Mortal Kombat X Details: Online Content, Possible Microtransactions

Get ready, Kombatants, because some new Mortal Kombat X information is coming your way. This time, NetherRealm Studios has released new information regarding Online Content, and there may even be the possibility of Microtransactions. Online Content is nothing new to the Mortal Kombat franchise — the online community can make or break a fighting game in the long term — but the developer is hoping to do something a little differently from previous installments of the series.

First, there’s the new faction system. Mortal Kombat X allows you to choose from one of five factions right off the bat: Lin Kuei, White Lotus, Brotherhood of Shadow, Special Forces, and Black Dragon. Everything you do, whether it’s single or multiplayer, contributes to an overall Faction ranking that is tallied up at the end of the week. These rankings cross the span of all versions of Mortal Kombat X, regardless of platform. By contributing to ranking points and completing challenges, you can earn special rewards. What these rewards are, of course, are unknown; NetherRealm’s been pretty tight-lipped about that. Regardless, because the results are compiled (and reset) weekly, players have many, many chances to get their faction to the height of the leaderboards and earn those special goodies.

Second, there is Mortal Kombat X’s Living Tower challenges. Living Towers center around three separate tiers of challenges, which a player can try to accomplish for new rewards and goodies. There’s the Quick tower, which players are expected to finish in around 30 minutes. Also, these challenges refresh every two hours. There’s the Daily tower, which offers a daily challenge, and there’s the Premier tower. Unlike the daily and Quick challenges, Premier challenges take far longer to complete, and are generally reserved for those who like completing extremely daunting gaming tasks on youtube and the like. Now, these challenges aren’t your typical ‘fight so-and-so dude in thirty seconds or less’ challenges, no sir. These challenges include special randomized hazards that throw a winch in the works in each and every fight, which keep changing as you win matches. These hazards can range from the camera swaying drunkenly about during the match, to bombs falling down from the sky onto you and your opponent.

Now let’s talk about the final elephant in the room: the microtransactions. In a conversation with IGN, NetherRealm’s marketing director Brian Goodman dropped a hint that it’s possible that microtransactions will be in Mortal Kombat X’s future: “We are not releasing any details on that yet,” he said, “Nothing to say about microtransactions yet.”

Yet, of course, is the keyword. Only time will tell if this is actually true, though. We can only wait and see as Mortal Kombat X’s April release date crawls closer.