Good and Bad MMORPG Publishers

With over 200 MMORPGs currently on the market, there are also quite a bit of MMORPG publishers. What exactly is an MMO publisher? They’re the guys who license MMORPGs / MMOs from Asia and bring them to North America and Europe. A common misconception is that publishers are responsible for a game’s development – and this is mostly not true. Publishers are responsible for localizing and distributing a game in a specific region, and that’s it. They don’t make the games they publish. Anyway. I wanted to talk about a few of the major publishers and give you my verdict on them. I won’t talk about any browser games publishers or social games publishers. I’ll focus on free to play client based game companies.

Aeria Games

Aeria Games is easily one of the biggest MMORPG publishers in North America. They publish numerous popular MMORPGs like Shaiya, Last Chaos and Grand Fantasia. They are also the company behind numerous less popular titles like the MMOFPS WolfTeam and the sci-fi MMORPG Megaten – which is based off the Shin Megami Tensei universe. Aeria Games has a very easy to navigate website and a huge selection of games, which I like. My only complaint against them is that they shut down so many good games – like Project Torque and Dragon Sky. Still, they’re one of the bigger and more diverisfied MMO publishers, so I like them.

Verdict: Good

ijji

ijji is a big North American and European publisher best known for their large variety of MMOFPS games. For some reason they REALLY love publishing these MMOFPS titles. Their most popular games include Karos Online, Rohan Online, Soul of the Ultimate Nation, Alliance of Valiant Arms and GunZ. They publish a ton of other games and are releasing other new titles like Genesis A.D. And Karma: Operation Barbarossa as well. I love ijji’s website as it’s easy to navigate. What I love most about them though is their easy to use ijji “reactor” program, which is basically Steam, but for free MMORPGs – at least the ones ijji publishers that is.

Verdict: Good

Uforia

Uforia is a fairly new free to play MMORPG publisher based in California. They’ve grown considerably in the last few years and publish Camon Hero, Mercenary Wars, Red War, NosTale and Three Kingdoms: The Battle Begins. Their website is okay to use, but what I dislike most about them is their selection of games. Both ijji and Aeria Games have a lot of high quality titles, but Uforia… not so much. If you’ve ever played Mercenary Wars of Red War, you’ll agree with me that they are quite bad. Three Kingdoms: The Battle Begins is equally bad, because Uforia hasn’t been able to work well with the game’s developer, so the game hasn’t been updated in ages and bugs aren’t even being fixed. Support on the game’s forums are bad too.

Verdict: Bad

WeMade Entertainment

WeMade Entertainment is a Korean MMORPG company but publishes and develops a bunch of free to play games here in the U.S. As well as world-wide. Their most successful games include Mir 2 and The Legend of Mir 3. Since those games released though, they haven’t done much else to push the genre forward. Their other games like Avalon Heroes and Digimon Battle were playable at best and nothing more. All of their games have poor graphics and a lousy interface.

Verdict: Bad

Well there you have it. A look into four MMORPG game publishers. I’ll probably write about other publishers in the future. What are your thoughts on these companies? Are they good or bad?

Are Facebook Games Free MMOs?

As Facebook gets bigger and bigger (it’s currently the second biggest website on the internet) more and more games will launch on it. Some of the most popular Facebook games these days are Farmville, Mafia Wars and Petville. For the most part these games aren’t MMOs, but they do have cooperative elements, so it wouldn’t be unfair to classify them as free to play MMOs. After all, they are all free and they are online. I actually started playing these “social games” on Facebook pretty recently, and I’m not quite sure what to think of them. It’s not exactly fair to compare them to full blown MMORPGs like Heroes of Might and Magic Online from TQ Digital and Digimon Battle from WeMade, but there are fair comparisons out there.

YoVille for example is a social Facebook that plays a lot like Gaia Online or even OurWorld. Both Gaia Online and OurWorld would be considered traditional free to play browser MMOs, so there is room for comparison amongst these games. As is, Facebook games are absurdly popular. Farmville for example has some 30 million active users on Facebook. That’s on par with mega popular MMORPGs like LaTale from OGPlanet and MapleStory from Nexon. Though it doesn’t quite surpass RuneScape from Jagex yet. Still, 30 million active users. Wow. That’s quite a number. The thing about Facebook Games is that they only started popping up a year or so ago, so within a years time they exploded in popularity and became mainstream!

As I said earlier, I really don’t know what to think of these games. I tried playing both Treasure Isle and YoVille yesterday and neither kept my attention for long. Treasure Isle did keep me entertained a bit longer, but meh. To be fair, I did like Farmville, but that’s only because I’m a fan of the Harvest Moon games. I remember playing the N64 Harvest Moon game for at least 50 hours! The game boy advanced one – Friends of Mineral Town was also a good one. Aside from Treasure Isle and Yoville though, I also gave Social City a try, which was basically a Sim City style city building game. It was a bit too basic for my liking, but the concept behind it was pretty neat. I did get bored of it in an hour though.

I guess Facebook MMOs just aren’t my thing, at least the ones available today. Maybe they’ll get better in the future. Who knows. For now though, I think I’ll stick with my client based MMORPGs. On that note, I just finished re-downloading Lunia from ijji. Since I first played the game a year or so ago, the game has went through a bunch of major updates, so it should rock now. Anyway guys! Later!

Woot! Digimon Battle is Awesome

I finally got around to downloading Digimon Battle and I have to say I really like it. I think I like it more because I’m sucker for Digimon and turn based games, than the game’s actual merits, but I think its worth checking. The only real issue most people will have with the game is its graphics. It is a 2D MMORPG, but the 2D graphics aren’t modern or ’sleek’ the way they are in newer MMOs like LaTale or Battle of Destiny. If you can look past the graphics though, Digimon Battle is a pretty solid pet raising game. Even though you start off with a single Digimon, you can easily catch more at anytime. The way the game is designed is that players can catch pretty much any Digimon they bump into. One thing that sucks is that the Korean version of the game is much, much further ahead in terms of development. Digimon Battle has been available in South Korea for over 8 years now and came to North America sometime in March 2010. So the game only has 50 or so Digimon in the entire game, vs the some 500+ Digimon in existence.

The company behind Digimon Battle, Wemade, also developers a few other MMORPGs. Interestingly, they are almost all 2D (Yay for 2D!). The other games WeMade develops are Avalon Heroes, Mir 2, and The Legend of Mir 3. If you’re a fan of either Digimon or Pokemon, Digimon Battle is certainly worth the download. Combat is also simple enough that younger gamers can learn the ropes rather easily. Everything is turn based and things start off really easy. In fact, the game never gets too challenging, but the real thrill behind it is trying to build the perfect ‘team’. The perfect lineup of Digimon. Players can field up to three Digimon at once, so there’s room for a lot of variety.

I’ll likely be playing the game for a while, provided that WeMade adds more content to the game. I’ve only been playing for a few days and I’ve already almost maxed out. I’m starting to think that they should have developed the game a bit more before releasing it. Anyone else here play Digimon Battle? If so, leave your username in the comments!