Heroes of Telara Preview

Eurogamer has cranked out a two-page, hands-on preview of Heroes of Telara, the fantasy MMORPG in development at Trion World Network that was formerly headed up by Jon Van Caneghem.

There are the standard four class archetypes: mage, cleric, warrior and rogue. You can play them all on one character, levelling them independently as in the recent free game Runes of Magic, and switching between them in town. There will be “a lot” of sub-classes available, according to Brown, and these can be switched between on a single character at any time, as he demonstrates by changing from a balanced Warrior to a low-defence, high-offence Berserker in the middle of combat, before diving into a Warhammer-style open quest. Sub-classes don’t need to be levelled independently, developing in tandem with your main class. Later on we see the Gravelord, another melee fighter who can shoot from range and command pet skeletons. Combat is a straightforward affair of clicking skills on a bar.

The potential for live events afforded by the server-based structure of Heroes of Telara is demonstrated when we return to the peaceful, gated medieval quest-hub town that we set out from. The gates are broken, buildings are on fire and NPC vendors and quest-givers are gone; the town is being ravaged by a sizeable demon and his imps. Demon duly defeated, there’s an explosion of fireworks and the townspeople reappear to cheer the victor – but, Brown notes, you could also leave the town to burn to the ground, which would render its amenities unavailable for a while.