Kung Foo! – MMO Fallout

Back in February, I talked about a fledgling MMO from Perfect World Entertainment called Kung Foo! This martial arts MMO was running through the final days of the closed beta when Perfect World made a remarkable announcement: They were shutting down the game. But unlike the likes of All Points Bulletin, this premature shuttering was not permanent, but rather an elongated downtime to assess the game and its direction, with PWE pleased with its community response, yet displeased with the game’s content. Perfect World promised that the game would see launch sometime in 2010.

As the months dragged on, I will be honest in saying that I forgot all about Kung Foo! and its quirky style, and imagine my amazement when I get an email from PWE announcing that the game is coming back! Those of us like myself who closed beta tested the original Kung Foo! have been invited to test the closed beta for Legends of Martial Arts. LoMA, as it is called, begins closed beta on the 24th of November.

It’s always good to see a thought-dead title gain new life. More on Legends of Martial Arts as it appears.

Perfect World Entertainment isn’t happy with the current state of Kung Foo! their upcoming MMO that yours truly had the pleasure of closed beta testing. In fact, now that the testing is coming to a close in just a few days, they have an announcement to make: Rather than moving the game into open beta, Perfect World Entertainment will be shutting down Kung Foo! in order to optimize it with more content and improved localization for a relaunch of the closed beta later this year. The closed beta test was quite successful, and the company hopes to use this time to add in new features based off of player feedback.

I often berate Eastern MMOs for being shallow titles, but one thing that remains awfully consistent is the attitude of the developers. For companies like Perfect World Entertainment and Gpotato, they have a vested interest in keeping their customers happy, even if that means delaying their title by months at a time in order to avoid launching before it is ready.