After a rough start getting the NA test server off the ground, Kakao Games successfully completed the first closed beta test for Elyon (stylized as ELYON) on May 11th (24 hours were added to the test due to the technical issues). The following are snippets from the closing event (I show some of the items they sent since those will likely be cosmetic items that will be monetized; the legendary glider wing suit for example is awesome and a huge boost due to faster glide/turn speed, higher rocket leap, 4 altitude boosting leaps, and lower stamina consumption allowing you to remain aloft longer).
Due to the problems connecting to the NA server, I initially played on EU and got to level 33. I debated whether I should just continue on EU but re-leveled on NA when the connectivity issues were resolved the next morning. Warning: I’m going to go off on some tangents in this post as opposed to doing any sort of pro/cons type of deal (there are content creators on YouTube who would be better to look into for that type of take).
Backing up a bit, Elyon is what was previously known as Ascent: Infinite Realm (A:IR). I had played the last incarnation of that design iteration when the Thai/SEA publisher Asiasoft Online (via their PlayPark portal) launched the OBT in April 2019 (effectively a soft launch since they were planning to run this beta indefinitely which they seemed to have paid to exclusively launch prior to the Korean release which at that time, had undergone its first closed beta test in December 2017 to less than stellar feedback). The beta was plagued with technical problems such that after a few days, required them to limit access to just 8 hours per day so that they could both monitor, and then work with Bluehole to resolve those issues. During the times I was able to play, my initial impressions were mostly positive except for reservations about the LoS (line of sight) combat system they chose to use (part of that was probably driven by the aerial combat design) instead of the time tested action combat that is used by TERA.
Besides the technical issues, there were some very real bugs including an exploit that occurred early on where both Asiasoft Online and Bluehole decided the best thing to do was to pull the game offline and evaluate the feedback. Additionally, they both decided that it would be better to have the next Korean closed beta take place and to build on that foundation for the Thai/SEA version. After all of this, the game went dark for the rest of 2019 and re-surfaced with a new PR campaign in March 2020. The real news hit a week later unveiling the design changes and rebranding of the game.
Since then, the Korean closed beta test (April 2020) and actual launch (December 2020) of this version of the game took place. The western release (NA/EU/Oceania) of Elyon is on a somewhat accelerated pace with this first closed beta coming less than six months after the official domestic launch (the CBT1 build was based on the Korean build from the January/February timeframe). The next beta test (date unknown) will utilize a build that will be closer to what they intend to release. Since Kakao Games has (via their investor relations financial reports) noted that they intend to launch the western version in Q4 2021, that doesn’t leave much time for the 2nd CBT.
The CBT1 survey was very selective and highly targeted in terms of the feedback they were looking for (initial and final impressions), tutorial presentation, UI improvements needed, arena matchmaking, dungeon instances, combat system, skill system customization, character growth, acquisition of items, questing and storytelling, housing content, text localization, voiceover quality, performance issues. The survey only asked for direct written input for the initial and final impression, text localization, and voiceover since that is effectively the remaining work involved (and the bulk of that will be the other languages in the EU region that weren’t part of this first beta).
The limited written feedback makes sense; most of the actual game play elements and systems won’t be changed for obvious reasons. Most of the relevant publisher related aspects are regarding the localization (and thus, voiceovers). The rest of the questions had rating scale or top choice options to check off which they can utilize to see if it was addressed in a newer build.
For myself, I feel conflicted having experienced the previous design. Project W as it was known until 2017, was designed with an aerial focus as well as a steam punk aesthetic. The original name Ascent: Infinite Realm (A:IR) made the aerial part abundantly clear so a lot of the expensive production work happened in that area (game systems, combat system, graphical assets including all of the aerial airship designs and mechs, the cutscenes, etc). A lot of this work had been well underway when Bluehole was still a relatively small studio (before PUBG hit early access, blew up, and turned Bluehole into a much larger company with more resources). Bluehole at the time wanted to capitalize on that success by announcing the working name of Project W at G-Star 2017. Yes, I had great interest in this game based on that earlier design and got a taste of it during the Thai/SEA open beta. A:IR wasn’t perfect by any stretch but it did have its very own vibe. So I was disappointed when the changes were announced last year. Which brings us to the present with this first closed beta for the NA/EU/Oceania version of Elyon.
