Typically I wouldn’t dedicate time to create a post here pertaining to the pre-registration of a mobile MMO, but I feel as though I’m obligated to given that NCSoft have confirmed this is going to be fully cross-platform compatible for both PC and mobile devices via their Purple Platform.

Lineage2M is the latest of seemingly hundreds of Lineage MMO titles was revealed to be releasing over here in the West – and, actually, 28 other countries around the world.
Yup, 29 simultaneous launches worldwide, which goes to show how much faith they have in the Lineage intellectual property.

According to NCSoft, they have plans on holding a Closed Beta for PC players via the Purple Platform on November 1st, with players already being capable of pre-registering.
So if you’re interested in that… well, you’re in luck, as I have a direct link to the pre-registration page. Simply click the link below, fill out the required information to become a Beta tester, and you’ll be on the right track to playing Lineage2M in no time!

Let’s rewind a little bit here. In December 2019 – almost a year ago to date – I did a video on Lineage 2: Remastered.
NCSoft had recently confirmed that they were going to be releasing an entire overhaul of the popular MMO using Unreal Engine 4.
Queue the crowds raising up ready to give NCSoft a standing ovation. Raising their hands into the air in victory – finally, they’re giving the Lineage games the attention they deserve!
Well.. they’d actually gotten plenty of attention up until that point, just not in the way players wanted. With Lineage 2 Revolution, Lineage 2M, Lineage 2.. err, random mobile port #3.

Fast forward to the end of the year 2020 – what do we know about the game, its release date, what the overhaul is actually going to include? I’ve been asked repeatedly – pretty much every week for the last several months if I had any updates. That’s what I’m here today to discuss.

So let’s get the most important question out of the way first: What is Lineage 2: Remastered? Is it an overhaul, is it a remake? Good question. I’m glad you asked.
At the end of 2019, NCSoft had opened a job posting where they were searching for a Technical Artist that had expertise in Unreal Engine 4.
Lineage 2 was released 17 years ago, roughly, and was developed on Unreal Engine 2.5 – yup, it has really been that long. Do you feel old yet?
So we’re skipping Unreal Engine 3 and moving directly on to Unreal Engine 4. The good news is – it isn’t being built on Unreal Engine 5, which means that the game doesn’t have an expected release date of 2024 or 2025!

What we currently know about this project is that NCSoft are attempting an overhaul that no MMO developer has ever attempted before – a task that is so daunting, that since beginning the overhaul, NCSoft have chosen to avoid discussing the game in any capacity.
Heck, they didn’t even make it to G-Star 2019 at the time to promote it. They haven’t made any mention of whether this overhaul will add anything additional into the game or alter any of the core mechanics that players grew to love about the game.
What has been confirmed is that since they’re upgrading the graphical engine to Unreal Engine 4, they’re going to be completely altering the textures for NPCs, characters and the environments. Meaning your favorite characters are likely going to be entirely unrecognizable.
Your character model – the characters we created when we began this game are going to change drastically as well.
With this large change comes the question.. if the graphics – especially pertaining to character models – is going to alter us to such a degree, then are they going to add in additional customization options?
I don’t think, with a game that is going to look as good as this will perhaps look should be as limited as the original incarnation of the game was, right?
And then if they overhaul the character models and the environments, that means they’re going to have to alter the combat, the combat animations, skill effects, everything.
So on the one hand, we might have a game that ends up looking something like Crimson Desert – incredibly fluid in terms of combat and animations, with crisp, gorgeous scenery.
Or we’ll have a game that looks and plays as sloppily, as clunkily as Astellia did.

So while NCSoft have titled this “Lineage 2: Remastered,” it might be entirely feasible to call this an entirely new entry in the franchise – just with the same story.
But why are they choosing to overhaul the entire game, and why now? I’m well aware Lineage and Lineage 2 have always been popular over here in the West.
Not nearly to the same degree – the same extent they once were, but they still have their followings of tens of thousands of players, especially with the Classic servers going.
I’m fully of the opinion that since they’re – wait, they’ve still yet to apply the Unreal Engine 4 update to Blade & Soul, right? Man it’s crazy how long they’ve been delaying that.
But since they’re overhauling Blade & Soul by importing the game over to Unreal Engine 4, I feel as though to keep the Lineage franchise kind of “up-to-date” and monetizable, they’re making certain to follow through with Lineage 2 as well.
Because at the end of the day, if there’s one thing we know to be fact when it comes to South Korean MMO developers – or maybe just South Korean developers in general – it’s that their game HAS to look good.
If it doesn’t, then it’s garbage and they should remake it in its entirety. Case in point.

