All of us, at some point in our gaming lives, must have returned to the games we left years ago in order to get nostalgia and relieve longing. I have such a story today.
The games we played in the first years of our acting lives definitely leave different traces. Especially if you, like me, were involved with games in the early 2000s, you know very well that period when MMORPGs ruled. We would work on our own character for days, weeks, trying to reach stronger items. You know the old style MMORPGs, the phenomenon that foreigners call “grind” is very dominant in all of them. There was someone who traded their account with a car in Metin 2… This is kept in the background a little more in new generation games. Because there is neither the dedication of the player at that time, nor that sustainability in the game. Don’t be mad at me, but old MMORPGs were much better. Today, I would like to talk about a game that I left years ago and that dragged me to a nomadic life before I left it. If anyone has played before, raise your hand because today Hero Online We will talk about.
Legend of once Hero Online EN
Those who know, know that when the game was opened in Turkey in 2006, it attracted great attention. Those were the years when games such as Knight Online, Metin 2, Silkroad made the MMORPG genre popular. At that time, Hero Online was opened in Turkey under the name “Hero Turkey”. It was a play whose scenario was filled with various intrigues and which had Asian winds. While I’m describing this game, I can praise it unnecessarily, because it was and still is my favorite MMORPG game. So don’t be mad at me, we love it!
The only place where players gathered in Hero was once the Dragon Castle. On the Turkey server, there was a bust of Atatürk in the very center of the center. When you clicked on it, the text of the Speech to the Youth greeted you. At the same time, the voices of the talents in the game were in Turkish. In other words, every time you use a skill while you “twitch”, your character was shouting the name of that skill in Turkish. “Bear kick! Delicate Move!” still ringing in my ears. If anyone has played with the time, they will understand me very well. Around this time, I returned to Hero Online again, but a lot has happened to the game over the years.
Hero Turkey unfortunately closed in 2013. Afterwards, attempts were made to reopen in Turkey twice, but these were very short-lived and players were left with their deposits lost. I was still playing in the final moments as the game closed. Then we said to our friends, “We can’t break away from this game, friend! Let’s go to the US servers”. You might not believe it, but in the first days, Turkish players did not want Turkish players on the US servers, so much so that even bans started. At that time, foreigners with strong accounts would wander around the map, find us and cut us down just so we wouldn’t rise. Of course, the Turks, who have developed a quiet character over the years, dominated there as well. I went there in the early days, and the game was no longer Hero Online, it was marketed as Hero Plus. Although it sounds like a plus, they cut a lot of systems from the game and added unnecessary rewards instead. Meanwhile, that wonderful theme music that keeps the peace flowing from the ears to the brain.
For example, in the past, the game gave you “PTS” as you took your character to an area and killed the creatures to level up there. So when you kill 50 enemies, your PTS score increases by 1, which increases the experience from the enemies. Of course, when you stop the contraction, these PTSs disappear. We said “grind culture”, that’s exactly what the game asked you to do. Of course, when we switched to the US servers, we turned into a fish out of water. Everything is in English, there are no talent voices that we are used to, the characters don’t even shout anymore. The PTS system has been abolished, nothing has been replaced… The worst thing is, when we go to the Dragon Castle, we can’t see our leader’s bust there. When one finds one’s place strange like this… Of course, this is 5-6 years ago, no matter how you look at what I’m talking about. We couldn’t stay in the USA much, we played for 2-3 years and decided to quit the game together. At the same time, the number of players gradually decreased. While all this was going on, the game changed hands several times and the characters were reset. Heaps of rewards were given to former players, but some did not want to return, resulting in even lower numbers. Nevertheless, no matter what, thousands of players who wanted to play Hero Plus joined the race and continued to play.
Returning to the “spiritual home” after years
Those who know me will know, I always call Merlin’s Cauldron my spiritual home. It was always like that for me in Hero Online. This year, I returned from the military last month and soon a Hero love flared up in me. The game was also on Steam and I thought that this might have an effect on the number of players, so I said “But, even if there are few people, this game is played” and downloaded it again. Then I realized that I could not log into my old Hero Online account with the Steam version, and downloaded it from the website again and entered the normal version. Of course, the accounts were reset again, my beautiful character was gone. I created a new one without too much trouble because I knew I was going to be given loads of stuff. Because it was like that, it took me 3 days to get back to the level of my old character. They have already added their own bot system to the game in the new Hero, your character will be walking around and contracting himself for 2 hours every day. This had a huge impact on the development speed.
Of course, this rapid development process is not just for me, so there is a big gap in the game. Most of the players are above level 100 in Hero, which has a level cap of 250. It is enough for a beginner to wander around the Dragon Castle or the Central Bazaar, where the markets are set, to get his morale down. There are only 100 people around and you have to struggle for months to be equal to your closest competitor. There are very few people like you who are still trying to improve at low levels. If you don’t like the game as much as I do, you won’t even look back.
Even though the game, run by Netgame, feels like it’s in its last stages, it has been standing for years despite this low number of players. Still, it’s clear that one of the feet holding it up is in the pit. Regardless, the feeling of nostalgia created by returning to games that were abandoned years ago, that longing for the past and the happiness of finding it as you left it is priceless. You must have such stories. I told you what I was going to tell, now it’s your turn, I’m looking forward to your comments.