Krafton’s MMORPG subsidiary, Bluehole Studio has been greenlit for that rumored initial (and tiny) R&D group (this TERA 2 project was led by one of the original designers of TERA, Kang Sang-wook) to move forward with the development of TERA 2.

It seems that Krafton chairman Chang Byung-gyu (one of the original founders of Bluehole Studio as the company was originally known as before rebranding to Krafton and creating a studio subsidiary with the Bluehole Studio moniker) was partly instrumental in approving this since the original TERA plus the MMORPG genre, is something of an important piece of nostalgic history for him.

Job listings appeared on Krafton’s careers section (not even codenamed as they’ve done often times in the past) with 7 positions looking to be filled (at this time). From those descriptions, the engine will be UE5 while the game itself, will build on the legacy of the original including its non-targeted action combat.

Outside of that, my former colleague (who knows a few insiders) said they heard nothing about this as well beforehand. We’re guessing part of this is due to Krafton CEO CH Kim’s wild and unflattering testimony with Subnautica 2; the usual decision making would end with him but it seems the chairman’s desire to see something done in that MMORPG space was key.

IMHO, this still highlights the dysfunctional organization of Krafton as a whole. The fact that Kim hasn’t been terminated after his testifying to relying on ChatGPT for advice on Subnautica 2, says a lot (they are ok with someone who looked like a fool to continue running the company). But it does also lead to questions of how committed Krafton will be to this genre which they’ve really stopped investing in for several years now.

I guess one thing to pay attention to is their investor relation material (to see if they begin pushing MMORPG development again in that material).

Bluehole Studio (the MMORPG subsidiary studio) has only TERA Console; something that hasn’t been receiving any major new content besides tweaks to the console specific designs (its weapon, armor, and accessory systems were forked from what existed on the PC version). As I’ve written before, I’m surprised it is still in operation in 2026 (I know I shouldn’t be since this is KRAPTON after all).

Which brings things back to the complete shutdown of TERA PC back in 2022. If they knew back then they would be developing a TERA 2, I doubt they would have shut it down completely that way. It still represented the game that from a historical purpose, sustained the company until PUBG. As I noted before, this would’ve been like Nexon killing off the original Maplestory, Webzen killing MU, or NCsoft killing Lineage.

Myself, I don’t trust Krafton’s c-suite and their ability to make great decisions (without consulting AI — snark somewhat intended). Part of this TERA 2 project seems to be a “passion” project by one of the last few remaining veteran designers at the company who understands the ethos of that MMORPG genre from that late 2000’s through 2014 timeframe before the VC money shifted over to mobile development. Nonethless, this is years away from seeing the light of day.

Myself, I’m not expecting much (given how Elyon turned out from its original Ascent: Infinite Realm concepts and design and how it was shutdown quickly). Heck, I don’t know if I’ll still be interested or even alive by the time it launches.

Tangent: One of the topics I’ve covered and have been involved with covering (not recently though) was the leak of several builds of the server binaries for TERA PC. TERA PC itself had been shutdown completely back in June 2022 but prior to that, the signed server binaries for a quality assurance build of v92.03 had been leaked from their then Taiwanese publisher, HappyTuk.

I myself have setup and have the various leaked builds running locally in what I refer to as TERA Offline. This is for my own use and I’ve put out written tutorials in the past with instructions on how to set one up. There was a time when I was active on RZ. My own interest is from the games preservation point of view. I personally do not agree with how many have chosen to running these private servers though (taking the hard work done/shared freely by folks who simply want a method for preserving the game).

As I’ve written before, this whole private server administrator demographic tends to be run by individuals with control freak tendencies that usually were heavily critical of the usual game publishers, but end up doing things the same way/even worse (without the necessary security expertise, without the budget, and without the infrastructure). To make matters worse, a few of these private servers were compromised.

I also learned that one of the earlier and largest TERA private servers (MT: The Dream aka Menma TERA) had shutdown earlier in 2025. I know there had been earlier rumors of them having received a cease and desist (nothing that had actual official confirmation though). Shortly after, they rebranded from Menma to MT: The Dream which sort of lended credence to the C&D.

They had also begun heavily modifying the v100.02 build (in terms of a lot more client side assets for cosmetics as one example) and well, taking money for this stuff. If there is anything that will draw the ire of corporate legal when it comes to their intellectual property, it’s monetizing it and well, when it is one of the larger private servers, a company will tend to take notice because there is a point where they do need to legally protect their IP in order for their copyrights, trademarks, and patents to remain valid.