The changes to the starting prologue for Elyon made me realize how much content had been removed (since a lot of that previously took place on several floating island hubs as well as the Inventus airship which on its own, was a huge zone filled with story quests). For TERA players, this is sort of equivalent to the original Island of Dawn starting zone. The videos linked in my 2nd day impressions post for the Thai beta shows how large the Inventus airship was (plus the original flow of the tutorial). Even the original character prologue (where you first spawned as a child before becoming the character you created) from the first Korean CBT in 2017, was removed by 2019 for the Thai/SEA OBT. For TERA players, this is sort of equivalent to having the original prologue (where you could test play a class as a level 20 character through a story line involving one of the games main heroes, Elleon) removed in a later patch.
My point is that this is a common theme with Bluehole where so much created content ends up being depreciated, removed, or abandoned in place – TERA is a testament to that. Unlike TERA though, Bluehole attempted to reuse as much of the previously produced assets but with a lot of the original context/game play, lost. Even the epicness of the battle on the Inventus airship felt non-existent because you don’t have all of the quests leading up to it. And instead of the cutscene where the Inventus is burning and crashing (where your character then wakes up in bed at an intermediary hub town), your character now simply falls in a blazing crash to your factions starting point.
If you had no knowledge of the prior design, what exists now would seem to be normal. For myself and others who played the original Korean beta in 2017 and/or the Thai/SEA beta in 2019, the streamlining of the level 1-30 tutorial was very apparent along with the stylized changes (the steam punk aesthetic along with the low level aerial content that previously existed were now mostly gone). There was a real hook to that initial first impression with A:IR; something that I knew was missing while playing through the Dark Apostle Lab section at the beginning in Elyon. The prior iteration had character/soul (even if there were flaws galore) where you felt like you were playing something different. With this change in direction, it felt like any other MMO. The last question on Kakao Games survey was “How would you describe Elyon in one word?” My response to that was “normal” (I tried to be polite because I actually wanted to say mediocre, average, generic or unmemorable). Basically, the unique vibe it once had (because that was where all the design effort was expended) has been lost and that isn’t going to change.
So I had to consciously just try to forget about that prior design playing through Elyon from that point and just treat and judge what exists now, on its own merits. With that said, the changes made to the combat system were noticeably better (the line of sight system used in A:IR, was annoying at times). The combat felt fun (still not as fast paced as TERA) and the skill customization and rune attribute system offers degrees of customizing your character. Yes, there are layers of RNG involved on the gear side when it comes to enchanting, getting the proper rune slots, etc (and there are methods to deal with them where part of it will likely be part of the monetization if you want to eliminate the grind to acquire them via in-game methods) but it’s pretty much a necessity (else there will be those players complaining about having nothing to do on day 1 if they can get everything they want easily).
It’s a balancing act which I’m ok with so long as the RNG is not over the top ridiculous. Similarly, the gold sinks also need to be balanced (gold is important because everything uses it; gear enchanting, rune polishing, teleporting via warp stones, entry to dimensional portals, repairing your gear, etc). Gear has durability on it (from general combat such as PvE mob grinding as well as PvP) and as of this build, the reduction in durability goes down pretty quickly where I found myself consciously heading to the nearest equipment NPC to repair (if it hits zero, your gear breaks, you lose skill attribute points, you lose access to your skills and any modifiers including the ones from runes socked in the broken equipment; basically, you go from hero to zero when durability reaches zero). Dying also takes off a larger percentage so RvR can be a costly endeavor. They also decrease at the same percentage on each piece (unlike some games where each equipped items durability reduces at their own rate). This supposedly has been addressed in a later build in Korea where items don’t wear down as quickly but we’ll need to see when CBT2 happens.
Getting through the story questing and then the daily quests, got my assassin around 150-200K gold. I easily burnt through 100K just upgrading (enchanting, rune polishing, rune upgrading) at the rare tier. As of the CBT1 build, an item needed to be enchanted to at least +7 for it to be upgraded to the next tier (epic purple; this has been reduced to +6 in the newer builds in Korea). Safe to say there will be higher tiers above that including legendary and mythic which will cost a lot more to enchant and upgrade. And while there is no real hard cap on levels, reaching certain levels opens access to content (which is important to generating gold). At level 36 (and upon completing a quest chain), every character gets access to instanced housing. There is a trade system attached to the housing system where you can make some gold. I didn’t get a chance to see if the luxury (formerly known as premium estates) housing in the open world still had the same buffs that you don’t get with the instanced housing. But I did capture the contract plate from one of those houses to see the costs.