So when should we expect Lineage 2: Classic? I know that’s likely the most important question on your mind going into this, right?
Back at the end of last year we had no definitive release date scheduled, and as of the end of 2021.. that seems to be the case once again.
This overhaul is a work in progress, and could likely take several years before their vision comes to fruition.
It doesn’t have a confirmed release date scheduled for 2021, nor 2022 – but I wouldn’t expect it to be beyond 2024 as by then the vast majority of MMOs built on Unreal Engine 4 are going to be outdated.
I mean, heck, there are MMO developers – such as XL Games and Kakao that are already building the new ArcheAge 2 MMO on Unreal Engine 5.
So if I were to take a guess – I’d say we should expect official trailers coming 2022 with a confirmed release some time during the end of 2023, maybe beginning of 2024 within South Korea.
I can’t say about its international version – I’m sure, much like Blade & Soul we’re merely an afterthought. But we’ll no doubt get it in time. We just have to sit back, be patient and wait, like always.
With TL: Origin coming soon – which is essentially Lineage 3 for all intents and purposes, this might – temporarily of course – put the remaster on the backburner, however.

Regardless, I’m excited to get in-game one day and play this in a world that looks as good as Blade & Soul Remastered is going to look. Like Crimson Desert looks. That will be the day the Lineage franchise makes its comeback.
Because while I’m sure TL: Origin will do good, I don’t think a top-down isometric MMO will ever top a traditional MMO.

This is perhaps one of the weirdest things I’ve seen done in an MMO. Who here plays Lineage 2: Revolution? Well, even if you don’t, I’m sure you’ve at least tried it at one point or another, as it’s one of the highest grossing mobile games in the world.
Well.. see, traditionally when you play mobile games, you physically play them. I mean yeah, you have auto-play features but even so, you still play them in some form or fashion.
But Lineage 2: Revolution had a new feature introduced last week that allows for players to continue playing.. offline.
Well not you physically. A brand new “Offline Mode” was added to allow your character themselves to continue adventuring, continue battling all on their own, without any need for you to even log in.
Yup – so you’ll be free to do whatever else you want to do throughout the day, ’cause you aren’t going to need to log in and play it.

The one redeeming feature regarding this new game mode is that you will be capped at 120 minutes per day – well, at least at the base.
See, you’ll be able to actually earn additional offline play time through various activities like daily quests, hunting and item benefits, and even Diamonds. Time will be added in increments of 60 minutes each.
However, you’ll need to actually get in-game and purchase those from the in-game store. Offline Mode is an interesting addition, as once you activate it your game completely closes.
However, your character will continue to consume potions while logged out, so you’re going to want to make sure you have a surplus of potions on-hand as otherwise you’ll log in.. dead. Which will be a huge waste of time.
Thankfully, the game will send you notifications if you begin to run low on potions.

I’ve never been a fan of auto-play in my mobile games as I believe the key to a successful game, and moreso a mobile game that is accepted by non-mobile fans won’t employ any form of auto-play.
But making it possible to spend hours worth of your day with your own character AFK-playing so you don’t have to.. that’s an interesting direction to take your game.
I think it’s the wrong direction to take the game honestly, as soon there will be less people playing than people logging in and the game will be mostly compromised of AI killing AI…
I dunno. That just sounds silly to me. But then again I’m still new to the mobile genre, maybe this is something a lotta you are interested in having in a game?

Yes.. yes it’s really coming. This isn’t a lie, this isn’t clickbait, and most importantly.. this isn’t for mobile devices. This is for good ‘ol fashioned PC, baby!

If you’ve been watching the MMO scene then you’d know a little while ago NCSoft announced they were doing a graphical overhaul of Blade & Soul, porting the game over to Unreal Engine 4 after all these years.
Did it need it? Not really, but that doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate getting the opportunity to play Blade & Soul in an overhauled state.
We’ve seen trailers and they look impeccable. Whether or not NCSoft can live up to the hype and bring an optimized, high quality experience is another story, though.
But people believed that that’s where NCSoft would stop, because.. well, what other MMOs do they have?
Aion, which has had its North American servers dead for longer than I can remember.
Guild Wars, which – and I know there are still fans of the original Guild Wars game – and I’m not saying it’s bad, so don’t jump down my throat here – just that it hasn’t been popular in quite a few years.
Guild Wars 2, which NCSoft are slowly moving into maintenance mode, much to the dismay of the community.
And finally, Lineage and Lineage 2, both of which are so old I bet you’d forgotten they even existed.

