Studying the financial report of Netmarble in the fourth quarter of 2024, I came across MMORPG Project Sol. Judging by the Payplain, the release of this project should take place in the second half of 2025, so I decided to learn more about it. Unfortunately, the information about the game itself is very small, since the advertising campaign has not yet started, and the project is under commercial secret. However, it was possible to find out information about the company itself and its founder.
The Project Sol is a cross -platform MMORPG for PC and consoles in the setting of medieval fantasy with an open and seamless world. The project is created on the Unreal Engine 5 engine, which will implement a realistic graphics with the introduction of modern technologies. According to the developers, the feature of the game will be the opportunity to influence the emergence and development of various game events.
Thanks to the vacancies, several details were found out:
- The company is looking for people with experience in optimizing server architecture and a game client for stable work with a large number of players. However, it is not yet clear in what conditions the players will gather in one place.
- Perhaps the full 3D will be implemented, since experience with it is required in some vacancies.
The development is conducted by the South Korean company Alt9, which sets its main goal to “make a revolution in the stagnant market of mobile games.”
Alt9 was founded in December 2021, and on March 8, 2022 it became known that Garena invested 30 billion out of it. At the same time, there were rumors about Krafton interest, but there were no more investments according to open data.
By May 2023, 53 people worked in Alt9, and the company itself got into the TOP-50 startups compiled by Forbes Korea together with 160 venture funds. In November 2024, the number of staff was already 113 people and continues to increase. At the time of writing the text, 11 vacancies are open, among which there are programmers, artists of different directions, animators, quests scriptwriters and content game designers.
Another entertaining fact concerns the founder of the company – Kim Hyo Su. He was born in 1981 and has a great gaming experience behind him, especially in Lineage. In 2003, he came to NCSOFT to settled in the Lineage team, but he was refused. However, in 2005, he became a temporary employee in the monitoring department, where he followed the actions of the players 12 hours a day and published technical information in the game chat. Then he worked in the Lineage tournament department, in the QA and FQA departments, after which he joined the Lineage planning team on an ongoing basis. Over time, he headed the Lineage planning team, and then became the director of Lineage M. This was the highest level that the planning developer can achieve. He played a large role in the success of Lineage and Lineage M, and in the recognition of his contribution was increased to the senior vice president. That is, in NCSoft there were only a few people above the hierarchy.
By the end of 2021, Kim Hyo Su left NCSoft, after which he became the general director of Alt9. His departure is partly associated with the decision of the company’s management to stop creating new Lineage franchise games. Before the release of Lineage W, the thesis about the “Lineage Last game” was part of the marketing campaign.
It is likely that the first employees of ALT9 were the former NCSoft employees who decided to leave the company after their manager. Such an assumption can be made on the basis of statements about “experienced employees, whose shoulders are years of work on successful games.”
In November 2024, Netmarble reported that it would become the publisher of the game both in South Korea and in the global market. Kwon Yong Sik, general director of Netmarble, so commented on this agreement:
“We are glad to cooperate with ALT9 to bring the Project SOL to the world market. By combining the publishing capabilities of Netmarble and the innovative developments of ALT9, we expect to give new impressions to gamers around the world. ”
It is likely that the Project SOL will not be the next cross -platform MMORPG, inspired by Lineage M or Lineage 2M, since it makes no sense for employees to leave NCSOFT for such a project. In addition, most likely, under the contract, former employees of the company cannot develop a direct competitor for a certain time after dismissal. It is likely that the idea of Kim Hyo Su about the new game was not supported by the NCSoft leadership due to its high risks. Therefore, we hope that Alt9 will be able to “make a revolution in the stagnant market of mobile games” and offer something interesting.