This is just getting stupid..
NFTs. Blockchain. Play to Earn. 3 terms you don’t want to associate with ANY MMORPG. Yet the undeniable truth is that more and more games – MMOs specifically, are beginning to implement them.
MIR4. ArcheWorld. Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds. Three games that immediately come to mind. And as of today, we can add 2 more to that list. 2 MMOs that have repeatedly shown that they have zero regards for their players.

First, we have KRITIKA. Kritika was a hub-MMO that I hyped up for over a year before it was confirmed to be coming Westward.
After launching, it amassed an incredible number of players – albeit, that surge in activity remained for maybe a month at most, and within 6 months the game had already passed into obscurity. Which is the fate most MMOs suffer.
It shut down due to poor reception and activity, briefly, before relaunching under a brand new moniker: KRITIKA: REBOOT. Again, a slew of new players immediately downloaded the game. And as fast as players arrived, players departed.
Within weeks – not months – the game had already dried up. Players were presented with the old game that they originally got bored with, so their disinterest was warranted.
It shut down recently as well. And then came this announcement – from ALLM. An announcement of yet another new moniker – KRITIKA GLOBAL – but this time, this time they’re introducing something new to the game.
This time they have a plan. This time, you can earn money while playing the game. Because play to earn is really the feature the game was missing – that was inhibiting it from KRITIKA achieving greatness, right?
ALLM are braindead and so out of touch with reality that it’s almost laughable. Well, it would be if players didn’t repeatedly fall for it.

Then, out of nowhere, VALOFE announced they were going the same route with Riders of Icarus – one of Mrs Stix’s very first MMOs – a game that was truly unique when it launched. It was gorgeous, allowed you to capture every Pokemon you saw and…. well, okay, that was all it really had going for it.
VALOFE acquired this from Nexon after Nexon gave up on it, and judging from the forum post – VALOFE have given up on it ever achieving any type of success as well.
Like always, VALOFE has no idea what their players want.

Although, if I’m being totally honest here, 150 concurrent players is why KRITIKA shut down. 120 concurrent players for Riders of Icarus. It’s no wonder these MMOs are trying to inject new life into their games.
They’re dead. People constantly claim “WoW is dead,” “Guild Wars 2 is dead,” Black Desert is dead.” Try averaging a hundred players playing your game. That is the definition of dead, not hundreds of thousands. Hundreds. And even that is being generous.

More and more MMOs are adopting blockchain, NFTs, play to earn, crypto crap. Even Square is considering implementing it into the Final Fantasy franchise.
Specifically pertaining to MMOs though, I get it. MIR4 is a play to earn MMO, averaging upwards of 50,000 players connected concurrently – likely hundreds of thousands of players log in every week to play this game.
And I use the term “play” very loosely here. I’ve given my thoughts on MIR4 repeatedly over time. It’s a trash, auto-play MMO designed to milk as much money as they can via a variety of nefarious practices. Yet it seems to be working well for them.
And other companies have taken note of this. Evidently. VALOFE, ALLM, Kakao with ArcheAge and the ArcheWorld NFT MMO – they would all love a piece of this pie, even if it comes at the expense of their players.

It’s sad to see more and more MMOs adopting this practice, and I have no doubt in my mind this is going to continue to become more and more prevalent over time.
Oh, what a time to be alive.

It’s always a sad day to wake up to an announcement that an MMO you’ve enjoyed, an MMO you’ve spent years not only playing on and off, but also advertising on your channel is shutting down.
MMOs come and go, it comes with the territory. They’re not like traditional games: People don’t just play them, complete them and then move on to the next big thing.
Instead, players play an MMO, then continue playing them indefinitely until they either get bored with the repetitious nature of the game or nobody is left playing it. Unfortunately, the latter holds true for KRITIKA: REBOOT as it was just confirmed by the developers that the game will be shutting down next month.

This is actually kinda surreal. I’ve been covering KRITIKA since before it was released in the West – I think I was the only MMO Youtuber actually dedicating time and resources to the game in any form 4 years ago.
My last video on KRITIKA: REBOOT was from only 4 months ago as well, and now they’re announcing the closure of the game – permanently?

The announcement can be found on both their website and their Steam page and reads as follows:

Announcement About Closing Kritika:Reboot
Hello. This is Kritika:REBOOT.
It is with a heavy heart that we announce about closing current our Kritika:Reboot service, since we started at 13th November 2019. This decision was made relying on that it is hard to sustain our service anymore in spite of team members efforts meantime.
Our schedule for proceeding the closing will be :
– From January 12th(Wed) : Stops selling CASH points.
– On Febuary 16th(Wed) 00:00 (PST) : Server will be closed and any services offering will be stopped.
Most of all, all members of Kritika:Reboot team appreciate to our people enjoying or enjoyed our game so far. We’re sorry that this is happened.
In future, team will keep try more challenge to make better game to fulfill players.
Sorry about this closure again.
Thank you so far.