But NCSoft most definitely have not, because here we are, at the end of 2019, with the news that out of all the games at their disposal, Lineage 2 is next in line to receive a graphical overhaul in the form of “Lineage 2: Remastered.”
No, this has nothing to do with Lineage 2M or Lineage 2: Revolution for mobile devices. This is a complete overhaul of Lineage 2 for PC.
NCSoft announced earlier last month that they were looking for a technical artist that is familiar with Unreal Engine 4, Maya and 3DS Max for work on Lineage 2: Remastered, also referred to as “L2: Remastered.”

Interestingly, NCSoft never officially announced the project at G-Star 2019 which was highly unusual, since that’s the convention that every South Korean publisher announces games at.
However, even despite the lack of an announcement, the overhaul is going to be quite a daunting task to undertake as the game was originally released way back in 2003, and upgrading the game to Unreal Engine 4 isn’t going to be easy.
In fact, an overhaul like this has never even been attempted before, and if that isn’t difficult enough, Lineage 2 launched back in South Korea in 2003 and was built on Unreal Engine 2.5.
That should give you a rough estimate of how complex this will ultimately end up being, if NCSoft are capable of completing this transition at all.

Lineage 2 over a decade ago was one of the most popular MMORPGs around. If you hadn’t played the game then you hadn’t experienced what the genre truly had to offer.
Yes, the game much like all MMOs, changed quite drastically over time, becoming more pay to win and much more casual friendly.
But even though the game was very popular over here in the West, the South Korean iteration of Lineage 2 remained significantly more popular, having tens of millions of active players.
Honestly, that could be the reasoning behind Lineage 2: Remastered. The game is still highly popular over in South Korea – I mean, the game has remained alive and receiving updates for over 16 years.
And if there’s anything we know about South Korean MMO developers, it’s that they value high quality graphics above all else – story, mechanics, and gameplay be damned! So long as the game looks visually appealing, they have a game that will make them billions.
So what better way to drive up new player participation or to at the very least bring players back to the game than to do a complete graphical overhaul to rival other MMOs that are currently dominating the market?

Not only that, but Lineage 2 was so popular that they went ahead and released Lineage 2: Classic for players to relive what made Lineage 2 great: Its early-game.
To date, there are still thousands of players online concurrently on both the current version of the game and classic version.

Now I would like to at least mention that this overhaul is a work in progress. While it has been officially confirmed by NCSoft themselves, it is likely going to require a lot of time and even more effort on the part of the developers.
So expecting this any time in the immediate future is highly unlikely, especially since NCSoft confirmed that Project TL, the sequel to Lineage is going to be releasing in 2020.
What form that’ll take – Alpha testing, Beta testing remains to be seen but they confirmed that it’ll be released in a playable state next year.
Whether that will ultimately delay the Lineage 2: Remastered overhaul is up for discussion, but suffice it to say NCSoft have a lot of work on their table right now.

I never got to play Lineage 2 back when it was still relevant and popular, but I was excited when Lineage 2: Classic launched.
I’m excited about the Blade & Soul Unreal Engine 4’s upgrade and equally as excited if not moreso for Lineage 2: Remastered because this game is probably going to look gorgeous.
I wonder if, then, they plan on introducing the graphical overhaul to Classic as well. Eh, well. Another thought for another video.

Like, hear me out for a minute here. I know a lotta you guys have probably played through Lineage or Lineage 2 at one point or another. I’m sure a lotta you have also played Lineage 2: Revolution as well.
This however, this is regarding Lineage 2M – a mobile recreation of the Lineage 2 MMO that released onto PC in 2002.
In September, a press event was held for Lineage 2M – where it was revealed that the game would be releasing in South Korea at the end of this year.
Now, it has since been confirmed to have a release date of November 27th – or at the very least it states as such on the official website.
Again, this will be releasing in South Korea on November 27th with no confirmed release date for North America or Europe as of this moment.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t play it. Tons of us played through Black Desert Mobile when it launched in South Korea, and likewise, with the right emulator we can play this as well.
And you’ll probably want to.

