MMORPGs Launching Quickly in North America

New MMORPGs and MMOs that launched in South Korea and China are making their way fastest to the West than ever before. Just recently Perfect World Entertainment launched their newest game – Forsaken World into closed beta here in the West. The game is STILL in closed beta testing over in China. So the game was localized and launched in BOTH regions at around the same time. I say “around the same time” because it was out in China first, but not by much. Nexon, the company best known for MapleStory and Dungeon Fighter Online, launched Vindictus in North America within 6 months or so of launching it in South Korea. The time it takes for an Eastern game to reach Western shores have been decreasing steadily for quite a few years now. Loong: The Power of the Dragon from Gamigo is yet another example. Unfortunately, things haven’t always been this way.

Digimon Battle from WeMade Entertainment for example, launched in North America some 5+ years after it launched in South Korea and China. Darkeden from JoyMax launched in the States nearly 8 years after it originally debuted in Korea. Just recently PWE launched Heroes of Three Kingdoms in North America, but it had been available in South East Asia as “Redcliff” for numerous years. It’s only recently that games have begun launching in different regions at “around” the same time. Black Prophecy, an upcoming MMORPG from Gamigo is scheduled to launch in both North America and Europe at around the same time too.

Unfortunately, there are still hundreds of games available only in South Korea and China which haven’t launched in the West yet. Luckily, some of these games – JX2 Online, Battle of Destiny, Super Dance Online and Hot Dance Party (Steps) are all playable from North America, even though they are published in South East Asia. Most games not released in America have IP restrictions preventing foreign users from logging in. Beanfun for example has half a dozen games available in Taiwan that aren’t yet available in the West. Luckily, they’re bringing the Japanese MMORPG Lucent Heart to North America real soon. But there are so many other games available in Asia that have yet to be announced in North America.

Even though the gap between new MMORPGs announced in Korea and coming to the West is decreasing, I feel that a lot of the older games are never going to make it to Western shores. It’s unfortunate because many of them would probably be really successful here. I mean just look at games like Silkroad Online from JoyMax and Conquer Online from TQ Digital – both of these Eastern games are huge hits in the West. Legend of Edda, FreeJack and Zentia for example are all really popular here in the West. These titles are new, but even older games “relaunched” here are big. Just look at Fantasy Earth Zero from GamePot USA. It’s an older Japanese MMORPG but it’s a big hit!

Bring some older Chinese MMORPGs and Korean MMORPGs to North America! After all, American MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons Online are available all over Asia already!

So Many Foreign MMORPGs

You’d think that 200+ free to play client based MMORPGs available in North America is a lot, but in reality its nothing compared to the number of free to play games available in China and Korea. This is because “free to play” is the ‘norm’ in these countries. Paying monthly to play an MMORPG is unheard of in the East. Games like Age of Conan from Funcom and World of Warcraft from Blizzard Entertainment are still available in Asia, just with a different business model. Lineage 2 and Age of Conan for example are both free to play with cash shops in South Korea. In terms of variety, North America is lacking compared to Korea. Obviously the mega popular MMOs like MapleStory, Runes of Magic and Vindictus are available in both the East and West. Other smaller MMOs like Prius Online and Koongya adventure from Netmarble aren’t yet available in the U.S or Europe.

In fact, there are so many smaller free to play MMORPGs in South Korea and Japan that MMORPG players over there have much more variety. Even with 200+ free to play MMORPGs in the U.S. Variety Is lacking – especially since most free to play MMORPGs in the West are the same old fantasy MMORPGs rehashed. Anime MMORPGs like Luna Online and Fly For Fun look neat, but there are so many similar games. Heck, if you’ve played Luna Online, you might as well have played every other anime MMORPG from Adsa Story to Zu Online – as they’re all very similar. I’m sure a lot of games are clones of each other in Korea and Japan too, but with more games means more variety.

I know Korea is big in MMO development, but Japan isn’t. There are only a handful of MMOs actually developed in Japan. I think Ran Online and Pandora Saga are some of the only two. I’m talking free to play MMORPGs, not pay to play ones, so I’m excluding games like Final Fantasy 11 & 14. Oh, and there’s Florensia as well as CosmicBreak. Korean MMORPGs seem to be more popular than Japanese MMORPGs, as Nexon is one of the biggest MMO companies in the world, and they specialize in free to play games. Perfect World Entertainment – the company behind Battle of the Immortals, Perfect World, Forsaken World and Jade Dynasty is also very big on free to play MMOs. I think Perfect World Entertainment and Nexon are the two biggest MMORPG companies in the World. There aren’t too many Western MMO developers, yet, so most of the free to play titles in the U.S. Are imported and licensed from Korean developers. Firefall from Red5 Studios is supposed to be free to play and League of Legends is f2p. So aside from these there are very few new western developed f2p MMOs, though big companies here are starting to realize the potential of free to play. I think Electronic Arts has been doing a good job embracing the genre. They should make their upcoming Star Wars MMO “The Old Republic” free to play too. That would be awesome.

Anyway, I’m done with this long random rant =).

