Atlantica Online

Taegon Kim who developed 'Gersang' and 'GoonZu', has recently produced 'Atlantica' which is attracting world wide gamers.

EnDoors (CEO, www.endoors.co.kr), developed and services Atlantica, introduced this MMORPG in Korea at the beginning of this year. The Atlantica has been chosen as an official game of the GNGWC 2008 which will be hosted by KIPA and sponsored by KT Corporation. Gamers from around the world will compete to become the winner of the Atlantica at GNGWC 2008.

In Atlantica, you will see present and past cultures of the world, including Egyptian and Mesopotamian, and you will be able to explore the Greek myths or the ruins of another ancient civilization. Unlike other MMORPGs, Atlantica applies battle systems and hired troops systems using a turn battle method.

The turn battle method allows gamers to play a battle between enemies and users including up to 8 hired troops in a 9 vs. 9 environment. It also has the option to make parties among 3 gamers so as to play a larger battle with a maximum of 27 vs. 27. There are a total of 18 troops currently available to choose from including troops with swords, spears, big cannons, or witches, and this feature will continue to be updated with other types of troops being added. Gamers can enjoy various strategic battles by combining these troops or by raising them.

Furthermore, a gamer can operate a city through guild activities and even make sub countries within their city. When becoming a lord, a gamer can obtain unique troops or items which are different from what other users have to choose from or can hire the people to empower his authority within the game.

The commercialized service of Atlantica commenced in January starting in Korea. Expansion is planned for services within Japan, China, the U.S. and Taiwan.

We visited EnDoors and talked to Taegon Kim, a program developer, about Atlantica which has received great attention from world wide gamers with its unique world aspects and systems.

▲ First of all, what is 'Atlantica'?

As you may guess from the name of the game, it is composed of adventures to find the lost city/land of Atlantis. The background consists of the real world, i.e. Eurasia and etc. For example, you can see the real landmark such as Angkor Wat and play in the background of these and dungeons found within the game. The most exciting part of Atlantica is a 'battle' which applies a turn method. In the turn method, you can control 9 members and make 27 vs. 27 large battles by making parties with other users.

▲ It is said that the background of the game is from all around the world and is dedicated to a global service. Can you explain it more?

The main character does not know that he is a descendant of Atlantis. But when facing various mysterious things and solving problems, he begins to acknowledge his connection with Atlantis and will set off to try to find Atlantica by solving puzzling clues from all around the world. So far, the background has been completed to include Eurasia, China, India, Europe Mediterranean, and Northern Europe, and will be extended to North America (Atlantica version 2.0). The final land of Atlantica will be introduced later on.

▲ Turn method is said to be a unique battle method. Can you explain it more?

I believe that the most important component of the game is the repeating battles or a strategic battle. Nowadays, most MMORPG consist of speedy actions. But we decided to make a difference for Atlantica and applied a strategic RPG. Thus, who can make an accurate plan or use an effective strategy is a key factor in Atlantica. The speed and the control of the game are important and that's why the turn method was applied to Atlantica, because I didn't think that a 1 on 1 would be enough of a strategic battle. There are various characters in the other popular strategic RPGs. Gamers can use those various characters to make various combinations and/or techniques. One character is not enough for these options. We took into consideration the combination of more characters or battle arrays, and after all internal tests, 9 was believed to be the most suitable number for these combination battles. That's why we made a turn method for the battles in Atlantica.

▲ Do you think that the update of contents are very important?

We know that it is very hard to bring users over from the existing MMORPGs, as it is not easy to keep up with the accumulated contents or invests for those games. That is so true. So we extended the number of developers to more than double, from 50 to 110. What we earned from the game is being invested for further development of the contents so that users can get more interesting and exciting facts out of the game.

▲ Atlantica was chosen as an official game of GNGWC. What is the contest process?

We have already developed a military match system in the game. With this system, gamers will participate in online preliminary contests from each country. The top gamers of each preliminary contest will join the local preliminary contest, and then the winners from the local contests will compete within the final match, which will be held in Korea. We thought about the GNGWC contest from the start of developing Atlantica. Eventually, it depends on how well we will be able to utilize the existing systems.

▲ How will it go in the final match?

The final match will be offline. The winners from each country will establish their equipment in the server and match for the game. The gamer winning 2 out of 3 games will be the final winner. We took fairness into consideration as well. Now we're discussing whether we will use the existing global server or get a new server for this match.

▲ Do you have any comments for gamers who are preparing for the match?

It's been more than 6 months since Atlantica was served. We appreciate many Korean users who love Atlantica. We are planning a large update in the beginning of next month. Also, we plan to expand into the overseas market and we believe that the GNGWC will be the perfect opportunity for us to show Atlantica to world wide gamers. We believe that Atlantica will be talked about in the world game market through this GNGWC match.

Atlantica will be updated to the 'Atlantica version 2.0' on 10th of July. The new land, North America will be introduced in Atlantica 2.0 and the main adventure scenario will also be added to Atlantis. In addition, the center of a field in the Northeast Asia will also be introduced. Other updates will include the dungeon, Tower of Babel, an Emperor's tomb for each country/guild, Caribbean phantom ships, new hired Spartan troops, the ability to exchange local products between villages, and increasing the top level to 120 and the equipment level to 120 level, etc.