I’m not sure how many of you remember Eternal Magic. It wasn’t really all too high a quality title if I’m being honest, but while that is very much the case, I feel as though every single MMO content creator at the time was sponsored to cover it. And despite all of that coverage – some positive and some negative, the game failed to really take off.

After the game’s first month online (which honestly went over better than expected in terms of total players,) talk of the game all but ceased. Until recently, where, after a mere 2 years online, the publisher has decided it’s time to shut the title down. Hundreds of thousands of players logged in and tried Eternal Magic out at launch. Cities were packed with players. You couldn’t run 10 feet without encountering another player – there were people ready to participate in every type of content at every time of the day, yet that was short lived, as the playerbase dried up in seemingly days, after players began to realize this was a low-effort, soulless grind.

Eternal Magic has since shut down as of January 10, 2022.

Not that anyone noticed it, though.

This has been a long time coming.
I’ve been asked repeatedly over the last couple weeks to PLEASE do a video on Eternal Magic.
Unfortunately I’d been caught up with prior engagements, but as Eternal Magic has just officially launched I thought it’d be a good opportunity to finally dip my feet into the waters a little.

There’ve been a ton of content creators pushing out videos for the game recently, but I never expected that upon logging into the game for the first time I’d see so many new players running around the beginning area.
So often games fail to get off the ground after their launch but on my journey to level 25 I saw nothing but populated areas.
Every new area I explored while leveling I was in direct competition with other players for monster kills.
Ever new settlement I happened upon, I saw other players running around completing the very same quests I was on.

The main city – or what I can only assume is the main city was absolutely packed with players. So much so that upon loading into the area for the very first time my computer dropped some frames while attempting to load them all.
And I’ll admit, although I only had a very basic brown horse.. seeing some of the mounts people were riding around was pretty damn cool.

Eternal Magic is a brand new traditional-themed free-to-play MMORPG.
It utilizes a tab-target combat system like Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft, and honestly, the combat is incredibly fluid.
These days whenever I hear “tab-target” I automatically jump to the conclusion that it’s going to be clunky or slow, but as you can see from the gameplay, as a Mage, I had the ability to be ever on the move.
I’m a fan of mobile magic classes. I get that traditionally mages are supposed to remain completely still when casting.
Often they’re the harder-hitting class, so allowing them to have the mobility to not only dodge boss AoEs but to also keep their distance from other players in PvP is a little unfair.
However, in Eternal Magic I get to live out my dream of being a tiny mobile turret, much to the dismay of my enemies.

Speaking of classes, I actually almost forgot to talk about them.
There are 6 in total: The Knight, Spellblade, Mage, Assassin, Gunslinger, and finally the Priest.
MrsStix traditionally plays healer in like.. every game we ever play together because she’s a nurse in real life so she has this thing about holding people’s lives in her hands.
That way if people are idiots, she can let them die. Okay, maybe not. She’s much nicer than that. I’m the kinda person that would let people die for being an idiot – she’d save them regardless.
But that’s why we’re married: She’s so contrastingly different to me that it makes me a better person.. and her a worse one.
Surprisingly she opted to go Spellblade though, while I went Mage. I went around shooting fireballs at everyone, whereas she did magic tricks with her sword. But it worked out.

The game is developed by Duoyi – a company out of China. It’s published in the West by Russian publisher 101xp.
I haven’t played too many Chinese MMOs with the exception of Perfect World, Moonlight Blade and Revelation Online but let me tell you, it’s very reminiscent of a Chinese MMO.
Let me elaborate a little.
In South Korean MMOs, their focus is on how visually stunning the game looks while forgetting that a good looking game is great, but a game that plays well and is filled with content is better.
They’re normally generic copy-paste MMOs that don’t offer anything new to the genre.
In Chinese MMOs, their focus is on providing a plethora of content – but it’s often at the expense of grinding.
They normally employ auto-pathing and are much more difficult in terms of content.

