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Amazon Games has revealed when it will bring free-to-play MMO Throne and Liberty to the Americas, Europe and Japan. The company will release the NCSoft-developed title in those regions on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on September 17. There will be full cross-platform support. An open beta will take place in July and you can sign up for that through the game’s website.
Throne and Liberty, which was originally supposed to be a direct sequel to the original Lineage, debuted in Korea last year after a lengthy development process. It has both player vs. player and player vs. environment combat, and you can join guilds and form alliances to help you succeed. Amazon says battles can accommodate thousands of players at the same time.
The action takes place in an open world called Solisium, where the weather can impact the effectiveness of your weapons and even open up new routes. Your character can shapeshift into creatures that can navigate the sea and air more quickly. You’ll even be able to transform into slain bosses to help out your side in battles.
Amazon signed a deal with NCSoft in 2023 to publish Throne and Liberty in North America, South America, Europe and Japan on the heels of Lost Ark’s success. That game, from South Korean developer Smilegate, turned out to be a huge hit, with a peak of 1.3 million concurrent players on Steam. Over two years later, Lost Ark is still going strong, with an average Steam concurrent player count of nearly 56,000 in May.
Despite how well Lost Ark (and before that, New World) performed for Amazon Games, the division has gone through some rough spells over the last several years. Soon after its first in-house game Crucible debuted in May 2020, Amazon pulled it back into beta status before completely shutting down the free-to-play shooter outright a few months later. Last year, Amazon laid off around 300 workers from its games division as part of a broader downsizing.
Even so, Amazon has some other notable games in its pipeline. It’s working on a Lord of the Rings MMO and it’s publishing the next Tomb Raider game (it’s bringing a live-action Tomb Raider series to Prime Video too).
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-throne-and-liberty-mmo-is-coming-to-the-west-in-september-123028015.html?src=rss
