The game was initially teased last week, with a release date for the information scheduled to come out on April 1st. This left quite a few people wondering if it was merely an elaborate April Fool’s joke.

Since I’m doing this on April 3rd and there’s been no confirmation that it is, I’m going to go out and assume this is real.

The South Korean version of Elyon is actually scheduled to go into Closed Beta on April 11th, with an expected release date in North America and Europe sometime.. soon.

They have every intention on releasing in the West as soon as they can, but their goal right now is to make certain that players located within South Korea are happy with the state of the game.

Elyon utilized tab-target combat when it ran under the A:IR title. I played days worth of it and.. yeah it wasn’t very good.

There have been some great MMOs with tab-target combat: Aion, ArcheAge and World of Warcraft all come to mind. But A:IR? Yikes, that wasn’t good at all.

I think I touched on that at one point during one of my videos, I can’t recall. In Elyon, though? They’ve overhauled the entire combat system and are now claiming it utilizes non-target dynamic combat – the very same combat system that TERA uses.

This is fantastic news as TERA actually has some of my favorite combat in an MMO. While I haven’t really gotten any “hands-on” time with the game yet, and I really hope I do, it’s a safe bet to assume that this will be a more updated version of TERA’s combat.

Combat isn’t the only aspect of the game that was overhauled, though. According to the press release, “a large portion of the content in the game is being revamped.”

While there is a large focus on overhauling the combat, they’re also aiming at shifting the focus of the game more towards “adventure, and both faction and individual battles.”

This is hinting at a focus on PvP, which may or may not be of interest to you, depending on whether you enjoy it, I guess. For me, personally, I love PvP, and having large-scale faction battles sounds like an absolute blast.

I’m not certain what “individual battles” is in reference to, but I look forward to hearing more. The world itself, along with the lore of the world have also been altered to fit the new vision of the game, however, it will retain its steampunk setting.

Thankfully, as that was honestly one of the largest attractions to the game for me. The last steampunk game I played was.. Black Gold I think, and that was a crappy game.

This is really exciting news.

While the game is currently in the process of accepting beta-registrations, since it’s going to be released exclusively in South Korea right now – the beta test, that is, you need a South Korean phone number along with a social security number to apply.

Alternatively, you might know a South Korean friend that can apply for you or, heck, you might still have your old A:IR account information on-hand that you can fill out and apply with.

I never applied to the A:IR Closed Beta myself, I knew people that applied and got accepted that allowed me in using their account.

Unfortunately I don’t believe they’ve been accepted this time so I might not be able to get in to obtain footage but that won’t stop me from talking about everything I learn regarding the game.

While they’re overhauling the combat system to make it more appealing to this generation of gamer, they’re also altering how the skill system works.

It’s been a while since I touched A:IR, but currently they plan on dividing skills or at least relocating them into “skill trees.” This will allow for players to customize the kind of character they want to play.

I don’t know the extent of the customization, but I would honestly love to have both PvE and PvP trees.. or talents. Whichever you want to refer to it as.

I believe that seperation of skill trees is a good route to take in an MMO since it allows for individual balancing of a single aspect: PvE or PvP, as opposed to mass-altering a skill tree and it having an impact on both.

This is something that World of Warcraft did very poorly for the longest time, and I hope that Elyon learns from.

We’ve talked quite a bit about PvP, haven’t we? I mean A:IR was supposed to be a large-scale PvP MMORPG after all, so it’s to be expected that they’d have an emphasis on it even after the overhaul.

They’ve mentioned that the game is going to feature faction and individual battles, I covered that earlier, but A:IR was supposed to also feature Realm vs Realm battles, along with instanced arena combat.

While the “individual battles” might be referring to the arena, I’m left wondering what happened to Realm vs Realm, and I’m also curious if the game is still going to provide players with open-world PvP opportunities.

One facet of the game that had kept my interest was the fact that a lot of the game took place in the air. You could freely fly around the entire open world.

Yes, your mount had stamina – something I loathe and something that will likely be fixed via handy cash shop items somewhere down the line.

You had full aerial-combat, allowing you full use of your abilities while flying atop your trusted aerial steed. I hadn’t seen this done since I played Perfect World a decade ago.

However, they went on to reveal that they would have a significantly reduced focus on aerial exploration, aerial combat, and.. well, aerial activities.

While I’ve liked the sound of everything the overhaul has affected up until this point, I’m a little saddened by the news that they’re reducing the importance of aerial activities so drastically.

I mean, you could even tackle world bosses on your mount. There was a point during the trailer released at one of the G-Star events that showed hundreds of players all grouped up together to tackle a giant world boss in the sky.

It looked incredible and I couldn’t contain my excitement. Like, what if you end up dying all the way up there? Are you screwed? Will your body plummet down towards the Earth?

Will there be faster and slower aerial mounts, and if so, will they play a part in mechanics since technically you could move out of AoEs or accomplish objectives faster?

It provided the opportunity for new ways of tackling content.

A:IR had both traditional multiplayer dungeons and solo, single-player dungeons. I thought it was pretty cool providing players the ability to tackle dungeons solo in the off chance they couldn’t find anyone to run them with.

I know, the foundation of the MMO genre is tied into the multiplayer aspect – but sometimes that just doesn’t work.

Like, Blue Protocol provides players the ability to group up with several players to tackle a dungeon, with the difficulty of the dungeon scaling depending on how many players join.

This means that you’re capable of entering a dungeon solo, or with 4 people, and it’ll be just as difficult regardless of how many people are there.

While A:IR offers just 2 forms: Multiplayer or solo, I’m not sure exactly what they have planned for PvE in Elyon. Will they retain the type of dungeon they’d planned for originally?

Will they opt to change it instead to cater more to players interested in multiplayer interaction and engagement? Moreso, what are their plans for raids? We can’t have an MMO that has dungeons but not raids, right?

Sure, MMOs can do without dungeons and still be successful. Black Desert has proven that. But if you’re going to have dungeons in-game then you need to have raids, otherwise there’ll be no competitive PvE content to consume at endgame.

The only issue I have with Elyon and it’s overhaul is that it’s still being built on Unreal Engine 3 as opposed to Unreal Engine 4.

I know an engine overhaul is probably a drastic change that is unrealistic to expect, but the performance was definitely an issue in A:IR and if that isn’t improved, then this won’t really be any better.

And that’s pretty much everything we know right now. And there are a few things I don’t know, either, that I threw in there because – honestly, what’s the point if we don’t strike up some type of discussion here, right?

Kakao are still in charge of publishing the game, just like they publish Black Desert Online in the West.

The game is going into Closed Beta testing in a little over a week for those of you with access to a South Korean social security number and phone number.

The new Elyon overhaul is changing quite a bit of the game: PvE, PvP, it’s providing an extension to the skill system and it’s making the game completely action combat.

It’s unconfirmed currently when we’ll end up with a Western release of the game. When last we heard mention of an English Closed Beta, we were expecting it back in 2019.

So while we don’t have an ETA right now, so long as the South Korean Beta test goes over well we’ll likely have a Beta test coming shortly after.

With how long they’ve waited to push this game out, you know they’re itching to get us in there so we can start making them money.

I believe the business model will be the same as A:IR – free-to-play as they haven’t announced a change in any form.

Regardless of whether or not we end up able to play Elyon in some capacity this year, Phantasy Star Online 2 is still confirmed to be coming out on PC this Spring, and both the Blue Protocol Closed Beta and New World launch are right around the corner.

Couple those games with Genshin Impact being a ton of fun, and Gran Saga going into Closed Beta at the end of this year.. yeah, things are looking great for 2020.