Krafton has surprisingly not taken a much more hostile stance to this (besides early in the 2020-2021 timeframe when they tried to play wack-a-mole takedown notices with repositories that hosted the leaked server binaries). But for what is the first time, they publicly acknowledged the existence of TERA PC private servers AND put out a notice from an official console (in this case, their TERA console account; TERA console is operated by Krafton).

Those who are connected online may know about these private servers. But there is a much larger demographic out there which do not follow this stuff and have no idea that past shutdown, such a thing existed (or even a way to run everything themselves to at least have an offline setup which they can run). It’s often times why companies don’t acknowledge their existence because once they do, people who may not have known, now know (and can therefore search and end up learning).

I’ve barely written about the console version post PC shutdown because it’s been mostly a low effort endeavor by Krafton (no actual new changes and often times, lot of downtime and little communication). I’m surprised it is still running in 2026 (I now wrongfully predicted it wouldn’t make it past 2025). Any contractual obligations on the console side would’ve expired in 2025; it’s the last remnant of the MMORPG’s they once developed.

But this short notice confirming that Krafton has not come to any sort of agreement with any private server operations (contradicting that particular German private servers assertion that they did have an agreement), is an interesting one. I mean, it is good to finally know that Krafton does not have any sort of backroom dealings that gives any of these private server operations legitimacy (unlike NCsoft finally granting an official license to a fan operated private server for City of Heroes). Back after TERA PC officially closed, I recall at least one of the private server projects (long dead) that was making some noise of trying to talk with Krafton.

I already knew that something like that would be a no go because it doesn’t matter if you have contacts (unless it’s an actual executive in South Korea that has decision making authority). I know someone who still has contacts and for the most part, MMORPG development is dead inside the company (and will just leave that part at that). What I can write is that executives there don’t care about trying to establish some form of licensing agreement because there is administrative/legal overhead involved with that.

Some of it makes no obvious sense when they killed off TERA PC completely but TERA console (PlayStation and Xbox) remains running (not like it has large numbers). The simplest way I have been looking at it is that Krafton did not want to self publish the PC version because it would’ve meant operating the business front end (for several different regions with their different requirements), the payment flows, and the servers whereas with the console version, that front end and payment flow is handled respectively by Sony and Microsoft while they have someone managing the server which I believe is cross play).

At one point, there were likely contractual agreements (within a 7 year time frame) with both Sony and Microsoft and potentially a development partner on the console side that kept them from pulling the plug. That window has now passed and given this notice by their TERA console account, it doesn’t seem like the console version is going away anytime soon. But then again, this is Krafton where not everything makes logical sense.

It’s for this exact sort of reason(s) why I don’t do this. At the end of the day, these private servers are run by individuals who may not possess all of the technical/security background. Additionally for some other reason(s), a few of these private servers (not speaking solely of the TERA ones) are run by folks who tend to have “power trips”. I mean the irony is often times humorous when you see a “big production” angle behind the site (like what publishers with their bigger budgets try to also do).

I often times see tag lines like “operated by those who were fans and loved the game” (again, not just TERA PC). I’m the guy who is a realist. Just because I love the game, doesn’t mean I would go out and run one of these just because of that. I’m human and also just one person who has opinions on how to run things. If a larger entity (that had to operate more impartially based on the contract with the actual developer/license holder) couldn’t run it successfully, what makes anyone think a bunch of fans without all of those resources, could do it any better (besides that initial honeymoon phase)?

Regular publishers while not completely free of internal drama/corruption, generally have to operate without that kind of human drama element. Why? Because as part of the larger gaming industry (where the “six degrees of separation” can often times be much smaller than that), personal reputation does matter at those lower levels. With these private servers, you have small groups of individuals who can do what they want to do (playing the role of the all-mighty king of the kingdom) including favoritism and overall corrupt behavior.

But I digress. I could only gleam what I could gleam from the TERA sub-Reddit (I am not a regular user of that site and I usually take much of what is posted there with a grain of salt). I also didn’t want to spend too much time on it (just writing this post is taking time I cannot get back). I occasionally post (once every few months at most) but similarly, I don’t expect anyone to take what I write with any sense of importance as well (I’m not there to try to gain whatever individuals try to garner there; to each is own).

