Massively Exclusive: Uncharted Waters Online sails to China
This past month, the captains and admirals at Uncharted Waters Online have made an incredible discovery: a brand-new continent called El Oriente. This update expands the game world to include China and Taiwan, additional trade goods and dungeons, and plenty of Oriental-themed ships.
To uncover all of El Oriente's secrets, Tecmo Koei's Director of Production Takeda Tomakazu has a look at the update and the real-world history behind it. Hit the jump for this exclusive dev diary!
The Mystery of El Oriente
In Uncharted Waters Online, we opened up the East Asia and Eurasian continent to explorers last month. Dubbed "El Oriente," a term originally used by Spanish explorers, the region was designed for higher-level players. These newly introduced high level contents will motivate global players to accomplish higher skills and quests along with the exploration of new regions.
Just like the real European explorers in the Age of Exploration (15th century), players sailing to El Oriente will be undertaking a huge task fraught with peril and risk. One of the major facets of Uncharted Waters Online is the historical accuracy -- we base our content on real-world places and people, and then let players take the fictional narrative from there. During the Age of Exploration, the current time period in the game, East Asia was still a mystery, completely closed off from foreign trade. Our design team put a lot of effort recreating the beauty of China and Taiwan to give players a true sense of accomplishment when exploring and uncovering new areas.
But let's face it: The real thing players are after is money! The new Nanban trading system is going to be the way for merchant sailors to fill their treasure chests with plenty of ducats. Completely different than the existing trade system, Nanban trading is exclusive to East Asia and offers a slew of new commodities for adventurous explorers. Our trade markets are updated by the minute, so it's definitely possible for a trader to catch a deal on Nanban trade and then turn it around on the regular market for a massive profit.
Since Uncharted Waters Online is a historical MMO, we strived to make sure the El Oriente content is as accurate as possible, and that meant adding Asian ships to the game. We have a historic planning group that reviews reference material for the ships and then the game developers create the models and stats for the vessels. The balance is closely monitored by our GMs and operations, and the result are the new Sha-Chuan, Zheng He and Fu warships, now available for players to hone their skills.
