Honest Reviews: 9Dragons

Introducing a new series, Honest Reviews, starting with our origin: 9Dragons

Background Story

9Dragons (nowadays named "Nine Dragons" for whatever reason) started its closed beta in 2006, and open beta in 2007, which is when I myself began playing it. It came out when MMORPGs and free-to-play games were a new and interesting thing. Today, however, not so much. The "trend" of MMORPGs is pretty much inexistent nowadays, and player numbers keep declining, even in the greatest MMORPGs like World of Warcraft.

The first publisher of 9Dragons was Acclaim. Not the game producer and publisher of the old Sega and Nintendo games, mind you. At that time, the name "Acclaim" has already been sold, to people who had nothing to do with the original Acclaim. This team - at least at 9Dragons - was mainly interested in making money, and not much else (I will spare you the details on how they treated their player base). And, despite making plenty of money out of the "Item Mall" (coin store), we on the US and EU servers of Acclaim always lacked new content, while the Korean version had all the new stuff and updates.

Long story short: Acclaim was acquired by another company (whose name I currently can't remember) in 2010, which in turn was acquired by Disney shortly after. Disney was not interested in keeping up the games and servers, and all of Acclaim's game servers soon closed - disgustingly selling off cheap Item Mall items in the very last few days, and notifying their players of 9Dragons' closure only one day before going offline. But something good came out of it: Somebody at Acclaim took the hard drives containing the server files, and soon thereafter private servers for 9Dragons began to emerge.

After Acclaim, the official publisher became GamersFirst. After only a year they threw in the towel, and the next publisher became GamesCampus. After that it was SubaGames, and after that till today it was and is RedFox (did I forget any?). The developer, too, changed, as the original developer Indy21 went bankrupt somewhere along the line and Zerodin Games took over, and after that it was and is Joongwon Games ever since. Despite first working on a "9Dragons 2" (and even releasing some trailers on YouTube), they seemingly never went through with it, as it never got mentioned again, let alone being published, even though many players have been asking for a graphics and gameplay update, on a different or at least an updated game engine. Sadly, that never happened. Instead, new content has been implemented, and private servers have been working on their own content.

All in all, the leadership of 9Dragons, both official and private, has always been motivated by greed, and not much interest was ever given to the player's wishes. The most noticeable one: 9Dragons still has only 6 clans implemented to this very day, despite being about 9 clans (hence the name). The addition of the other three clans (and a vagabond role) was officially announced from the very beginning, but have never been implemented.

The Game Itself

After Acclaim's departure, new content finally began to be implemented, which was very welcomed by the player base. But the disinterest of the management persists to this very day, resulting in limited answers to - or interaction with - the players. It is a heaven for toxic people and bottom-feeder (not joking).

Even though the implementation of far better items and gear was a HUGE improvement compared to Acclaim-times (I'm not even going to say anything about the ridiculous pet-like system with "pets" that make no f*cking sense), leveling on official servers is just insanely difficult. Have you ever played World of Warcraft? I have. And it's fairly doable (even more so today). But 9Dragons just frustrates you in this regard. Quests give barely any experience, and leveling is pretty much all about grinding (killing mobs). PvP is still unbalanced to this very day. And, as mentioned before, neither the three advanced clans, nor any vagabond role, have been implemented to this very day.

The player numbers are declining, and allegedly the publisher is having difficulties surviving. 9Dragons was and is a great idea, but has always been cursed with bad management. Not even private servers are interested in being different - and I speak out of experience.

Conclusion

I really can't recommend you to play this heavily outdated game, especially on official servers, as all you'll be doing is wasting too much money in the Item Mall, and will still get frustrated by advancing in level and getting your ass kicked by other players having too much time and money. If you really would like to play this game, I'd highly recommend you do so on a private server, as they usually have elevated experience rates. But even then, you'll be sucked into the coin store trap of free-to-play games. You will have far more fun playing some other multiplayer game, even if you have to pay about 10 bucks per month as a subscription, for the game itself, Playstation Plus, or the XBOX online games equivalent - which is still a lot cheaper than what you'll be spending on 9Dragons.

Rating

Story:
★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 7/10
Graphics:
★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 2/10
Animation:
★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 2/10
Gameplay:
★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 2/10
Sound:
★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 1/10
PvP:
★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 1/10