Visually stunning, action focused M.O.B.A Paragon will cease operations on April 26th developer Epic Games announced in a statement to the remaining players within the Paragon Community yesterday.
The Paragon Team thanked all of the players who have stuck with the game and, in what is probably the most honest / direct statement I’ve seen from a AAA developer in a long time, admitted that their vision for Paragon wasn’t sustainable. Despite their best effort the Paragon Team ‘failed’ their player base and were sorry to see Paragon shut down.
Refunds for the Paragon Game (originally priced at $19.99 USD for Early Access) and any in-game purchases can be requested directly from Epic Games themselves. Often when it comes time for the online portion of a particular title to be sunsetted, developers and publishers rarely offer any form of refund at all. This is not only a welcome change of pace from what we’ve become accustomed too from AAA publishers but should also foster some goodwill within the Paragon community, despite the bad news.
Below is the full statement announcing Paragon’s closing. Epic Game’s other Unreal 4 engine title, Fortnite, has been hugely popular – drawing in more than 40 million players thanks to its free Battle Royale mode.
“Hey Everyone,
It’s with heavy hearts we’ve decided to close down Paragon.
We truly appreciate everything you’ve put into Paragon. We received many passionate ideas for where to take the game; the outpouring of thoughtful suggestions is another testament to this incredible community.
After careful consideration, and many difficult internal debates, we feel there isn’t a clear path for us to grow Paragon into a MOBA that retains enough players to be sustainable.
We didn’t execute well enough to deliver on the promise of Paragon. We have failed you — despite the team’s incredibly hard work — and we’re sorry.
To try to make this right, Epic is offering a full refund to every Paragon player for every purchase on any platform. This refund will come directly from Epic rather than your platform provider.
If you play on PC, or have already linked your Epic account, you can request your refund here.
We’ll continue operating Paragon servers until April 26, 2018. As the player population continues to decrease, matchmaking times and quality will further degrade.
Thank you for joining us on this journey and for your dedication to Paragon.”
The latest hero to enter the combat arena in Paragon is GRIM.EXE a fully functional battle robot that comes with his own infomercial. Using an unlimited energy source that powers a large pulse canon GRIM.EXE is able to unleash devastating blasts at medium range, shield himself using another one of his abilities and knockback opponents with another. His ultimate – a “Gyro Targeted Force Orb” – can pass through solid objects and home in on a single target, dealing them their final blow.
GRIM.EXE (and the little imp who issues him commands) will be coming for free to the PlayStation 4 and PC versions of Paragon on May 10th. Check out the chuckle worthy faux infomercial in the embedded player below. If you’ve never played Paragon before make sure to read our in-depth impressions before jumping in, Paragon is currently available as part of a $20 buy-in for access to the “pre-alpha” season.
Epic Games have revealed the latest hero for their early access 3D MOBA, Paragon, and this new playable character is a bit of a hot take, if you don’t mind the pun. Iggy & Scorch might sound like two characters but as their reveal trailer shows – it doesn’t look like the pair can be separated, with the reptilian Iggy always attached to the fire breathing Scorch whenever possible! This pair have the ability to launch missiles, Scorch is able to roast foes with fire breath and their ultimate move calls down hell-fire from the skies!
The pair will be available in just one week, April 21st, for all players who have access to the game. Currently Paragon is in a buy-in alpha state with the lowest tier costing $20 USD – an open beta and eventual free to play full release will follow later this year on Windows PC and PlayStation 4. If you want to check out our impressions of the current version of the game they are available here.