Eternal Magic is absolutely packed with players. When I first did a video on the game I had no idea it would be as popular as it is right now.
It utilizes a very fluid form of tab-target combat that is significantly better than some of the other MMOs released recently like DK Online or Guardians of Ember.
I didn’t make it too far through the game – only level 25? 26 I think as I wanted to push an early-look of the game out as soon as I could to give you guys my impressions of early-game.
If you’re all interested in me taking a deeper look into it, I’d be more than happy to. The game seems like a pretty traditional MMO as far as early-game looks and I’m definitely interested in moving further into it.
I do play on the North American server so if you guys do as well, you should shoot me a message. I’m in need of a guild and I’d love to tackle dungeons and PvP in a group of people that I know so this would be an awesome opportunity.

Get ready.. for an MMORPG like no other. A game so epic, so grand in scale that it looks to shake the very foundations of the genre. This is.. Eternal Magic.
Alright, jokes aside, lemme give you a rundown of a brand new MMORPG right outta China. Eternal Magic is developed by Duoyi and is being published by 101XP.
101XP are known for.. well, browser MMOs like League of Angels and mobile MMOs like Era of Legends so you know we’re off to a good start.

Eternal Magic is set in a “huge fantasy world” with a “flexible class system” – of which it doesn’t elaborate on, “dynamic combat,” an interesting MOBA mode and “epic 80 player battles.”
The MOBA mode seems to be your traditional League mode: Move down the map, kill mobs, destroy the enemy base.
The 80 player battles are just large battlegrounds pitting players against one another. You have traditional PvP modes like Capture the Flag, Domination, and a Reinforcements mode. Then finally we have Guild Wars.

Then we have PvE.
Dungeons come in the form of Classic dungeons for all levels, Heroic dungeons for players level 60 and above, and Chaos dungeons for level 65 and over.
Then there’s everyone’s favorite: Daily quests, open-world events that randomly spawn and apparently many additional features that they’re not currently at liberty to reveal since the game has yet to even go into closed beta testing.

There are 6 unique classes to choose between: Knight, Gunslinger, Spellblade, Priest, Mage and Assassin.
It seems as though the game utilizes the holy trinity of classes: Tank/healer/DPS so that’s something to look forward to I guess.
I’ve never been a fan of the removal of tanks or healers in-game it makes for much too difficult dungeons in my opinion.

Then we have little pay-to-win cash-grabs- I mean, adorable little pets that provide players “invaluable” abilities in battle.
I’m sure we’re totally not going to have any premium quality abilities or re-roll scrolls purchaseable through the cash-shop, definitely not. Completely out of the question!
Upon reaching level 50 players will obtain their very own personal estate. You can hire slaves, have them clean your home, cook for you, send them down to your dungeon. Y’know. The usual.
Additionally, if you play with your significant other – like I play with my wife MrsStix, then you can go ahead and get married!
I’m sure it’ll be just as good as in real life. Except the cake isn’t real and we all know the cake is the real reason you get married.
Finally… and I’m- I dunno. This one was really, really weird, but supposedly, this is a female-centric feature.
Every female can upload a photo and compete for some weird “celebrity title,” with a statue of them appearing in the center of the capital city.
I’m not sure whether to be disturbed, creeped out or flattered that I could have a statue of my wife in the center of the city.

The combat, unfortunately, had the UI removed so gauging whether or not the game is action combat or tab-target was impossible, but that might be the point.
From what I could gather, however, it looked as though the game is definitely using some form of lock-on or tab-target style but again, it’s impossible to say without getting in-game to take a look.

I feel like these days we’re either getting disappointed by indie releases, getting re-releases like DK Online, Warlords Awakening and Guardians of Ember or getting asset flips like this.
I don’t mean to shit on an MMO- I very rarely do it. But this looks like absolute garbage. This is not the kind of game we should be getting in 2019.
This looks like an MMO from the mid 2000s. I get that it’s been out in China since 2016? 2017? But c’mon.. this isn’t the kind of game we’re going to see succeed over here in the West.
Look at every re-release that has launched in recent memory. Look at every MMO that has launched in recent memory. The last successful free to play MMO was Blade & Soul, and it’s been years since we’ve had anything come close.
Cash-grabs like this are a waste of time. There might be a few of us interested in it, sure, but that interest will dry up very, very fast.
Eternal Magic looks very dated, the combat looks slow and clunky and the game is heavily pay to win in China. That is not the recipe for success.

Regardless, Eternal Magic will be going into Closed Beta testing later this year so if any of you guys want to try the game out, you can purchase- yes, purchase an Early Access pack that will guarantee access to the game and a head-start.