Ilysia is a Brand New Upcoming VR MMORPG

Today I happened upon a brand new upcoming VR MMORPG thanks to a friend of mine, Sarumonin. Ilysia, developed by Team 21 Studio is a WoW-esque MMO set in a large world that takes hours to traverse on foot.
They released a trailer for the game in December 2019 and haven’t shown full gameplay since, but they made an effort to showcase at the very least the basic graphical style, including NPCs, environments and buildings.

According to Team 21, Ilysia is going to have a large emphasis on more than your traditional MMO: While crafting and professions are definitely an important part of every MMO, they’re all fairly similar.
When moving between games, there’s rarely any form of innovation with regards to the professions available. This is where the team behind Ilysia claims they’re going to be different. “Professions won’t be just the typical blacksmith and tailor type of professions,” they claim.
“We also want players to be able to be merchants, traders, bartenders and other professions that lean less towards roles that require combat and more towards a peaceful play style.
If you’ve ever played Mabinogi, then this may very well feel particularly familiar to you as this is the very same system employed – a system that many a player has been calling for for a long time.

While they did confirm that there will be dungeons and raids present, they never specified what form they would take, whether there would be combat and non-combat dungeons, how many players they would feature. Nothing. But I get it – they’re holding out, waiting for their Kickstarter. They confirmed that there won’t be a class system in place, rather, they’re going to employ a system much like the Elder Scrolls Online. You are what you wear! And like that statement, your play style and abilities are determined by what weapons you have equipped and what gear you have.

Traversing a world as large as this will require various modes of transportation, and Team 21 have confirmed that there will be caravans – which double as a form of player housing, airships to fly you around the continent, teleport scrolls and even mounts down the line.

As per every MMORPG, Ilysia will feature 8 different playable races. 3 will be available when the game officially launches, with the remaining 5 being added over time. I don’t like the sound of gating over half the races behind a “TBA” date but this is the best that I believe they can do. Unlike most MMOs, the game is also being built around solo play, meaning if you don’t want to party up with other players – you don’t have to. The game is supposedly completely tackleable solo.

While Ilysia is definitely shaping up to be an interesting MMO, I cannot say that I fully endorse it yet. I’ll need to wait and see how the game ultimately ends up, and what they offer via Kickstarter before I get my hopes up for this.

Interestingly, Ilysia actually has a fully confirmed release date. What is the release date for Ilysia? According to the devs, “Spring 2020.”