This time, it's Ragnarok.

[randomness]

I'm in another Internet/Net Game parlor filled with high-school boys. This one's in Thailand, not Botswana. On one side of me is a kid playing some first-person shooter (could be Counterstrike), and on my other side is one playing Ragnarok, or some other similar Korean game.

Ah, the rattle of simulated automatic weapons fire. Brings back fond memories of Julian's basement, and those massive Halo-fests. :)

So, anyone ever play one of the Korean games? I'm under the impression they're like EverQuest or Asheron's Call, but I don't know this for sure. Have they arrived in the States or are they just all over Asia?

Comments

[bryant]

I suspect WoW will do quite well; Blizzard understands the Korean market and has great name recognition. Warcraft is a big brand in Korea.

And yeah -- the Korean market is currently somewhat larger than the American market for whatever reason. The top couple of Korean MMORPGs have > 1 million players. Nobody's hit that in the US yet. Mind you, the method of counting has to be somewhat responsible for this. You don't pay a monthly fee as a player; you pay by the hour in the PC Bang and the PC Bang owner pays a high monthly fee to cover anyone playing from his establishment.

if I have no monthly fee to pay I'm going to just leave my account "active" forever. It'd be interesting to see counts of the active player base; the numbers might come back into alignment then.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

The Economist's explanation for why the Korean market is so large is that broadband has really taken off there. They recently had an article on Korean online gaming which didn't really get into much detail about the games themselves.