NCSoft have promised that unlike Lineage 2: Revolution, which is a Lineage game in name only, Lineage 2M will be an accurate remake of the Lineage 2 PC game.
They’re sparing no expense in providing us as faithful of an adaptation as they can – and I’m grateful of that.
I know that certain aspects of the game are no doubt going to be required to be altered to fit the mobile scene – I’m under no illusion that the game will be different.
But I’m hoping that they’re aware enough to know that we don’t want another copy>pasted mobile game like Lineage 2: Revolution. We want something good, something actually worthy of the Lineage name.
I’ve played quite a few mobile games since having begun this channel. Some good, some average, and some terrible.
Only a few have ever really caught my eye – as most mobile games are a convoluted mess of cluttered UIs, auto-play and.. are literally a clone of every other title in the genre.
While I can’t in any way confirm that Lineage 2M will offer us something that doesn’t follow that formula, from what I’ve seen posted around online, it looks to be a pretty solid title.
Plus, it’s being built with the new Purple platform in mind – an in-house emulator developed specifically for Lineage 2M that will be the first step going forward in making mobile games cross-play compatible with PCs by default, something I think is truly necessary going into the future.
Both for PC MMOs and Mobile MMOs alike. Not only will it garner additional revenue for developers but it’ll breathe additional life into every single game.

Lineage and Lineage 2 are still widely successful and still popular within South Korea.
Both games still have healthy playerbases in the West as well, numbering in the tens of thousands of active players. And even though Lineage 2: Revolution wasn’t the Lineage game we all wanted, it has since gone on to make well over $1 billion dollars already.
That is significantly more than the vast majority of PC MMOs, and PC games, even. Do I think we need more mobile games, or mobile MMOs?
I’m of the opinion that in this day and age, when every developer wants to get into the mobile market, we’re much more in need of quality mobile games and quality mobile MMOs.
But then again my thoughts are pretty similar with regards to PC games and PC MMOs as well, so this isn’t exclusive to mobile devices. Lineage M was popular and Lineage 2: Revolution was beyond popular.
Lineage 2M looks like it’ll end up a faithful adaptation of Lineage 2, much in the way Lineage M was, so this ultimately might work out well.
I have high hopes that it will because it’ll be the first game released for the new Purple platform and if that ends up less than stellar.. well it’ll be a step in the wrong direction.
I believe that if PC gamers are ever going to fully accept, or even tolerate mobile gamers, especially with regards to mobile MMOs, cross-play like this is going to be necessary, and this is a great first step.

Where do I even begin with this one?
I did a video on Lineage 2: Revolution for the main MMOByte channel a year or two ago when they released the brand new Orc race.
Since then, I’ve actively avoided the game because it was so heavily auto-play that I almost threw up a little in my mouth.
But I can’t operate the MMOByte Mobile channel and not do a video on it.
It’s one of the most popular MMORPGs on mobile – not to mention it’s one of the highest grossing mobile games.. pretty much ever, having pulled in tens of billions of dollars.
So here we are, at the end of 2019.. doing a video on Lineage 2: Revolution.

Lineage 2: Revolution is still one of the best looking MMOs on mobile devices. You cannot honestly look at this game, or the character models, and say that they are anything other than top-tier.
The game is set in the same world as the rest of the Lineage franchise – and adopts a very fantasy-esque style of graphics and setting.
It features a large open world, open-world PvP allowing for hundreds of players to participate in large scale battles, has a plethora of dungeons, raids and.. well, I’ll be real here.. this is one of the most “MMO” feeling MMOs on mobile devices.
It’s just a shame so much of the game is auto-play. But then again, with how difficult things got on my Orc last year, I don’t think auto-play will cut it at end-game so my concerns may be for early to mid-game only.

It’s a weird hybrid of action and tab-target. You technically need a target to use your skills but at the same time as long as you have one you can use AoE skills that make it feel more.. action-y.
My one issue with the game was that combat was pretty much complete auto. Yes, I don’t need to use auto-combat. It’s a feature – it isn’t meant to be the sole form of combat used.
Nevertheless, the game is difficult to play without it. Or, without auto-pathing, at the very least.
You’re all but required to auto-path to your quest objectives, and upon reaching your quest objectives, you begin auto-attacking everything.
Yes, yes, technically you can stop yourself from auto-attacking. But since I auto-pathed to pretty much every objective, by the time I looked back at my screen, the 2-4 enemies I was required to kill were already dead.
So I just let it do everything for me.
Again, I’m sure this changes the further you go through the game, when you jump into PvP, and when running dungeons or raids because I can’t see the AI working properly with difficult mechanics.

What would an MMO be without unique races, classes and character creation, right? Right. An MMO that isn’t worth playing.
Customization is part of the game – it’s one of the most important facets of an MMO.
Lineage 2: Revolution thankfully offers players 6 different races: The Elves, Dark Elves, Kamael, Orcs, Dwarves and Humans.
Each race has their own unique classes associated with them and yes.. yes the game is so auto-play that it attempted to automatically create my character as well. That is legit how annoying the auto-everything is in this game.
There’s a basic amount of customization, not nearly as much as I’ve seen in other MMOs like Rangers of Oblivion or Dawn of Isles.
You had a few hairstyles, clothing choices.. and then you made your character. That was it. For a game that is as beautiful as Lineage 2: Revolution, you’d think they’d provide you more.. anything.

