webzen

Free-To-Play Shooter Looks To Have Borrowed A Map From Counter-Strike

Currently in closed beta, Arctic Combat appears to be set in the Middle East, despite its title. That’s not all that looks fishy about this free-to-play military shooter. One of its maps, “Sand Storm”, is almost a direct copy of de_dust2 from Counter-Strike. See for yourself in that video above.


Rumour: Red 5 Studios Goes Down

Red 5 Studios may never complete its unannounced MMO. The Irvine, California based developer founded by ex-Blizzard staffers, has been hit by layoffs, sources tell Kotaku, leaving it with a “skeleton crew” and an abandoned massively multiplayer online shooter.


Archlord Buckles Swashes Worldwide

Webzen has officially launched European and North American servers for MMO Archlord, picking up where Codemasters left off and delivering a brand new Swashbuckler character class to the West in the process.


Codemasters Says Goodbye To ArchLord

Codemasters has lost the rights to operate its first free-to-play MMO ArchLord in North America and Europe, but a new operator is stepping up to make sure the players can keep playing.


Fileplanet Has Your Huxley Beta Invite

Yes, Webzen’s massively mutliplayer online first-person shooter Huxley: The Dystopia is still a going concern, and all it takes is a Fileplanet login to get in on the closed beta action.


Huxley Delayed On PC, Again

Ahh, Huxley. Were it not for the Korean Open Beta – which apparently exists, and has players and everything – we would have to keep checking Snopes to see if it was still considered real or not.


PC Huxley Officially Coming To North America

Webzen’s massively-multiplayer online first-person shooter Huxley is officially heading to North America and Europe as NHN, Korea’s largest internet company, announces that they will be publishing the title via their Western subsidiary, NHN USA. The game will be available to download and play via the company’s www.ijji.com website in late 2008, while the 360 version remains up in the air at this time.

“Huxley is one of the most anticipated online games currently in development, and we are very excited to bring the triple-A title to Western audiences,” said Whon Namkoong, CEO, NHN USA, Inc. “Huxley provides gamers with a unique and compelling experience that gamers everywhere are sure to enjoy.”

Is Huxley still one of the most anticipated online games currently in development? There was a time when I couldn’t mention online games without Huxley coming up, but now? Meh. Anyone out there still all tingly for some MMOFPS action?


Crackdown Devs Wrest Control Of APB From The Koreans

And by “the Koreans” we mean the fine folks at publishing outfit Webzen, which until now was the planned publisher of Realtime Worlds’ cops and robbers MMO APB, planned for a PC (and possible PlayStation 3 and almost definite Xbox 360) release. You may recall that the Crackdown developer was on the receiving end of a $US50 million cash infusion, the majority of it we assume was spent on frozen haggis, but which some was surely earmarked to get the game out of hock from the Korean distributor.


Huxley Closed Korean Beta Coming

Remember Huxley? Of course you do. I can’t write about an MMO without someone in the comments section talk about how awesome Huxley is going to be. Well now some lucky Koreans will be getting a chance to find that out for themselves as Webzen has announced the first closed beta test for the FPS MMO. Starting on August 28th, 999 beta testers will be chosen from the official Huxley web site to participate in the event that will start on September 13th and run for five days. “With Huxley’s many innovative elements, gamers are in for a totally different experience,” said Nam-Ju Kim, chief executive officer of Webzen, Inc. “Huxley is sure to challenge the existing genres with a new look and feel in multiple platforms. We’re extremely confident that this title will set a new standard in MMOFPS.”

Man it’s good to be writing about Huxley again. Hopefully I’ll have many more chances to do so in the months to come.


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