The Quinfall: An Overly-Ambitious MMO... (2024)

Quinfall, or ‘The Quinfall’ as it's sometimes called, is an upcoming Sandbox MMORPG developed by Vawraek Studio, that was first announced via an in-game trailer on March 29th, 2022. This video starts with about 3 minutes worth of lore content before showcasing some of Quinfall’s gameplay features, such as sailing, climbing puzzles, underwater content, as well as some examples of the game’s action-combat. This video received over 90,000 views in the span of 10 months, which is fine, but the quality of some of the gameplay, especially combat and NPC movement, left much to be desired.

Fast forward exactly 10 months to January 29th, 2023, and Quinfall has released a new Gameplay Showcase trailer. Now this trailer looks incredible, and it gives us a great deal of information related to the major features included in Quinfall. The video starts off with an environmental and combat showcase. The combat and NPC movement seems to have improved quite a bit from the first iteration. The video shows us that the game will feature action-combat with a variety of different weapons and spell-types. The spell effects and animations look much more fleshed out than before. The enemy mob types seem very diversified. It doesn’t appear that we’ll be fighting against the same zombie models from level 1 all the way through the endgame. We’re also given a glimpse at some of the group content, with over 50 players concurrently taking down various World or Raid bosses.

After this 2 minute combat preview, we’re told about the various biomes of Quinfall, and how the map size of the game will be an ambitious 2016 km sq. For some context, Azeroth in World of Warcraft Classic is about 200 km sq, Black Desert Online has about 400 square kilometers of explorable space, and ArcheAge, which seems to be one of the main inspirations for Quinfall, is only about 600 km sq. So, by comparison Quinfall’s map is expected to be over 3 times this size.

The video goes on to describe the dynamic Weather system, and its effects on the world of Quinfall. Similar to some other recently revealed MMOs in-development, such as Ashes of Creation and Throne and Liberty, the video claims that Quinfall’s weather will impact the mob types found in certain biomes, as well as being able to change the region itself in weather-events such as flooding and droughts.

The world of Quinfall is also advertised as being “player-driven”. In a bar setting, the narrator of the video describes the different kinds of activities that players will be able to engage in with each other, such as owning shops & taverns, playing board games or minigames together, and even creating music within the game. There even appears to be a 'Magic, the Gathering'-style card game within the world of Quinfall that players will be able to play against each other.

In Quinfall, friendly NPCs will have their own lives, and won’t always be available. Similar to some single-player games such as Skyrim, NPCs will work and be available to chat during the day, but they won’t always be around, since they have to eat, sleep, and take care of their other responsibilities. In order to learn more about these NPCs and receive hints about the world, players are encouraged to listen to the NPC’s dialogue options carefully.

As with every MMO nowadays, Quinfall will allow players to engage in several different professions. The video mentions that there will be eleven professions, to be precise, and these will include Treasure Hunting, Farming, Cooking, Chemistry, Fishing, Animal Husbandry, Logging, Harvesting wild plants, Mining, Hunting, and possibly Surveying the land for resources. There will also be a caravan system within the game, that will allow the transportation of large amounts of valuable goods.

Since the story of Quinfall will involve time-travel, there will also be opportunities for players to utilize technology from different periods of time. The video shows us a zeppelin, a minecart, trains, and a giant mech, which presumably can all be used by players at various points during the game.

Quinfall also promises to allow for player-housing, which is an often-neglected feature in most MMOs. It looks like players will be able to build and decorate their own homes in certain areas of the game.

Another popularly requested feature in MMOs is sailing or sea content, which you guessed it, Quinfall will feature. It appears that players will be able to craft their own ships, and have real-player crew members. Sailing the open oceans will be no easy task though, as players will have to take into account winds and weather before heading out to adventure. There will also be enemy NPC pirates, PvP against other player-controlled ships, and giant sea monsters that players will be able to fight against.

All of this seems extremely (some might even say impossibly) ambitious for an MMO in-development...

While I would normally say that an MMO with this level of ambition would take at least 5-10 years to develop, since Vawraek has the experience and framework of their previous game to work with, Quinfall might be deeper into development than I would expect. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what they’re capable of delivering later this year.

Quinfall is currently in an Alpha state, with an expected Closed Beta test planned for sometime in 2023.