KRITIKA launched in North America and Europe in September 2017 with En Masse as the publisher, and was shut down in April 2019. ALLM, the developers of the game took this as an opportunity to publish the game directly starting in November 2019, but reception for the game was far less stellar than ALLM had expected.
Taking a look at the concurrent player numbers via Steam, it looks as though there are 46 people playing the game at this very moment, with a peak of 72. 2 days ago, before ALLM announced the game was closing, concurrent players were sitting at approximately 140 to 150.
However, as of the announcement, it seems as though what little remained of the playerbase abandoned the game quite quickly.

Concurrent players peaked 2 years ago at almost 4,000, but within 3 months of launching 75% of its playerbase had already left. This continued over the course of the next several months, even with the addition of new classes, new content and active development.

While KRITIKA and KRITIKA: REBOOT – which are the same game, just FYI, was a very fun hub-MMO to play with some gorgeous character models and great quality action combat, it wasn’t enough to captivate players. To retain their attention long-term, like most hub-MMOs.
And while ALLM are relieving themselves as publisher in the West, I do want to note that Innova is releasing KRITIKA within Russia and CIS countries beginning in the first half of 2022. They’re the same publisher behind Blade & Soul, Crowfall, Aion and Lineage 2 in those territories.
They’re also selling founder’s packs for players to pre-order the free game – which is both alarming and slightly hopeful. On the one hand, that means ALLM are continuing to attempt to milk the MMO playerbase for as much as they possibly can, but on the other hand, could mean additional funding and a potential re-release sometime in the future.

So yeah. Horrible news, as this was a really fun game. But it happens. This is just another casualty, the first of probably many in 2022.

Kritika: Reboot is one of the few hub-MMOs that I always find myself coming back to.
And it’s been a while at that. I was honestly meaning to take a look at this sometime during 2021 – but my schedule has been so full lately.
But fate smiled upon me and I was reached out to by the devs behind the game to take a sponsored look at it – and they went ahead and offered me a slew of characters from which to choose from.
Now I’ve leveled in Kritika plenty of times in the past, so being offered this opportunity was too good a chance to pass up – and I mean, I’m gonna be real with you all here.. they called all of the characters “Youtube star.” I felt a little like a celebrity. Not A list, maybe a D list celebrity. Or.. like, as well known as someone from Sharknado.

Kritika has a ton of classes. Each has their own selection of outfits, hairstyles, and overall aesthetic look and feel.
They also have unique combat styles and weapons specific to them and only them. As an example, the Flame Striker utilizes a pretty sick sword and shield and the Galactic Disciple makes use of fist weapons.
What makes the class system in Kritika so much deeper than your average MMO is that there are additional sub-classes to pursue, allowing for more in-depth customization over your character – which is further magnified by individual choice over skills and builds.
Just don’t be like me and YOLO without research. Time and time again I find myself suffering from performance issues – and honestly, that’s more common than you’d think with people my age – don’t laugh – you’ll be here one day yourself.
Jokes aside, I find myself underperforming because I don’t research builds and just pour into whatever I think looks and sounds the best to me. Which is unfortunate, but I’m lazy.

Now, even if you’re terrible at video games like I am you’ll still find yourself plenty of opportunities to excel at the game.
Thankfully, the combat in Kritika is exceptional. There are plenty of action MMOs out there, some of which actually go on to make the grandiose claim that they’re the “ultimate action MMO,” but honestly? Kritika’s is one of the more fun, more engaging dynamic combat systems I’ve come across.
You’re required to aim your strikes, your abilities, and most importantly, you’re capable of jumping and dodging. You have no idea how much I hate when MMOs lack a jump function. I even had a discussion on jumping in MMOs once, where a guy legitimately argued “you don’t go jumping around in real life,” so jumping isn’t necessary in an MMO.
Yeah, I have some weird conversations online occasionally. But I find jumping is integral in an action MMO, possibly as much as a dodge mechanic. Because while I suck at dodging, I sure as hell wanna jump out of a giant telegraphed AoE cone when I see one.

Kritika: Reboot is a hub-MMO. This means that the bulk of the game takes place in the quest hubs, or the zones connected to the corresponding hubs.
You can see hundreds of other players scattered around the hubs, you can communicate with them, group up with them, run content. There are tons of different instances you can run, each with their own look and feel.
I’ve always been a fan of hub-MMOs because I enjoy games that have good combat, and typically I wanna just burn some time in them. So games like this make it easy: I get to play a character – or class that I enjoy the combat style of. And I get to run instances and murder enemies at my own pace.