Again, the game is very auto-play. Every aspect of the game is automatic. Auto-pathing, auto-equipping, auto combat, auto-customization.
Yes, you can easily opt out of those but when they make the game easier.. people will end up falling victim to the ease at which they’re accessible. Myself included.
But disregarding auto-play, the game is still one of the better ones out there. At least mechanically. Visually. Lineage 2: Revolution is a whales paradise: It’s heavily pay-to-win according to players.
While I’ve not experienced it, I don’t doubt it.
This game could very well have been one of the best MMOs on mobile if it weren’t such a prevalent pay-to-win mess filled with microtransactions, catering to whales and auto-play.
But then I know a lotta people love the game.. so make of that what you will.

Before you guys jump to conclusions, no this does not have anything to do with the Lineage 2: Revolution Mobile MMO.
That is an entirely different game all together. Lineage 2M is a complete mobile remake of Lineage 2 – an MMO that is still enjoyed by thousands of players today.
Lineage 2: Revolution was a spin-off title that was made to be a mobile game, whereas Lineage 2M is made with the intention of being a mobile adaptation of a PC game.
And while the 2 genres no doubt share similarities, they are at their core different games.

Alright, so if you hold mobile games in disdain, then you’ve probably already long since closed out of this video.
If you’re interested in either mobile games OR the Lineage genre itself – which this video is about, then this will probably be of interest to you.
So, a recent press event was held for Lineage 2M – where it was revealed that the game would be released at the end of this year. This sparked a lot of attention as we weren’t aware it was this close to release.
Now I’m not much of a mobile gamer: I’ve played almost 50 different mobile games over the last several months but only a handful have held my attention.
This is because most – from what I’ve come across are a convoluted mess of cluttered UI, auto-play and a case of copy>pasting ideas from already established games.
Lineage 2M is promising to be a faithful adaptation of the PC title, including a large, completely open world without any loading screens whatsoever, dozens of world bosses to tackle in open-world PvPvE.
Which is good for those of you that are into fighting other players, groups or even guilds over world boss spawns. And the ability to hold up to 10,000 players concurrently on a single channel.

Another interesting note is that at the very same press event, Purple, a brand new Korean service was unveiled.
Purple will allow players to effectively emulate mobile games, allowing for complete cross-play between both PC and mobile players. See, a lot of us use emulators like Nox, Bluestacks, MuMu and the like.
However, this new service will allow games to be built with this new platform in mind – so that when mobile games release, they will automatically be cross-play compatible.
Lineage 2M will be the very first game on the Purple platform – but considering the game already had over 2 million players pre-register for the game within 18 hours of the announcement, it’s safe to say that a lot of PC players are interested in playing as well.

Lineage and Lineage 2 are both still very popular in South Korea, and still have a semi-active playerbase in the West, although not nearly to the same degree.
This is likely the reason behind so many players pre-registering for the game – and the critical success of Lineage 2: Revolution, which has gone on to make well over $1 billion dollars already.
Significantly more than the vast majority of PC MMOs.
Do I think we need more mobile MMOs? I think we need more quality mobile MMOs, certainly. But I feel the same way about PC MMOs.
Mobile games as a whole are pushed out weekly, with new releases coming out faster than I can reasonably record on my mobile channel.
But how many of those games are actually quality games worth investing time into and not just another re-branded, copy>pasted cash grab?
Lineage M was popular, and since Lineage 2M looks to be a faithful adaptation in the same vein as Lineage M, this might work out well.
Especially since it’s going to be the very first game of its kind to be launched as cross-play compatible on the Purple platform.
This means those of us that dislike the thought of playing a mobile game on our mobile device will be able to play a game that looks as good as this does on our PC anyway, as if it were released on that platform to begin with.

I believe that if PC gamers are ever going to fully accept, or even tolerate mobile gamers, especially with regards to mobile MMOs, cross-play like this is going to be necessary, and this is a great first step.
I can’t say whether or not Lineage 2M will be heavily pay-to-win, or even heavy on microtransactions, but since it’s a South Korean mobile game.. it’s still very likely.
So, do we need Lineage 2M? No, we don’t. But this is a great step in the right direction – remaking MMOs that are long since past their prime.
So while we don’t necessarily need it.. it doesn’t mean that it isn’t welcome, especially the new Purple cross-play platform.