The first thing that most people will notice when looking at a new game is the art style. With just the art style of a game someone can form an opinion if they like it or not. From art style alone, one can see if a game is of eastern or western origin. Eastern style known as being "Anime" and western being known as "Cartoony". When seeing the anime style for an MMO, people will form opinions on the game based on other games of similar style which can create stigmas that a game has to overcome before some will even consider the game worth playing. This holds true for even TERA, a new game being developed by Bluehole Studios and published by En Masse and Frogster in their respective regions.
When looking at videos or screen shots of TERA it is obvious that the game has a lot of Asian influence. Whether it's the well designed landscapes, the large designed weaponry or the very detailed skimpy armor, there is a lot that sticks out into being Asian influenced. This can be good or bad depending on personal opinion. When looking at TERA it is easy to associate it with other Korean titles. A common comparison to TERA is the Korean title released by NCsoft, Aion. Even with a different studio and different game play it still is easy to associate the two games and because of this people have already formed opinions about TERA whether they be good or bad.
A common question that is asked is if TERA will be free to play. Free to play MMOs already baring a stigma of not being as good as a pay to play titles, which in general is true. It shouldn't be too uncommon for this question to be asked since Korea is known for pumping out a lot of free to play games. People tend to avoid free to play games for various reasons. Due to this, it is good to knock out the question right away or why bother to keep looking into the game? Either it be for lack of updating or possible cash shop unbalancing, the free to play subscription model is a stigma that does not fit with TERA. It has been announced on many sites that TERA has been and will continue with the pay to play subscription model. It was rumored that TERA would adopt a cash shop on top of the pay to play model but this rumor was quickly debunked on the official forums.
A stigma that a lot of people think about when it comes to Korean made MMOs is that Korean studios don't care about the opinions or feedback of the western audience. A stigma that was reinforced by the release of Aion. It seemed that no matter how much people told NCwest what needed to be changed, nothing was ever changed. This could be for many reasons but in general it is something that should be worried about when it comes to Korean made MMOs. If a company will not change a game to fit the audience then why should the audience keep paying for the game. There are plenty of western companies that are making MMOs that will listen to the audience and make changes accordingly. This is defiantly something that needs to be taken into consideration. This is where En Masse comes into the picture. En Masse, which is formed with employees from many western companies like NCwest, Blizzard and Bioware, were given the job to make TERA a better game for the western audience. As stated in multiple interviews and podcasts, En Masse intends to make TERA a better fit for the western audience even if it means changing the leveling curve or edit some of the coding, which was something that was not allowed by NCwest.
Another common association with Korean games, which I believe is the most talked about, is monster grinding. This is a stigma that has also been reinforced by the release of Aion which in the early stages of testing with NCwest claimed that there would be hardly any grinding if at all. Even I fell for this when playing Aion and came to a cold realization that there was indeed a grind. While the grind was not as bad as a lot of the more notorious grinding games, it still left a bitter taste to the western audience. Bluehole studios, which was formed by former NCsoft employees, came to the realization that the western audience needs things different. En Masse knows that this is a big issue and claims that they are already working on adding more quests for the western version of TERA. En Masse also states that there working on plenty of things to do in the game so that the game does not feel like a grind. This is the biggest stigma that En Masse needs to remove from TERA and hopefully they will back up their claims to make TERA more enjoyable for the western audience. This is not something that should be overlooked and should be found out during the testing phases. Aion's testing phases only allowed players to level to 30 which is before a lot of the major grind started. All levels need to be tested during the testing phases to ensure a better game for all.
In conclusion, TERA has some stigmas it needs to deal with, which gives the game an already uphill climb in becoming a popular game. There have been plenty of claims made by studios in the past about how their game is going to turn out after release and in recent years this has lead us to a lot of disappointment. While Korean studios and games have made many mistakes in the past, it should be taken into consideration that not every game is going to turn out the same way. It's better to give a game a chance before associating it with other games that did not do so well in the past.
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