The Legend of Mir 2
| Legend of Mir 2 | |
|---|---|
| File:Legendofmir.PNG | |
| Developer(s) | WeMade Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | ActozSoft |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Release |  September 19, 2001 |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy MMORPG |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
The Legend of Mir 2 (Korean: 미르의 전설 2) is a sprite based isometric 3-D massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Korean-based Wemade Entertainment. There are currently four versions available; Korean Mir, Chinese Mir, Taiwanese Mir, and European Mir.
While being moderately successful in Europe, it has been incredibly well-received in Asia, and was the most popular MMORPG in China in 2002 and 2003, with over 250,000 simultaneous users being reported.
Mir 2 continues to officially run in both Korea and Europe, albeit with lower player counts. The technology used to render the game is antiquated, as it simply loads pre-rendered images to display the world while using no real rendering engine, as opposed to most of the 3D game engine technology used today.
The sequel, The Legend of Mir 3, has a very similar gameplay but has updated graphics, as well as providing larger maps. It has not quite reached the popularity levels of its predecessor, and has so far been released in the same countries as Mir 2, as well as in the United States.
Gameplay
Players control an avatar and venture through cities, open landscapes, woods, and dungeons.
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Characters
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New players have the option of playing one of three professions, with no more than two characters per server. Professions range from Taoist, healers who use magical and melee attacks; Warriors, who use mainly melee attacks with some attacks relying on Magical Power; and Wizards who solely depend on magic (though some weapons do compensate for their lack of general weapon knowledge).
Taoist
Taoist use their connection with nature to form powerful attacks. While being neither a wizard or warrior, they have skills similar to both. Taoist are primarily healers while assisting other players, though they can be quite destructive. Most of their skills depend on the use of Amulets, which are purchased from NPC vendors.
Warrior
Warriors are incredibly strong characters that use their brute force with little magic to hack away at their enemies. Warriors are generally the easiest character for newer players due to their higher maximum health and easy of play.
Wizard
Wizards are a magic based class using magical ranged attacking methods due to their lack of ability to sustain melee damage. Similarly, wizards rarely use melee attacks against their enemies.
PK
Players are allowed to attack and kill other players ingame for any given reason, though it is generally frowned upon. Once a player has killed another player they are labeled with either yellow or later, red, that informs other players that they have killed somebody recently. Red players are not allowed in most cities and are generally ignored by NPC's. Red players are also fair game to other players, a punishment for their PK status.
Another punishment is the chance of cursing your weapon from the death of another player. Curses cause weapons to deal less of a melee blow. Increased number of curses will render a weapon useless.
While attacking another player, the attacker will be labeled with a Brown player name. Any other player can attack and kill the offending player without accumulating PK points.
Point System
Players are labeled with a PK status after successfully killing another player. Each kill is considered 100 PK points. One point is removed every minute. Following the point system
- 0-99 Points - The player continues to have a white character name, even though the character still has PK points.
- 100-199 Points - The player's name will turn yellow, a symbol that the player has killed somebody recently.
- 200 and above - The player's name will be red, showing that the player has killed at least three people. While red the player can be killed without any ill effect to the attacking player. Red players will lose their entire bag when dying.
History
European Mir
The Italian company Game Network is responsible for the operation of the European version of the game. Game Network originally had their own satellite television channel, but it was canceled due to lack of funding. Game Network now has a reputation of being the worst game provider around and is currently facing a munity
Chinese MIR
Mir 2 is operated by Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited, established in December, 1999. In September 2001, Shanda published Mir 2 as its first game. Later in November, 2003 Shanda acquired the controlling stake in Actoz who owns 50% of the copyright for Mir 2.
Another game by Shanda, The World of Legend, allegedly infringes on copyrighted Mir 2 content, prompting legal action by Wemade.
Mir 2 continues to officially run in both Korea and Europe, albeit with lower player counts. The technology used to render the game is antiquated, as it simply loads pre-rendered images to display the world while using no real rendering engine, as opposed to most of the 3D game technology used today.
Hackers and Software Leaks
Similar to many MMORPGs, Legend of Mir 2 suffers from tailor-made cheat programs, and numerous bug exploits have been abused by players. Private servers are also a problem, as the server code has been leaked onto the internet on more than one occasion.
More recently Mir has been subject to packet editing, though it has been going on behind the scenes for some time it became more obvious when people started to exploit the Challenge NPC, resulting in obtaining multiple high level characters within hours, and possibly the most clear sign of packeting, complete server failure.
Private Servers
During the summer of 2002, months before the release of a large European Mir patch nicknamed "Spider Patch", a distribution server used by Wemade Entertainment mysteriously contained a copy of a the Korean test game server, and within it held all the applications required to operate a game server. Soon, a group of individuals from around the world assembled to translate the software and NPC dialog into English from the original Korean.
The resulting translated files were then used by the individuals as the first private server.
After the files had been translated, one of the members of the group leaked the files, this caused anger amongst the group, who in the end decided to tidy the files up and make an "official" release.
Considerable strides have been made over the years following, and development had been continued by many different individuals and groups of Chinese players with English private servers relying on translated versions of Chinese private server developments. As of recently, newer European versions of the client and server have been developed by English developers and subsequently released for English use.