This is in the context of the game engine for their MMO titles (current and future).
MMO Culture discovered a recent job posting by NCsoft where they are looking for an animator for “a new project based on the Aion IP”. Furthermore, this next version of the game is described as being a “next generation console and PC MMORPG powered by Unreal Engine 4” (UE4).
NCsoft is going all in with UE4; they are re-doing Blade & Soul in UE4 and Project TL (formerly known as Lineage Eternal) is also being completely rebooted using UE4. As I mentioned before, their production pipeline with Project TL is giving the software designers and coders there valuable experience working with this newer game engine in their various MMO projects.
This will end up giving their PC titles (and ones they also plan to bring to console like Blade & Soul) an advantage in terms of performance and visuals over their Korean counterparts. Webzen? Nope…. it took them way too long to launch MU Legend (UE3) and it was something that just didn’t appeal to a large number of players in all of their published regions. Pearl Abyss uses their own proprietary engine for Black Desert Online along with YEBIS middleware (from Japan based Silicon Studio) for enhanced graphics (part of the remastered graphics they are planning to roll out).
Tripod Studio is utilizing UE3 for their upcoming LOST ARK Online MMO-ARPG but they’ve put a lot of effort in getting the most optimization out of the game (it remains to be seen how it will really perform with a fully populated server though). WeMade Entertainment and XLGAMES utilize CryEngine for Riders of Icarus and ArcheAge respectively (both suffer from the same slow texture loading in the environment). IMC Games uses a custom engine (from their other title, Granado Espada) for Tree of Savior and is known for client FPS lag when there are a large number of players).
Bluehole’s only UE4 game is PUBG (but their experience from that is something which they can’t really leverage when designing an MMO) which is still poorly optimized (seemingly a trait associated with the company). Bluehole’s upcoming title (Ascent: Infinite Realm) was designed with Unreal Engine 3 and has the usual frame rate drops once the visual clutter reaches a certain limit.
Bluehole’s only other money making IP is TERA and that really is an unoptimized mess right now; there is no way this franchise is going to be able to remain competitive by 2020 (and Bluehole has stated a long time ago they have no plans for a TERA 2). And there are a host of other studios and titles that I didn’t touch on. In a nutshell, NCsoft is going to end up pulling ahead of all of these other companies main titles by the time 2020 comes around. Seriously, by the next decade, there really should be no new game being developed in UE3 (and other companies using other engines will really need to evaluate their internal development roadmaps).