The short version is someone or group, has been hacking various TERA private server sites and dumping some of that user data online. The TERA Classic private server had garnered recent attention since one of the bigger MMO streamers on Twitch, started playing/streaming it. That resulted in some renewed coverage with YouTube content creators (which naturally attracted further attention to this private server). Potentially some of the background behind these attacks might have been due to the un-ethical behavior of the server owner. I really don’t care at this point (IMHO, one should ALWAYS be wary of any private server and know that it could be rug pulled even faster than what regular publishers constantly do).

Now the source of the files for these private servers are publicly available knowledge (well, actually mainly to those who keep up with some of it). It’s the release of the v31.04 server files earlier this year. With all of these officially signed server binary releases, one part of the system had to be filled in by others. That part, the TERA API (which provides a lot of the glue for things like account management, launcher services, patching, front/backend integration) was written from scratch by someone in the RZ community. His abilities are solid (he’s also the one who patched out all of the DRM checks in specific binaries) and he open sources the API code. Thus anyone can inspect that on top of having a good knowledge of how the entire official backend server/services works (and can thus end up learning where the attack vectors are for exploiting things).

While the passwords in the database are hashed, that isn’t the primary issue (as it is to everything else when it comes to personal information including anything related to donations). It’s easy to say none of that actual personal information was part of the breach (“like trust me bro… I’m running this pserver and taking donations to run it without any proper authority/licensing from the original IP holders” <- more on this later). Anyone who takes these private server releases and tries to operate a public facing private server without having the proper understanding in online security (and not further hardening the base account management system provided as well as the server environment), is going to be a target (especially if that server becomes a higher profile one as what happened with it gaining some attention in the streaming and content creation realm).

Guess what? Most of these player facing private servers take this freely available work performed by others to try and make some money off of it, but are run by individuals unqualified to handle every part of what industry publishers normally have to take care of/consider. I do understand some enjoy having their ego stroked when being the private server owner, but in this case, whatever was happening seemed to have gone awry all over the place.

As it was with official TERA PC when it was still alive, some folks have gone on to make meme videos about this situation. Drama begets drama unfortunately. I dislike drama (gaming ones are the worst so I try not to spend too much time on that). I used to get a laugh out of some of them but usually found many annoying. I’m just going to link this one since it captured a bunch of game chat and Discord messages about how the game issues have been handled. I of course cannot vouch for the authenticity of all those messages BUT parts of it looked like how the official game was (in-game chat toxicity, forum post toxicity, other site toxicity). There is also some highly racist BS which is also the NORM for many of these MMORPG’s including TERA PC (when it was alive officially). In short, it looks all believable (nothing surprising which kind of highlights the lengths some will go through when they think they are really that much smarter than everyone else, only to have their reputation handed to them on a golden platter). I guess it is “classic” TERA in many ways (freakin idiocy filled DRAMA). And this one is taking place in a private server setting… how appropriate.

The wildest part in that was the portion about reaching out to KRAFTON for some kind of licensing deal (to redo things in UE4/UE5 or the in-game shop cosmetics). Seriously? I was kind of joking noting that earlier. So you have a couple of $million US laying around and want to negotiate some form of licensing agreement to use the TERA intellectual property? I mean after the original onslaught of mobile gaming developers working out licensing deals (of which they are all dead now), not one PC game publisher has come to this “brilliant” realization that there might be money to be made from a portion of the intellectual property (because guess what, the game would still be ALIVE today with Krafton’s Bluehole Studio subsidiary; the one in charge of MMORPG’s, would still be developing the damn thing). I remind about Krafton’s Challenges again. I seriously don’t know what goes through some of these peoples minds at time (oh yeah, they know how to roleplay king).

Is there a lesson to be learned in all of this? Of course. Games like this DIE for a reason. I now look at it as equal share with the developers, the publishers, and the player base all contributing to this (and todays greed infested gaming industry really makes everything far worse). Private servers are no different. Be very wary of any private server (or at least, be careful with your personal information). It’s one of the reasons why shortly after it was announced that TERA PC (Krafton) was officially ending development/closing, I began noting to others about the ability to grab the retail files (that had been released at that time which was v92.03 and v100.02) and having the option of running it themselves. The target was mainly those who really just wanted the means to experience their characters and the game world in some fashion (or maybe the ability to play with their friends). And I did manage to hit some folks (but that knowledge continues being buried as each year goes by).

