webzen posts

It's been a long time coming but finally US residents can now sign up to beta test Huxley, the long-in-development sci-fi FPS MMO from developer Webzen. Sign-ups will last until May 20 and announcements on who will be picked will be made on May 27. The actual closed beta will last from June 3-14.

Meanwhile the game's official web site has added some new content while you wait for your beta test number to be picked. New screenshots and videos have been added to the site along with features like character descriptions, backstory info and a new forum for folks to chat about Huxley. So far there's no word on the game's released date.

How long have we been waiting for Huxley? A long, long, long time it seems. The sci-fi MMO shooter from developer Webzen was one of the first games that announced it would be using Unreal Engine 3. Today there have been tons of UE3 shooters but still no signs of Huxley.

This week we finally got some new screenshots from Huxley which has switched from a retail game to a free-to-play MMO. The shots still show off some impressive looking Unreal Engine 3 graphics and the game has kept its basis premise of players fighting in a persistent world with character customization and improvements. Huxley is now scheduled for release in the US via the ijji.com web site sometime in 2009.

We've been waiting for a long, long time to find out what in the wide, wide world of sports developer Red 5 Studios is making. The MMO developer, founded back in 2005 by former members of Blizzard's World of Warcraft team, has only said their first project would be published by Webzen and use the Offset game graphics engine developed by Offset Software (now owned by Intel).

Gamasutra has a new interview with Red 5 execs Michael Weingartner and Mark Kern and, well, it looks like the studio is still not willing to share what they are doing. Kern states that they are at least thinking about when and how they plan to announce their first game, saying. "We're kind of in the meeting stages, planning that out, and we're pretty excited because it's going to be the first time that we get to show everyone what we've been working towards." Still it seems that we are still a ways away from that reveal with Kern saying only, "In the coming months."

It's been a long, hard road for the Unreal Engine 3 based sci-fi MMOFPS Huxley. The Webzen-developed game was first announced way back in 2005. Earlier this year it was announced that NHN USA had picked up the US publishing rights to the game and planned on launching it as a free-to-play MMO on their web site ijji.com before the end of the year.

Unfortunately it looks like that's not going to happen after all. Big Download has learned that Huxley's launch has been pushed back for the US market until the first half of 2009. We spoke on the phone with NHN USA's PR rep who said that the development team wanted more time to handle the game's localization issues. Huxley has been in open beta in Korea for the past few months.

An Open Beta for Huxley, WEBZEN's MMOFPS, has kicked off in Korea, according to Business Wire.

"Huxley is a creative, thrilling and immersive adventure, and we are excited to open the break-through game to the mass public for the first time anywhere in the world," said WEBZEN, Inc., CEO Nam Ju "Huxley combines the unmatched Unreal Engine 3-based first-person shooting action with WEBZEN's proprietary networking technology for an online gaming experience like no other. We are expecting great results from the Korean beta, leading to broad anticipation and excitement for Huxley all around the world."

Hailed as the world's very first massively multiplayer shooter, the open beta phase of Huxley will continue until the game's commercial launch in 2009.

Download the Huxley trailer from Big Download.

New MMO announcements continue to be made with a great deal of frequency. Today a new development team based in Korea called Eyedentity has revealed its presence and announced their first fantasy MMO called Dragon Nest. The dev team consists of former members of NCsoft, Webzen, Gravity and other Korean based publishers and are creating Dragon Nest using their own in-house graphics engine.

The game itselft sounds like it will be more of an action title with a colorful art style. The press release announcing the game sound like it will have some Diablo elements such as random generating dungeons and random spawning monsters. Dragon Nest is due to be beta tested in Korea in late 2008 with a worldwide release (including North America) in 2009.

We've been wondering for a long time about the status of Huxley, the long-in-development Unreal Engine 3 based sci-fi FPS MMO. The game was first announced by Korean publisher Webzen some time ago but little info on the game has been revealed since. Today there's some movement on the Huxley front, at least in the US, thanks to a press release from NHN USA announcing it will release Huxley in late 2008 for the PC in this country and in Western Europe.

According to the press release the game will be released via NHN USA's web portal ijji.com. While that web site offers free-to-play games, the actual business model for Huxley is up in the air, according to a story at Next Generation. This deal apparently only covers the PC version; a previously announced Xbox 360 version of Huxley is still in limbo in regards to a publishing deal.

Korean based publisher Webzen made their first big push into Western games when they announced that they were going to publish All Points Bulletin (APB), an urban themed action MMO from UK developer Real Time Worlds. Little info on the game has been revealed since the inital announcement way back in 2005, but just a few days ago Real Time Worlds announced they had raised a whopping $50 million in venture capital to continue to develop APB.

Today we learned another reason why the money was raised as Real Time Worlds announced that it has gotten the distribution rights to APB back from Webzen and will publish the game on their own. The press release didn't mention any specific financial details but Real Time Worlds claims that they are " . .. excited about the prospect of having direct, personal relationships with our players." Meanwhile the big question is what is happening with Webzen after this new development. The once promising publisher now only has the sci-fi MMO Huxley on deck and even that game has been delayed a number of times since its own announcement.