Re: Paladins
Matt Dreher
Paladins was initially announced in 2012 as Global Agenda 2 and was scheduled to be released in mid-2013.[1][2] which would be the sequel or the spiritual sequel to the pvp mode of Global Agenda according to some developers.[3] The game changed its name several times, in the end the developers renamed the game as Paladins in early August 2015.[4] The game had pre alpha and alpha versions during 2015 but were not shown until August 3, 2015 when news channels like IGN were given permission to show the game content.[5] The Paladins closed beta started on November 17, 2015.[6] In the Open Beta, the game appeared on September 16, 2016, in the Steam Early Access program.[7]
Paladins takes place in a fantasy world called the Realm, a largely medieval world filled with elves, dwarves, dragons, and other fantasy races. In this world, there is a conflict between two factions: the Magistrate and the Resistance. The Magistrate serves as the ruling power of the Realm and wishes to keep it safe and peaceful by restricting the use of magic, largely in the form of magic crystals, which had been used by corrupt individuals to cause chaos and destruction. The Resistance meanwhile, despite the damage caused, believes crystals are too useful to be banned from the general public, leading to them coming together to fight the Magistrate. Many playable characters in the game belong to one of these two factions.[9]
However, there are many others that are not part of either group, instead doing things by themselves, or being part of some of the numerous other factions with their goals, some notable ones being the "Abyss", a group of monsters from another dimension, the "Pyre", a group of beings with angelic designs that hate the Abyss, the "Thousand Hands Guild", a criminal empire, the "Darkness/Maw", a group of alien monsters that consume worlds, and several others.[10][11][12]
Paladins is a team-based first-person shooter that focuses on two groups of five players each, who compete for combat-based goals. The game is set in colorful sci-fi fantasy maps, where each player chooses a champion that cannot be repeated in the same team and cannot be changed in the match. Each champion has their own weapons, skills and fighting style; in addition, they can be enhanced and personalized from a card and skin system. The interface of each player is customizable, with avatars and customizable borders to symbolize the player's profile; titles when reaching mastery level 30 with a champion, among others.
It is possible to customize the gameplay of the characters by unlocking talents (by leveling up) and by creating a deck with classic cards. Each champion has 3 talents. Each talent gives the champion a great advantage, but only one can be selected per game, they cannot stack. Each champion also has 16 classic cards (up to 5 cards can be used at the same time) that the player can use to build decks. Only one deck can be selected per game. Each card can be leveled up, from 1 to 5, which can be chosen by the player. Each deck must make 15 points in total.[13][14]
The game has different currencies. Battle Pass XP for daily quests or in-game achievements, Crystals for purchase with real money, and Gold for leveling up, daily visits, quests or playing individual matches. Currencies can be used to purchase special items in the game.[16]
Paladins arose from the idea of making a sequel to Global Agenda, which focused on improving PvP game modes, it was initially announced in 2012 and scheduled for release in mid-2013.[1] Later, the developers preferred to change the aesthetics of the game. setting it in a fantasy world and turning it into a first person game. At the time, the game was known as "Aurum", though it went by the codename "Chaos". However, despite the initial goal of a fantasy setting, everything about the game was constantly changing, with what was essentially a new game being created every single day; with the sci-fi theme of Hi-Rez's previous title, Global Agenda, additionally being experimented with, potentially almost even outright becoming a sequel to the game.
There were multiple leaks of the game during its development period, where several of the game's characteristics could be known, such as game modes, designs and abilities of some characters, weapons that would be recycled from Global Agenda. During this time some dubbed the game with the name of Global Assault.[18][19][20]
Eventually, the developers found an iteration they were satisfied with. However, according to the developers, before they could show off the game, Blizzard's highly anticipated new game, Overwatch, was shown off. The developers claim they were worried about being compared to Overwatch and initially planned to implement some changes to make Paladins different to avoid this, but according to the developers, internal testing indicated players enjoyed the current version of the game, causing them to stick with their original plan.,[21][22][2]
The game was officially announced for the first time as Paladins in early August 2015.[4] Before that the game was in a pre-alpha for a few months but could not show game content, on August 3, 2015, permission was given for players and reporters like IGN to show the game.[23] The Paladins closed beta started on November 17, 2015.[6] In the Open Beta, the game appeared on September 16, 2016 in the Steam Early Access program.[7] Within a week of the Open Beta launch on Steam, the game had reached 800,000 downloads and was one of the top ten most played games on Steam.[24][25] On PlayStation 4 it was released on the PlayStation Store on May 2, 2017.