The reason I’m covering Kritika now is because they just rolled out a large update. On the one hand, they introduced a brand new character: Baeg-Un.
I felt like it would be a good idea to go ahead and create a brand new character and start him at level 1. That way I didn’t find myself being overwhelmed with a plethora of abilities like I always am when I throw myself into a new MMO with max level characters.
Honestly, his fighting style was interesting. He made use of a fan and a type of martial arts, while proceeding to shoot elemental magic from his hands. Why he’d opt to use a fan is beyond me, especially when he’s as jacked as he is.

The other part of the update introduces the brand new Jumping event. This event started on the 4th of August and lasts until the 25th.
As per the event page, you create a character, do the tutorial, then proceed to do the special quests until hitting level 75. There are plenty of rewards for participating, and even more for successfully obtaining level 75.

There’s plenty to do in Kritika. You can level any of the characters, you can play solo content, group-content, run dungeons or raids. You can PvP if you want to assert your dominance over other players. Which you should totally be doing, mind you.
It’s something Mrs Stix does to me at least every other day.
Honestly, when this first released as “Kritika” years ago I spent weeks playing through it because I found it to be a lot of fun. Ever since the developers re-released it under the “Reboot” moniker, the game has continued to be regularly updated with new content to consume.
Whether this is a good game right now is entirely subjective. There’s no way of convincing you of either – but this is a 100% free to play MMO. Meaning it requires no actual investment other than time.
And as MMO players, time is one thing we all have a surplus of.

So if Kritika: Reboot looks like something you might enjoy, then I urge you to go ahead and download the game. You might enjoy it, and if you do, you’ll know who deserves your undying graditude and unfaltering loyalty henceforth.
But don’t worry, I won’t hold it over you.
.. kidding, of course I will.

It’s been almost half a year since ALLM brought Kritika Online back to the West and since I did my last video on the game.
I was ecstatic when they did – this was one of the few games I did videos for pretty regularly back before En Masse acquired rights to it and chose to publish it within North America.
In my last video I went ahead and talked about the re-released version titled Kritika: REBOOT, the changes that were happening, and how I was glad ALLM had opted to self-publish the game.
This would of course give them more creative control over the global version of the game, without a publisher acting as an intermediary.

Now I’ve expressed how much I enjoy this game on many occasions – but imagine my surprise when I was approached after having finished my last Kritika video to take a sponsored look at the new upcoming Blader class.
I’d be crazy to turn down the opportunity to not only try the new class out, but to also record and push out content on it for players to consume ahead of time, right?

So before doing anything, naturally I headed straight into character creation. And my god did I enjoy what I could do with her. Like, take a look at this – does she not look just like Harley Quinn from the new Birds of Prey movie? Huh? Right?
Yeah. That’s how good I am at character customization.

So the Blade, or the Blade Dancer after her class change is an aerial sword-wielding badass.
She’s one of the most mobile classes I’ve ever played, with some of my skills literally teleporting me all around the field, flying me up into the air, raining down a barrage of hellfire from above, then behind whoever’s left down below, staring at the sheer death and destruction now surrounding them.
Okay, maybe that was a little extra, but seriously, her attacks are actually ridiculous looking. I’ve always said the game looked good and have always been of the opinion that the skill effects and animations were fantastic considering when this game was made, but this was next-level.

This class is the very first class to be introduced since the game underwent their rebrand. This class isn’t available globally at present, which is why you see the entirety of the game in Korean.
Honestly, I needed to use a Google Translate app on my phone to really tell what was going on, but after a few minutes in-game I remembered what did what and didn’t have any additional issues.

Honestly, this new class, this new character – since yes all classes in Kritika are gender locked, is one of the reasons I’m glad ALLM are self-publishing their game over here now.
Not only do we not have to wait for a North American publisher to go back and forth with the South Korean developer before finally releasing content months, if not years after the official version, but I get to work directly with the developers themselves.
Keeping an MMO – or, heck, any game alive is impossible without the addition of new content.
Sure, you can have players repeat, replay the same content if there are differing routes, varying levels of content to choose between, but to keep the playerbase growing you need to provide them new content to play through.
This can be story-content, new areas to explore, new dungeons or raids to run, or new classes to play and learn from scratch. New classes provide a reason to replay older content, as you get to slowly grow and learn your character.