Finally, I’ve long had this blog set to reduce its visibility to search engines but I’ve made a conscious decision to unset that at least temporarily such that maybe some searches will eventually see some of those postings (regarding the game preservation angle and these TERA PC server binary releases plus my TERA Offline postings).

The few videos I have on my YouTube are never going to end up in the algorithm, plus you need to use the right search terms for them to show up near the top of the (relevancy) results. I know that RZ shows high up with the proper search terms in the main search engines (something like “tera private server” will tend to show some of the actual private servers first but “tera private server files” will put RZ at the top).

However, I believe it’s a bit overwhelming for the average reader (especially if they aren’t technical) on where to start on the forum once they click into it. Regardless, the main hope is that more are able to learn they can run and setup something themselves if they are not interested in the multiplayer aspect with others/guilds (like what I do).

Uhm yeah. Wake me up when we see some serious resources backing this.

There’s some key takeaways from this… currently just 4 people; it’s a small team basically comprised of a few veterans who have been with Bluehole since the early days, worked on TERA, and who did not like how TERA PC’s development came to a close. Until Krafton PR (KRAPTON) puts out an actual loud throated corporate press release message, glitzy cinematic trailer on a video site, AND MMORPG development is once again noted in their investor relations material, I’ll remain skeptical about this.

Krafton itself wound down investing in MMORPG development long before Elyon was shutdown (I mean what Ascent: Infinite Realm ended up turning into and how Elyon was so bland kind of highlights things). The company lost a lot of that design expertise well before 2020 (TERA development also being treated like a design bootcamp for interns since at least the latter part of the prior decade). It’s been mainly PUBG.

The Bluehole Studio subsidiary (the one that held their MMO IP’s has been basically hanging on by a thread since it’s currently only TERA Console; that seems to held together by duct tape).

Bluehole founder Chang Byung-gyu is still the company (Krafton’s) chairman and probably still has some personal nostalgia for those earlier years when TERA was the companies main revenue source. At the same time, Krafton is publicly traded now on the KOSPI and has to deal with actual non-private shareholders unlike the past.

Besides the Subnautica 2 drama, Krafton also recently acquired Eleventh Hour Games for the ARPG Last Epoch (which kind of has part of that player base naturally concerned). The current team is being given independent control but I think we all know how that works over time.

I’m familiar with Krafton’s acquisitions in the past; the old Bluehole Alliance stuff which eventually morphed into the Krafton Game Union, and later Krafton CI (Creative Identity) before they gave up on that whole thing. Eventually the senior/leads get involved with those projects and well… basically most every acquisition made has not fared well. Krafton Challenges (aka FAILURES) exemplifies this (it is more relevant/funnier when you replace all occurrences of the word challenge with failure/fail). BTW, they failed to include MISTOVER (this was a buy to play turn based RPG Krafton quickly abandoned development on after launching in 2019 – they finally delisted it from Steam and Nintendo 3 years later).

Anyway,that arrangement basically created subsidiary units each responsible for their own P&L but would also allow cross utilization of resources. Bonuses were pretty much based on performance of those individual subsidiaries (PUBG personnel for example would be reaping the bulk of the bonuses given how well it has done). No surprise you will have morale issues in other units with that type of structure…

Here is where the irony exists though. One of the companies earliest acquisitions was Ginno Games (Bluehole Ginno) for Immortal (what became Devilian). One of Ginno Games co-founder is Chang-Han Kim (who is now Krafton’s CEO); he was also the CTO and executive producer for this game they were developing since 2009. Immortal was a Diablo inspired title that became an MMO-ARPG. Bluehole’s official acquisition in 2014 overhauled that with assets from TERA; the game releasing in South Korea in 2014 to large fanfare.

They inked publishing deals with Trion (NA/EU), GoodGames (Southeast Asia), and NHN Hangames China. Thailand launched in May 2015 while a heavily modified/forked version was published by Trion in December 2015. The Chinese version never launched. Meanwhile back in South Korea, NHN Hangames was pulling back on their PC portal and refocusing on mobile (VC funding shift in 2015). September 2015, Devilian and TERA PC’s publishing with Hangames ended. TERA was picked up by NEXON but Devilian had no takers so Bluehole Ginno acquired the player data from NHN with the plan to restart (this never happened).

