ELOA – Interview with Webzen and Npicsoft
Hello, my name is Dennis Choi, and I’m the founder & CEO of NPICSOFT Inc., the developer of ELOA (Elite Lord of Alliance). It’s very nice to meet you, and thank you for this interview opportunity. Today I’m joined by Richard Sunmyoung Moon, Head of Global Business at WEBZEN Inc., the official publisher of ELOA in the West.
1. What would be the difference between Inspirit Online and yours ELOA?
[Dennis]: We understand that this situation must have caused a lot of confusion among players, who learned about ELOA and started playing it under the name of “Inspirit Online”. Inspirit Online is not an official version of the game. In fact, we have sent many official notifications to the corresponding company, declaring Inspirit Online as an illegal copy of ELOA. It is important to note that NPICSOFT has registered the global license of the brand name “ELOA”, along with its characters, etc. This includes licensing rights for North America, Europe, and other countries. However, a company called “GRE” is still continuing its unauthorized services. The developer of ELOA is NPICSOFT, and the official publisher of ELOA is WEBZEN. Inspirit Online is simply a copy of ELOA, a game developed by us, and will be considered as an unauthorized, illegal private server.
2. Are you not afraid about the competition between IO and ELOA?
[Richard]: No. After NPICSOFT discovered this illegal copy of the game, they sent an official notice to their Korean partner, Netmarble, in order to work together to put a stop to the unauthorized service of Inspirit Online.
While the official publishing contract with WEBZEN was still in preparation, NPICSOFT had also taken important advice from WEBZEN on this matter into consideration. Now that the publishing contract has been signed, WEBZEN will take every legal and business measure to manage WEBZEN’s license to the best of our ability. WEBZEN has been authorized to utilise all rights for the game’s brand and license to enforce adherence the lawful copyright of NPICSOFT, and will try our best to protect the license of NPICSOFT which was infringed without notice.
3. What are your thoughts about two identical/very similar games in one region?
[Richard]: After a thorough investigation, we came to the conclusion that Inspirit Online is using a CBT client from the Southeast Asia version of the game, which was leaked without authorization. Rest assured that we are not worried about WEBZEN’s official version of ELOA, as we already have huge amounts of content readily available for our beta test. This includes new maps and classes which have already been developed by NPICSOFT, but are not included in the leaked CBT version that Inspirit Online is using. We’re very certain that Inspirit Online, currently operated illegally, will never keep up with our content releases. We look forward to showing you the distinct differences between the original and copy, as we offer much better quality assurance for our live operations, and receive direct support from the original developers of ELOA. Because of this, the two games will show incomparable differences in terms of service stability, with superior security/server connections, and so forth.
4. Why did you buy ELOA? What was the key factor that convince you to make it happen?
[Richard]: We have evaluated the excellent gameplay of ELOA and the development capability of NPICSOFT very closely. In addition, NPICSOFT has lots of experience with services abroad, as well as a strong desire to expand its services across the North American/European areas. NPICSOFT was certain that this would be a huge benefit when combined with the 60 million members of WEBZEN.COM.
5. There will be also a Devilian Online soon from Trion Worlds, it's also a hack'n'slash MMO. It's not getting a little bit tight? What do you think?
[Richard]: ELOA has its own unique strength as a game, and offers completely different art direction and gameplay. You will immediately notice the anime style, which is a big and quite amusing contrast to this darker themed world. For example, riding a giant teddy bear as a mount is not something you see in many other games in the usually grim action RPG genre. The combat system offers 3 stances that you can switch between mid-combat, what we refer to as “triple action”, which is another completely unique feature to ELOA. Action RPGs are booming (again) since the release of Diablo 3, Path of Exile and similar games, and we are very confident that ELOA can offer a unique and easier-to-get-into experience, especially for beginners and the less hardcore-oriented MMORPG fans. That’s not to say that ELOA is not tailored at all towards the hardcore crowd; on the contrary, instance bosses and later end-game raids are quite challenging! For example, tactically switching between the three combat stances and learning their mechanics while fighting a raid boss is something that is surely easy to learn at the start, but hard to master later on. We are very confident that our players will have an excellent and unique gameplay experience with ELOA. As we have many content updates already in the pipeline, there’s already a long content roadmap laid out by the developers, so our fans should not be disappointed or bored at any point!
6. What are you going to add to the Item Shop? Is it going to be P2W?
ELOA will be “Pay for Convenience”, and items that change the visual appearance of your character will be available in the shop. We are aiming for convenience only, such as a slight increase in experience gain, visual transformations into NPCs or monsters, or ridable pets which can also be obtained in game.
7. Are you going to translate ELOA to Polish?
[Richard]: The first test will be in English only, depending on community feedback and demand we will try to add more languages in the future. You can help us grow the Polish community if your readers like what they see!
8. When the CBT/OBT will start?
[Richard]: The first beta test will start this autumn, with the official launch slated for the end of this year. We are currently looking at the Beta Test date to be finalized, but we will announce the upcoming schedule soon. So stay tuned!
Autor pytań - guru;
Tłumaczenie pytań; "przeprowadzenie wywiadu"; - Salek dla mmorpg.org.pl
Nie jestem tłumaczem z zawodu, więc małe pomyłki w pytaniach mogły się znaleźć. Mam nadzieję również, że zrozumiecie brak tłumaczenia na język polski. Stwierdziłem, że pomimo faktu, że doskonale wszystko rozumiem wolę tego nie tłumaczyć ze względu na to, że po prostu mógłbym przeinaczać w jakiś sposób pewne kwestie. Wrzucam to w oryginale. Mam nadzieję, że sobie poradzicie. Jeśli ktoś nie będzie w stanie poszczególnych rzeczy zrozumieć to służę pomocą.