Metin2 is a 2005 MMORPG developed by Gameforge. Many of you probably played it back then, including MeinMMO author Anny Bader. But was the game really good?
What kind of game is this? Metin2 is a F2Play MMORPG from Korea. At the start of the game you choose your character from 5 classes and join one of three kingdoms that are enemies of each other.
The point of the game is to level up your character and improve your equipment. This can only be achieved with an eternally long grind.
You kill monsters and farm the so-called metin stones, from which the realms are “oppressed” according to the story (how exactly that happens, but I never quite understood). In any case, you can hit these colorful smoking things and get loot. Monsters keep coming out little by little until the brick breaks and drops some items.
There are also quests in Metin2. In the beginning they let you run from NPCs to NPCs on the first two maps and later become an endless grind when it comes to finding and defeating 50 rare monsters. The story is very boring and is ignored by most players.
Does Metin2 still exist? Yes. There are even a few real players among numerous bots. However, the MMORPG will leave Steam in August and can then only be played via its own client. It still receives updates to this day.
In the MMOHuts video you can see the gameplay of Metin2:
Leveling and farming took forever, shop items made it bearable
Many of us have played and loved it, but Metin2 really wasn’t and isn’t a good MMORPG. I used to come home from school and sit down at my laptop for a few hours to grind in Metin2.
Although progress was made without spending money, Metin2 still puts a strong focus on Pay2Win aspects:
Unfortunately, the developers have leaned too heavily into Pay2Win and monetized every aspect of the game. Even with said items it took a long time to progress, but without it the grind was unbearable.
The new MMORPG Diablo Immortal is also particularly Pay2Win-oriented.
ANYTHING can fail and frustrate you
Metin2 also relies heavily on luck aspects, which is why it had a high potential for addiction. Does my skill book or biologist item work? Will my gear get the bonuses I want? Does my horse quest work, or did I ride somewhere in the desert for nothing?
Everything in this game could go wrong. Really everything. Upgrading equipment was particularly frustrating. The upgrades worked reliably up to +4, after that the chance dropped with each level, up to a total of +9. With the higher levels, the blacksmith needed more and more expensive materials, for which you had to farm certain monsters again.
The materials required included various beads that could only be found by fishing or at the market. So it was like fishing forever, hoping to get a shell and then hoping that a pearl will come out of the shell. Often there was either nothing in the shell or a piece of stone. Alternatively, there were the pearls for Yang, i.e. the in-game currency, on the market.
If the improvement then failed, the item was destroyed and you could farm a new one. The Blacksmith was probably the most hated NPC in Metin2.
But the moment when something worked out made us all the happier. That’s probably why so many were so invested in Metin2. Everything upsets you, but at some point the blacksmith upgrades your weapon to +9 and your skill increases to Grandmaster 1 level.
In the video you can see 5 old MMORPGs that are still being played:
5 Old MMORPGs That Are Still Actively Played
Body warriors were way too OP
The original 4 classes of Metin2 were Warrior, Sura, Shaman and Ninja. There was no classic holy trinity of healer, DD and tank, with the shamans most likely being considered support since the other classes could use their buffs well.
At level 4 you then had to go to the skill master and choose one of two specializations:
The differences between the classes were massive and if you wanted to be good in both PvE and PvP, you had to take a warrior.
Unfortunately, there was no way around the warrior if you really wanted to be good at Metin2. It was a shame because I thought my dragon shaman was really cool.
The community has been (mostly) nice to me
But what you have to give Metin2 is its helpful community. People still talked to each other, in contrast to today’s MMORPGs, in which everything runs via a dungeon finder that automatically assigns you to a group.
I was a member of various guilds where the players supported each other and chatted nicely in teamspeak every evening. Discord didn’t exist back then.
The so-called DT runs, i.e. ascents in the demon tower, also welded together. Together with a group you fought your way through many monsters in order to be able to improve an item at the end with a special blacksmith who did not require any upgrade materials.
Of course there were also nasty players who wanted to steal my metin stone. Or players from opposing realms who just killed me. But most people in Metin2 were really friendly.
Is it still worth it today? If you want to take a look at Metin2 for nostalgia reasons, you should definitely do so. But I wouldn’t play it seriously today. I loved it and played easily 2000 hours back then, but I have to admit that it’s a rather bad MMORPG.
The developers have improved some things in the meantime, but the focus is still heavily on Pay2Win aspects. Warriors are still OP, so the Lycan as a 5th class doesn’t help, especially since it’s almost worse than the other classes.
In addition, numerous accounts are hacked to this day. So anyone who had farmed particularly good equipment always had to expect to be hacked and cleared out. Gameforge has not improved this problem to date.
For example, they try to ban cheaters, but made a mistake last year.
Do you feel the nostalgia? What do you say about Metin2 in general? Did you play it before, or maybe even play it today? Do you think Gameforge can save the MMORPG and make it playable again one day? Write it to us in the comments here on MeinMMO!
Are you looking for an MMORPG but don’t want to start one of the great classics? There are also good MMORPGs that hardly anyone knows: 5 strong MMORPGs on Steam that you should know