The PC MMORPG Dungeon Fighter Online is incredibly successful in China, South Korea, and Japan, even though hardly anyone knows it in the West and it is just limping along on Steam: The developers now announce that they will release a remake with updated graphics. This is also what some fans wish for World of Warcraft, our MMORPG hit.
What is Dungeon Fighter Online? It’s an MMORPG as a 2D sidescroller and features elements of a “Beat ’em Up”: It was released in 2005 in South Korea and has been incredibly successful in the Asian region for 15 years:
- The game has over 700 million players and has generated over 15 billion US dollars worldwide.
- Dungeon Fighter Online is considered the “most successful PC game in the world,” even if it faced some challenges during Corona.
- In Japan, the game has already received animes and mangas: It is considered one of the “entertainment media products with the highest revenue of all time” and proudly stands in a large list between the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Pac-Man (via wikipedia).
With a 10-year delay, Dungeon Fighter Online was also released in the West: However, it only has mediocre reviews on Steam, around 64%. In Asia, however, it is a cult series like Warcraft is for us with WoW.
The original game with better graphics – What many wish for WoW
This is the new game: The developers of Dungeon Fighter Online, Neople, have now introduced a new game for PC: Dungeon & Fighter Overkill is the provisional name of the project.
The game uses Unreal Engine 4 from Epic and is supposed to be a “massive remake” of the original as MMO Culture reports – but with 3D graphics. Dungeon Fighter Online still runs as a 2D game as a sidescroller.
It is supposed to be a “side scrolling action MMO”.
A first teaser trailer gives an insight into the game:
The developers for Dungeon & Fighter Overkill are now looking for a lot of new people to develop the core of the game. There is still no further information on when the game will be released.
This is what it’s about: They are doing in South Korea what many in the West also wish for WoW: the same game again, but with updated graphics.
In Europe and the USA, these are fan fantasies that only exist as videos: But every time a YouTuber releases a video about “World of Warcraft in the graphics of Unreal Engine 4”, the videos get really high view counts.
In Europe, developers are reluctant to make major upgrades for graphics or engine. In South Korea, however, studios are actually tackling such graphic revisions. This can be seen in the South Korean MMORPGs Black Desert and Blade & Soul.
Maybe Dungeon & Fighter Overkill will eventually manage to bring us the phenomenon of the “Dungeon Fighter Online” series closer, which fascinates so many in Asia.
Neople has been developing another new MMORPG based on Dungeon Fighter Online for some time: Project BBQ.
