[AO] Nexon Europe To Launch English Client for Atlantica Europe

After years of the successful service of Atlantica Online in the European market in the languages of French and German, Nexon Europe will launch an English client for the game. The new client will be launched alongside the upcoming Empires of Gold game update.

“The German – and French-based servers have seen enormous success and we look forward to echoing that throughout the rest of Europe”, says Marc Mehlitz, Product Manager, Nexon Europe. “Part of the joy of making games like Atlantica is bringing so many enthusiastic gamers together into one imaginative space. We’re thrilled that we can do that across Europe with the launch of the English service, while also providing a massive content update that will benefit existing players as well as new ones.”

I had for long been wondering why the English service of the game published by Nexon America was not more integrated into the European market since no IP block has ever been in effect for either of Nexon America or Nexon Europe’s services. This would mirror the setup which existed when Atlantica was still published by Ndoors Games and would have long allowed Europeans to play the game in English and would also give Americans easier access to the German and French clients.

 

[NXKR] Nexon Korea To Take Over Sudden Attack and Atlantica

Nexon is known by some Korean companies as the “cancer of the Korean gaming industry”. This is because Nexon has acquired at least one successful company in each of the past several years and has taken over the service of at least one of their new subsidiary’s successful games from another publisher. This has surely worked for Nexon as they remain Korea’s largest online game publisher by revenue and will likely become Korea’s first gaming company to generate of 1 trillion Won in revenues in 2011.

Past examples of this include Nexon’s 2005 acquisition of Wizet, the creators of MapleStory, and in 2008 when Nexon acquired Dungeon Fighter Online (DFO) developer Neople. In the case of Wizet, Nexon was actually working with them since 2003 as Nexon published MapleStory in Korea and Japan and was at the time preparing the game for a global release. However, with Neople, DFO was being published by NHN on their Hangame portal from its launch in 2005 to Nexon’s takeover in 2008.

Both of these takeovers have proved extremely profitable for Nexon as MapleStory is one of the world’s most revenue-making games and DFO has grown to have over 300 million players worldwide and set a recently eclipsed world record of 2.2 million concurrent users.

Nexon continued their pattern of strategic acquisitions last year as they acquired three companies, Atlantica Online developer Ndoors, Sudden Attack developer Gamehi and Everplanet developer Nclipse.

The results of the takeover of Ndoors is likely the most obvious to North American gamers as Atlantica Online has transferred publishers from Ndoors Interactive to Nexon America. It has been announced that Nexon will take over another game from NHN (after DFO in 2008). Starting this Summer Nexon will take over the publishing of Atlantica Online in Korea. Atlantica will become third game to be published by all four publishing branches of Nexon, after MapleStory and Mabinogi. Of course, this number should increase to four by the end of the year as both Nexon Europe and Nexon Japan take on Vindictus.

Gamehi is the developer of the first free online first-person shooter to enter the Korean market, Sudden Attack. Sudden Attack has truly done well in Korea where it holds the fifth highest concurrent user mark of 250,000. Sudden Attack has been published by CJ E&M on their Netmarble portal since its launch in July 2004. Well Gamehi’s publishing contract with CJ E&M for Sudden Attack expires on July 14 and Nexon will take over publishing of the game on that day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the original publishing contract that CJ E&M would have to handover the game’s database in the case of a service transfer. Therefore, unless Nexon can negotiate quickly with CJ E&M, no character data will be transferred between the two companies and all Sudden Attack players from CJ E&M will be forced to start over from scratch under Nexon.

It’s not just game transfers that have come as a result of Nexon’s acquisition of Gamehi. The development of MMORPG Dekaron 2 has been canceled as Nexon slashed Gamehi’s development team from 600 to just 200 in a move they describe as “strategic” and “conservative”. This was a huge shock to all Dekaron fans who were patiently awaiting Dekaron 2. The job cuts were not only as a result of the cancellation of Dekaron 2, but also were also due to the sale of Gamehi child company Hope Island to CJ E&M. Another change that came is the change of the Gamehi logo to a much better designed one in my opinion. The new logo also resembles the Nexon logo in many ways.

