After a beta period filled with changes and updates influenced by the community, Trion Worlds’ latest MMO Trove has now formally launched and swung its free-to-play doors wide open for PC, with a Mac client currently in development.
You may remember that I visited the world inside Trove as the beta period opened a few months ago. In the preview, I praised its friendly style and the creative possibilities that present themselves through the clubs (A.K.A guilds) in the game.
Trove is an MMO where the world is created purely of destructible voxels (3D pixels, think Minecraft). These voxels can be collected and stored to create whatever you see fit. In-game items can even be crafted to create new kinds of voxels that have various purposes. Crucially, every crafted item can be traded with everyone. This is a crucial block (pun intended) in the foundation of the game.
During an interview with the developers of the game, one new addition that has been a boom within the creative community has been music blocks. These can be stacked so multiple instruments can be played as the player flies over that particular vertical section. It’s best explained using a video, so I’ll use this example from a game that’s rather dear to me:
A wide variety of other activities and goodies have also been added since I last visited the beta. Flying mounts is one such addition, which can be levelled up and upgraded to improve their abilities. The example I was shown was a dragon that was upgraded to have an awesome fire-breath attack.
Other activities have been added to boost the crafting aspect further within Trove. Gardening within the clubhouses that a club shares is now possible, as well as fishing out in the realms that can be explored. With clubs, the whole idea is to band together to create something awesome. By pooling together resources that have been gathered by club members, those items and blocks can be used to build epic buildings as the club chooses.
Aside from the crafting aspect, Trove is still an MMO with the core principles of killing beasties and raiding dungeons to level up and get loot. With the full launch, one new addition is the inclusion of ‘adventures’. These larger quests encourage groups of players to work together in completing objectives for tasty bonuses. An example could be “complete as many dungeons as you can in the time limit”. The more dungeons that are cleared in an area, the more loot for everyone!
As I mentioned in my preview, Trove is a rather accessible MMO for those who want to have a bit more beyond simply plonking blocks together. It’s free-to-play and can be downloaded by visiting the game’s website here.