This was in a level 36 zone. In A:IR you got better buffs and benefits in the level 40+ zones but the upfront costs and tax rates were much higher. For this particular house, it’s 170K gold for the purchase and a daily tax of 85K (just to give a general idea of how much gold income you need to generate daily) and I have no idea if there are the same buffs. Unlike ArcheAge, you don’t build a home from scratch. These houses already exist (and are per channel) and need to be claimed. For this CBT, there were only like two channel instances but I know that during the Thai/SEA open beta, they had like 20+ channels already spun up in order to handle the player base (since it was sort of a soft launch). I didn’t spend much time with the instanced housing myself to get an idea of how similar or different things were though with the production facilities. I do know there are some design choice “issues” that are present (like when you craft stuff, you can’t do anything else; so if it takes 5 minutes, your character will be doing the crafting animations for those 5 minutes).
Housing also offers a new AFK battle system (Luminus Battles) that allows you to earn some EXP, gold and items. It’s a fraction of what you would receive from open world grinding or dungeon running. I tested it out for around 4 hours with the 300% XP, gold drop, and item drop buff scrolls (that will be cash shop items) and it honestly isn’t worth the electricity your system will be consuming. I suppose competitive players who want every bit of advantage will use it early on once they hit level 36 to get what they can when they first go to sleep but it’s only serviceable with the 300% scrolls.
I did take part in the first Realm vs Realm (Realm War) battle (there were three simultaneous boundary battles that you could choose from) and it turned out to be a zerg-fest event. I happened to select Ontari for this CBT (since I had played Vulpin during the Thai/SEA beta and also on EU when NA was down) and there happened to be way more players in this faction. One of the boundary battles was filled to the 200 limit participant so I selected the next highest one.
After the first round, Ontari had a score of 4 to 2 (meaning two of the above were won by Ontari). And as I mentioned, the battle I was in was effectively a zerg win. We’ve all seen this type of design before where number one, the event times won’t be conducive for everyone (Korean game designers still cannot wrap their head around how their systems which work well in a narrow geographical/time zone region, will fail miserably in regions with broad geographies/time zones). True, they design without those considerations in mind since deployments to other regions is normally a final cash grab to milk what revenues that can be milked from an already fully designed and produced game. Secondly, those same design considerations, also means the participation numbers are out of whack. Sure, in the beginning, it may work out. But over time (as the inevitable player retention numbers drop), these designs end up running into having insufficient numbers of participants. RvR is a core part of Elyon and seeing this particular Realm War in play, wonder how Bluehole is going to adjust their game to manage this (that’s actually a rhetorical inquiry since the answer to that is little except try to adjust times and maybe participant numbers/requirements).
There seems to be no balance system in place when selecting a faction (the first time you connect to a server, you create an in-game account, then select your faction which cannot be changed, and then your characters). The result on NA was an imbalance of more Ontari than Vulpin. Unlike ArcheAge (as an example), races aren’t tied to a specific faction or geographical starting point. With ArcheAge, there is a system in place which locks faction and even race selection if there are imbalances. Furthermore, your account isn’t faction locked and you can freely create characters on either faction. With Elyon, the difference is primarily story and which half of the map your faction is in control of (Ontari is the northern half and Vulpin the southern half). Without any sort of balancing, you are screwed if you pick the lesser populated faction at launch. Kakao Games has not addressed how they intend to handle this as far as I know.
This is where I have major personal issues with Elyon (and by extension A:IR, since little has changed with the world design since then). You have this one big continent called Harth that is split right in half. Contrast with the world design of ArcheAge with continents separated by an ocean; now that feels like a real world and has ocean content. Elyon doesn’t have anything like that because most of the design effort was for the original aerial based combat and environment. With that depreciated and likely to be smaller events at later levels, the game world feels soulless.
