Can Dune: Awakening find the post-launch golden path?

Dune: Awakening enjoyed a successful launch in June with a peak of over 180,000 players. Many online games have had a great start, only to fall off the tracks with successive updates and endgame issues. Is Dune: Awakening doomed to a similar fate?

I got into the game with a group of friends, and my husband and I were so engrossed in the intricacies of Arrakis politics that we both listened to the audiobook. Dune: Awakening is a very good adaptation of the original lore, showing an alternate timeline where the Houses Atreides and Harkonnen have found themselves in a grueling stalemate known as the War of Assassins.

This alternate timeline provides Funcom with plenty of room to work. In fact, some might even suggest there’s too much — levelling up on Arrakis felt like playing three separate games. Early on, I truly felt like a desert scavenger. I cobbled together a jet bike and carefully plotted routes to avoid Shai-Hulud. I tracked down raiders and pillaged their bases, fighting in a series of tense skirmishes. I would stop to break down wrecks in the desert, Hardspace: Shipbreaker-style, and flee from the bright lights and death squads of the Sardaukar tasked with hunting me down.

Once I built up my base and my very own ornithopter, all of this gameplay became largely irrelevant. I’m flying everywhere, baby, and the Sardaukar and smugglers can’t get me in the sky. Here is where I started to focus on the quest content, which is largely functional. Right now, most of the content is made up of courier quests and assassination missions as I learn more about Arrakis and secure my place in a major House. I have faith this simplicity will improve in time; in the endgame, things get a little more complex and cinematic, and Funcom also created some terrific missions for The Secret World.