NCTY – SUN – Open Beta

On 4/18/2007, Soul of Ultimate Nation (SUN) will start open beta. It is going to be a free-to-play game. It is made by Webzen of Korea.

Like all Korean games, the graphics are gorgeous. Its PC requirements seems to be even higher than that of Ntes’s TX2, especially now that Ntes has optimized TX2 pretty well.

Unlike most other foreign games, SUN is not an old game. There were virtually no review for this game anywhere. Webzen doesn’t seem to plan to release this game to the west in any hurry.

Did Webzen make this game with Chinese market foremost in mind? Interesting.

That will mean this game will have to go through what Ntes’s games or Sohu’s TL have to go through. It will be pretty rough (with lots of bugs) at the start.

By all indications, SUN will be extremely hot starting open beta.

But will Chinese players tolerate a foreign game that is buggy at the beginning? Probably yes.

Will SUN fades quickly from the scene like most foreign games in China? Well, that depends on whether Webzen and NCTY can work together to provide bug fixes and adds new features quickly. The logistics to do that considering that NCTY and Webzen are not just in different cities, but different countries. Different companies also have different bureaucratic hurdles that needs adjustment to work together. The odds of these two working seamlessly together is not very high (not saying these are not two good companies).

The other recent NCTY game, Guild War, seems to fade rather quickly. I predicted quick start for this game. I also predicted it will fade quickly for this game.

It looks like I was right on both counts.