https://store.steampowered.com/app/838330/Warlords_Awakening
This re-vamped version of ELOA is going to be a Steam Early Access launch which already raises a red flag with me. The title will also be buy-2-play (expected retail price is $11.99 US). ELOA was previously an anime-inspired 2.5D isometric MMO-ARPG that was developed by NPICSoft and published by Webzen. The game featured 5 character classes (with 4 different races) with 3 combat stances (utilizing typical ARPG style hack-n-slash combat akin to Devilian). Like Devilian, it uses the Gamebryo engine.
The open beta (soft launch) for this started back on November 17, 2015 with the game officially launching a week later. Webzen however announced on September 6, 2016 that they would be shuttering the game in mid-October (the service was brought down in early November). Webzen also was shutting down ASTA (another Korean MMO they were publishing) at the same time. This was also when Webzen was gearing up to launch the first closed beta for the global version of MU Legend (their own franchise). Thus while both of these titles weren’t doing well in terms of player concurrency (Webzen was straightforward in announcing these weren’t financially viable), it was also a matter of Webzen re-prioritizing their limited resources for their Dublin based global publishing subsidiary towards their own “new” title, MU Legend.
ELOA however was immediately picked up and re-published by GamenGame with their servers opening on November 17, 2016. The game failed to gain significant traction yet again with GamenGame making the decision to pull the plug on August 17, 2017. On October 23, 2017, Netmarble announced they would be terminating service for the Korean version (service was shutdown on December 14, 2017).
The problem here was nothing out of the ordinary though. It wasn’t because the game had major flaws or not being fun to play at all. The title had its loyal followers (just not enough initial critical mass to even give it a chance though after the usual falloff occurs). It was the usual “cash grab” attempt to re-publish outside of Korea (thus no real interest by the publisher beyond trying to monetize the game) as well as developer side; the lead designer (Korean) for this game had been re-assigned off the project and there was really no one steering the ship after that. Basically, this was nothing really different than what happened with Devilian (Trion just managed to milk the game for much longer because it did have a small but loyal base of players that still bought Patron, credits, or DEX until at least 6 months before the announcement was made to shut the game down (the Windows 10 issue also was still not a problem at that point).
This renamed version of ELOA (Warlords Awakening) is being handled by a “new” developer named PLAYWITH Games, Inc and published by PLAYWITH Interactive). This company is what was formerly known as YNK Korea; the North American/European publishing subsidiary is based out of Irvine, California where they have a VERY small team managing their existing published titles; mostly mobile platformers and currently three PC MMO’s (R.O.H.A.N, Seal Online, Eclipse War Online). They will have their work cut out for them in trying not to repeat what happened with Neowiz’ small support team during their early access launch. I have my doubts that the Korean based development team they put together is going to really do much though beyond the existing game systems and content (except re-skinning some of it and maybe fine tuning stuff like leveling and class balance). They are aware that former ELOA players are skeptical that anything will be different this time around (PLAYWITH made note their commitment with “remastering” the game and also servicing it by self-publishing).
Like Bless Online, I will wait to see how they handle early access in terms of what the Founders packs ends up looking like. All the other promises about no pay-2-win are just that to me, empty promises since I now view all of these with an extremely skeptical view where actions need to speak louder than the actual words. The sheer lack of early marketing for this remastering is another concern because its going to result in the same issue that ELOA faced with Webzen and GamenGame where lack of advertising failed in generating enough initial critical mass. I know it is a double-edged sword with too much hype with an early access title (especially in light of Bless Online). The biggest difference here though is that Bless Online has always had technical issues and design flaws whereas ELOA was well beyond that. So time will tell on this one.
