There’s games that spend a long time in development and then there’s Albion Online, which is perhaps in a whole other league of “long time in development." To back things up, Albion Online is an MMORPG that first popped on our radar by way of a forum post in February of 2013… more than 7 years ago! Developer Sandbox Interactive was touting Albion Online as the first true cross-platform MMORPG with a client that would run on desktop and mobile devices and sync your progress between them seamlessly. That doesn’t sound that impressive nowadays since there’s a handful of games that do just that and do it quite well, but in 2013 this was some pretty new territory for mobile gaming.
We were intrigued, and we posted plenty of stuff about Albion Online whenever it seemed like there was some newsworthy development, but we haven’t really talked about it in at least a few years. Since its original announcement the game went through many forms of testing before launching officially in 2017, and even since that “official" launch it has gone through many more iterations and changes. I kind of figured it was one of those games that would just never end up actually releasing on mobile. But I guess I was wrong! This week Sandbox has finally announced a worldwide release date of June 9th for Albion Online on iOS and Android. The game’s director Robin Henkys explains more about what to expect and what the heck took so long in the following video.
It’s easy to be like “Pffftttt about time!" but as the video above highlights it ain’t easy squeezing a full-blown MMORPG onto desktop and mobile devices, especially when you originally envisioned the project NINE years ago when no one else was really doing something like that. Also I think it was wise for Albion Online to go through its growing pains on PC only, because as I alluded to it went through a number of changes over the years but as far as I can tell as someone who doesn’t actually play the desktop version it seems to have finally stabilized and built up a solid foundation of players. It’s smart to have that more stabilized and refined version of the game be the one that shows up on mobile.
Also mentioned in the video is some goodies for pre-registering for the mobile version of Albion Online, specifically a really cool Chimera mount skin for your horse and Tomes of Insight that are worth 100,000 Fame. You can pre-register by visiting this link here, though you’ll need to create a free Albion Online account first if you don’t have one already. If you’re on iOS you’ll input your phone number to receive a text when the game releases, which is odd, but if you’re on Android it’s a bit more standard as you can simply pre-register through the Google Play Store. Why not offer a pre-order through the iOS App Store? Your guess is as good as mine.
While I’m not a big MMORPG person I do find the concept interesting and am just waiting for that one game to suck me into the genre, and as someone who has covered mobile gaming for more than a decade it always makes me happy to see projects announced LONG ago end up seeing the light of day. So it’s for those reasons that I’ll be very excited to finally try out Albion Online myself when it lands on iOS and Android on June 9th.
It’s been “in Beta” for iOS for a while but if you requested beta access, you would get it within a couple of weeks. It’s been stable for ages but the original touch interface was awful. It was redone a year or two ago with a touch-MOBA like control scheme and it works really well now.
It’s a fun game with a ton of customization in terms of combat styles, and lots of content for small and large group pvp. It has one of the most thriving economies I’ve ever seen in a game, similar to Eve, because like Eve it’s a full loot PvP. When you die in pvp zones (all high level zones) you lose just about everything with you. Even season mounts. 50% of your posssesions break and are just lost, the other 50% drop on the ground. It sounds brutal, but you don’t get out in your fancy gear most of the time and you generally learn to stay safe. They have also added content that caps group sizes so unlike the open world pvp, you can’t just Zerg people.
It’s a good game with something for most at least someone pvp oriented MMO fan. You even get a personal island where you can craft, farm, raise animals (to craft mounts or make meat), etc. It’s in a good state right. I highly recommend.
Thank you for this insight, it's good to hear it's a solid game.
World of Dungeons is a text-based MMO that launched in 2003 and runs entirely in a browser. It never used plugins, and it didn't use Javascript originally (I'm not sure if it does now since I haven't played it in many years), and it didn't require fast reflexes, so it could definitely have run in Safari on an iPhone original in 2007. And since it is browser-based, it is automatically cross-platform between mobile and desktop.
The point being, Albion Online's claim of being the "first" MMO with cross-platform multiplayer between smartphones and desktops was suspect even in 2013. It might have been "first" if you narrow the category to some smaller subset of MMOs.
Anyhow, I do intend to try it out. But not because it's the "first" game to do something.
That seems REALLY pedantic. They were aiming to bring a fully 3D MMORPG cross platform and whether they were first or not it was a really impressive endeavor for that time and nobody else to my knowledge was trying it in the mobile space.
This is simply not an apt comparison. Web IS a platform. The fact that a browser based game could be played on different platforms (awkwardly, it wasn’t designed for touch) including the original iPhone does not make it “cross platform.”
Albion is a full strength, highly graphical, open world, single shard MMORPG. I don’t actually think it was first. Some Asian MMOs beat it. And so did OldSchool RuneScape. But when it was first announced it could have been. Anyway, not remotely comparable to your text based browser game. That’s one platform.
You lost me at "Text-based".
such as?