I genuinely didn’t know what to expect with Fellowship. When the opportunity to check it out came across my desk, all I really knew was that it was “developed by Chief Rebel, a brand-new studio with devs who’ve worked on major titles like World of Warcraft, Diablo IV, Helldivers 2, the Just Cause and Battlefield series and more!” With a pedigree that high, how could I possibly say no?
It was fortunate that CGM got to sit down with Chief Rebel and get a quick run-through of Fellowship. Almost instantly, I was transported to my youth—late nights spent running through Instances in World of Warcraft fueled by Red Bull and bags of Smartfood. Its old-school vibes pulled me in, but what really hooked me was how it plays and how it exceeds its inspiration.
At its core, Fellowship perfectly evokes the look and style of the classic World of Warcraft—in fact, this was somewhat intentional according to the devs—but the driving philosophy behind was “an MMO for people who don’t have time for MMOs.” Taking inspiration from MOBAs and ARPGs, Fellowship has players squadding up and jumping into a dungeon where the focus is on working together and facing hordes of monsters and terrifying bosses.
“Fellowship perfectly evokes the look and style of classic World of Warcraft—and that’s entirely intentional.”
“With our Closed Alpha playtest in August last year, it was extremely valuable for us in the early stages of Fellowship’s development,” said CEO and Game Director at Chief Rebel Axel Lindberg. “Not only was it incredible to see so many players going on dungeon runs and, of course, having fun, but it was also great getting so much support and feedback.”
Fellowship has been in development since Chief Rebel was established in 2018. The genesis for Fellowship was born from the team playing a slew of MOBAs and coming up with the idea to take the core of what a MOBA is but make it a PvE experience rather than a PvP experience. The team realized that when it comes to endgame dungeons, there are often several barriers to entry for accessing them, so they wanted to make a game that makes endgame dungeons easily accessible for all players.
The way Fellowship’s gameplay works is incredibly unique and works to incentivize players to work together and face every challenge thoughtfully. One of the things I mentioned while playing was how one tactic I remember players always utilizing during Instances in World of Warcraft was just hugging walls to avoid drawing aggro and only really fighting the bosses since they dropped the most meaningful loot.
However, Chief Rebel definitely considered this since players not only need to reach the end of a dungeon in order to face the final boss, but they have to achieve a certain “Kill Score” be defeating enough enemies before facing the final boss. So, charting their route through each dungeon is an added layer of strategy as players need to consider when to take a route with more enemies and when to play it safe.
” It was this kind of creativity that really clued me into how awesome Fellowship has the potential to be!”
But in terms of facing enemies, it’s about as close to World of Warcraft as you can imagine, and I say that in the kindest way possible. It’s funny to think that a lot of MMO devs tried to avoid comparisons to World of Warcraft as much as possible, but Chief Rebel even said they didn’t want to fix what wasn’t broken. Between the style, the pacing, and the layout of attacks, it evokes that classic sense of the golden age of the MMO that took the world by storm.
Players can choose between two tanks, two DPS—which are a bit closer to Mages than Warlocks—and two Healers. Unlike most MOBAs, teams don’t require a certain balance or focus in order to work, so long as players work together and strategize effectively—although having a Healer is always beneficial. While players will be able to unlock different skills via a talent tree to customize their play-style, the game’s focus will be more towards rewarding players with gear to enhance their characters.
Chief Rebel also hinted to me that they have high hopes of bringing new characters to Fellowship, as the game focuses more on character archetypes rather than specific “classes,” allowing for more varied gameplay. They mentioned wanting to introduce a character that plays more like a traditional World of Warcraft Warlock and also discussed ideas for a Slime hero that could potentially split into duplicates or morph into enemies. This kind of creativity really clued me into how much potential Fellowship has!
“Fellowship will be a constantly evolving adventure, and this upcoming public playtest will let us have even more players jump in, share their feedback and suggestions, and help us shape Fellowship before it launches in Early Access on PC this year,” says Linberg, adding that having a public playtest is a huge milestone for the team, but it’s also just the beginning. From the look, style and feel of the game, it’s shaping up to be something really special!
Public playtesting for Fellowship via Steam will kick off on Monday, Feb. 24, at 1 p.m. EST and end on Monday, March 3, at 1 p.m. EST across North American, European and Asian servers.