I was lucky enough to get in to the Beta test phase of Paragon from EPIC studios. The game is very ambitious Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game that is challenging many of the traditional MOBA elements, while still keeping to the genres roots. The first thing that anyone who plays this game is going to notice is how pretty it it. The game is rendered in Unreal engine 4, and everything looks amazing. Colors pop, champions animations are fluid and beautiful, and the map is alive with terrain that is anything but flat.
look at that map, look at how it undulates, and is alive
The second thing you are likely to notice is that this is an over the shoulder Third person style of game. Instead of League or DOTA’s top down perspective you get a single over the shoulder camera. Fans of Smite will be familiar with this perspective, and it serves well in Paragon, giving the game a more epic feel. One of the first things I noticed about the games perspective is that it makes ganking and surprising your enemy much easier. Its too easy to zero in on an ememy in front of you and forget to check left and right and even behind to make sure you arent goign to get ganked. This combined with the extreme variety of terrain made the game really refreshing. Paragon is also working on a fresh take of items and levels.
Most MOBA games have items and levels and talents, Paragon sets out to break this mold with its card system. It still has leveling, but EXP is not passively instead it drops from mobs that you kill. Each enemy or mob kill drops drops amber colored orbs which you pick up to earn CP(card points) and EXP. Last hitting is still very important, as the amber that drops from minions will be summoned to you (With a very fluid pretty animation) if you are the one to last hit the minions. You also get more EXP and CP from last hitting then you do from just killing minions. Card Points or CP are the currency of the game, and experience is how you level the games abilities. Paragon does not have items as you might traditionally think of a MOBA having, instead you make a deck of cards, consisting of three types of card. First you pick a primary strain card, this is like your passive and you always start with this card. Next you pick several active cards that you can buy and equip like items, these are bought with card points and some are passive stats and others are active abilities, most right now are pure stats but the game is still in its infancy with many more cards to come. A few exmples of active cards are potions (Which the game handles on a charge system 3 uses before refresh) and wards. The final card type is upgrade cards and these slot in to existing equipment cards (think of how MMOs let you slot weapons) to give the equipment card more stats. most equipment cards have three upgrade slots and its in these upgrades that you really get in to a champions build. I may chose to equip a card that has damage, but slot that card with some health to help me survive dishing that damage out, or perhaps armor pen to get that damage past a powerfull enemies defenses. All of the item cards that I have seen have three upgrade slots, and once you finish upgrading the card you receive an additional upgrade bonus. This system keeps the game adaptable and intresting, because while most items cost 3CP some upgrades and deployables cost as little as 1. Card points are awarded fairly frequently, but they max around 40 so keeping in mind what you are building is a good idea. Each time you use a card it is “consumed” and you can not use it again during that match, so keep that in mind when building decks.
see all of that on the left? those are cards that this STEEL has in their build right now.
Unfortunately this is a bit of double edged sword. Building wrong means your game is over, period. If you take a deck for crit chance for example and you end up against a team who is mobile with a lot of armor your going to have a really bad time. I found that since decks are limited to 40 cards you can really only build for one thing, with a tiny flavor of something else. For example I might build a crit chance deck, and mix in some armor and life, so that I can survive long enough to deliver that damage. Since cards are consumed on use, when building decks you need to make sure that you have enough diverse cards to slot all of your items to full and get their bonuses.
The playable roster for Paragon is currently quite small, but has a good variety of types of champions. Assasins, Rangers, Casters, Tanks, and fighters all currently exist in game and no two heroes really feel the same. A lot of this is due to the fact that there are basically 5 attacks per hero and none of them feel bland or the same. Some champions are melee, other are ranged, and some are able to mix the two together. Champions still have an “ultimate” and basic attack, but the difference is there is no auto attack. Instead you will be manually firing or slicing at your enemies, all be it with a basic attack that consumes no manna. As far as I can tell, most of the champions I have played have one buff and 4 active abilities. I like the mix of combat so far, and its pretty clear that traditional MOBA roles are here.
Character designs are mostly variation on metal and flesh
During the games that I played my team split off in to our lanes, just as anyone would, and our jungler took off in to the jungle. The jungle in this game is absolutely bonkers, its a maze of passages through the center of the map that spreads out and is surrounded on both sides by high canyon walls. What a cool feature this is, its one of my favorite things in the whole game. The map is just so pretty, everything is moving, or alive, or shiny. Its one of the best examples I have seen of the current gen unreal engine put to effect. I found myself pretty immersed in the game no matter what i was looking at.
