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

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Back when I was mostly unemployed and was filling up some of my free time as a beta tester for various games, I spent some time on one called Neocron, put out by a german company called Reakktor.
Since the servers were located in Europe, and thus a lot closer and lower-ping than most MMOGs of the time based on servers in california, it had a fair percentage of asian players.
As my knowledge of deutsch is limited to small amounts of yiddish and overexposure to "hogan's heroes" shows in my youth, I was flailing with the cultural gap, until the Asians showed up and made cultural gaps all around vastly more entertaining.
Perhaps not all that surprising, I hooked up with a group of players out of Singapore who spoke english as well or better than I, and they also played Phantasy Star Online, and sent me a key to try it out.
I was utterly lost. It was pretty, although the graphics were a bit simplistic in a Nintendo kind of way. Even with fan translations of the menus, I had no hope of getting immersed in it. If they've arrived in the States, it's through the otaku culture or they've had a major overhaul to be english-friendly.