Playing MMORPGs in Korea

One of my buddies here in the U.S. Is moving to Korea later this year. Sorta sucks, but at least I can still talk to him via skype and play MMOs like Dragon Oath and Neo Steam with him. Internet 4tw I guess. Korea is pretty awesome considering all of these free to play MMORPGs originate there. Well not all of them, but most, as Electronic Arts recently entered the free to play arena with FIFA Online and Battleforge. Even Sony Online Entertainment began embracing free to play with Free Realms and Clone Wars Adventures. Some of my favorite free to play MMORPG companies though are Korean. Companies like NCSoft and Netgame for example are high quality MMO developers. NCSoft is probably best known for Guild Wars and Aion while Netgame is better known for Hero Online, Scions of Fate and Cloud Nine.

Come to think of it… a lot of the MMORPGs I play are developed in China. I used to think 99% of free to play MMOs came from Korea, but chinese developers like Perfect World Entertainment (Ether Saga Online, Jade Dynasty, Etc) and ChangYou (Dragon Oath and blade Wars) are pretty big companies. Perfect World Entertainment is huge in China and probably one of the biggest MMO companies in the U.S as well with their American division. So I guess its sort of a misconception that free to play MMOs are exclusively from Korea! Chinese MMORPGs are big too!

Anyway. I bet there are a lot of awesome MMOs available in Korea that aren’t out in the U.S. Yet. I know Netmarble (Korean MMO company) launched a global English portal, but they only have one game available at the moment – Mini Fighter Online. The Korean portal on the other hand has games like Koongya Adventure, Wego and numerous other titles that haven’t even been announced in the U.S. Yet. Vindictus is already available in Open Beta in Korea through Nexon as well. That game is highly anticipated here in the States, but it won’t be released until Fall, 2010. So North American and European users will have to wait. I guess one of the perks of living in Korea is that there are a lot more free to play games available. I wonder if pay to play games in the U.S. Like Lineage 2 and Aion are free to play in Korea? I think they actually might be.

Anyway. Yeah. Living in Korea sounds pretty interesting, but it would sorta be impossible for me, as I don’t even know the language. My buddy who’s moving there is Korean so it makes sense for him. Anyway, I’m about to go play some League of Legends with my Korean buddy.