I’m back this week to cap off my initial impressions of Dune Awakening after collecting my thoughts and allowing them time to really bloom before percolating into the carafe of gameplay opinions. There’s so much to like about this game from the beautiful graphics and animations to the way Funcom captured the essence of Dune to recreate the living, breathing world of Arrakis. In my last column, I told you all about my experience trying to become a true Fremen… which now that leads me into the endgame.

I tried. I seriously, really tried to get into the endgame like a proper gamer. But after my time in Myth of Empires, Pax Dei, and probably some other survivalboxes I’m not thinking of right now, I’ve realized these games just aren’t for the type of PvP player I am. I don’t really want to run around for hours building up a base and establishing myself as a base builder, robber baron, or whatever flavor of survivor the game includes. I just want to fight when I can and run through some story when I want to relax. Dune Awakening handles the story bits fairly well, but the PvP fights are just packed behind too much stuff I don’t want to do.

So after all the PvE play, of following the tutorials and trying to appreciate the game for what it is, I found that I wasn’t even close to the PvP parts of the game, which is where I really want to live. I guess I’m just an outlier in the PvP world of gamers. Clearly there’s a desire for this sort of game, but I just want more easily accessed PvP in my MMOs.

I know that’s what the likes of Valorant, Overwatch, Mecha Break, and a thousand other titles are purely built for. It’s just that I want to have my cake and eat it too. I want another original Guild Wars, where I could play through and enjoy the MMO themepark when I wanted a story and fully realized world and then switch over into the straight-up battles of PvP when I was itching for a good fight. It’s just so weird to me that even if I wanted to look for a fight in Dune, I realized I wasn’t going to find one anytime soon.

That’s when I remembered my old Crowfall guild. I’ve been in and out of so many games since then that I had forgotten how incredible these people are. I briefly ran around Pax Dei with them, and they blew my socks off at how much they were able to accomplish. I thought I had checked on whether they were playing Dune, but somehow I missed them. Well, it turns out they’re in it to win it, and they were friendly and kind enough to boost my sorry butt into the Deep Desert.

On a quick aside, since I hadn’t realized they were playing, I simply found the highest population server I could during character creation and started up there. That means, with there being so many servers, I didn’t magically create my character on their server. And as I type this, there are no accessible server transfers, so I had to start over. Fortunately, even with my brand-new character straight out of the tutorial, these folks were able to get me on my feet and way beyond where I had gotten to naturally playing the game.

So once I had the gear and the means I was able to truly find out what was up with the Deep Desert. First, I had to get there, which involved flying north for a long ways. I couldn’t believe how big the starter map was. In terms of a typical MMO, it was huge! It’d likely be the size of three zones in Guild Wars 2. As you travel between named areas in Dune, you’ll see small messages pop up on the screen indicating that you’re entering a new area in the zone. It doesn’t give a hard load screen or anything, either – just a brief message and countdown timer. And maybe since there are basically no other players around, it’s extremely seamless. However, when it came time to actually travel to a new map there was a hard load screen.

But then it gets weird. Instead of just entering the Deep Desert, you get put into an overworld map. It’s an entirely top-down view where you click to move. Instead of flying your ornithopter from a third-person perspective as you have this entire game, you instead click around like it’s some kind of RTS game. It was very strange. I literally cannot think of another MMO where there was such a stark difference in gameplay all of a sudden. It felt truly bizarre.

It turns out in this mode you have new fuel and water meters to maintain, and as you fly around, these will deplete. You have to fly over small islands that indicate they will refill your water or fuel, and then you can continue on your way. Apparently, this is how travel works, not just to the Deep Desert but to some of the other zones in the game. I believe there are cities and other PvE maps, but I’m not interested in those right now. So I flew out to the Deep Desert and clicked to enter. Once there, it was kind of a lot more of the same. to be honest.

There’s dust everywhere and some player-made structures. I suppose since all the good loot and gear drops here, plus the game is a few months old now, the Deep Desert is much more populated than the rest of the game. Rather than seeing a player-made structure once in a while, you’ll find them strewn all over the place.

Large areas of the Deep Desert are PvE-only still, though, which ironically was a bit of a relief as despite being here, I hadn’t leveled up any skills yet. I got geared up with endgame armor and weapons thanks to my guildies, but I was still going to be way outmatched if I got into a battle with anyone. I might be a 1337 gamer, but without the passives and skills that come with a properly leveled character, I was going to get smoked.

But the draw in coming to the Deep Desert is all the best loot in the game. There are shipwrecks and dungeon-styled locations for roaming and looting high-end mats. The worms are apparently bigger too!

And that’s kind of it. My takeaway is that if you’re a PvPer who just wants to play the game for fun and engage in battles from time to time, Dune Awakening is probably not it. It’s too long a PvE/survival drag to get to the PvP portions, and when you do, you need to be grouped up for success. There are a few avenues for being a solo player in here, but it’s going to be dangerous and hard to not get wrecked by organized groups. You really need some fine friends like I had to help out and work together with you.

Now, if you are someone who is engaged with a solid group of other players and enjoys not just the basebuilding aspects and combat but really working together towards a shared goal while competing with other guilds for loot and glory, then Dune Awakening may be perfect for you. For me, popping in to check out the game is fun, but otherwise I’ll continue to march on.

Every other week, Massively OP’s Sam Kash delivers Fight or Kite, our trip through the state of PvP across the MMORPG industry. Whether he’s sitting in a queue or rolling with the zerg, Sam’s all about the adrenaline rush of a good battle. Because when you boil it down, the whole reason we PvP (other than to pwn noobs) is to have fun fighting a new and unpredictable enemy!