MMORPG History - Korea Edition

The history of the MMORPG genre is difficult to piece together as many of the websites housing information are lost to time, wikis are fragmented, source links are unavailable, vintage footage is lost forever or in 240p...Which might as well be the same thing. I tried to piece together the history of the genre for Korea in this video and present it in a way that contextualises the importance the genre has had in the region. We might not always agree with the monetization practices that are the norm, but after researching this video I am incredibly impressed by how they were right there with us every step of the way making classics that are still to this day populated just as with our own classics. The south korean love for MMORPG is apparent and as someone who loves this genre, I appreciate it.

Hope you enjoyed the video.

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#mmorpg #history #korean

[alexandermelendez]

Phenomenal Video. It's funny how it started as a video about ArcheAge that ended up truning into a video about all of online gaming in Korea, because that's how connected it all is.
I'll always love ArcheAge and hate that it never got to live up to the full potential it should have, and so many people don't even know what could have been.

[kaiserbun]

Definitely do more of these Kira, I enjoy your content quite a bit but documentaries hit different. Excellent job, keep it up, I look forward to what else you will come up with.

P.S. DFO is bad ass, Glacial Master ftw plays so smooth.

[nicolasmandeville]

I love this kind of videos honestly, it's mad how some of these games are forgotten by many

[razatiger]

Maplestory was the second MMO I ever played and it launched my love for Korean MMO's. My first MMO I ever played was WoW but i was 10 when i started playing and couldn't always afford a subcription monthly as my parents didn't want to put their credit card onto the website every month. I found Maplestory and got hooked on Korean MMOs and have tried probably every single one of them from 2005-2015, the good and the bad ones, Stand outs for me were Flyff, Cabal Online as well as Silkroad Online, you can see a lot of Silkroad in todays Korean MMOs like BDO and Archage. Korea really did revolutionize the Free to play model of gaming.

It also helped that Korean MMO's of the past were very hardware friendly compared to their western counterparts. I remember being ecstatic about having 28fps on WoW in 2005, Maplestory could run on a toaster and so could many of the old Korean MMOs.

[lifewater]

It’s insane to see one of my favorite YouTubers covering Nexus TK. Been playing since I’m 16, I still play now and then.

[chasebliss]

Absolovely love this kind of content! It's always nice to learn new stuff about the thing you're passionate about and this video format where you did all the hard work for us to sit back, relax and soak it all in is amazing! Thank you for taking the time to put this together, it's much appreciated.

[dennissantos]

This was amazing and always a surprise that I know so little about the history of MMORPGs. Thank you!

[benpielstick]

Really great work on this. You caught several points I didn't know. This is the type of thing I can use professionally to help catch people up on a part of the genre they may not know much about, so I really hope you do more like this.

[Djehuty]

This is one of your best videos so far, informative and entertaining.
Deserves to have much more views :(

[DeenIsaiah]

This was a wonderful video to watch and learn about. Thanks for all the time you spent researching to make this!

[icepower]

This is awesome! Thanks for taking me back on a journey of my childhood, and back to the days of authentic and awesome MMOs!

Keep up the awesome work, and thank you for taking the time to make this a quality video! I wish more people would check this out, so you could continue to make great stuff like this! (Also, your Kickstarter videos rock as well!)

[visiblymoist]

I truly am sad that a lot of these new MMORPGS have just turned into places for showing the size of your wallet via a cash shop instead of worlds in which stories are told and made

[lukesheridan]

Thanks for this video - despite having played a number of Korean mmos, I was not aware of some of these, and had no idea the success of Dungeon Fighter. I hope both regions will come to understand that players have little patience for overly monetized mmos. A lot of people say they did not like subscription models, but for the most part the content was not being cut into smaller portions as a result as we see so often today.

[markmfbnstudios]

Very informative. Thanks Ash. I have always focused on NA based MMO. I was aware of several of the titles you spoke about but the sheer masses of people playing them surprised me. Nice video.

[BluishGnome]

You seem to have a knack for researching and presenting “academic” material in a clear and digestible manner. I hope you continue to produce this type of content in parallel to the scam mmo videos. While I enjoy hearing about Arya Realty, Earth 2, Chronicles of Elyria, etc., it has become a bit one note when that’s the only topic covered. Keep up the great work! Cheers!

[magnumbeef]

Really entertaining and interesting video! I learned a lot that I didn't know previously and would love to see you make either some deeper dives on topics you touched on here (like PC bangs and wider gaming culture in Korea) or to see this topic expanded to cover MMO/gaming culture in other markets (the West, Japan, Russia, etc).

I feel like you provided a deeper look at a gaming culture most of us in your audience know nothing about, while also skimming over some really interesting topics for the sake of brevity (not a bad thing, gotta satisfy that algorithm, I know). But it's clear you researched a lot for this video, and I'd love nothing more than to learn more from that research on this topic or the aforementioned related ones. Great job!

[megamcee]

I played Lineage 2 for ~10 years. It gave me 3 best friends of 15 years and taught me how to manage people and talk to them. It is also the only reason I'm interested in Ashes of Creation. I hope AoC becomes the same mmo for me as L2 was back then.

[boomermcboom]

Great video ! I'm learning korean at uni and been there as an exchange student, when winter came I remember spending so much time in the pcbang in front of my uni. Great time !

[staberinde]

Excellent video, I've been playing MMOs in the UK since Legend of Mir 2 came over so its very interesting to see the bigger picture that I wasn't aware of as a kid and how it affected gaming so widely!

[thelonesomewanderer]

dungeon fighter online is still a pretty fun game, i can imagine it being massively popular in korea. super fast paced, only issue i had with it was that i could feel arthritis racking up on my fingers with the amount of button mashing and finger dexterity you need for it.