During a media conference recently in South Korea, developer Krafton (TERA, PUBG etc) and publisher Kakao Games announced that Elyon will officially launch on 10 December. It will not be a Free-to-Play PC MMORPG, but rather a Buy-to-Play one with an in-game cash shop. Elyon, previously known as Ascent: Infinite Realms (or A:IR), depict the story of 2 warring factions fighting over the control of a giant portal, the game’s namesake Elyon. It was mentioned that the portal will lead either faction to a “very special source of power.”
Note: Prices above are discounted for the early pre-order period before official launch.
It was also confirmed that due to the massive criticism of removing aerial combat as the game’s core content, major improvements were made to Elyon, including the introduction of non-target combat to provide a “dynamic action” feature. This was made possible by re-purposing the “projectile trajectory simulation technology” previously made for aerial combat and the skills customization system that have thousands of combinations. Through the tests in 2020, Kakao Games claimed that players reacted positively to the changes.
As usual, standard MMORPG features such as boss raids, team PVP, guild wars (owning fortress and rights to control portals), large-scale faction battles, player housing, and even PvEvP dungeons will be in Elyon. At launch, 3 dimensional portals (Elyon) are planned, with 2 more joining in the first post-launch update. In case you missed it, Elyon is developed using Unreal Engine 3, hence some of the latest rendering techniques cannot be utilized. It was also not mentioned if the Western server will use the same Buy-to-Play model.