OLD Gamehi Logo Along With Nexon Group Logo

 

Awesome NEW Gamehi Logo That Looks Like The Nexon Logo In Lots of Ways

As far as Nclipse goes, I honestly haven’t heard much about them recently. Nexon continues to publish Everplanet in Korea and Japan and Everplanet made Msupdate’s Top 5 Nexon Games That Should Be Brought to North America. Maybe we’ll be seeing more of Nclipse in the near future.

[AO] ijji Players Can No Longer Log Into Atlantica Online

If you haven’t already heard the innovative and successful free-to-play turn-based strategy MMO Atlantica is making the transition to Nexon America tomorrow, March 30, 2011.

For quite a while, NHN USA has been channeling Atlantica on their ijji portal. This means that although the operators of ijji (NHN USA) do not publish the game, users have been able to log into the game using their ijji account, ijji holds a few exclusive events and ijji gets a percentage of the revenue made off of the game.  The actual publishers of the game’s North American service are Ndoors Interactive, a subsidiary of Nexon Corp.

Nexon has decided that when the game makes its transition and comes fully into their hands, ijji will no longer channel it. Therefore, as of 5:00PM Pacific (8:00PM Eastern), ijji service of Atlantica has been permanently discontinued and the website is no longer accessible. Ndoors Interactive users will have until 10:00PM Pacific (1:00AM Eastern) on March 29 until their service will go down permanently as the transition maintenance begins.

ijji users will be able to convert their ijji Atlantica accounts to Nexon accounts on March 30, 2011 in order to continue playing the game. Ndoors Interactive users, however, will have the option to log into their game using their Ndoors account information until April 26, 2011. Following April 26, 2011 only Nexon IDs will be able to log in to the game.

As of tomorrow Atlantica Online’s game website will be atlantica.nexon.net.

[AO] Migration Maintenance

Atlantica Online will be going through its final maintenance under Ndoors publishing on Tuesday, March 29, 2011. This is likely the largest and most intensive maintenance ever executed on Atlantica Online. The maintenance will begin at 5:00PM Pacific (8:00PM Eastern) and will last for approximately 11 hours. During this time, the website will be unavailable. You can join the Atlantica team on their Xfire Channel “Atlantica Online” for updates on their progress. The Atlantica team thanks you for your continued support and patience as they become a part of the Nexon family!

After they re-launch the website, you will be able to find Atlantica Online at
http://atlantica.nexon.net

[AO] Atlantica’s Migration to Nexon America Delayed to March 29

For the original post on the transition of Atlantica Online from publisher Ndoors to Nexon America, click here.

The transition of the global English service of Atlantica Online has been delayed and will now take place a week later, on March 29. This is in an attempt to make the transition “as smooth, simple, and efficient as possible”. The actual announcement from the Atlantica Online team is as follows:

Greetings Atlantians!

The Atlantica team is working hard to ensure that the move to Nexon is as smooth, simple, and efficient as possible. In order to do so and make sure this a positive experience for our players, we are postponing the transition to Nexon until March, 29th 2011 while we establish our new home. Until March 29, players will still be able to log in to the game as before. We will also hold an Xfire chat next week soon to address player concerns in regards to the transition. Stay tuned for details on the chat. We thank you for your patience, and we can’t wait to join Nexon starting on March 29th!

Sincerely,
The Atlantica Team

[AO] Atlantica Transfer to Nexon America Begins

I’m sick so it may take me a while to respond to comments and post the latest news.

It was announced last year that the Global English Atlantica Online team had transferred to Nexon America. Now this transition is going a step further as the announcement of the transfer of Ndoors accounts and Gcoins to Nexon America accounts and NX has been made. The account transfer period for Ndoors users will be from March 22 to April 19, but ijji users will be required to transfer their accounts on March 22 to continue playing the game.

For the transfer announcement click here.
For a Q&A and more details click here.

This will remain as the Global English service, meaning that any region without a local service (Europe included) will be able to log in through Nexon America. The Global German and Global French services have recently been taken over by Nexon Europe. The Global Portuguese service will soon be taken over by a publisher that I have never heard of before, Ignited Games. This leaves Ndoors publishing only the Spanish service, which I have a feeling will be transferred to a new publisher soon.