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Sword of the New World: Granado Espada

Play with a whole group alone

In one regard Sword of the New World: Granado Espada does break some new ground - the whole game is based on a concept of playing a whole group alone. People have used "multi-boxing" in MMOs for quite a while, running multiple characters using multiple copies of the game, sometimes on the same PC but usually by using multiple PCs. The most notorious case I've met myself would be Team Wizzy from Dark Age of Camelot. Team Wizzy consisted of one player running a group of six characters using six PCs, and he used to cause plenty of havoc in the PvP areas of DAOC on the Igraine server.

MCC - control a whole party of your own.

Healer (Scout) - Tank (Fighter) - DPS (Musketeer)

In Granado Espada, instead of just a single character, you create a whole party of three characters. The game calls this "MCC" or Multi Character Control. In practice, you can control the usual MMO holy trinity of tank-healer-DPS completely on your own. While nothing prevents you from stacking character types or switching around group compositions, in practice you tend to need a healer type (in Granado Espada, that would be the Scout) and a tank type (Fighter), leaving only one spot open for one of the damage dealers (Elementalist, Wizard or Musketeer). You can grind normal trash with more DPS-oriented group builds as everything tends to die to one or two blows anyway, but when fighting boss-type monsters or things higher level than you, some survivability offered by a tank type is advisable.

All your characters are part of your family, and player is actually identified by the family name. Each single character gets a first name, but all share the family name. Initially you have room for just four characters, but over time you can purchase more space, up to a massive set of 36 characters. This system is perfect for the alt-a-holics among us, but not much fun for those who like to stick to one avatar as representative of self in the gameworld - once again it's one of those cultural differences between western and eastern gamers.

Character creation also reveals Korean-style design. Character customization options are virtually non-existing. You can pick between a male and a female, and choose one of the half-dozen classes and then pick your starting outfit from about a dozen different choices based on your class, but that's it. Even the outfit choices were not originally part of the game, and they have been included as an attempt to please western gamers.

You can't customize the actual body of the character at all, and the outfit choice is very permanent, as that's how your character will look, period. None of the pieces of armor you find later change your visual appearance in any way. While the outfits are very elaborate and beautifully designed,, the fact still remains that you will run into clones of yourself, and there is no way to display your "status" in the game using your armor as it doesn't show on your characters.

UPCs - more characters

In addition to the characters you create from scratch, your family can expand with UPCs, "Unique Player Characters". These are essentially pre-made NPCs that you can recruit to your family and then level up from their predetermined starting level. Copies of the game actually come with one UPC unlock code, with the character depending on where you purchase the game from, with some US retail chains having their own special UPCs. Most of the UPCs are unlocked with cards you receive as rewards during game play.

Alt characters and UPCs can be brought rapidly up to speed by pairing your highest level characters with the new lowbie - experience will roll in very rapidly for the new character with such a group composition. Quests also give their experience reward as "EXP cards". These are items that can be used for experience boost on any of your character, allowing you to save them for new alts.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: Korean MMOsPage 3: Solo multiplayer gamingPage 4: Grinding gameplayPage 5: Problems & HardwarePage 6: Final thoughts & Scores

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