After having been tuned out from the game due to last months guild drama, I didn’t even realize Trion held a live stream this past Friday (so this was the first time since 2015 that I wasn’t actually in the chat to ask questions). It didn’t matter since nothing new was really covered anyway except to announce that level 60 is coming in the next 2-3 month timeframe.
From the beginning, level 60 end game is about the main thing I cared about when it came to gearing so the timing works out perfectly in terms of AFKing to get what Patron rewards I can get until that runs out in a few weeks.
Just prior to all of this in-game stupidity, myself and a former colleague had managed to make a few more contacts in Korea and there is a reason I refer to this (Trion version) as Deadvilian now. Active design and development for the PC MMO was significantly curtailed back when the company decided to stop service in Korea (they had signed a mobile publishing deal with Gamevil earlier in 2015 which is noted below). The Thai and unreleased Chinese version got what few pieces of designed content had already been on the drawing board. As for Trion’s version, since Forbidden Sanctuary was repurposed to a level 58 raid, it is expected that its level 60 content will end up coming in separate phases in order to string out the remaining “content” (i.e. rehashed stuff) until the end of this year.
Disclosure: I do not invest in any KOSPI traded equities nor do I have any business holdings related to the private equity partners that have funded Ginno Games in the past prior to its acquisition by Bluehole. The above mentioned colleague that used to work in South Korea does though, but I will not speak for him on those matters.
The first phase will likely consist of more difficult versions of existing archdevils (probably Severam Fortress and Bottomless Pit which had heroic versions in the Korean and Thai servers) which will likely drop the heroic tier needed for the level 60 unique gear crafting system, and at least a few more heroic/hell versions of existing dungeons (Ruined Citadel being one of them).
A new artifact tier is a high probability in order to serve as another “catch up provision” to deal with the increased power creep caused by the Capricious set (plus there also has to be something for the elemental gem equivalents for multisocket unique weapons). The fact they mentioned they have the request in to Ginno (to switch out the soul token rewards) means they already will use that as a monetization incentive for Patron since they will likely end up adding in all the pieces to the Capricious vendor in the future (like how it was done with Slaughter). The players that used to always datamine the clients no longer play so I’ll be doing it once the build goes up on PTS. But I will not be making any of that information public.
The final phase (likely towards the tail end of this year) will probably be another raid dungeon for the actual unique gear crafting system. Previously, I thought they might try to work on designs that were in the trailing end of the pipeline but the least costly route for them to take (in light of the fact that Bluehole Ginno has refocused the majority of their resources on mobile) would be to just power creep the Tower of No Return and/or Forbidden Sanctuary. Ginno has almost zero incentive to invest design and development resources into completely new designs. Trion Worlds has almost zero financial incentives to commission Ginno to produce newly designed content (the lack of a Devilian producer who would be coordinating all of the logistics since July 2016 speaks volumes).
Up until the last quarter of 2016, most of these details regarding the mobile focus weren’t known until a series of candid interviews were given by Ginno’s CEO. The former colleague I mentioned above created a topic over on the official forums several months ago to point out some of this and I followed up on his post with links to the interviews (all in Korean but machine translation helps to get the gist past some of the usual mistranslation/grammar issues).
While Ginno Games was acquired by Bluehole Studio (acquisition completed in January 2015), the renamed Bluehole Ginno studio operated independently as its own business unit in order to remain agile in their decision making when it came to maintaining a competitive edge in the market. They had also signed a deal around the same time for a mobile version of the game (utilizing IP from the PC MMO); this is why actual major content updates for the PC version is non-existent and why many issues haven’t been addressed (Ginno has prioritized mobile design and development).
Source: http://www.zdnet.co.kr/news/news_view.asp?artice_id=20150127114002
In earlier newswire releases, the details of the reason for the shuttering of the servers in Korea were usually vaguely attributed to NHN Entertainment’s (Hangame is the gaming portal they operated) decision to move from publishing PC MMO’s to mobile platformers. In early 2015, there were rumors the publisher was looking to shed some MMO’s. Hangame had been experiencing slow growth in online gaming while the parent company itself had been experiencing operating losses. The first PC games to get the axe were those that contributed inconsequential revenue.
