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 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 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 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?
