Funcom delivered its look at Dune Awakening’s lategame last night, effectively showing off the content that wasn’t actually open to testers during the event earlier in May. The team discusses the MMO’s story dungeons, social hubs, map travel, and endgame combat too.
Of particular note is the Landsraad, which is basically the focal point of the faction system that allows Karkonnen and Atreides players to coordinate their power to wrest control of the council of great houses from each other, to the ostensible benefit of both PvE and PvP. Since this is a completely new concept in MMOs, we can’t even begin to think how this could possibly be abused by players; fortunately, since the game abruptly stopped being called an MMORPG after years of development as an MMORPG, absolutely zero PvP lessons learned from three decades of MMORPGs apply, and everything will go smoothly! Wait…
The team also includes a split-out segment that homes in on combat that Funcom says will “raise the bar”:
“Combat is a central part of Dune: Awakening, and we’ve gone to great lengths to try and raise the bar for combat in open world multiplayer survival games. From early survivor to later game death bringer, your journey on Arrakis will see you progress in one or more Schools of the Imperium, each offering unique abilities that you can use in combat. Whether you prefer melee or ranged combat, or a mix of both, there are multiple ways to shape your character as you advance from early game to endgame.”
Dune Awakening officially rolls into preorder headstart next week. We’ve tucked the longer video along with the two split-outs down below, but we’re pretty sure you’d just rather go back to fighting over whether 300-person deep desert zone servers should count as an MMO.
