but it isn’t a pet. Described more as “organic armor,” it also has it’s own skills and combat maneuvers you can utilize. During my demonstration, my character’s esper was a large flaming sword. He also showed me a skill called invigorate. Basically, it’s an auto-attack bot built into the game. You have a bar (invigorate) that fills up as you fight and after doing loads fighting yourself, you are able to activate the skill. Then, your character begins following whatever orders you put into the bot. Attack only same level creatures and when you attack, first do spell A, then attack B, followed by special attack C. Your character follows the orders given and you can be very detailed in your instructions, as you want. That definitely looked like something to check out.

   

While the pets, espers, and invigoration help you in battle, you can also earn experience when just hanging out in town or even while you are offline. If your character is in town and say you need to take a break, you can use a skill called Meditate. While you are meditating, you gain some, albeit a small amount of experience every 60 seconds you meditate. Outside of meditating you can also use a skill called Dreaming. When you are dreaming, you can be logged out of the game, and you still earn experience for your character, up to three times that of meditating, just for being offline. Obviously, this isn’t the easiest skill to acquire, but for those willing to put in the effort, it is an attainable goal. All these skills and special abilities seem small, but make a large Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game like Jade Dynasty accessible to everyone in the MMO market.

   

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten to talk about the micro-transactions. Jade Dynasty is Free-to-Play, meaning that anyone can play and advance in the game without ever spending a penny. Perhaps, though, you would like to be the fashion plate of your town or don’t feel like walking to the town on the other side of the map. This is where Perfect World looks for your investment: fashion and convenience. Expand your storage, reduce travel time, purchase fashionable accessories and gifts, acquire consumables for crafting or just get a temporary stat boost for a really tough boss; all of this is possible through the Cash Shop in game. Like I said though, all convenience and fashion, nothing that really gets you ahead. You cannot buy your way into power.

With a ton fresh features, many of which I didn’t even get to see in my 20-minute demonstration, and a lot of social networking options (you can join a clan of 12 people of mixed factions and have that clan join an alliance of clans), Jade Dynasty looks to be shaping up as a must-try in the scary world of large scale MMOs. The open beta is up and running as you read this, so give it whirl. I know I will be checking it out, if nothing more than to see a new game that isn't the same old elves, goblins and dwarves all the popular ones seem to have these days.