Netease - FF2 - Expansion pact close beta

3/1/2007 is a big date for Netease. It is not just open beta for TX2, it is also an important date for FF2 (Fly for Fun 2).

Again, FF2 is a licensed Korean game that will be Netease's first free-to-play game. It may not be as important as TX2 or XY3 in term of revenue. But it is very important to indicate if Netease can compete in the area of Free-to-play games.

Fly for Fun had been in open beta for 2 years now. Netease has allows the players to play for free for a whopping 2 years.

But FF2 will be a completely new game. Every part of the game will be rewritten by Netease, even the game engine is written from the ground up. But before they come out with FF2, Netease will come out with a major expansion pact for FF.

But this expansion pact is no ordinary expansion pact. It will be powered by the brand new game engine that will eventually power FF2.

Therefore, this expansion pact will need to go through the close beta -> open beta cycle.

Tomorrow (3/1/2007), FF with expansion pact will go into closed beta. More than 50k players had signed up to participate in the closed beta. Will be interesting to see if the players like it.

From the behavior of this expansion pact, we can find out how stable is the underlining game engine. If the game engine is stable, FF2 will have a good probability of being a good game.

link:
http://ff.163.com/news/2007/02/1-3-20070228140000.html