Looking back on the past year, from the stunning debut of "Gran Saga" to "Odin: Rebellion" and "Heaven W" taking over the C position. At a time when global developers are collectively increasing the number of collecting RPGs, there are still many excellent next-generation MMORPGs in the Korean market.
Now, less than a month into 2022, South Korean companies have once again brought their best MMO. On January 13, the dark LIKE "Undecember" released by LINE Games and developed by Needs Games was officially launched.
It is worth mentioning that Undecember is also a cross-platform game. At present, in addition to landing on the iOS and Android side, the PC side of the game has only launched LINE Games' own game platform "Floor" for the time being, and Steam still shows that Q1 in 2022 will be launched.
In GameLook's view, in the empty window period of "Diablo: Immortal" online, Koreans took this dark LIKE new tour to the field first, which obviously greatly met the expectations of dark fans. It should be known that the number of game reservations once exceeded 3 million, and even aroused the attention of overseas players. Although it is currently only online in South Korea and does not support Chinese, there are still many community discussions such as domestic Tieba and B station.
In the small and large, "Undecember" can be said to be the first blockbuster product in South Korea at the beginning of 2022.
Unfortunately, the game suffered an "accident" on the day of launch: on the first day of service, the game was maintained for a long time due to server instability. According to the statistics of some players, as of that afternoon, the game had a total of 13 explosions. Today, undecember has achieved no.1 on the Google Play free list, but no best-seller list; fortunately, after two days of dominating the iOS free list, after gradual troubleshooting on the afternoon of January 14, the game has ranked 7th in the iOS best-seller list.
A combination of next-generation MMOs and vintage-flavored darkers
Intuitively, Undecember is set in a fantasy world of dark winds: twelve gods born in the light, making this world more and more prosperous. But with the arrival of the thirteenth evil god, players have to embark on a journey to prevent the resurrection of the evil god giant snake - in fact, it is already quite dark from the worldview setting, not to mention, the game also inherits the art style of "Diablo 2".
You know, even Blizzard has adopted a "colorful black" that is more in line with the aesthetic preferences of contemporary players in "Diablo 3", and achieves a brighter picture through the increase of saturation. But Undecember chose to return to the classics, paying a direct tribute to Diablo 2.
After all, the continuous topic from the "Diablo 2 Remake" is enough to illustrate the core appeal of most players. It is also understandable that although Undecember uses UE4 to create next-generation quality, it still continues the spooky and depressing picture sense, full of retro flavor.
It can be seen that the game not only still follows the classic red and blue bottle design, but also has a relatively low color saturation. Even the special effects that have always been easily regarded as "light pollution" attacks have a significantly darker color than blood. GameLook found that even the colors and fonts of the damage value numbers are not as colorful and exaggerated as many MMOos on the market, and the overall UI design maintains a very distinct Dark 2 feature.
Of course, thanks to Unreal Engine's expressive power, Undecember also loses its graphical details and detailed character modeling. It not only retains a strong "dark taste", but also more in line with the aesthetic standards of next-generation players. What's more, the game is a cross-platform game that requires high-quality graphics to take into account the visual experience of PC players.
Also in order to further take into account the aesthetic changes of contemporary users, especially Korean local players, Undecember also retains the tradition of Korean-style MMOs - "pinching faces" and the nine-headed "perfect model" style character. Behind this design, it is obviously to ensure that while attracting the attention of dark fans, it can also win the favor of local young players.
Enhance BD fun and return to the original DarkLIKE
In fact, the reason why players still have a crush on Diablo 2. In addition to its gems, runes and other equipment enhancement methods are almost used to this day, it is also the first time that the game has introduced the concept of skill trees into RPGs. Since then, having a multi-genre BD gameplay has become one of the most prominent labels for dark games.
Similarly, Undecember inherits this distinctive feature. However, unlike the general Dark LIKE, there is no specific class in the game, and players are purely through a variety of equipment and inlaid with different rune skill sets to build their own characters and genres.
Specifically, the game's freely combined fighting style depends mainly on three of the core mechanics.