Instead, Bluehole Ginno had signed a large global deal with GAMEVIL to do a Devilian Mobile. PC development in South Korea ended as they worked on this mobile version (which was a mess because the other co-founder, had this misplaced idea that creating a mobile version from the PC code base would be trivial). Only a small skeleton team remained to service the Trion fork (and those updates were slow in releasing and half-baked buggy).

Devilian Mobile did end up launching in the fall of 2016, did the usual mobile front loaded cash grab, and ended up shutting down by November 2017. The PC versions shutdown in March (Trion) and May (GoodGames though their server had been mostly offline for the 6 months prior due to technical issues) 2018.

This particular studio (Bluehole Ginno was on the ropes but Chang-Han Kim pitched a bunch of ideas (in blindfold, throw dart at board, and see what sticks fashion). One of those was talking with ARMA modder Brendan Greene (PlayerUnknown) for a battle royale type of game and the rest became history with PUBG. Bluehole Ginno which handled the development of PUBG eventually became PUBG Corporation (with Chang-Han Kim as its CEO), Bluehole, Inc restructured/rebranded to Krafton, and Chang-Han Kim was eventually made CEO of Krafton.

If you managed to read this entire thing, this is really the “readers digest” version of this. There’s way more drama involved. I personally have no confidence with Krafton doing any sort of follow on to TERA correctly because their entire corporate leadership and structuring is beyond a mess (let alone not having the kind of designers and team in place to properly do MMO’s, let alone people who had direct involvement with OG TERA to know any better).

Thus I see this article on Inven as hopium inspired versus something with the actual full backing of Krafton’s “leadership”. And I already know how CH Kim runs things (for the record, I believe on the software engineering side, he’s competent; he was a top KAIST graduate). I do question his overall business acumen though as CEO; that Subnautica 2 drama for example is cracked including Krafton’s corporate legal/PR messaging (it’s like those crazy PUBG lawsuits they filed in the past).

P.S. If any major industry site that covers gaming/MMO’s decides to cover this oddball posting from Inven, they REALLY ought to connect with media sources in the South Korean gaming industry and work with them to get clarification DIRECTLY from KRAFTON (this actually goes for ANY KMMO that plans to eventually makes it way to the west).

Why? You are NOT going to get the information from the subsidiary folks (they don’t get all of that from corporate in South Korea). There is a distinct business culture difference; you will need to speak to an actual South Korean (the ones who are actual management/authorized to provide a more accurate/source worthy note). This isn’t racist; it’s just how lot of the business organization is done in what is an ethnically homogenous country as most Asian countries are.

Note: I personally don’t believe this is even worthy of dropping an tip to MassivelyOP (they are the only site I’ve been willing to send tidbits to since their roots are in bloggers covering games). UPDATE: I missed their August 5th posting for some reason; they had posted a short regurgitation of the Inven article with absolutely no additional research/trying to reach out to some South Korean gaming media about this (sadly, they’ve become no different from what I had written about before).

For those who don’t know, just because something appears on Inven (KR or Global), does not mean the information is accurate. Sure, Inven is an influential site for gaming. These webzine postings are often times made to sound more important (word “reporter” used for example) because some of this is about “shoot first before verifying all sources for accuracy”. South Korea’s equivalent of Wikipedia covers some of this.

Basically, the tepid comments in response to this webzine post highlights it didn’t gain any traction (the lack of a KRAFTON press release regarding all of this is telling and as I noted above, I will only believe the company is getting back into MMO development again is if it is a huge part of their IR prospectus).

UPDATE: added the following videos (June 30, 2025 – 3 years post official closure)

v31.04 (May 2015) is the build that has many of the earlier game systems intact (Alliances, Crusades, Sky Castles) but obviously not the original Vanarch political system (since this was replaced with Exarchs in Alliances). This also has the original Island of Dawn starter zone questing (which was removed and changed to Stepstone Island in November 2015) and the 2013 character lobby.

TERA PC now has these different releases preserved which allows one to be able to experience the game (in those different incarnations) well after its complete closure back on June 30, 2022. As noted before, I’m a huge advocate for game preservation and having this ability to run such games after the developer and/or publisher terminates the development/operation of the game (more so given how most titles nowadays are run online as live service games utilizing this server/client architecture even if that game is mostly single player). With TERA PC, I have each of these releases working offline with the server running within a virtual machine and game client running outside of that (what I refer to as TERA Offline which I eventually intend to repurpose my 2019 Mac Pro to run them since it has 320GB of RAM).

