Kingdom Under Fire 2 is alive and is apparently being released here this year
KUF!
Kingdom Under Fire 2 is alive and apparently it's actually really genuinely coming out. Publisher Gameforge is now in control and will release the game on PC in Europe and North America later this year, it has told me.
You'd be forgiven for thinking the game was dead because it sort of was. It's been closed everywhere else in the world, it doesn't really exist, and it only ever really existed in limited beta form in Asia and Russia anyway. This, then, will be the game's first commercial launch, which is remarkable, really, for a game originally announced in 2008.
To recap: Kingdom Under Fire 2 is a Korean-made, persistent online game. I'd say MMO but I'm not sure how massively multiplayer it is outside of hub spaces. It's always struck me as a cross between Dynasty Warriors and a real-time strategy game. You play as a very powerful hero who can carve through seas of opponents with huge, devastating powers, and you can also control your own army. And it's these armies you can join with other players to take on the game's biggest challenges. It all looks quite spectacular, or looked, perhaps - it's no spring chicken any more.
Another reason I followed Kingdom Under Fire 2 was it was constantly linked with a console release, in addition to PC, and console MMOs were once very rare. To begin with, KUF2 was an Xbox 360 game, which always seemed super-ambitious, and indeed Xbox Live red tape made life super-difficult, and the game was held up and eventually dropped. Then, KUF2 reappeared as a PlayStation 4 game, when PS4 was very new, but the 2014 release date came and went, and the game disappeared again. That was the last I heard of it.
A business model for Kingdom Under Fire 2 wasn't disclosed. I'd be surprised if it wasn't free-to-play but Gameforge told me confirmation will wait for a future announcement. There's a Kingdom Under Fire 2 Facebook page which Gameforge apparently intends to keep up to date.