In June 2018, one month after its official release (Open Beta), the game reached an average of 18,000 active players per day.[26][27] In November 2016, the game had surpassed four million registered users,[28][29] and in mid-May 2017, the developer announced that the game already had over eleven million registered users.[30] During 2018, this number surpassed between 30 and 35 million players.[31][32] In March 2020, Hi-Rez reported that Paladins exceeded 40 million players.[33][34][35] In December 2020, Paladins had seen over 45 million players.[36]
Paladins Strike is the mobile version of the game, launched in May 2018.[37] In Paladins Strike, most of the characters from the original game are present, with all their abilities adapted to suit the canons of the MOBA genre. Here too, the game is based on 5 vs 5 battles. The fights are carried out in real time with an isometric top view. Paladins Strike is free-to-play: the game relies on micro-transactions and in-app purchases.[38][39]
Realm Royale is the third-person shooter battle royale game version of the game, launched in June 2018 via Steam's early access program. In January 2018, Hi-Rez decided to give Paladins a corresponding mode named Paladins: Battlegrounds.[40][41] Later, the mode became its own game, called Realm Royale.[42][43] The game is free-to-play, integrating micro-transactions and in-app purchases.[44]
Paladins is a title that was played as an esport. The Paladins Premier League (PPL) was founded in cooperation between the developer studio and the WESA. This promises the participating e-athletes a fixed salary and support from the clubs.[45][46]
On August 1, 2017, the Paladins Global Series started, which is a community tournament with prizes worth 350,000 US dollars.[47][48] It was announced at DreamHack in Valencia. The event was the largest community esports tournament in the world. Regional PC tournaments are held every month and players from Southeast Asia, Russia, North America, Brazil, Latin America, Europe and Oceania can take part. Open bracket tournaments are held in the first 3 weeks of each month, where the amateurs can prove themselves and qualify for the monthly tournament. The actual Global Series starts on August 1 and runs for 10 months with monthly payouts.[49] The events are then also broadcast on live stream services such as Twitch or Facebook.[50]
The Microsoft Windows version of Paladins received "Generally favorable reviews" while the Nintendo Switch version received "Mixed or average reviews" according to review aggregator Metacritic.
In response to accusations that the game is an Overwatch clone, Hi-Rez COO Todd Harris said that While Overwatch is a fine game, it was not the inspiration for Paladins. Game development is an interactive process with ideas coming from many past projects. For the hero shooter genre, the game that deserves the most credit is Team Fortress 2. We released a TF2 inspired class-based shooter called Global Agenda way back in 2010. Paladins was conceived as a fantasy version of Global Agenda and of the approximately 85 combat abilities currently in Paladins, the vast majority are from the game Global Agenda we made 10 years ago".[75][76][77]
In 2018, Hi-Rez Studios CEO Stew Chisam pointed out the similarities between Ash and Overwatch's last fighter Brigitte Lindholm, stating "If I happened to notice and point out any similarities between these two characters, would that make me the Pot calling the Kettle black, or the Kettle calling the Pot black? This will keep me up tonight unless I get a clear answer".[78]
In an advertisement released in 2018, Paladins Strike used an artwork from Overwatch. Hi-Rez Studios' art director responded by stating "This art was created by a overseas partner studio for paladins strike and had not much in the way of oversight in its content creation by anyone internally at Hi-Rez. We will be looking into this immediately".[79][80]
The loot boxes introduced in the game by an update were criticized by players, which could make the game too much pay to win.[81][82] The game also received these allegations when it introduced a new in-game currency in a beta patch.[83][84]
Honestly, saying that Paladins is a copy of OW always seemed wrong to me, Paradins was announced in 2012 almost 3 years before OW, and it is essentially the sequel to a 2009 game called Global Agenda, a game from which OW is also very inspired.
In fact, it is known that the developers of paladins had to delete entire characters that they had created since developing Global Agenda to try not to look like OW, an example is the Medic in global agenda, who would reappear in paladins but in the end they eliminated him, because OW released Mercy who is a very similar character ( h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtAUw42M9Ro&ab_channel=ManBrow90 )