Free MMORPG Round Up

4 Story

Hey wait a minute! You can’t include World of Warcraft in this feature! It’s not free! Yes we know that, but believe it or not (we’ll excuse anyone that falls into the ‘not’ category) this isn’t WoW. This is 4 Story, a free online MMORPG that simply can’t be legal such is the extent of its copycat fabrication. From the moment you lay eyes on the opening screen, the game smacks heavily of the infamous Blizzard title. The fonts and colours of the chat channels are the same, the menu system and character sheet are practically identical, the art style, buildings, characters, textures and lighting effects all look they've been made using code that was swiped directly from the servers on Azeroth.

Once you’ve got over just how much of a shameless rip-off 4 Story is, you can get on with the game. The first ten minutes or so is an embarrassingly pointless series of quests that involve one person telling you to talk to another, who tells you to talk to another, and so on. While this is unquestionably a key component in the standard MMORPG quest conveyor belt production line, 4 Story has made a particularly unforgivable lack of effort in adding any differentiation to the quests.


When you eventually get to some combat, there’s more WoW emulation to behold: the monster models and attack animations are all but identical. It’s difficult for me to sit down and enjoy this kind of play as I’ve attempted to get into WoW twice (with the two attempts being about 3 years apart) and both times I was almost bored into an early grave by about level 37. It's fun for a while, but we think (in contrast to the better part of 20 million Warcraft subscribers, but hey, what do they know?) that it lacks longevity.

We fired up You Tube to see if we could find some end game content for 4 Story. It looks as though it provides the sort of big-action fights that retail MMORPGs often provide, but if the first few hours are anything to go by, then you’re in for a long grind to get there. If you’re willing to spend hard currency in the ‘cash items’ shop then you may find advancing quicker.


Because this is a free title and not made by a company with Blizzard’s curriculum vitae behind it, it’s going to have inevitable flaky niggles liberally dotted around. For example, poor descriptions of locations and a lack of pointer can leave you wondering where you’re supposed to go for a quest. It also sometimes takes a few clicks to get an item to do what you want it to.

Conclusion

At end of the day 4 Story is basically a free World of Warcraft imitation which itself will appeal to many gamers. If you’re a WoW fan and you enter the 4 Story game world expecting just this, and are prepared to put up with the occasional flakiness, then 4 Story might be something that will get your rocks off. If, however, you’re not into WoW, we'd recommend steering well clear of it.