Funcom reveals more details about new survival MMO Dune: Awakening

Funcom has published another livestream dedicated to its upcoming survival MMO "Dune: Awakening" where players will embark on tenuous journeys throughout Arrakis.

Funcom's Dune: Awakening is a new open-world survival MMO from the studio behind Conan Exiles, and the upcoming title will take players to the desolate world of Arrakis. Just like in the movies, surviving the harsh environment on Arrakis will be paramount, which means players will be required to stay hydrated throughout their adventures and also use rocky/shady areas to their advantage.

Funcom revealed during the recent livestream the character creation menu, where players are able to change the appearance of their characters, provide their own backstory, and select their mentor specialization. What was likely the most exciting part of the livestream was the reveal of the world structure, where Funcom explained Dune: Awakening will connect various maps together to enable a seamless experience between different maps all within a single world.

Under the hood, Funcom has connected many servers together to run form the main world, and the benefit of having infrastructure like this is that developers can expand maps more easily and have more players connected to the game at the same time. If none of that made any sense, below is an explanation from Game Director Joel Bylos.

2

The reason we call it a survival MMO, as opposed to just a survival game, is that most survival games do one map, one server. But we have multiple connected servers running in a single world, and it also allows us to have a lot more players in this structure.

When you join the game, you start in the Hagga Basin map, which has a server with a minimum of 40 other players. It's a place where you can build, craft, survive, progress. If you want to play specifically with friends, you want to join the same version of Hagga Basin because it can have multiple versions. And then from there, you move outwards.

I can select which Hagga Basin I'm starting with. So if we start in Dune: Awakening at the same time, I can make sure that we're spawning in the same. Not only that, our server browser also tells you where your friends are playing. Once you're ready to leave the Hagga Basin, you craft yourself an ornithopter and you fly out into what's called the Overland map, which allows you to see all the locations in the world. You physically fly between locations on the Overland map.

One of those options are the social hubs, Harko Village and Arrakeen, which are differently themed based on the different factions in the game. These are safe spaces, peaceful by the Canley Peace. There are bars, vendors, and home exchanges. And of course, you and your friends can go dancing in the clubs.

Then you'll go back to the Overland map and you'll fly to the Deep Desert. The Deep Desert is this massive area, a minimum of 500 square kilometers. It's actually a bit larger than that. That's where you can meet hundreds of other players in Dune: Awakening. There is probably going to be a player cap if too many people go there, but it should be able to handle quite a lot of people, and that's a completely seamless set of servers that are all connected together.

It's generally a PVP map with a strip of PVE as people enter so that they can be safe when they come into the map and don't get ganked. The cool thing about the Deep Desert map is that we have this thing called the Coriolis Storm, which every week wipes the Deep Desert and sets it with a new landscape and new points of interest, so it's an infinitely explorable space and a really cool place to hang with your friends.