Basically, this is actual proof that even an MMO can be run offline (just requiring adequate hardware). Tweaks can also be made to the configuration in order to reduce the usual multiplayer restrictions (like many party dungeons can be modified to allow for solo entry and play; maybe the more problematic ones are those requiring multiple players to deal with certain mechanics). Yes, it would be nice if it could all be rolled up into a much more easily configurable local binary but this is to be expected the server side components are meant to be able to scale.

As for v31.04, previously only the private server administrators of TERA CZ (now shuttered) and TERA Akeron (which has added their own updates over time) had a “close to classic” version of the game publicly available for play but also held tight reigns on the actual files. Given the small tidbits of information regarding this release (the official binaries and datasheets are from the Russian 31.04 with protocol 286406), that seemed to be close to what these other projects were based on (an early Destiny Games “leak”).

As I noted before, it’s rare to just have one leak of any type of official server binaries (and having knowledgable enough people who are able to remove all of the server side DRM to allow it to all run). With TERA PC, it’s an incredible treasure trove of FIVE different versions (31.04, 71.03, 92.03, 92.04, and 100.02) that have been made public since 2021.

UPDATE: On a related note, part of this also will also segue into the whole “Stop Killing Games” drama that has been happening recently in May/June 2025 (I’ve just been so out of it recently that I haven’t had the energy to even begin to write about that).

When I popped back into RageZone in November 2023, I also learned about the just released EME 71.03 version of the official server binaries/datasheets (this one was an accidental release which required the removal of a lot of the protective DRM (given that it was a production release which tied it to specific publisher hardware and an operational date period).

Spending a small amount of time in that older version, I also played around a bit more with the old prologue and getting the original Island of Dawn pegasus cut scene to work again along with verifying that the entire guild sky castle customization system worked.

I also tried for a short bit to get the old 2013 style character lobby screen operational again, but after running into issues with getting those assets to load, gave it a rest.  The last thing I want to do is spend way too much time on this where it turns into burn out.  This is much truer now that I have moved away from gaming.  With ArcheAge having closed recently, these offline setup(s) of TERA are now my last connection to that old gaming hobby.

As I did last year, I ran my offline setups to run around Arborea again for a short time, and then logged out/shutdown the virtual machines.  Even two years later, the official PC sunset hasn’t reached that point where nostalgia hits hard (part of that has to also do with having these official server binaries).  Which is why I want to be careful with spending too much time with this since I want to be able to experience those moments when I do get the desire to visit the game world again (like how it was on this 2nd year since the game came to that official end for PC).

He also created a virtual machine with everything in place (new Web API and Steer Box components) which allows most folks to get up and running really quickly.

Patch v71.03 is before the level cap was increased to 70, and has the older Arsenal gear system (basically Guardian through Heroic Oath).  It also has the older client UI.  It’s also just before the aerial Guardian Legion missions were added (so it has the skywhale performing its leisurely cruise over Val Aureum before exiting out to the abyss).  Yes, there are merits to getting older builds (more on that below).

While this one happens to be an older build, I look at each one of these as an archived preservation of the game (more so now that the PC version no longer operates officially).  Older patches for example have game systems that were disabled/had their functionality actually removed (Crusades and Alliances being prime examples) in later builds.  What I hope to see for example, are those builds (as well as the older ones with the Vanarch political system).  It’s all a long shot, but some of that exists (Akeron has the Fate of Arun Russian leak while TERA CZ is a hodgepodge of this and later patches; both of these are tightly held though).

I do have to say that it’s HIGHLY unusual to see a full official server build leak out from what was the NA publisher EME which was also a Bluehole subsidiary (given that relationship, plus the usual policies and protocols that are put into place to prevent such unauthorized leaks from happening or being deployed outside the publishers server environment).  Since it seems that this wasn’t a QA build (like 92.03 and 100.02), the Arbiter Server was DRM’ed (it had to be run on a specific EME system AND the year had to be 2018).  That check however was patched out by another TERA RZ community member (hsdn).  Sure, EME stopped operating back in 2020, but I am sure a lot of of its employees (especially ones who worked closely with the game/backend) have remained within the game industry where you just sign new NDA’s and contracts (trust is always an issue in this area so it’s not a good look for ex-employees that may have worked in this area when leaks of this this sort are out in public).

