Interview With NPICSOFT, Developers of ELOA, and WEBZEN

WEBZEN and NPICSOFT recently gave us a chance to ask the founder and CEO of NPICSOFT, Dennis Choi, and the Head of Global Business at WEBZEN, Richard Sunmyoung Moon some questions about Inspirit Online, ELOA, what happened, and what we can expect from the official version. The answers may surprise you quite a bit.

What exactly happened with Inspirit Online? How did it come to fruition in the first place if it was unlicensed? Was it going to be licensed originally?

Choi: We understand that this situation must have caused a lot of confusion among players, who learned about ELOA and started playing it under the name of “Inspirit Online.” Inspirit Online is not an official version of the game. In fact, we have sent many official notifications to the corresponding company, declaring Inspirit Online as an illegal copy of ELOA. It is important to note that NPICSOFT has registered the global license of the brand name “ELOA,” along with its characters, etc. This includes licensing rights for North America, Europe, and other countries. However, a company called “GRE” is still continuing its unauthorized services. The developer of ELOA is NPICSOFT, and the official publisher of ELOA is WEBZEN. Inspirit Online is simply a copy of ELOA, a game developed by us, and will be considered as an unauthorized, illegal private server.

Is the Webzen-hosted version of ELOA a response to Inspirit or has it been in the works since before Inspirit launched?

Moon: We were aware of it before signing the publishing contract. We received confirmation from experienced developers that Inspirit Online is a very obvious illegal copy of ELOA, the original.  However, we couldn’t just give up a good game like this one, so we decided to sign the contract, embracing the risks at hand. After NPICSOFT discovered this illegal copy of the game, they sent an official notice to their Korean partner, Netmarble, in order to work together to put a stop to the unauthorized service of Inspirit Online.

While the official publishing contract with WEBZEN was still in preparation, NPICSOFT had also taken important advice from WEBZEN on this matter into consideration. Now that the publishing contract has been signed WEBZEN will take every legal and business measure to manage WEBZEN’s license to the best of our ability. WEBZEN has been authorized to utilise all rights for the game’s brand and license to enforce adherence the lawful copyright of NPICSOFT, and will try our best to protect the license of NPICSOFT which was infringed without notice.

Where will the Webzen-hosted version of ELOA be in terms of updates at launch? How long are updates planned to take to reach their servers after the update goes live on the Korean servers?

Moon: We are currently planning to set up EU/NA servers for launch, and about 100 developers at NPICSOFT’s ELOA studio are currently devoting all their energy to the global release, and we strongly believe that the developers will do their best to support us in order to catch up with the Korean version that contains much more content. As we have many content updates already in the pipeline, there’s already a long content roadmap laid out by the developers, so our fans should not be disappointed or bored at any point!

What kinds of items will be available in the cash shop?

Moon: ELOA will be “Pay for Convenience,” and items that change the visual appearance of your character will be available in the shop. We are aiming for convenience only, such as a slight increase in experience gain, visual transformations into NPCs or monsters, or ridable pets which can also be obtained in game.

Will the translation be any different than that of Inspirit?

Moon: The first test will be in English only, depending on community feedback and demand we will try to add more languages in the future.

A number of people had issues with Inspirit when it launched, in terms of getting stuck when various event triggers didn't fire off. Is this an issue that has been solved in ELOA? Was it ever an issue at all?

Moon: You don’t need to worry about the issues that Inspirit Online happened. We are not worried about WEBZEN’s official version of ELOA, as we already have huge amounts of content readily available for our beta test. Besides, the two games will show incomparable differences in terms of service stability, with superior security/server connections, and so forth.

I assume that ELOA will be much further along in terms of updates. What are some of the core changes that have been implemented since the version that became Inspirit?

Moon: WEBZEN’s official version of ELOA already has huge amounts of content including new maps and classes which have already been developed by NPICSOFT, but are not included in the leaked CBT version that Inspirit Online is using. We’re very certain that Inspirit Online, currently operated illegally, will never keep up with our content releases. We look forward to showing you the distinct differences between the original and copy, as we offer much better quality assurance for our live operations, and receive direct support from the original developers of ELOA.

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So there you have it. Inspirit is a leaked CBT version of ELOA, which was likely translated by someone at Game Release Entertainment. The issues that cropped up during the early phases of the game's launch were likely related.

WEBZEN will be launching ELOA in an official capacity later this year. Beta tests are set to start soon. The official site has not been set up as of yet.