I typically play as Mages in MMOs because I love magic. I played through the scythe-wielding Reaper initially because I mean, looking at her, why wouldn’t you want to play with her? I mean, play as her.
Okay, Mrs Stix is glaring at me now. I’m half tempted to edit this out but in case I don’t make it past today I’d like this here as record of how I mysteriously disappeared.
Jokes aside, playing as this new class was actually really damn fun. By far the most enjoyable class I’ve gotten to play in Kritika, or even in the rebranded Kritika: REBOOT.
This is the class I’ll definitely main going forward, at least until something more fun comes out. Which, hopefully is in the latter quarter of 2020, but who knows what the future holds!

I have always been a huge fan of Kritika Online. See, back before it ever received a North American release, I played the Playpark version of the game and brought it to the attention of our viewers a couple years ago.
I thought the graphics were fantastic, the combat was highly engaging and overall it was a really good hub-based MMORPG. So you can imagine my surprise when the game was shut down earlier this year.
Thankfully, ALLM, the South Korean developers of Kritika saw the potential for the game and opted to self-publish the game in the West in place of having someone else incorrectly handle the game once more.
And here we are, the end of 2019 with a brand new rendition of Kritika called Kritika: REBOOT.

Kritika: REBOOT is a highly dynamic, fast paced action MMO. There are over-world hubs where players traditionally relax, take quests, sell items, upgrade gear and talk amongst one another.
Then there are the dungeons where most of the game takes place – unlocked by continuing with the game’s story. These are pretty varied, and offer various difficulty options for players to tackle if you want a challenge.
Granted, I will point out that early on the dungeons are pretty easy, but I know for a fact they get much more difficult and more intuitive as the game itself goes on.
And that’s where grouping up with other people comes in. You might not need to necessarily during the introductory levels but not only does it makes things go faster, but trust me, it’s always a good thing to build relationships early on.
Thankfully I play pretty much every game with Mrs Stix so at the very least I’ll always have another person to play with, whether she plays DPS or opts to go healer to keep me alive.

Since the majority of the game does take place around running through a plethora of dungeons and fighting your way through hordes of monsters, it’d suck if the combat were dull and boring, right?
Thankfully, as I stated during the intro, I believed Kritika had really great combat. Coming back to the game, I still feel that way.
Normally I play as the scythe-wielding Reaper, but this time I felt like I wanted to go and try something new. Thus, I went ahead and made the Eclair class.
I felt like the description for the class just.. spoke to me. I’ve always wanted to be a masochistic runaway emo teenager.
Jokes aside, there are quite a few classes to choose from in-game. The Monk, Noblia, Warrior, Rogue, Gunmage, Reaper, Eclair, and the most recent addition to the game – the Archer.
Each class brings their own unique personality, flair and style of combat to the game providing you with a surplus of ways with which to progress through the game.
The combat is complete action – there is no auto-locking on at all. You’re required to aim your skills and as such are completely capable of overshooting your mark. Which I’m totally not guilty of doing because my aim is true.
But Mrs Stix – she normally plays healers in video games so she’s a little.. less true with hers.
There are plenty of skills to choose between, with each and every skill being upgradeable as you continue to level your character. I didn’t really know what I was doing so I just kinda YOLO’d whatever looked to be doing the most damage to me.
Probably not the ideal way to build your character but I can’t be held accountable for my characters build if you leave me unmonitored and without a guide.
Each dungeon is designed for smaller, quicker play sessions in mind, allowing you to jump into the game and get right into the action as soon as possible, with every dungeon resulting in a large boss-battle.

Speaking of characters earlier, I would also like to point out that while there are initial classes, several of the classes you can choose between are actually capable of progressing into additional sub-classes.
This provies additional customization options for characters that you wouldn’t have otherwise, allowing for more variety in how you decide to tackle each dungeon and subsequently each boss encounter.

Overall, I had a lot of fun playing the re-released Kritika: REBOOT. I’m glad that ALLM have decided to self-publish the game over here because I feel like there’s a market for it.
There aren’t many action brawler MMOs with active populations anymore, and it’s good to see that there are thousands of players concurrently playing through the game.
For the kind of game Kritika: REBOOT is, it’s actually pretty packed with players all participating in content, partying up, PvPing and doing dungeons together.
Or maybe they’re off collecting outfits – of which there are a ton. What would an MMO be without a plethora of outfits, after all, right?
I look forward to seeing where ALLM take Kritika: REBOOT going into the future.
I’ve always been a fan of the game and will likely remain a fan of the game for a long time to come. You can go ahead and type “MMOBYte Kritika” into Youtube if you wanna see exactly how many videos I’ve done on Kritika over time.

