Made in China: The New Wave of MMORPGs

It’s no secret that the free to play MMORPG business model originated in East Asia. The average Asian gamer often lacks a personal computer and plays mainly at internet cafes. Developers had to offer their product with as little up-front costs as possible, and instead hoping to recoup their investment steadily via micro-payments made for small in-game items such as clothes, upgrades, or other virtual goods.

Learn from the Koreans…

Even as the average income in places like South Korea increased, companies continued to use the same model, finding it more profitable than the monthly subscription alternative popular in the West. Eventually, some of the greatest hits from Asia even started making their way to America and Europe. The Lineage and Legend of Mir titles are a good example. While these games did enjoy some success here, they relied on the domestic pay-to-play model used in earlier titles like Ultima Online and EverQuest.

The Koreans eventually realized that micropayments can work just as well here as they did back home. Korean free to play MMOs & MMORPGs started mushrooming in America & Europe. Classics like Mir 2 and The Legend of Mir 3 are both free to play in the States now along with games like MapleStory and Scions of Fate. These same games also gained popularity throughout China, where they served as the inspiration for a whole new home grown industry.

First, a look at the numbers. China now has the world’s largest number of internet users. That’s not much of an accomplishment with 1.5 billion people but what is surprising is the rate of online gaming. As of June 30, 2009 China has over 217 million online gamers. In much of the Western world and Japan, console games still dominate. The fact that many large video game companies like Nintendo and Sony were weary of investing in China over the past decades (due to rampant piracy) means almost all gaming is done on the computer via the internet. This has made China fertile ground for MMORPGs.

Learning from the Koreans, many Chinese studios launched MMORPGs of their own. Publicly traded Chinese firms like Perfect World Co. and ChangYou now boast a market capitalization of over $1 billion. Having had success at home and across Asia, these companies have only recently started penetrating the Western market. They bring with them well financed warchests which they draw from liberally, especially for internet advertising.

China Rises

The aptly named Perfect World was the flagship game of Perfect World Co. The game has a large world, varied classes, and a quest based progression system as opposed to excessive ‘grind’ which is popular in Asia but loathed by Western gamers. Perfect World was soon followed by Ether Saga Online, a more cartoony take on the genre. Their third title was Jade Dynasty which has the most realistic physics and graphics among their games to date. The company now has at least two more games in the works, Kung Foo! and Battle of the Immortals. Kung Foo! is already in closed beta testing as of this writing and offers a more comedic atmosphere. Battle of the Immortals promises more action oriented gameplay.

ChangYou’s Dragon Oath was released in 2007 in China and has seen over 800,000 concurrent users active during peak hours. The game was released in the US in late 2009 with a large media blitz and is already very popular. In fact, ChangYou is in the process of releasing their first expansion for the game titled Age of Destiny.

But Chinese MMORPGs that players download and play is only half the story. The real interesting phenomena is the coming wave of Chinese browser based games. By now everyone on the internet is familiar with the notorious Evony ad campaign. This browser based strategy MMO with traditional medieval graphics has opted for a marketing blitz that has no connection to the product. Banner ads showing scantily clad women with the words ‘Evony’ and ‘play discreetly’ have appeared on thousands of gaming sites, MMOHut included. In fact, we had to manually remove the ad from our rotation since it was in such poor taste. Oddly, the ads have gotten the game noticed so they’ve done their job. Quite frankly, Evony is not a bad game. It’s actually much more streamlined and visually appealing than older, mostly German developed, browser strategy games like Tribal Wars or Travian.

A slew of Chinese browser MMORPGs have followed in Evony’s wake including many clones like Empire Craft. Slightly different variations on the genre are offered by games like Heroes of Gaia, where players get to build an empire and still hunt monsters with heroes. Other more advanced games like Legend: Legacy of Dragons and Dragon’s Call are also entering the market now. Both these games are a blend of traditional text/image based browser MMORPGs and simple animations that make gameplay more immersive. Other browser releases like Business Tycoon Online offer the traditional text based gameplay but with a new twist. Gamers looking for a browser experience even closer to that of a client MMORPG can try Neverland Online which was brought to the US by another Chinese publisher called hithere.

Only the Beginning

The Chinese games I mentioned and the dozens more that are currently available are only the tip of the iceberg. Expect 2010 to see the release of many more client and browser based MMORPGs from the Middle Kingdom. While the ‘footprint’ of Chinese games and developers will undoubtedly increase, I want to know your thoughts on this trend. There’s no question that some of these games will be low quality but the fact that there are so many top-notch ones like Perfect World should dispel any stereotype about inferior products. Complaints about localization and customer support are likely more common. Too many games suffer from poor English translations and a lack of customer support. Hopefully there will be more improvement in these areas as the industry matures.

By, Erhan Altay