Massively Exclusive: Elsword Online community Q&A, part deux
KOG Studios, developer of free-to-play hack'n'slash MMO Elsword, has unleashed the second round of an ongoing series of Massively-exclusive community Q&A segments for your enjoyment. A bit of backstory for the uninitiated: Elsword is a popular Korean side-scrolling MMO that saw its North American launch in May. The game puts players in the role of one of three characters as they face off against legions of manga-styled enemies, or against one another.
This second Q&A session covers questions from the Elsword community regarding the hilarious mishaps of localizing the game for North American launch, the team's preferred style of play, and what games the team plays when they're not working (or playing) on Elsword. For the full Q&A, jump on past the cut!
Do you have any funny stories about pre-launch troubles that you had when localizing the
data from Korea to North America?
Wow, you must know a thing or two about the localizing troubles with games. The toughest
challenge we faced while localizing was figuring out the appropriate word count and adjusting
accordingly. Korean words are generally shorter than English words so we had a hard time
cramming all the necessary details within the given spaces. We try to cut down on words as
much as possible, but if we are still facing space issues, we abbreviate, and as a last resort we
will sometimes substitute words with icons! In fact, we needed to create special icons in the
game that are unique to the Elsword North American version (exclusive content!). Another
memorable moment during the initial launch involved a high level character we used for testing
purposes only. When we discovered that the character had not been logged out before the
game opened, we had to scramble to run away from players and so they wouldn't see our godly
character!
Which part of Elsword do you prefer, Dungeon or PvP and why?
We like PvP a lot and we often hold tournaments and give out prizes within the company. The
only thing is that in order to participate, we can only use characters that we leveled ourselves,
so we do a lot of dungeon play as well. One of our co-workers actually plays Elsword so much
that he has six max level characters! We're just happy that everyone has an equally good time
whether they're running dungeons, leveling, obtaining good items or showing off PvP skills.
What other types of games does the Dev Team enjoy playing? Shooters? Puzzle games?
Well, number one is Elsword, of course. Other than Elsword, we usually play games that we
can team up on to play against each other. We play StaftCraft often, which is very popular in
Korea, and lately we've been playing FPS games a lot. So, as much as we love Elsword, we have
other favorites as well.
