Fellowship recreates the thrill of MMO dungeons without the MMO and I'm scared of what it will do to my free time
Fellowship fits like a glove on me, a former 16-year-old World of Warcraft raider who mistakenly thought Blizzard would be the only one who could scratch that itch again. Stockholm-based studio Chief Rebel proved me wrong while we cleared out two MMO-style dungeons in a hands-on preview I had with the game last month.
It hit me the moment I logged in and had rows of spell icons and health bars staring back at me. Fellowship's UI looks exactly like my WoW one did back in 2010, when everyone used the ElvUI mod to minimize Blizzard's gaudy health and mana bars into flattened rectangles with text. Whoever made it knows MMO players want nothing to get in the way of seeing whatever horrible gunk a dungeon boss might spit onto the ground.
For both dungeons, I played an elf sorceress named Rime, a hero who resembles a frost mage in WoW. Chief Rebel was inspired by the variety of characters in MOBAs and sought to make a co-op experience that doesn't require you to spend weeks questing and leveling up like you would in an MMO. Heroes in Fellowship gain power from their skill trees and gear as you play, but you won't have any homework to do before you're allowed to join a dungeon party.
The game's hub area, with its overgrown steps and bent redwoods, mirrors the tabletop miniature-like fantasy aesthetic that is synonymous with Warcraft. It's actually so close that I'm not sure I could tell the difference, even as someone who is so keen on Warcraft's art style that I can identify it from a zoomed-in screenshot of a dock texture in GuessThe.Game (I'm normal, I swear). A mission table sits in the middle of the oddly familiar courtyard next to some training dummies to test your spells on. Clicking on it opens a window for choosing which dungeon you want to run and how hard you want them to be. Of course, I recognize this too.
Fellowship is essentially what you get if WoW's Mythic+ dungeons were the entire game.
Mythic+ dungeons in WoW are basically a sport at this point, or so I hear. Blizzard invented them after I stopped playing, but they're essentially five-player dungeons with modifiers that add considerable challenge to the normal experience. In addition to a general increase in difficulty, weekly Mythic+ affixes will give enemies extra health, cause vines to appear and slow you down, and fill the dungeon with deadly tornadoes. You need more than just a tank, healer, and three damage dealers to survive these brutal encounters as you climb the difficulty tiers. A good strategy, and sometimes specific classes, are required.
Fellowship is essentially what you get if WoW's Mythic+ dungeons were the entire game—although large-scale raids are in the works too. As you enable 'ascensions', like a time limit or a 30% health increase for all enemies, the loot rewards change. One of them lets you toggle threat management, a mechanic that forces tanks to keep an enemy's attention off of their teammates—which is an incredibly smart option to help ease players into what is often the most intimidating role to play. 'Curses' are even harder and add things like meteor showers and spirits who protect enemies in return for even better rewards.
After clearing an introductory dungeon through Fellowship's quick play mode, which matches three players together for a relatively easy adventure, we made a four-player party and queued up for Drakehold Terrace. Once we loaded in, our tank charged into the first of several packs of enemies that stood along the snowy path toward the boss. As I flung out frost bolts to build up charges for my stronger spells, I felt like I was 16 again, trying to pump out enough damage to stay top rank on a mod that tracks the group's damage output—another thing Chief Rebel has perfectly replicated.
I think I did pretty well for someone who hasn't seriously ran a WoW dungeon in years. When I saw certain enemies would channel a spell that dealt heavy damage to the group, I quickly interrupted it, and I saved my charges to spend on AOE spells when our tank came running back with a crowd of enemies in tow. The boss wasn't an issue either. He's a giant made out of ice who occasionally targets a player with a conal attack. The chosen player needs to point it in the right direction so it destroys some ice crystals that will otherwise wipe your party out. It's a classic WoW boss mechanic that didn't deter me from launching as much damage as I could into the big guy, ending the fight with zero casualties.
Apparently, that boss usually trips people up, but it just made me eager to flip on some curses and do it again. I was still missing some gear pieces that you can only earn from higher difficulties, and I really wanted to try healing a dungeon as one of the support heroes. Fellowship's loop of endless dungeon running gave me the same urge as early Overwatch did where all I wanted to do was go another round to see what each hero does.
And I plan to do that when the Fellowship alpha starts on August 15 because I'm absolutely hooked. WoW has plenty of ways to boost a character past the leveling process to jump straight into dungeons, but Fellowship goes a step further and gives you a MOBA-like roster of heroes to master as you take on harder and harder dungeons. The alpha will have two heroes in each category, for a total of six, to test out, and Chief Rebel says there will be plenty more coming over time. A ranked mode is on its way too, which will measure how well your team can optimize a run while juggling the various difficulty modifiers.
If Fellowship is able to offer a good variety of heroes to play and keep its dungeons as satisfying as the two I tried, I could easily see myself running a dungeon or two every evening like I would play a few matches of Overwatch. My free time is officially on notice.