Game-Flier Sdn Bhd today launched with much fan fare the Malaysia and Singapore chapter of the Ragnarok Online World Championship (ROWC) competition at the Palace of the Golden Horses.
Officially launched by Deputy Information Minister YB Datuk Donald Lim, ROWC will pit Malaysia and Singapore fans of this immensely popular online game against each other for the grand prize of US$10,000 in cash and prizes, along with virtual prizes of high level in-game items comprising weaponry and armour of every class worth 100 million Zeny (the currency in RO).
The top four guilds of nine members each will be sent to Korea for the grand finals, giving them a chance to play against other ROWC champions from 17 countries for some US$50,000 worth of cash and prizes.
Registration for this competition, priced at 10,000,000 Zeny, has already begun, and will close on 30th April 2004. The competition proper will begin on 6th June 2004, with the finals taking place at AMPM EZone cyber café at Plaza Low Yat.
Game-Flier Sdn Bhd is looking at getting 256 guilds in total to take part in this event.
Organised internationally by Gravity Corporation, the creators of RO, Game-Flier Sdn Bhd’s Managing Director YelloX Wong believes this to be the first such event for an MMORPG of such a scale.
Also present at the launch was Datuk Hoong Soon Kean, Director of Nan Yang Siang Pau, Datuk Ang Say Tee, Chin-po Wang, President and CEO of Soft-World International Corporation, as well as Gravity Corporation representatives Scott Lee and the man who started it all, Lee Myoung Jin, the artist behind the Ragnarok series.
Four days after the game has officially gone pay-to-play (P2P), Wong says that some 20,000 members are now playing concurrently in their servers, down from the previously reported figures of 32,000 concurrency when the game could be played free of charge.
However, both Wang and Wong are confident that with current and future marketing activities, the numbers will return to the previous FOC level in no time.
“When we went P2P in Taiwan, the numbers dropped to 70 per cent of the original level,” said Wang.
“In just a few months, we returned to the original figures,” he said.
Soft-World Corporation, which oversees the marketing and distribution of the game in Malaysia, is looking at bringing more games like RO in Bahasa Malaysia and English languages to the Malaysian and Singapore market by the end of this year.
According to Wong, ROWC participants will be given new accounts with a certain amount of money and character level to start with in a new server.
Participants will be given one month from 2 May to 2 June 2004 to build up these characters, after which they will play against other in a guild war at Ezone on 6 June 2004.