South Korean MMORPG Developers finally have to learn from their mistakes

 

South Korea is pretty much the mainland of MMORPGs. Since the success of games like Lineage the South Korean MMORPG Market is booming and Online games are being developed en masse. However, there is something we really have to talk about. The Koreans refuse to learn from their past mistakes. Since more than a decade, Korean MMORPG developers are not capable of optimizing their games for the global market. Be it Tera, Aion, Blade&Soul, Bless or other eye-catching AAA MMORPGs.

 

So why do they invest millions into a game that ends up in an awful optimized lagfest? The answer is actually pretty simple. Koreans are used to play on High-End Systems at PC bang gaming centers. PC bang is a place where gamers can play online games for an hourly fee, so pretty much like an Internet cafĂ© just for gaming. Most of the PC bang systems share the same hardware and configuration which is why the developers don’t have to care that much about optimization in the first place. Even tho most Koreans own a PC and fast internet, they prefer PC bangs to meet new people and play games on the highest possible settings. In most online games, you also get special rewards like bonus experience, daily loot and other bonuses when playing on a PC bang system.

 

So it’s not really the Game engine which is to blame but the Korean developers for not optimizing their game for the global market from the very beginning. We can only hope that they will learn from their mistakes someday and realize how popular well-optimized MMORPGs are on the global market. Just compare non-Korean MMOs like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2 or Final Fantasy 14 with the Korean ones and you can clearly see a huge difference in terms of game quality.  What do you think? Will South Korea ever learn?