As we head towards the closing of 2014, Tree of Savior search results hit an all-time high of 108,100 searches a month in November 2014, beating many South Korean games such as the popular MapleStory 2 (90,500), Lineage Eternal (49,500), Peria Chronicles (18,100) and Sudden Atttack 2 (12,100). The search result shows an increase of 228% since November last year when imcGAMES released the first Tree of Savior game play.
Just 30 minutes ago, imcGAMES has publicly announce that Nexon will be their publisher for Tree of Savior in Korea. imcGAMES will be responsible for servicing and development, while Nexon will be responsible for business and marketing. This relationship will not affect international CBT.
Weekends! Oh the dreadful weekends where patch updates are non-existent and nobody is working in IMC Games to complete our much awaited game, Tree of Savior. However, I feel a strong urge to write a summary of what we know so far on Tree of Savior and the company working on the game, IMC Games. I will let the numbers do the talking.
IMC Games started their very own Tree of Savior’s English blog on May 13th, 2014. The English blog is mainly updated by Community Manager, CM Leslie. IMC Games also announced that they will reveal future updates on their Facebook Page. English blog were mostly updated on Mondays.
Goddess of Fire, Gabija was first introduced in the blog.
Inven.co.kr, a Korean gaming website interviews the development team of Tree of Savior. This article explains the summary of the interview.
NHN Entertainment (old publisher, new publisher unknown) announced that IMC Games has renamed “Project R1″ as “Tree of Savior”. It took approximately 12 days for IMC Games to find the name. The focal point of the game will be the spirit of the forest, the “savior tree”.
The game features a 2D character in a 3D environment in an isometric view of the surrounding, differentiating Tree of Savior from most 3D MMORPG games. This decision to create a 2.5D was pushed by the depreciating attention on 3D games. So one day the developer said “Let’s make a 2D game that highlights the attractiveness of the game”.
“Project R1″ has undergone four years of development. Most of the basic contents has been developed and right now the developers are refining the game. CBT is expected to begin at the second half of this year.
When interviewed Kim Hakkyu, he said “I want to create a friendly, cute and casual game”. Kim Hakkyu is the lead developer of popular online game “Ragnarok Online” and “Granado Espada”.
Source
Following the completion of Granado Espada, Kim Hakkyu will start to work on two titles (later revealed as WolfKnights and Tree of Savior). Both projects are funded by IMC Games.
“I’m working on two new projects,” Kim said. “One is an MMORPG with a more basic structure, one character to control, but with some deeper, weirder stuff thrown in there. The other title is more niche. It’ll be a 2D cross 3D game in the Ragnarok style. It’ll be pretty different from other games. I’m moving in both directions.” – Gamasutra.com