A look at Anime MMORPGs

Since most free to play MMORPGs are developed in the East, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of them are Anime MMORPGs – visually speaking. In fact, most free to play games available here in the West through publishers like Aeria Games, OG Planet and Alaplaya are all developed in places like South Korea, China and Japan – where Anime is popular. To give you guys a better idea of where these MMOs come from, the most well known Korean MMORPG developers are Nexon (Think Vindictus and MapleStory) and Webzen (Think Soul of the Ultimate Nation). The most well known Chinese MMORPG developers are probably Perfect World Entertainment (Think Jade Dynasty and Battle of the Immortals) and ChangYou (Think Zentia and Dragon Oath). The biggest Japanese MMO developer is probably Square Enix with Final Fantasy 11 and maybe CyberStep with Getamped 2 and CosmicBreak.

Anyway, with so many anime inspired MMORPGs available from the super cute Luna Online to the more serious yet bright themed Cloud Nine, MMO gamers have a lot of choices available to them. In my opinion though the best anime MMORPG is probably MapleStory from Nexon. After that, other great anime inspired MMORPGs are Mabinogi, Fiesta Online, Secret of the Solstice and Grand Chase. I think more than half of the free to play MMORPGs out there are anime inspired. The first free to play MMORPG which I’ve played is Ragnarok Online from Gravity. Back when I played it, it wasn’t free to play, but I played on a private server. The game is free to play now, at least one one official server – Valkyrie. I’m actually not a fan of Japanese anime television / manga, but I still enjoy playing anime inspired games. I really love the art style – more so than realistic games actually. I mean, realistic MMORPGs like Karos Online and Sword 2 are good, but I just prefer the look and feel of anime inspired games more.

There are a lot of other anime MMORPGs which I didn’t mention here. If you know of any awesome ones that I didn’t bring up, leave their names in the comments below! I’m actually currently playing Grand Fantasia from Aeria Games and it’s a lot of fun. It’s definitely one of my favorites!

Dead Free MMORPGs

Recently two more free to play MMOs announced that they would be shutting down. Earth Eternal and The Chronicles of Spellborn. Earth Eternal was a browser based game by Sparkplay Media that played a bit like Runes of Magic and Allods Online. The game’s charm was that it offered a WoW alternative, but on the browser. The game was definitely a technological marvel, as it was one of the browser based games, aside from maybe FusionFall, which had great graphics. The game lasted less than a year, which is quite sad. The Chronicles of Spellborn on the other hand, was a failure from the get-go. The game was originally published as a pay to play game by its developer, but it went bankrupt within 3 months of the game’s release. Since then, Acclaim Games picked up the service as ran it as a free to play game for about a year. Acclaim Games never attempted to monetize the game, so it was guaranteed to fail. The game’s skill system was interesting and somewhat resembled Mytheon from UTV True Games. Both games never managed to attract a very high playerbase. No matter, it’s always sad to see an MMORPG shut down.

Aside from these two MMORPGs, several other MMORPGs were shut down in the last month. Project Torque from Aeria Games and Three Kingdoms: The Battle Begins from Uforia both announced that they would shut down in August 2010. Project Torque will be re-launched as Heat Online by another company, so that’s good, but Three Kingdoms: The Battle Begins will be gone for good. No worries though, as gamers can check out Heroes of Three Kingdoms, Kingdom Heroes or any one of the other Three Kingdoms inspired MMORPGs.

Even with the announcements of these games closing down, free to play enthusiasts should remain excited about the genre. It seems like for every free to play MMORPG to shut down, there are 5 more to take its place. By the time these games shut down, MicroVolts, Legendary Champions, King of Kings 3, Legends of Edda and many other upcoming MMORPGs will take their place. So even though games are shutting down, more new games are being announced and launching. Just like everything else, bad games will shut down and new ones will replace them. In the long run, the free to play space will be bigger and have better games. Why am I so confident? Because big Western firms are starting to embrace the genre. I played Company of Heroes Online the other day from THQ Relic and was very impressed with it. I was also super impressed with Need for Speed World Online from Electronic

So Yeah. Older less popular games will shut down, but these dead MMORPGs will be replaced with newer, better games.

Spicing up old MMO Ideas

I played Land of Chaos Online from Alaplaya the other day and I have to admit, I’m pleasantly surprised. The game itself still needs polish but the idea behind the game is quite awesome. It’s inspired by aeon of strife games like Avalon Heroes and League of Legends, but instead of a standard top down RTS style gameplay, Land of Chaos Online features action packed gameplay with a third person camera. It blends FPS, RTS and RPG elements – much like Savage 2. Like I said, the game still needs a lot of work, more characters, and skills but even as is, the game is quite fun. Each hero in the game has 10 skills. That’s incredible. Especially considering DotA and HoN heroes have four skills. The variety is intense.

