Allods Online enters open beta

By Oli Welsh Published 17 February, 2010

Free Russian WOW-alike with flying ships.

Allods Online, an unusual free-to-play MMO from Russia, has entered open beta testing in Europe, its publisher Gala Networks has announced.

You can download it straight from the official site. You'll just need to create a login for the gPotato.eu portal, which you might already have if you tried last year's cutesy Korean side-scroller, Dragonica.

Breaking with the Asian tradition of free-to-play MMOs, Allods has more of a Western flavour, and boasts striking artwork and flying ship battles as well as owing a clear debt to genre titan World of Warcraft.

Check out our closed beta impressions if you want a little more information before you start to play.

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About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (10) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Sharzam #1 2 years ago

    I was on the closed beta and it seamed like a solid game, yes it owes alot to WoW but that isnt always a bad thing. Overall it seams to work it is not trying to break the mold or bring anything particularly new but you don't need to revolutionise to do it well (again like WoW). So i would reccommend people to try it if they havnt ever really played MMOs after all it is free to play.

    The only thing i found annoying and this may just be me was there was no auto attack swing, so in between special abilitys and spells you had to manually press for every swing what is called 'white damage' in WoW.

  • JediMasterMalik #2 2 years ago

    I'll give it a go, hopefully it's more WoW and less grdinfest from the get go.

  • Distributor #3 2 years ago

    Allods....sounds like a tumor or something that stings after a nice curry.

  • Miths #4 2 years ago

    I think I'm gonna give this a try. I've been looking for a new MMO and none of the current P2P can really draw me back at the moment (I've played most of the major ones over the last several years) - and the next batch of interesting ones don't really seem to be on the very near horizon anymore.
    I'm currently trying out DDO again after they've gone F2P, but I'm just not "feeling" it.

    Edit: This article didn't mention it, but it might be pretty relevant for other people wanting to give it a try. From the official site: "Remember! Now that we are in Open Beta, the characters you create will not be deleted!".
    So this is effectively a "soft" launch.
    Edited by Miths at 17/02/10 @ 21:00

  • rodpad #5 2 years ago

    It's not WoW.

  • Thrawny #6 2 years ago

    couldn't get it to install, AVG flagged the installer as containing a trojan and quarantined the file :/

    probably a false positive but it's still bloody annoying

  • Miths #7 2 years ago

    The unpacker was hanging on my system ("No response" in the title bar), but it seems like it did finish the job as the installer launched after I killed it from the task list.
    Nod32 hasn't complained about anything, but as I noticed a couple of trojan threads on the official forums (seemingly also only in relation to AVG) I'm going to postpone installing it until it's been confirmed that this is just a false positive, which I'm sure it must be.
    Edited by Miths at 17/02/10 @ 22:26

  • sesskie #8 2 years ago

    On the surface, the game bears a resemblance to wow, but its another beast entirely, particularly in the endgame where the focus is more on PvP and astral ship battles, as well as exploration with your guild to distant allods for quests and world encounters.

    It definitely worth a shot, and considering its free to play, it gives most substandard subscription based MMOs a run for their money. I ahve a feeling the game will be pretty popular.

  • JediMasterMalik #9 2 years ago

    Seems quite a step up from most F2P mmos, thats for sure.

  • Silvervein #10 2 years ago

    For me, a definite highlight of allods is a chance to play as a team of three gibberlings. Emotes they have (and there's a lot of them) are just cute.