First of all, the player will initially only activate the three attributes of strength, agility and intelligence, which will also directly affect the subsequent outfits, such as the use of swords to use magic and so on. After reaching a certain level, you can use talent points to gradually activate the zodiac signs, further creating a rich genre.
This is followed by runes, which use different skills by activating thousands of runes. Link runes can then be activated further, gaining abilities such as more powerful damage, AOE range, etc., which are more like the skill mechanics of Diablo III.
Finally, the equipment system, especially by decomposing the equipment for enhancement, directly affects the direction of the current genre and creates a direct exclusive role.
It is worth mentioning that kryptonian points such as the rune system and talent bonus point reset in the game have been replaced by ways that can be obtained in the game. It is reported that the main paid points in the game are only focused on pets and clothing, and the buff effect is limited, which maximizes the essential needs of the dark player's "brush brush".
For the same reason, "Undecember" not only launched multiple platforms, but also canceled the current MMO popular automatic combat, insisting on letting players operate by themselves, further amplifying the fun experience of the game.
On the day of the unbelievable opening of the service, the potential for catching up with the latecomers is still there
Long before the game went live, the number of gamer reservations exceeded 3 million. Linked to south Korea's population of about 50 million, equivalent to 6% of the country's people booked "Undecember", for this 6% may be domestic players and peers have no concept, if you calculate according to 6% of the Chinese mouth, it is equivalent to the number of reservation users of about 70-80 million, almost equivalent to the "dungeons and warriors" of "eighty million warriors".
With its high attention ratings and distribution by communications giant LINE, Undecember can be called South Korea's first new year's work. However, it is such a highly anticipated potential new work, but immediately after the launch of the service encountered a big embarrassment.
After 00:00 South Korean time on January 13, long-awaited players poured into the game, but unexpectedly found that they could not access the server. It wasn't until 1 hour and 30 minutes later that the game didn't allow mobile players to enter, and there were still many snatches. In the game, there are also bugs such as the flashback of the game when switching skills.
The game team began a dozen server maintenance sessions throughout the day, with the first day of maintenance lasting more than 13 hours. In this regard, the official explanation is that the number of user visits is too large, and the server crash caused by overseas IP attacks, and an announcement was issued that overseas IP will be blocked. Later, some domestic players pointed out that logging in using the Floor platform is likely to be banned.
The image is from the player's summary
However, this empty explanation and handling method was not recognized by the players, and many people said in the official community of the game: "In the case of less than 10,000 people online at the same time, the server will be interrupted and there is obviously a problem." Some people even said bluntly: "The official is not forcing the launch of a game that is not ready to go online." ”
In GameLook's impression, not long ago, a domestic two-dimensional game had a bug problem repeatedly. But this is after all from the hands of small and medium-sized teams, as a communications giant LINE should not have technical problems. Is there a possibility of a cyberattack, as the authorities say?
First and foremost, it is likely that the target will be Japan, which has historically been at odds with South Korea. But local players don't favor MMORPGs, and Japanese game companies don't have a motive to do so. From another point of view, the game is only launched locally, and the greater probability is due to conflicts between Korean companies, but it is impossible to know who it is.
The only thing that is certain is that the storm had a serious impact on Undecember.
It can be seen that the game has dominated the google play and iOS free list consecutively, but the best-seller list results are not satisfactory. That is to say, a large number of players downloaded the game but could not log in, this time the high popularity failed to convert into "real money and silver" in time, the game not only missed the most important launch dividend, and even the early massive advertising delivery also hit the water, which can be described as "losing the lady and folding the soldiers".
However, with the further restoration and optimization of the official experience, the current popularity of the game is gradually heating up. What's more, there is still a lot of time to go before the real blockbuster , Diablo: Immortality , is released this year. Taking advantage of this time lag, Undecember, which has full potential and is gradually regaining its status, still has the possibility of preempting the market segment ahead of schedule.
In the longer term, Undecember is also another cross-platform MMO built by Unreal Engine after Odin: Rebellion and Heaven W. This undoubtedly marks that Korean MMOs have preempted the world and completely entered the era of next-generation cross-platform games. As the market performance continues to rise later, the game is more likely to take over the two "predecessors" and set off a new trend of dark LIKE first.
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GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
Global vision / depth is material