Divina is a new MMORPG coming out that is being hosted on beanfun! and is made by gamania. With the success the game has had over on the East in places like China and Japan, the game has made its way over to the West for English speaking audiences. Recently I got a chance to do a press tour with another writer and a few of the GMs on the game, which gave me a chance to take a deeper look into the game and find out some things that I didn't know while playing the closed beta. I had a lot of information thrown at me, so I will try to summarize it the best I can and focus on the main features of the game.
Character Creation
Now the games character creation system isn't anything groundbreaking on its own, in fact it is rather standard. The one thing that did surprise me the most was how on the site they did show the classes as actual characters with names, which made me originally think that the game is gender locked, which thankfully it isn't. You are able to pick the gender you want for each of the classes in the game which are; Knight, Cleric, Sorcerer, Machinist, and Assassin.
As for actually customizing your character, as I said it is rather standard. Beyond picking out what gender and class you want to be, you do have the arrows to select what you want for a face, hair, and hair color. The selections are varied enough to make running into a twin fairly unlikely, but still possible. Two more things you can select in the creation make this a bit more worth mentioning, which is the clothing color and character voice.
Now the clothing color will only affect your starting outfit, as you find more outfits to customize your character with, you will be able to alter the colors later on with various dyes.
The character voice selection is a bit neat, you can actually pick out the voice you want to portray your character, and each of the voices are professionally done by experienced voice actors who have experience from doing voices from various games to anime. So no, they didn't just pick up some random hobo off the street and told him to read the line as if he was really reading it and not portraying the character. You do have the option to change what voice you want to use later on in the menu, so if you're not happy with your first choice, just go through them again and pick another.
Dual Class System
Dual class systems aren't anything new to the genre, so that in itself is not noteworthy, but the game actually features something a bit different – the ability to change your class in a flash using their quick change system, which allows you to change at will between two classes. This feature is unlocked for players who reach level 30 and complete some quests in order to access it. After you unlock it you're able to pick the second class you will specialize in. During the tour for example I started as a Knight and alt classed as a Cleric, playing two support type roles, you don't have to do the same since the classes play out separately, but that gives you a general idea of it.
When you get your alternate class, it starts out at level 25, which isn't too far off your main class, and comes with its own stats and equipment. Though one thing we learned quite quickly is that you still do need to set the skills after you get the new class, so that means sitting down and getting things all set up beforehand. Not to mention that the quick switch does have a bit of a limitation to it. While you can quick switch all you want in towns without a worry, out in the field you need to watch the hearts that are below your characters health and mana bars. These indicate how many times you can switch, and when they're depleted then you're stuck with that class till you regenerate another heart. You can regenerate them merely by fighting enemies.