Bluehole/Krafton has kept a relatively hands off approach to this (only early on were they aggressive with the DMCA takedowns of file archives; I have a large mirror for example and would know about such actions).  And none of the private servers have been taken down via a cease and desist order (there has only been a C&D that Menma’s said they received, but that hasn’t been independently validated as originating from Krafton’s legal counsel).  I do know that IP stakeholders HAVE TO go through this legal process once they determine that someone else is using their IP to make money (doesn’t matter if it is under the guise of donations) since failing to do so, could result in them losing those intellectual property rights, service/trade marks, copyrights, etc.

What’s becoming somewhat clearer though is the relatively large number of leaked builds that are likely in the possession of people (most of the older pre-v50 patches seem to have come out of the old Russian publisher, Destiny Games, while the post-v88 ones have come out of the Taiwanese publisher, HappyTuk).  Only the HappyTuk (v92.03 to v100.02) and now this EME build have seen wider distribution.  The HappyTuk v105 QA server files remain tightly held similar to the Russian server files.

I do understand the desires of intellectual property owners not wanting that IP to be hijacked/used/profited from improperly.  Me as a regular person though, likes the whole archival/preservation aspect when it comes to running the official server binaries locally (like what I’m doing), or even having the ability to clean reverse engineer them (which the DMCA exemption allowed for back in 2018).  The fact that there are now three different official versions widely available, is just remarkable since it’s normally just difficult to have ONE completely functional version (case in point is nothing for Devilian or ArcheAge 3.x being in the hands of just a few people).

Today was the first time in 11 months that I revisited TERA (specifically my v92.03 setup).  I have long decided that while the 64-bit version (v100.02) offered a lot of performance benefits (especially asynchronous loading on the client), that way too much stuff was lost in that process.  One of the things I really wanted to work on re-enabling was the guild sky castle system (specifically changing the appearance).  Unfortunately, not even the base external assets load with the 64-bit client.  The same goes for trying to get the original Island of Dawn appearance to work (or even the old tutorial to run).

Before I stopped all work on this, I managed to re-enable the old prologue/tutorial system (below) and at least assign a sky castle (the default one) to my guild (though this being nearly an year ago, I’ve forgotten a lot of the specifics on how I did this) such that the guild logo is rotating around the base sky castle (above video).

The reason provided was posted on the official console web site.

EME (Krafton’s now shuttered publishing subsidiary) had handed over everything back in late 2020 (EME shutdown in November 2020 after the migration of data to Gameforge was completed) including the social media accounts.  Up until March 2022, updates were posted on this same Twitter account (see first screenshot).  So it sounds like they somehow lost access to it (and weren’t able to reverify to regain access).  However, their Facebook page also went silent in March which tells me this is more about a missing social media person that maybe didn’t leave that information when they left.

As for the console version itself, they continue to make incremental upgrades (utilizing designs and graphical assets from the PC version).  No one knows how long Krafton will keep the console version going (except it is realistically living on borrowed time when also taking into account what a veteran Bluehole developer said).

SIDE NOTE:

As for myself, I’m continuing to stay away from TERA (console, private servers and my own offline setup) after it’s official PC shutdown in June.  From April (after the closure announcement was made) until around July, I spent a lot of time with the leaked server code just to make sure it was known there was an avenue to continue experiencing the game outside of the inevitable deluge of private rogue servers (and there are a lot of them).  I did play for a short while on TERA CZ (since it was an older version) but stopped (until they address some of the shortcomings).

But I had no desire to continue playing on private versions of v100.02 since inevitably, you will run into the lack of actual new content (you can only slice and dice what exists with modifications, before the desire to login disappears).  TERA had already become a game that players would stop, and then return to on new updates (though as time went on, that amount kept diminishing).  The biggest challenge with TERA private servers is population.  Part of the end game content relies on a decent sized player population; you cannot have the same 35-50 people churning in between themselves to do that content.  That’s the catch-22 with too many private server developments with different ideas of what changes to implement.  It’s splitting what was an already small niche (let alone the NA/EU/Asia regional issues of where a server is co-located).

As for playing around with the offline setup, I wanted to take a break from that as well.  The quickest way to get burnt out from the whole thing is to continue being involved with it.  It’s been only 4 months since the official PC version shutdown.  I want a bit more time away from TERA in order to better appreciate it later, when I do decide to get back into it again.