This is new? S.U.N. and RMTing

November 8, 2006 on 8:54 pm | In MMO (Upcoming), General Gaming, Playstyles

As announced yesterday, Webzen, makers of SUN (and other games), will present "a new payment model".

Trouble is, it doesn't sound new at all.

From the press release:

WEBZEN Inc. (NASDAQ:WZEN), a leading global online entertainment company, today announced that the company will present a new payment model to its gamers in Korea for its upcoming online video game, "Soul of the Ultimate Nation." The highly anticipated game, which is currently in the open beta phase in Korea, will offer players free basic service in the market with optional in-game items and services offered for nominal fees, also known as micropayments.

How is this "new"? Is it new to Webzen? I would expect most new MMORPGs launching in Korea to be based on micropayments. To me, the question is how long it'll take before they start becoming the standard in the West.

Not that I think the few that are here now are representative of huge hits in North America. Space Cowboy, Archlord, Maplestory and apparently Everquest 2's trade-enabled servers all seem to have not yet gained serious traction in the U.S., or are reporting numbers in ways the usual gentries of aggragated ranting don't pick up upon. Can't blame the punditry of course. Most have been disliking microtransactions/RMTs since the days buying and trading Ultima Online gold was the big thing to hate.

Played this at E3 a bit. Except that you could set some fairly interesting parameters for the instances you enter, it seemed likely a prettier version of Guild Wars. I don't know what their business plan is for North America and Europe. But between the above announcement and their earlier one about partnering with Massive Entertainment to provide ingame advertising, another no-no for the veteran set, I wonder who their target player is going to be in the West.