Hopefully you enjoy the game as much as I did, but I understand hub-based MMOs aren’t for everyone.
Nevertheless, I urge you to at least give the game a try and see what you think, the game is completely free after all.
Worst case scenario? You waste a couple hours of your time. Alternatively, you might really enjoy what you play! Totally worth it to me.

Unique Promotional Code: (008-005-5794A49)

Make sure to redeem the code within the Kritika Launcher itself.

Before you redeem your code, please create a character first.

Promo code goodies:
[Denim Costume] full set
[Premium service 7days]
[Golden dot] weapon costume
[Mongmong] pet
[Nutcracker doll mask] side costume

Unlike some people I was of the impression that Kritika was actually a very fun MMO. I played the Thai version of it.. or at least I think it was the Thai version of it before En Masse ever released the game globally.
I was absolutely gutted when I learned earlier this year that En Masse were actually shutting the game down – after a brief 2 year run only.
I know, Kritika is a hub-based MMO so it lacks the appeal of MMOs with more frequent, more diversified content such as Final Fantasy XIV or Guild Wars 2 but I felt like it was an abrupt closure.
It wasn’t as well-received or as popular as Soul Worker – probably its most direct competition, but it had a loyal playerbase nevertheless.

But all that is changing as ALLM, the South Korean developer of the MMO is actually planning on self-publishing the game over here.
That’s right, the game may have been shut down due to En Masse’s poor handling of the title but for fans of the game – and let’s be honest here, yes, there might not be that many, but that doesn’t mean we don’t exist – it looks like we’ll have the ability to carry on playing.
Kritika never shut down nor ceased development in South Korea, and with the developer self-publishing their own game that might mean we get faster, more up-to-date versions of the game concurrently with their South Korean releases.
But then again, I still have PTSD from the last time an MMO from South Korea decided to self-publish their game over here.. yup, although I’d hate to admit it, it feels a little reminiscent of Bless Online.
Now I’m not going to completely shut down the possibility that this could turn out to be a sincere re-launch of the game. I’ve just been shat on by so many companies recently that I can’t help but be pessimistic.

On October 22nd, ALLM made an announcement on the official Kritika Facebook page.

While details of exactly what we can expect are a little vague, we can safely gather that the game is going to be titled Kritika:REBOOT and is going to be doing away with the Stamina system and reworking rewards.
Removal of the stamina is a very good move as stamina in any MMO – Closers, Soul Worker, Kritika, is a terrible design flaw that I think should not exist in any capacity.
Limiting what you can do by anything other than your own time should never be how you prevent people from running content.
Kritika:REBOOT will be launching November 2019.. Well, relaunching.. kinda relaunching? The new version will be going live but as noted, not much has been revealed.
Whether or not they’ll opt to have players purchase Founder’s Packs to get Early Access or a Headstart, whether or not the game will be free-to-play.. right now there are too many unknowns to really guesstimate accurately.
So all we have to go off is that the game’s coming back, there’ll be some necessary changes made and hope that it isn’t a cash-grab like Bless was.
I feel like that’s realistically all we can hope for.

Kritika’s latest update – Windhome – is now available to play, bringing with it an increased level cap – Up to 70 -, the new Windhome region and accompanying story line, new Danger Zones, new equipment and the Prime Attribute system, and an increased gear enchantment cap of +19.

Of all of these, the Prime Attribute system seems the most interesting to me. As described on the promotion page:
“Windhome also introduces the Dusk gear set designed with the new Prime Attribute system in mind.

Prime Attributes are a way to further customize your character. Each piece of gear you pick up in this new region will have a Prime Attribute that will particularly resonate with a specific class. Add up enough Prime Attribute points, and you’ll unlock a powerful array of special abilities for your character.”

It seems like a unique way to make your character stronger, and I’d be curious to see just what sort of  special abilities the new Prime Attributes will bring.

For the full patch notes, visit the Official News Post Here.

What would any MMO patch be without shiny new things to dress your character up in? The Windhome update also brings with it the release of two new Kritika bundles.

The first is the Collector’s Edition Pack, with a hefty pricetag of US$49. For your precious coin you will receive An exclusive Infernal costume for one class of your choice, a Clockwork weapon skin, a steamdrake autoloot pet, 30 days of Elite status, some 30 day bonuses and some consumables.

The second is the new Elite Costume Pack, which comes in at US$29. This will net you 4 costumes, 30 days of elite status, a Player Pack with useful bits and bobs like exp boosters and resurrection stones, and a 30 day Dye Mania voucher.

Check out the full details on the Official News Post Here.

The new Breezehome Windhome update is live now. Are you looking forward to the new Danger Zones or Prime attribute system? Leave a comment below or join in the discussion on Our Discord Server!