Although Western players could take a game named Wonderland Online for an adaption of the famous book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, this game has nothing to do with this story, but starts off to something completely different:
Welcome aboard the Ocean Star, a luxury liner seemingly in direct ancestry to the Titanic! A colorful bunch of passengers is enjoying a ride through southern waters, a busy bunch of staff members is doing everything to make the journey unforgettable. When the ship passes the South Ocean Islands, suddenly a sharp sound splits the air and the shudder of a severe underwater crash is reaching every corner of the ship. Only minutes later, the inevitable becomes obvious: The Ocean Star is about to founder. Time doesn’t matter any more, and after the exhausting fight for survival the player’s alter ego wakes up stranded on one of the basically unexplored Southern Ocean Islands, alive and unhurt, but lonely. From this moment forward, he/she will start to make his/her way back to civilization, find and team up with other survivors, and explore these islands full of monsters and magic.
Wonderland Online is an anime-themed massively multi-player online RPG that’s played in an isometric 3rd-person perspective. In the beginning the player can create up to two characters per server choosing from various survivors of the ship crash, but only one of them can be controlled at a time. These pre-made survivors all come with their own background story, character model, and a starting bonus which somehow resembles their background. Character customizing, naturally, goes beyond an individual name in that nearly the complete color palette of the character model can be changed, five upgrade points can be distributed among the five basic attributes (strength, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, agility), and the player must decide which of the four schools of magic (earth, water, fire, wind) his avatar should try to master.
Once thrown into the game world, the player will soon cross swords with the first monsters. Battles can be triggered in various ways: One can walk into visible monsters roaming the country side, some scripted battles are necessary to progress in the story line, or in more dangerous areas there’s additional random battles. The fighting is dealt with on a separate screen that shows the opponents from the side, executing their moves. This game features that kind of active time battle system which we saw in so many Asian-developed RPG’s over the years. Every side has a certain time to choose whether to attack, perform a skill, use an item, defend, or retreat next, then all the moves are executed one after another depending on the statistics of the combatants. Successful battling will net the player experience points and a wild mingle-mangle of items, but no money which instead is mostly earned by selling items or by questing. With enough experience points earned the player will reach a level-up where the basic attributes and skills can be improved, or even new skills can be learned.
The game also features a pet system not often seen. While other games usually give the player one pet to care for at a time, here one can carry many pets using a kind of pet inventory. Even NPCs joining the player along the way are treated as pets, and one can even catch monsters in battle that will also be put in the player’s pet inventory. However, there’s only one active pet possible at a time, following the player in the game world and fighting the battles with him. If the active pet is an NPC the player can follow his/her story for some additional quests. But the most peculiar thing about this system is other players joining your party - they will become pets, too. And so will your alter ego when joining another player’s party which basically means watching that other player walk around, do stuff, while waiting for a fight to begin where, then, battle control is given back.
Advanced features of the game include:
- The player’s own tent which can be used as a safe haven for resting and can be stuffed with all kinds of furniture over time.
- A kind of remote control for automatic battle options.
- Instanced themed dungeons for cooperative game play from level ten upwards.
- Item creation by combining and manufacturing.
- Special arenas for player-versus-player battles.
- And pet riding - but didn’t try that with NPCs, though.
The game’s developers release a new major upgrade once in a while. These patches basically add new content for high-level players, add new features to the game, and change the subtitle.
