Heroes of Telara E3 Previews

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Written by BuckGB on June 8th, 2009

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One of the interesting elements of Telara lies in the fact that every single character can be any one of the four base character classes at any time. No longer will you have to worry about sending out a "looking for group" request for a specific character class and hope that someone responds. Instead, you'll be able to instantly swap at will between the mage, warrior, cleric and rogue classes to fill these slots. Of course, there will the be traditional attack and defensive power adjustments, as well as the skill changes that you'd expect, since each class has its own abilities, bonuses and weaknesses.

On top of the ability to switch between classes, you'll also be able to trigger what's known as sub-classes, which you can acquire by picking up cards from defeated opponents or performing different quests. These sub-classes have a base class that they're attached to, so even though some of these classes will change the look and function of your character, they'll level up as you level up that particular class, unlocking new abilities and powers along the way.

We got a look at the Warrior main class who then chose to run as a Berserker sub class through a quest. The Berserker spec gives the character a boost to melee and damage but offers little benefits in terms of defense. As the Berserker got further on the quest, she ran into a Lich with some nasty undead minions blocking the road. After a tough fight the Lich went down and gave our Warrior some very unique loot for an MMO.a new sub class! The Warrior could now spec into a Necromancer-style sub class and summon undead to fight for her. So if she came upon a fight where her Berserker skill may not work best, she could switch to Necromancer and send in the undead to battle her foes for her, eventually jumping in to finish them off with her melee abilities. So as Heroes of Telara starts out with some basic main classes, there are plenty of options for players to spec in lots of sub classes depending on the situation.

Next we took the fighter into a Heroic Quest scenario. You have heard of Warhammer's Public Quest idea, right? Well this is the same thing. Players enter a town that is burning to the ground with fire imps and a giant demon running around. The Warrior used her new sub class of Necromancy to summon some undead and hurled them at the giant demon in the center of town. Once the demon was weakened, our female was able to charge in and finish the job. The questing systems allow other lower level players who cannot fight the demon directly to kill imps or fight other baddies in the town to help in the quest. Overall the game play of the Heroic Quest scenario looked good and seemed to work well, the game play definitely moved faster than current MMOs, a trend we saw with all the games at E3.

The theme of heroism returns in the way combat happens in Talara. There are two major differences from the average MMO. First, the NPCs are rarely if never wandering around aimlessly, waiting to be killed. They have their own goals and motivations. Players tend to find bandits skirmishing with guards, not sitting around a camp fire. The second is that as each player wants to be a hero, they better damn well fight like it. The combat is one vs. many, as players take on many monsters at a time. In our demonstration, the warrior would knock back multiple enemies with a giant, stylized staff. Beyond this, though, the combat is intended to be very familiar to fans of MMOs. It uses special abilities and hotbars.

Artistically, the game makes a lot of nice strides forward. Humanoid enemies have expressions on their faces that actually change. No longer do they look like wax figures as they blindly smack players. The game's artistic style is stylized, but (realistically rendered.) The effect is a very detailed, high-fantasy world that looks full of life. When they say stylized, they don't mean cartoony or World of Warcraft. This is a much gritter artistic vision.

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