We can all breathe a collective sigh of relief as Perfect World Co. Ltd., developer of hit massively multiplayer online role-playing games like Ether Saga and Jade Dynasty, announces the upcoming alpha testing of the Tideborn patch for Perfect World on November 25th, 2009.
I’m calling it Tideborn because that’s how the new race is being called by Level Up! Games, Perfect World’s publisher in the Philippines. It’s actually much better than simply calling the race “Mermen” because they are more than that. But that’s how the Chinese are calling them, Ren Yu Chuan Shuo.
Along with the new playable race, Perfect …read more

It’s not apparent from the title what I’m talking about, so let me lay it out more plainly in the body text of this posting. You see, 4story looks like a World of Warcraft clone from almost every angle. Even the character sprites, with their ungainly and cartoonish appearance, reeks of the highly successful Blizzard Entertainment massively multiplayer online role-playing game title.
Not that 4story is devoid of merits. Far from it. Despite a warning I’ve received from a fellow gamer and colleague in the gaming industry that I might end up disappointed if I start playing the game, I still …read more

A few weeks ago, good friend and MMOtaku regular Robert Sanchez gave me the heads up about NDOORS Interactive’s recruitment of a game master in the Philippines. I checked out the job posting and, sure enough, it was the real deal. It got me thinking: Was NDOORS planning to launch Atlantica Online in the little tropical paradise that serves as home to thousands of online games-hungry players?
Oh, don’t bother looking for the advertisement; it’s long gone. NDOORS has probably found someone capable of running the show. The question, however, remains: A game master for what game? I fervently hope it’s …read more

If China-based online games developer and operator Giant Online is to be believed, the free-to-play business model for massively multiplayer online games is on a decline. By decline, Giant probably means the market share of F2P online games as opposed to games following a different business model, such as pay-to-play and free-to-play via retail sales.
Giant Online is, of course, citing only local (read: China online games industry) figures as free-to-play online games are, as far as I know, making a killing in other parts of the world. Korea, long acknowledged as the MMO capital of the world, is keen on …read more

That’s how I read well-known game developer David Perry’s speech before the Develop Conference in Brighton, while Matt Martin of gamesindustry.biz has given the talk a different title, “Western devs ‘kissing goodbye’ to Asian opporunities.”
Either way, Perry hit the issue squarely, pointing out that developers of massively multiplayer online games in the West aren’t taking advantage of Asian markets and are missing out on open opportunities to monetize their games.
“Western developers just aren’t exploiting this anything like as much as they should,” Martin quoted Perry as saying. “That’s a bit of a scary trend. A lot of developers rushed off …read more

That is the question. Apparently, the government of China is asking the same thing, and the question is enough to merit a memorandum to online game developers and operators to stop accepting real or virtual payment for contests and other random selections that offer virtual currency or items.
Thanks to this new government regulation, a China-based online games operator, Giant Interactive, has decided to shelve a “prize draw” in its in-house developed massively multiplayer online role-playing game ZT Online.

Here’s an excerpt from the story on online games portal 17173:
Giant Closes ZT Draw Citing Regs
Shanghai-based online game company Giant Interactive announced on …read more

My apologies to my friends and colleagues who work at Level Up! Games, publisher and operator of hit massively multiplayer online role-playing games in the Philippines, including Ragnarok Online and Perfect World. I know the title seems harsh, considering I know how hard you work your butts off to bring us great content, but it’s just the way I feel.
This “feeling” is heightened every time I catch a glimpse of the videos that Perfect World Entertainment, the North American operator and publisher of China-based Perfect World Co. Ltd.’s games, churns out. Take this, for example:
Yes, Philippine players of Perfect World, …read more

It’s been quite a while since I laid my hands on a virtual golf club in the casual online game Pangya, and I’ve got to admit that the sight of Blue Lagoon has me on edge. I steel myself for the task at hand—that of teeing off and starting a nine-hole run of the Blue Lagoon course in Pangya’s Practice Mode.
“I used to be good at this,” I tell myself repeatedly as I watch my avatar (character or toon) Cesky move into position for the tee off. “Used to be—the operative term.” Mumble, mumble.

The first hole is about 416 yards …read more

Good news for Grand Chase fanatics in North America. A new character is joining the ranks of Grand Chase Knights and his name is Jin, a melee specialist.
Don’t know what the heck Grand Chase is? Let me fill you in:
Grand Chase is a free-to-play, 2.5-dimension side-scrolling massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Korean company KOG Studios. The story centers around the adventures of the Grand Chase team.
Grand Chase has servers in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States. The Taiwan and Hong Kong servers call the game Three Young Heroes. In the rest of Southeast …read more

It’s been a long time since I last logged on to Granado Espada, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game operated in Southeast Asia by Infocomm Asia Holdings Pte. Ltd. I want to play the game again—that is, if I find the time, or when I eventually get bored of romping in Atlantica Online, Ragnarok Online and Rohan: Blood Feud.
I’m really not in a hurry, especially after learning about new events shaping the New World in Granado Espada. One of these earth-shaking events is what IAHGames calls The Defense of the Zeia Battle, which runs from May 27 to June 11, …read more