What We Know About Throne and Liberty and Project E, The Upcoming NCSoft MMORPGs

Let’s get the release date out of the way first! The Throne and Liberty MMORPG is coming out in the last quarter of 2022.

MMO announcements without a release date – even a vague one – are the worst. NCSoft, the company behind Throne and Liberty, led us on for years. They announced the game in 2011 as Lineage Eternal, a sequel to the original 1998 Lineage. Six years later, NCSoft hit Lineage Eternal with the reboot hammer. The name changed to Project TL.

Details, if you can call them that, arrived in 2019 in the form of artwork. The few pictures featured iconic Lineage locations, a clear sign that Project TL still has a bond with Lineage.

Three long years of silence followed. Now, in 2022, NCSoft is finally ready to spill the beans on Project TL. A rather lengthy developer interview shed more light on the upcoming games. Throne and Liberty has a sibling and its name is Project E.

Throne and Liberty – The Big Reveal

Throne and Liberty is a new NCSoft IP (intellectual property). The reboot process made it less Lineage-y and more into a standalone title. As a result, the name changed from Lineage Eternal to Throne and Liberty. The denomination is in line with the new story.

Gameplay-wise, a lot has changed. The developers felt that the 2011 design would no longer appeal to today’s gamers. So, they took the initial game under revision. Where possible, systems were updated. Others were completely removed.

The team created new features. World-building and exciting gameplay is at the forefront of the design process. We all know that linear play and repetitive activities are the ugly dark heart of the MMO blueprint. Throne and Liberty aim to shake things up.

We’ve seen our fair share of MMORPG announcements that all say that. Thankfully, Producer Jong-ok Ahn was kind enough to exemplify a situation.

Let’s say that you are out in the open world killing mobs. The weather changes. Barely an inconvenience, you would say. In T&L, the meteorological conditions are more than just pretty pixels. The wind direction and force influence the speed and route of your arrows. On a sunny day, lighting magic spells hit one enemy. When it rains, the spell becomes an AOE attack.

Weather also works against you. Water can inundate the underground sewer of a castle shutting your way in during a siege battle. Of course, other options will be available. You won’t have to postpone the raid because of bad weather. If the weather doesn’t work in your favor, you can change it. Players have the power to cause solar eclipses and rainstorms. That’s an intriguing feature.

To prevent us from getting bored of defeating the same enemies over and over again, new monsters will join the fray. The dynamic environment should create more opportunities for immersive and exciting adventures.

According to Jong-ok Ah, two main ideas guided the team when creating the content. To know Throne and Liberty is to love Throne and Liberty. Story-telling and world-building play a special part.

Throne and Liberty utilizes console and adventure mechanics to create a living game world and a connection between the players and NPCs. The second idea is all about teamwork. Players will need to work together to defeat challenging bosses.

It seems that Throne and Liberty has many boss fights that require a party. It’s not clear if the game is PvE-centric. By the looks of it, the priority is teamwork first, competition second.

However, Throne and Liberty don’t have a specific target audience. It caters to all group ages and players all over the world. We hope this means that the PvP fans won’t be forgotten.

Judging by the artwork and video, the world of Throne and Liberty looks amazing. And it’s not just for show and monster hunting.

Exploration and traveling play a big part, specifically in how we get from one place to another. The developers came up with an interesting solution. Characters can transform into land, water, and air creatures. You don’t need a mount, you become the mount. In animal form, you will be able to carry other players.

The interview didn’t tell much about the gameplay, but we can discern a few things from the three-minute trailer. Throne and Liberty is an action MMORPG.

The video presents several combat styles. We have a melee warrior equipped with a one-hand weapon and shield. He has the ability to pull mobs close to him. Another melee character wields a two-handed sword hitting multiple mobs at once.

We also see a spell-shooting mage armed with a staff. A hybrid melee/ranged fighting style allows the character to shoot arrows from a bow and a sword when the mob closes in. Another character can escalate mountains using a grappling hook. The weapons are connected to the story.

The trailer also shows boss battles where lots of players join forces to take down colossal enemies. These fights look epic. We see a scene where several players mount a stone giant. From what we gather, it has something to do with the castle sieges.  

What Is Project E

Project E came to life from the hundreds of ideas bounced around when creating Throne and Liberty. Not all of them could be in the game, but they were just too good to be left aside.

So, the team created another MMORPG. Project E shares the world with Throne and Liberty. One planet, two playgrounds. The Western medieval fantasy Throne and Liberty takes place on the continent of Solisium.

The Eastern-themed adventures of Project E unfold on the continent of Laisak. Project E pursues the exoticism of the East. The E in the title stands for East. The video shows heavy Korean influences, but the plan is to include Eastern influences from more countries.

The same laws of physics, ecology, and fantasy of the planet Novcrea govern both continents. However, each civilization followed its own development path. These differences make each world distinct.

The background story starts with the Old Gods war. The Star of Silaves was a magic stone prison to contain the eponymous god. The plan failed and the stone broke into pieces that fell on Novcrea. The scavenger run for pieces turned into a great war on Solisium.

Pieces of Sillack – that’s what we call the stone prison in Project E – landed on Laisak creating four islands, a lake, and holy flora and fauna.

This land is not free of conflicts either. Humans learned the secrets of magic from elves and then declared war on them. The orcs lead a war to unify their tribes. Some races sought refuge in other areas.

On the continent of Laisak, elves call themselves Nirva. Yaksha is the term for orcs. The Project E cinematic trailer doesn’t include gameplay.

Throne and Liberty and Project E will be available on PC and consoles, including next-generation machines. As for the business model, the team is still figuring out what will work best.