PLAYWITH, Inc, the new developer and publisher of what was previously called ELOA, has shutdown the Korean version of the game (Kuntara Online: The Elite Lord’s Awakening) on July 11, 2018. This is the same title they are releasing as a Steam Early Access title called Warlord’s Awakening.
The following is the shutdown notice on the official site.
Source: https://www.kuntara.co.kr/
The following was the longer notice posted back in June regarding the shutdown schedule.
PLAYWITH first announced Project K’s official name along with it’s brand image back in May 2017. This was well before Netmarble terminated the Korean service in December 2017. It later became known that PLAYWITH had licensed the ELOA IP from NPICSoft including the source code (which allowed them to make necessary changes to the game in order to launch this “remastered” version fairly quickly). In March 2018, the company announced they had acquired the IP from NPICSoft.
The Korean version went into open beta test on October 19, 2017 after PLAYWITH suddenly announced the soft launch on September 20, 2017. The official Korean launch was just one week later (October 26th).
By all accounts, the open beta was a success with over 150,000 pre-registrations and 45,000 players taking part. Even with that much initial interest with the game under a new name with completely new management, developers, and publisher, it has once again shut down.UPDATE: a former colleague who is living/working again back in South Korea informed me why there was the above numbers. PLAYWITH never did announce their Project K game was a rebranded version of ELOA so players actually thought this was going to be a completely new MMO. The truth only became apparent at open beta launch when players realized it was ELOA. When questions began to arise if this was another illegal version (since Netmarble was still publishing ELOA), PLAYWITH announced they had licensed the IP (per the link above). This also explains why those open beta test numbers did not sustain the game.
The Kuntara Online Inven site was also shutdown but there is still a news page that still exists (which also contains the news regarding the Steam launch of Warlords Awakening.
Captain Obvious Opinion: this does not spell good news for the Steam version of Warlords Awakening because when a title is officially dead in its home country, there isn’t a huge incentive by the development team to work on designing actual new content. The Korean management at PLAYWITH may try to deny that the Korean closure will have any real impact on the Steam version BUT we have all seen how that is usually never the case.This has Devilian written all over it unfortunately (for those who aren’t regular readers, I played Devilian for a long time dating back to Korea in 2014 and when Trion launched the western version where I played until the bitter end and have intimate details of its history). As I’ve blogged about before, it was a cash grab (as most Korean MMO’s that are later launched in other regions tend to be) so it looks like this Steam version is no different in that regard (the game is in much better shape than Bless Online is though which means that it can still be enjoyed once it launches; just don’t expect it to have longevity once all its content has been rolled out).