Land of Chaos Online isn’t the only game spicing up old formulas. Runes of Magic was one of the first mega popular free MMORPGs to do this. It took the World of Warcraft formula, and spiced it up by adding a dual classing system. Yeah, so even though Runes of Magic is a WoW Clone, it’s an amazing one. The game’s dual classing system gives it so much depth. Frogster did a brilliant job with the game. It’s much better than Talisman Online, Allods Online and the other WoW clones out there. The game’s soundtrack is also quite nice. I believe the game released its third major content update, so Frogster has done a swell job keeping the game fresh. I love how they took the WoW idea and spiced it up. The dual classing system is awesome. Sure, it’s not exactly original, as Guild Wars from NCSoft also had dual classing, but Runes of Magic was the first free to play MMORPG with such a system.

Next up is Wolfteam – the MMOFPS developed by Softnyx. Wolfteam took the basic MMOFPS gameplay from Sudden Attack and made it original. It did this by giving players the ability to transform into powerful melee wolves at anytime. Sure, the game is still largely an FPS – meaning most of the time it makes more sense to have your gun equipped, but giving players the option of turning into a wolf adds another layer of gameplay to Wolfteam. In the MMOFPS genre, this extra layer of depth means quite a bit, especially since all of these MMOFPS games in their core (Mercenary Wars, Operation 7, Soldier Front, etc) are all the same.

Know of any other free to play game that took an old idea, but spiced it up? Post it in the comments below!

EverQuest 2 is Free to Play! Awesome

Sony Online Entertainment announced yesterday that their flag ship MMORPG EverQuest II would be going free to play. Well not entirely, but basically. As is, The free to play version – called EverQuest II: Extended will be separate from the current pay to play service, but offer most of the same content. EQ: Extended will offer the base EQ2 game and five expansion packs. Only 8 or so races and classes will be available, but the rest can be purchased for a small one time fee. Since all of the classes are balanced, it’s not really a big deal. Come to think of it, Dungeons and Dragons Online from Turbine offers the same level of “free to play”, as certain classes and races in it also need to be purchased.

So now that EverQuest II is going free to play, what’s next? If EverQuest 2 becomes a big success, there’s no doubt in my mind that Sony Online Entertainment’s other games, including Vanguard, Star Wars Galaxies and Pirates of the Burning Sea will go free to play. I Think Sony has actually seen first hand that free to play can work, as Free Realms, their first experiment with free to play, has been a big success. Maybe not in terms of revenues, as I don’t know how successful free realms is, but in terms of volume, the game has some 4+ million users. To put that into perspective – games like Allods Online from gPotato and Eudemons Online from TQ Digital have less than 4 million users each. So in terms of users, Free Realms is doing good.

If the free to play version of EverQuest II does well, there’s no doubt in my mind that other tier 2 pay to play MMORPGs like Age of Conan from Funcom and Eve Online from CCP will go free to play. Warhammer Online and Lineage 2 will also likely follow. I’ve played the free trials for all of these games and they’re really good. I just don’t want to pay for them! Unfortunately, all of this depends on how successful EverQuest II is. If the free to play version is a flop, it would be terrible for the industry. With top notch games like EQ2 and The Lord of the Rings Online going free to play though, I think it’s safe to say that “free to play” is indeed the future. At least for the time being.

I’ve always wanted to get into EverQuest 2, but I didn’t want to pay for it – so I’m very excited about this announcement! I can’t wait until the free to play open beta begins on August 12. I hope to see you all in game!

High Quality Free to Play Games

Just because a game is “free to play”, doesn’t mean it’s “low quality”. There’s a pretty terrible stereotype out there, mostly amongst forums for pay to play MMOs like World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online, that free to play means “low quality and bad”. What many of these folks bashing F2P don’t realize is that many pay to play games have gone free to play. Dungeons and Dragons Online from Turbine and Archlord from Webzen were both once subscription based pay to play MMORPGs, but are now free to play titles with cash shops.

There are many MANY free to play games out right now that are much “higher quality” than other pay to play games as well. Allods Online from gPotato for example had a 12+ million dollar budget. I’m not saying that Allods Online is “better” than pay to play games, but it’s certainly on the same level in terms of quality. Black Prophecy from Gamigo looks just as “good” as Eve Online from CCP, and it’s completely free. Well, not completely, as it does have a cash shop, but it’s still free to play. Martial Empires from Gamgio has also proven that free to play does not have to be “cheap.”

I do have to admit though, that there are a lot of very cheap free to play Chinese and Korean MMORPGs. Games like Age of Armor from Snail Games and Avalon Heroes from Alaplaya. In fact, there are easily 50+ “terrible” MMORPGs, which no human should play. I think that many pay to play players are turned off from free to play games because they’ve had poor experienced with these cheap games. Pro tip guys, skip games like Azuga: Age of Chaos and Battle of Destiny and stick with the Triple-A titles like Runes of Magic, Dungeons and Dragons Online and Allods Online.

So is free to play better than pay to play? I think so, but I don’t think it’s fair to generalize things. World of Warcraft is still an unmatched title in quality, content and variety. I don’t think any free to play game can come close to it. But there are free to play games that rival, if not surpass other pay to play MMORPGs – Especially the second tier pay to play games like Dark Age of Camelot and Pirates of the Burning Sea. I feel that some of these second tier games should go free to play, as there’s no reason to pay for them when there are better titles available.