This is a transcript of my daily gaming podcast called The Daily PWN.
Download The Daily PWN 68: Sword of the New World

Today in the third edition of our month-long journey into the world of free MMO games found on the web, we have found a very interesting and impressive gem of a game. It’s called Sword of the New World, and before you count this off as just another sword and bow medieval adventure MMORPG, this game is nothing of the sort. In fact, Sword of the New World ventures in to the Baroque period of Europe.

The story is simple and elegant. War broke out between the nations of Orpesia. Opoluto was fighting fiercely with the nations of Illier and Vespanola. Opoluto, being the weaker of the nations, failed to maintain their strength and their king quickly realized they weren’t going to last. He called for an adventurer to seek out a direct route to their biggest trade partner, Katai. An explorer named Ferrucio Espada answered the call and took 12 ships across the Dark Sea to find Katai. After much journey and the loss of ten of his ships, they found land. Upon landing, they quickly discovered that it was not Katai they reached, but a new world.

The war continued to rage on and Opoluto sent every citizen capable of sailing to the new world, then named Granado Espada, after the two surviving captains on the original journey. With Opoluto’s homeland being overrun, they surrendered to Vespanola in return for mercy. Opoluto’s survivors in Granado soon discovered, the land was scattered with beasts and creatures. They struggled with keeping their newly claimed land safe. Vespanola soon discovered the new home of Opoluto and sent some of their own pioneers to the land. Vespanola quickly found themselves the new target of the nations of Orpesia and found themselves in a battle for survival. The queen called on all families of her kingdom in the new world to carry out her will. As the new world is colonized and new families arrive, you are one such family.

When I say that you are a family, I quite literally mean that you play multiple characters at the same time. What makes Sword of the New World unique, aside from the refreshingly unique environment, is the multi-character controls. You have the ability to independently control each of your three allowed characters as they roam through areas, or set commands for the group. You can assign a leader, set their movement or command actions, and more. The system has a small learning curve and is fairly intuitive once you get over adjusting to the idea of controlling multiple characters at once.

Characters are created and organized using the barracks system. Inside your family barracks, you handle all of the administrative tasks concerning organizing and creating your team. Your barracks has room for many family members, and can grow as you gain experience and accomplish tasks in the game. Every member of your barracks has your family name which is used as their surname. Starting out, you have the ability to create nine characters in your family.

Speaking of characters, you can create adventurers in any of five distinct classes: fighter, wizard, scout, musketeer, and elementalist. Each class has its own set of stances, which level separately from the character itself, and this makes each character class highly customizable. Some of the specialized class types Sword the New World boasts on its website include a physically imposing fighter, mystical wizard, crafty scout, powerful elementalist, to the bold musketeer. I found that while playing the stances really make a difference in your overall experience and work rather well for this particular playing system.

In addition to the relatively simple characters you have the power to create in your barracks, there are UPC or Unique Player Characters available for a price. These are characters with their own looks, storyline, abilities, and talents.

The game is beautiful, abundant, and well supported. Though quests aren’t the main goal of SotNW, they can help you discover what’s ahead. From the first moment you set foot in the new world, you have access to a portal system giving you instant commute between settlements in the new world. This is great for people that don’t necessarily like to travel to get to certain points in the new world.

Overall, Sword of the New World may be my personal favorite free MMO yet. It will be hard to top its beauty and play system. There are minor downsides in your relatively restricted character creation in terms of appearance, though with time and in-game currency you can quickly overcome that hurdle. Sword of the New World makes its profits from selling in-game currency on their online market, among other things. If you play the game and earn a living you can do without spending a dime on in-game currency to buy some of the interesting cash items through trade with other players, but the option is always open to you. Give Sword of the New World a try if you’re looking for something other than medieval fantasy or a space-based RPG experience.

Link: Sword of the New World