As it turned out, those rumors weren’t far off the mark when Hangame made the announcement in August 2015. However, the timing of Hangame’s focus change to mobile publishing dovetailed with their not being satisfied with Devilian’s performance (declining users) that also was afflicting the game which made sense since players had managed to exhaust the end game content that had been provided within a 9 month timeframe.
This Korean blogger mentioned the lack of updates and events from Ginno which is not different from the neglect (content wise) that happened with the Thai version and is what the Trion Worlds version has been experiencing in a much more drawn out fashion since it has been going through a slower two level at a time cap increase; the game does not have enough content to actually last this long which is why it has shed a significant number of players on both the North American and European servers even after the two servers in each region were merged in May 2016 (Ginno had to burn engineering resources/money over 3+ months working on the backend tech to make that happen while also working on the Alvir’s Legacy content).
The Trion Worlds Devilian team was downsized around this time (with associate producer Andrew “Drewcifer” Sipotz resigning instead of being terminated while senior producer Rick “Din Othar” White moved to the Atlas Reactor team while it was still in development) in late June/early July 2016. GoodGames (the Thai publisher) ceased performing any further events starting in June 2016 (their last major content update was the level 60 “Banned Sanctuary” raid back in September 2015). The Thai server went live on May 6, 2015 just to exemplify how quickly they received the entire game and to also show quickly the game died off after no further major content updates were provided by Bluehole Ginno.
Ginno originally had plans to relaunch in Korea in the first half of 2016 incorporating changes made in the Trion version as well as some of the content updates (the 5th class, Ancient Devil scramble event, Transcendent dungeons) that had been made for the Thai version. That never happened because of the huge financial losses which parent company Bluehole experienced (as noted in the above mentioned forum posting) which led Ginno to concentrate their resources on the development of Devilian Mobile. The Chinese version was never released because the Chinese publisher was a subsidiary of Hangame (which had also ceased publishing PC MMO’s in favor of mobile).
Gamevil (a South Korean mobile game publisher) themselves were hoping that Devilian Mobile would be a huge hit globally in order to reverse a declining trend. Expectations were very high as noted in early marketing and PR material. While the first week numbers (downloads/players) were very positive, the conclusion was that the actual cash shop sales numbers (where the actual growth was) would not be enough.
In simple laymens term, Devilian Mobile was not the huge microtransaction sales hit that both Gamevil and Bluehole Ginno were hoping for. The PR regarding the success/failure of the recent major patch (which served as a content expansion) has been notably absent.
The PC MMO version of the game has been long dead in Korea. The Thai server has been mostly a ghost town since the summer of 2016. That leaves just the Trion Worlds version which has at most, several hundred players in each region. Trion Worlds Devilian team (in terms of size and composition) reflects the business reality of a property that has stagnated development. As someone who has worked in senior management before, actions telegraph what isn’t spoken.
The reality is that Trion probably was able to pickup the publishing rights on the cheap which allowed Bluehole Ginno to at least salvage a portion of the 5 years of development work that had been put into the PC version while they shifted focus and tried to utilize what they could for the mobile version. Mobile games are the current trend in South Korea and that is generally where the focus is (except for PC MMORPG’s that were already being designed and coded).
Venture capitalists and private investors are also going to be looking for a return on their investment; Bluehole Ginno’s CEO isn’t going to waste a lot of resources on the PC version beyond what currently exists (they will have fulfilled their part of the licensing contract once they fully deliver level 60 content and game systems). GoodGames (Thailand) had the entire game by SEPTEMBER 2015 and saw absolutely nothing new from Bluehole Ginno after that. All Trion Worlds can go is provide lip service and try to retain as much players as possible.
Trion Worlds does not even have someone at least semi knowledgable with how this game works anymore where they can have a meaningful conversation with the Ginno folks (unless they reassign Din Othar back to the team). The fact that they haven’t telegraphs that even they know this game is at a dead end development wise (but that isn’t going to stop them from cashing in on those who continue purchasing large amounts of DEX or credits).
Once MU Legend goes live (no matter how horrible I personally find that game to be), it will put a further dent in this game. Once Lineage Eternal finally launches, the same deal. Lost Ark would put this game out of its misery really quick but that one is a long way off from hitting North America/Europe. Add any of this to the type of long lasting content stagnation that the Thai server saw, and that dead empty server is the future for this version of Devilian (aka DEADVILIAN).
