Although MMOs get their name from their multiplayer content, many of them offer at least some content for solo players. But that often means there’s some grind involved, and not everyone wants to spend hours completing a campaign just to get ready for a dungeon crawl. That’s where the new dungeon-crawling MMO, Fellowship, steps in. It offers endlessly scaling dungeon crawls with characters designed to let you jump right into the action.
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Unlike similar MMOs like World of Warcraft or Throne and Liberty, Fellowship provides basically zero content for solo players. Instead, you will queue up and head into Quickplay or scaling dungeons to take on dungeon crawls in groups of 4. Each team is comprised of tanks, healers, and damage dealers from a pre-defined list of characters. Once your party is full, the dungeon crawl begins. And ultimately, this multiplayer focus is Fellowship‘s strength and its weakness.
Fellowship Drops You Right Into the Dungeons, But Still Rewards the Grind
If you’re new to Fellowship, the game offers a tutorial run to help you get the lay of the land. Those familiar with the mechanics of similar games like World of Warcraft‘s Mythic Dungeons may not need it, and you do have the option to skip. But if you partake, you’ll learn the bare minimum basics of dungeon crawls through the lens of playing a Tank. The tutorial is helpful for new players, but it would be nice to get the option to do a solo run with each character to get a feel before you’re tossed out into the dungeons. You can test out Healers and DPS at camp by going up against dummies and chickens, but it’s not the same as a fully-fledged practice round without the pressure of holding up the team.
In Early Access, Fellowship offers a few different character options for each class. There are 2 tanks, 5 damage dealers, and 2 healers to choose from. Each one is ready-built to get started, but the base camp offers several options to further level up and customize your build. There’s new armor to buy, weapons to enhance, and skills to unlock and improve. This happens between runs and is about the only thing you’ll do alone in Fellowship. It’s a nice way of making each run feel rewarding, as you’ll get loot, automatically unlocked rewards from the skill tree, and money and supplies to spend on other upgrades.
Having everything for upgrades at a central base camp location is a great solution to make it easy to jump in and out for short, engaging play sessions. The base camp area is small, and everything you need to strengthen your character is right at your fingertips. That way, you still get right back to the dungeon crawling quickly, but you still get the satisfaction of leveling up and building a character between runs. In that regard, the core gameplay loop of Fellowship is genius. It offers everything players love about dungeon crawls without the extra RPG fluff that some gamers would prefer to skip. But as much as that’s a highlight, it can also be a flaw.
Your First Few Dungeon Crawls in Fellowship Might Be Rough If You’re Going Solo
Yes, Fellowship offers dungeon crawls without the fluff. That’s a great model in theory, but it does mean you’re thrown right in with other players the first time you play. And that’s where Fellowship runs into the same issue that plagues many MMOs – it lives and dies by its community. If there aren’t enough players, or if those players are unwelcoming to those still learning the ropes, that can become an issue pretty quickly.
When I was first getting the ropes with Fellowship, I ran into this in a few ways. In an initial run, I was the only one in the party who hadn’t yet secured a mount. This does unlock fairly early on, but if you’re a newbie, your horseless status makes you stick out like a sore thumb. As the game also tracks damage dealt in the corner, new players may find themselves the target of frustration that way, as well. You’ll need to learn quickly, or risk some harsh words from teammates.
As you get used to the controls and how these dungeon crawls differ from other, similar games, these issues fade. But it’s a barrier to entry that can be a hurdle for new players wanting to stick around. And this can be compounded by how other players react to newer members of the party. Mostly, the in-game text chat in groups of randomly queued strangers was pretty quiet during runs. But on the few occasions folks did have something to say, the conversation wasn’t exactly pleasant. Players who weren’t already adept dungeon crawlers were accused of being bots or bluntly called out for specific missteps. Of course, with text-only chat, it’s hard to mince words mid-dungeon. But even so, this creates an environment that may have some players dipping out of the game altogether.
After all, with no solo content on offer, it’s not like you can just decide to avoid the community and enjoy the game without engaging with other players like I did during my Throne and Liberty obsession last year. Thankfully, you don’t have to queue up with randoms to play Fellowship. The game also lets you create your own party with people you know IRL or from previous online communities. That means it can be a great game to play with a dedicated group who wants to dungeon crawl together without the grind of something like World of Warcraft. If you go in with friends, you’re going to have a great time even when you’re learning the ropes. Outside of that, your mileage may vary. That’s not a problem unique to Fellowship, as it’s true of any game with a matchmaking system. But when multiplayer is your only option, there’s a bit more pressure there.
Like Any Multiplayer-Only Game, Fellowship Could Have a Matchmaking Problem
Fellowship is a game you can only enjoy with other players. There’s no option to dungeon crawl with computer NPCs and no solo content to fill time between group runs. That is by design, and it works out well for those eager for a multiplayer dungeon-crawling challenge. If you already have a set group of gamers who want a new, quick, and satisfying game to play, Fellowship is going to scratch that itch. It can have a bit of a steep learning curve, especially with the awkward camera angles, but the base gameplay that’s there is a lot of fun already in Early Access. But for players logging in on their own to find a random match, getting matchmaking right will be an essential piece of the game’s success.
Fellowship offers a few options to dive into dungeons. You can queue up in Quickplay to jump right into a crawl. This is a fast and easy way to join a game, but in the early days, actual skill level isn’t reflected because player accounts just haven’t had time to level up quite yet. Your party will be balanced in terms of roles (Healer, DPS, and Tank), but you may have a few highly experienced players with a few newbies. This will smooth out as the player level differences between newcomers and those who’ve been grinding become more pronounced, but it’s a noticeable challenge in the game’s early days.
Another problem with having a game that’s solely made up of multiplayer elements is that if there aren’t enough roles ready to fill the queue, you just can’t play. Once or twice in my Fellowship playtime, I wasn’t able to get a party formed at all. The queue loaded for 10 minutes for a low-level dungeon without success, and Quickplay didn’t offer better results. Playerbase is always a pretty big concern for an MMO, but one that focuses entirely on its multiplayer content will come up against that even harder. The issue I ran into may well have been a glitch or server error, since Fellowship still has a solid concurrent count on Steam with daily peaks nearing 40,000 players. But either way, matchmaking is something the game will need to fully iron out in Early Access if it’s going to stick the landing as a full 1.0 release.
At its core, Fellowship is the bare bones of something great. The basic combat is fun, the party structure feels well thought-out, and the game’s reward structure is set up to make each run pay off. It’s got some great engaging potential, but much of what the game becomes will depend on getting the matchmaking ironed out. For players going in with a group ready to tackle it together, Fellowship is a perfect solution. Hopefully, future updates will help make the matchmaking clearer and smooth out the tutorial so newer players can jump in and find joy even while they’re still learning, too.
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Image courtesy of Focus Features.