The world is decently sized and from a graphics fidelity point of view, nice looking in many spots. But the same can be said of other games like ArcheAge, Guild Wars 2, and TERA (as examples). There just aren’t those very memorable locations in Elyon (what few there were like Inventus or the Sunsetville hub on that huge floating island have been removed with the changes). Even when just starting those other three games, I had very distinct memories of various locations. Like in Guild Wars 2, entering your first major city depending on what race you selected (in my case, my first character was human and I remember fully exploring Divinity’s Reach before continuing with questing). In ArcheAge, I still remember the first time I reached Mahadevi (playing on the eastern continent as a Harani); the City of Towers left a lasting impression. In TERA, flying into Velika the first time was extremely memorable as were many locations that had a sense of place (like if you told someone Fey Forest, Kaiator, Allemantheia, or Scythera Fae as examples, they could easily describe the location). But the big hubs left this very lasting impression where just their visual sight had this feeling of epicness (the first time I flew into Allemantheia on the pegasus was a wow moment).
In Elyon, it is zone after zone of unmemorable locations where some of them look decent, but they have no soul (that’s the theme). And that’s a design team issue since there is a whole new generation of them at Bluehole (most of the original art direction teams and graphic artists that created TERA’s world and original designs including character models, are no longer with the company). Yes, even the character model designs in Elyon lack soul compared to the ones in TERA. And let me go one step further, even the gestures, emotes, and dances, feel soulless. I know most players don’t care about these type of details (chalking it up to maybe as an RPer issue) but there’s a reason why some games have long term “charm” and nostalgia while others don’t. Both ArcheAge and TERA have their own respective issues in their most recent designs (let alone, publisher related ordeals) BUT they each have their charm where they each have their own loyal players that are keeping these games running (since their respective Korean launches in 2011 for TERA and 2013 for ArcheAge).
I was hoping the change in direction would also lead to at least a revamp of the continent where it felt worthy of exploration. It wasn’t in A:IR where you had this airspace verticality that you could explore. That world was devoid of anything interesting and little has changed in that regards. In Guild Wars 2, that type of exploration was a design objective (discovering vistas and points of interest for example). ArcheAge gives you achievements for hitting some out of the way spots including the tops of structures on geographical features. TERA to a lesser extent also had those especially prior to flying mounts where you had to climb (jumping or using a mount) to get to some spots with the “wall of wordcraft” signs. Again, some players don’t care about exploration and would consider this a minor thing for Elyon. Some of us though consider it a small attention to detail when highlighting the game world environment that was created.
A lot of this has nothing specifically to do with CBT1 either; this is a broader perspective of how memorable Elyon will be over a period of time. I can see myself buying this and playing the way I want to (effectively as filler). Yes, Elyon is PvP focused (and I’m not into PvP – but that doesn’t stop me from playing such games so long as there is some PvE and/or lifeskill systems in them). But what I don’t see it doing is being a replacement for the two MMO’s I am playing the most right now; ArcheAge Unchained (where I’m pretty much a casual life skiller and property maintainer) and TERA (for my combat fix). And when you add my guilty pleasure single player RPG game Genshin Impact into the mix, it becomes even worse (even Genshin Impact is far more explorable with very memorable locales and has characters with personality).
We had effectively less than a week of play testing for CBT1. The hardcore competitive types were naturally level 40+ and/or had item levels north of 300. Those folks will thrive in Elyon. It’s the rest though (which games like this also need). How long will they stick around once the actual honeymoon phase passes when this actually does launch? There are a lot of people on the official Discord saying they miss the game and have nothing else to play. These are the people I am talking about. Not one of the many other still existing MMO’s out there offers them a place to continually play? Seriously? It’s these folks who are always looking for that one MMO they can play forever. Some let stuff like pay for convenience get in the way (everything turns into a pay to win argument) or they own themselves out of a game by letting every slight turn into this unending battle of finding that next perfect game (IT DOESN’T EXIST).
Elyon has way too many flaws (that will never by rectified be Bluehole) to make those folks looking for the “can do no wrong MMO” happy once the honeymoon phase is over. ArcheAge Unchained brought back so many prior players and some new ones but that didn’t last long. Just the first few issues with the ArchePass caused some of them to quit again (that honestly was the worst reason to leave the game so quickly). The competitive + no-lifers type will always be way ahead; that isn’t going to change in Elyon where the game is designed to be mostly end game (earlier levels again are just tutorial where you transition to the end game grind from early level 30’s) where it is unlike most MMO’s where you shoot for hitting the level cap to begin the actual end game (1-30 in Elyon is merely to give a progression gauge and as a gating mechanic besides item level/gear score).
