WTF, FIFA Becoming MMO?

January 2, 2008 by Chapree

LOL, I got you there. No, the beloved FIFA footie game is not being fully transformed into a Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) game yet but instead, a seprate MMO version of the game is being released to the market as we speaking. To be more detailed, EA already released them back in 2006.

The first ever FIFA Online was released at South Korea in conjunction with the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. Co-developed by Seoul-based company NeoWiz, the game was pretty successful (although yours truly never even heard about it before) where it reached a record 600,000 unique users a day in 17th - 18th June 2006.

With that successful outing, EA announced that they are going to come out with a sequel called FIFA Online 2 in September 2007. This time around, they decided to expand the game into China which is going to see their first ever limited public technical test this weekend. In China, the game is handled by the country’s largest online games operator, The9.

Apparently, FIFA will not be the only one that going MMO route. EA already signed on for few more games such Warhammer Online, NBA Online and Battlefield Online for special Asia market release. Looks like EA felt the force are strong with MMO in Asia.

[Thanks to yupeizuan who posted the news at SK-Gaming forums]

EA Sports FIFA Online 2 Chinese Official Website
EA Sports FIFA Online 2 Korean Official Website (it only accepts IE5.0+ browser)
FIFA Online 2 @ Lowyat.NET Forums

Posted in International, New Releases, Online Games