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Today we are going to take a look at 3 titles that took a lot of time to come to the west, 2 upcoming titles that we will probably get to play on the Chinese servers before their western release and discuss about why are we usually the last on the MMO market.
Blade and Soul
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Every MMO player has heard about this game somewhere in 2010-2012 and hoped that NCSoft will aim for a world wide release after the original launch that took place in Korea on June 30, 2012.
Thinking that they already have a western office that can start working on localization right away, and following the news from Gamescom 2012 and the press release made on September 13, 2012 that stated: " NCsoft ®, the world's premier publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), today confirms its Western expansion plans for Blade & Soul, the wildly successful Asian martial arts fantasy MMO developed by Team Bloodlust, an in-house studio based in NCsoft's headquarters in Seoul", we were already imagining ourselves playing this awesome title at the end of 2013, but we were so wrong.
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On the other side of the world, publishers and developers alike, are taking risks from the early alpha stages or even from when the first development pieces are puzzled together. I can't say why they do it, but it looks like they really like to play the odds or they can afford it, although we have some great publishers (in terms of bussiness, not that we like their p2w localizations so much) that can sit on the same table and sign a deal at the right time. When it's the right time, you may ask. For me it's somewhere around one - max two years after the original release. I can wait that long for a hyped MMO, but after that I will either loose my interest in it and go try something else or I go play it on the KR/CN servers.
I said CN servers because they are almost always the first to publish a game after KR and almost every single time it's easier for us to get inside (damn those KSSNs). In Blade and Soul, Tencent saw a new opportunity and decided to close a deal somewhere at the end of the development process, and at ChinaJoy 2011 they were already promoting it. When I look at Tencent that old Duke Nukem ventrilo harassment comes to mind ... "I got balls of steel".
Did it pay out for China and Tencent? We can't really compare the numbers as China's gamer population is far greater than EU and NA combined, but just to see the popularity we were looking at more than 150 million users for Blade and Soul Open Beta, with 100 servers proven insufficient, as Tencent increased it at 170 shortly after. The popularity of NCSoft's title broke all the limits after the gaming event "Tencent Game Carnival", and the phrase "Blade and Soul" became the number one search on Baidu, the Chinese search portal.
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For some unknown reason our dream of playing Blade and Soul in that period was shattered and we got to look at country after country getting their release dates, while we stood there and wait. China launched it in November 2013, Japan on May 2014, Taiwan on November 2014 and we got it, you know ... in January 19, 2016.
At first I thought that maybe other titles that were coming like Guild Wars 2 and Wildstar stood in the way, but after watching the strong presence on the Asian market in 2013/2014, the original reason doesn't seem right anymore.
Why do we lose the battle (I really look forward to hear your thoughts on this, so please take a minute and leave us a comment about this subject)? You may say that they are all Asians, but you know that every game gets through a localization process there also, and even if it's not a case for Blade and Soul, other regions like Rusia are already getting in front of us on the que.
I can understand if we decide to skip a title, ok we don't trust it to be a success on our market (in KR in 2012, Blade and Soul was the 2nd most played game, with the first spot took by League of Legends, so we can safely say that as an MMO it was quite successful), but to get a deal for a game that everybody played it for years already, seems wrong. We even got a few private servers before the official Western release.
ArcheAge![]()
Here we will talk a little about successful launches and communities (that "abstrat" thing we aren't really having here in NA/EU).
With ArcheAge we managed to beat China, but with what cost? And do you think that we were at the table when the first contracts were signed? As you probably guess the answer is no, we were as always late, but we got a faster or weaker localization that moved us towards the front of the que. Even with this fast process we still came after Japan (July 23, 2013) and RU (February 16, 2014).
Back to China and Tencent, let's take a look at XLGames and ArcheAge short history so you can cleary see where Trion Worlds was on the deal. XLGames was founded somewhere in 2003, and after playing with some small titles, three years later, in 2006, they decided to start aiming for the top with a next generation MMORPG, that was officialy announced in 2009 (this is when the first license agreement was signed with GameOn for Japan service). Shortly after, in September 2010 Tencent signed the deal, followed by GigaMedia for Taiwan.
After the official KR launch, in January 2013 Trion Worlds signed the deal to bring ArcheAge to the Western Market and extend their business as publishers (they were already well respected developers with successful games like Rift).
How come we started before China? For Tencent the localization process is very important and in this case it took longer than expected, but as oposed to our well known "soon to be released" remark, they are customizing their titles to meet their community needs, and it's something more than just translation, voice changes and some censored content (yeah it's China afterall so they usually get a "light version" on different features).
Why don't we get unique/exclusive localized version (this applies to every MMO that came to the West)? Maybe we are paying less, although I doubt it, but the real guilty person behind this is me or you. We lack a strong gaming community and we fail to create a common voice and get us heard.
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After 2 hours of searching the web's ArcheAge archives I finally found the video that best ilustrates what I am talking about. On 28.09.2013 during a press event held in Moscow, Mail.ru officialy presented ArcheAge, a show where they also talked about a new bussines model. The entire community failed betrayed and they decided to make a stand at Igromir 2013.
The most well known guild leaders and other attending gamers decided to peacefully protest by putting down two red flowers (you can see it from 2:40 in the video below) at the feet of those girls who were there handling beta keys, creating a funeral place (for orthodox/catholic people, at funerals you bring a pair number of flowers), in order to raise awareness of the p2w model.
Dragon Nest![]()
With some little variations we have to deal with the same story, and Dragon Nest was not any different. The game officialy launched in KR in March 2010 and China managed to get their version through Shanda games 5 months later.
Without a real marketing push, Shanda Games achieved over 400,000 concurrent users during the peak time of the open beta, making Dragon Nest CN the most successful game launch of 2010.
This time, besides waiting for two - three years, we got splited between EU and NA. We couldn't find a suitable publisher for both versions and as result the NA got it in a reasonable timeframe, in September 2011 while the EU got it on March 2013.
As with other similar titles, the ones that really wanted to try the game started on the Chinese servers and thanks god there are enough nice people that do those launcher guides and english translation patches for the asian versions. I know it's not the optimal gameplay experience, but if you can't wait for years to pass, the single real solution is to try a KR/JP/CN server. Since I fell in love with the KR MMORPG I really though about learning either korean or chinese so I can skip the waiting line.
Did you ever play an MMO on a foreign server and if yes, witch one?
Lost Ark and Dragon Quest X
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Many players are already waiting for these upcoming titles, and my early bet for "where are we going to play?" goes to China again.
Dragon Quest X has been available in Japan for quite some time, but no other country signed any deal recently. The only one ready to try their luck was Shanda Games, so we already had a closed beta phase in China (more info on the official
CN official site).
If everyhting goes smooth and there won't be any SSN restrictions (for Dragon Nest things were pretty soft) we are planning to make a guide on how to join the CN server as soon as Shanda Games move into Open Beta.
For Lost Ark things look more promising, but it's too early to talk about servers and release dates. What we know at the moment is that Smilegate opened a
localization facebook page for the Western market, while the developers already announced a partnership with Tencent for the Chinese version back in 2015.
In terms of getting in, with Tencent things look a little harder, but I'm sure we will find a way on their servers when the time comes. I already saw players reporting from the KR first Closed Beta Test (a short phase that was only up for 5 days), plus a database page that was recentl launched, so the future looks promising.
Today we are going to take a look at 3 titles that took a lot of time to come to the west, 2 upcoming titles that we will probably get to play on the Chinese servers before their western release and discuss about why are we usually the last on the MMO market.
