NCSoft, makers of popular MMORPG games such as City of Heroes, Guild Wars and the extremely popular Lineage II, have entered into an agreement with Valve, the makers of the very successful online content distribution system Steam, for some of NCSoft’s current MMORPG games to be made available via Steam. Steam already has dozens of top-quality games for download, and adding NCSoft’s games to the list only strengthens their arsenal.
Specifically, Lineage II, City of Heroes and Guild Wars, including expansions for these MMORPG games, are available. Currently, there are some discounts applicable to some of the items, including a 50% discount for Lineage II. The recently released Mission Architect for City of Heroes is also included on Steam. The Mission Architect allows for players to create their own missions and story arcs, and players did just that: 20,000 mission arcs created in just the first week of release.
What makes this particular move interesting for South African gamers though, is that we do in fact have a local Steam server in South Africa, proudly hosted by Internet Solutions. This likely doesn’t mean, however, that those of us on local-only internet connections, or after our internet cap has been reached, will be able to access and/or download these games, as authentication to the Steam network still happens via international links. However, the existence of a local Steam server for South Africans means much faster game downloads and updates, and quite possibly better multiplayer game matching as well.
NCSoft’s new upcoming game, Aion, will also be included in the deal. Aion is scheduled to be released in the second quarter of 2009.
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