Overall im looking forward to this game, I think with time and investment it can be a major part of my play rotation. I have been having so much fun streaming it, and just playing it in general. Right now I really want to take a deep dive in to decks and building but as of now thats pretty hard with the only option being vs AI on one level or people on a whole other level. I hope that EPIC can add some more difficulty to the AI or a more causal non-ranked PvP mode. Overall I say if you want to play a new refreshing MOBA spring the 20$ for the beta access for this game. If you cant wait it is coming to the masses sometime this summer for free on Playstaion and PC
Epic Games sent out an email blast to everyone who has signed up for the Paragon open beta this afternoon informing them that an early access Founders Pack is now available. If you don’t want to put down the $19.99 USD for the early access pass Epic will also be holding free beta weekends before the open beta’s launch.
In part here is what the email read:
As someone who has signed up for the beta, even if you don’t want to buy a Founder’s Pack, you will be invited to free Beta Weekends during the Early Access Season.
You can also choose to buy a Founder’s Pack starting on March 14, and begin playing March 18. We’ll have more details on Founder’s Packs and Beta Weekends soon. If you’d rather wait, the game will be in free Open Beta in the summer of 2016.
Steve Superville from Epic Games also took to Reddit this morning to further explain the announcement. All heroes and cards in the game can be earned for free only by playing the game and Epic will monetize the game by selling skins, emotes and other non-gameplay changing add-ons in addition to providing paid early access.
There are two other packs available if you want to put down a little bit more cash – the Challenger Pack and Master Pack which Steve described like this:
Founder’s Packs will cost $19.99, and include access to the game, skins, boosts, and other cosmetic items you can unlock by playing. Challenger Packs ($59.99) and Master Packs ($99.99) will include a huge number of skins, unlockable items, boosts, a unique skin, and a Founder’s Pack to give to a friend. We’ll be sharing complete details soon.
What do you think about the monetization and paid founder’s access to Paragon? The open beta will begin sometime later this summer and the founder’s pack will be available on March 14th. We’ll bring you our hands-on impressions once we get access to the game.
Epic Games has opened up beta registration for their upcoming third person MOBA title Paragon. The actual beta sign-up process is rather simple: if you have an EPIC account simply login to their site or create a new login on their beta sign-in page. Potential players can also sign up by signing into the Epic launcher if you happen to have that installed.
Paragon will be coming to both PlayStation 4 and Windows PC with a paid early access period beginning in this spring followed by an open beta sometime this summer. It is not known how much Epic plans to charge for the early access period but the game will be free-to-play once it enters open beta.
It appears that Paragon follows the traditional MOBA formula with each team having a core, minions being present on the map and 3 lanes dividing up teams. It’s unique selling points come from its absolutely gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 visuals and the third person camera that isn’t typical of MOBA titles (save for perhaps Smite).
No official system requirements exist yet for Paragon but website Game Debate estimates they’ll be close to this:
Moba’s are really hot right now, the massive commercial sucess of League, Dota, and to a lesser extent their dozens of clones and imitators have spawned a wave of indie and AAA moba type games. I myself am a huge fan of Overwatch, Blizzards shooty moba, and Paladins, a similar game from Hi-Rez studios. So it comes as no real suprise when I see that the Epic games backed Paragon is actaully a MOBA and not an epic sci-fi shooter.
Now a new trailer is showing us what we can expect from its MOBA aspects. The new trailer, as Epic explained, features “Gadget and Feng Mao pushing down mid-lane, while Rampage rushes to defend, setting up a gank from the Assassin Kallari.” So it seems that Epic have decided to market the game as 100% MOBA, isntead of its more previous more mysterious tacit.
Most of the rest of Paragon remains a mystery, keep it tuned here for all your Paragon related new and a first look some time next week, and hit the jump for the new trailer