Again, a close colleague of mine was an early private investor at Bluehole and knows some details with the leadership and culture there which I’ve discussed in-depth with him; the most important thing for them ever since PUBG blew up was how to parlay that into some huge payday (none of it has worked and they’ve had trouble getting their IPO off the ground even after several corporate reorganizations including the last crazy one). Project W was a deal made prior to that in 2014 where Kakao Games invested in Bluehole to make this game and in return, receive the publishing rights (and probably a higher percentage of the shared revenues) in most major regions (Korea, NA and EU, Oceania). TANGENT TIME: A lot of things have changed since then including the game itself (have no idea how Kakao Games leadership really feels about that). There was obviously pressure to finally launch (Kakao wants to see a return on their investment plus they are no longer the publishers for Black Desert Online; no matter how anyone wants to spin it, the contract between developer Pearl Abyss and Kakao Games was NOT renewed by the former since they wanted to take back control of their own game – why share revenues if you can self-publish which is what they’ve been doing in other regions).
Bluehole would love to see another PUBG happening but it’s not going to happen with Elyon (not even the prior A:IR design was good enough to generate that level of hype; plus all beta tests for them had less than stellar feedback). Bluehole itself is a “listless” company. They tried over the course of the last few years to take a dart board approach to find the next success and they’ve all failed. MISTOVER is still hanging on as a niche (turn based RPG), but almost every one of their other initiatives (mostly mobile efforts based on the TERA franchise which Krafton/Bluehole ended up acquiring most of the formerly independent mobile studios that had licensed the IP to develop those titles) including Mini Life, has failed. Yes, TERA HERO (formerly TERA Frontier and published by Kakao Games), TERA: Classic (publisher Kakao Games ironically) and TERA: Endless War (Joycity) are in operation in various regions but both of the latter are developed by studios that Bluehole did not acquire (TERA: Classic is developed by Lantu Games while TERA: Endless War is developed by NDREAM). The point is that Bluehole itself has been fairly quick (when they were toying with the Krafton rebranding effort) to shutdown anything that doesn’t meet expectations or no longer makes sense for the current market (as was the case with closing down Enmasse though their inability to attract and maintain a decent library did not help). TERA HERO is developed by Red Sahara Studio which Bluehole acquired in 2018.
There’s a method to what looks like madness though with why Bluehole ended up acquiring some of these studios. Each had their own take on how to frame the TERA universe as well as art direction. TERA HERO (what was formerly known as TERA Frontier) was originally going to have the entire game world from the PC/Console version recreated and the game play happening in the same time arc. Basically, Bluehole has various incarnations of the game assets already designed for Unreal Engine 4 through these companies designers (who by extension, are now part of Krafton/Bluehole). TERA: Endless War is a different beast though (a real-time strategic game utilizing the TERA IP). To be honest, Bluehole completely missed out on the MOBA craze where they could’ve milked this IP. The problem? That was before PUBG when the company was way too small and didn’t have that kind of resources to throw around (by 2017, they had given up with Devilian and had no direction with TERA). My point about this particular tangent is to highlight how even with a memorable franchise like TERA (created mostly by designers who are no longer at Bluehole), the current company has trouble finding further success with it. It’s almost like the designers who are working there now, are going through the motions of designing and production, but lacking in what it takes to give a title much needed personality. It’s a major reason why Elyon lacks some of these sensibilities in its entire design. Again, for players who really only care about being able to bash in their opponents head, they’ll thrive in Elyon.
Digressing, I can see this maintaining a niche following but nothing more (it would be buy, play, and then forget by a larger majority especially when the issues go unfixed over a period of time). The old game design with A:IR, at least offered a more interesting niche and had potential (especially if the entire combat system was revised the way it is now in Elyon). But as I noted higher up top, the game needs to be judged on its own re-designed merits. And that leaves us at the post-CBT impression/thoughts phase where the opinions vary widely. Don’t get me wrong. The game does have fun elements. I wouldn’t have stayed all the way to the end to record the ending event if the game did not have fun elements (like what happened with the first PC closed beta of Bless Unleashed or V4 where I logged out after half-an-hour). I just don’t see Elyon being a blockbuster. It’s been turned into this generic MMO that will serve its purpose as being a filler game for many of us who are already playing something else while being home for a smaller demographic who are fine with this niche title.
