"A game with great potential, but should be hosted by a company that cares about it!"

The good – As stated in the title, Mabinogi has the potential to be a 9/10 or even a 10/10 game. If you have read other reviews of this game, you know that one thing they all have in common is the unique – and varied – set of skills you can acquire in this game. You can spend days just harvesting herbs to make potions, or shearing sheep or collecting spider webs to spin for weaving – or kill any of the many various monster types in-game (either through dungeon crawling, or variation on a theme “shadow missions”) There is even a “cooking dungeon” where one can use combat skills to finish recipes for rewards! Speaking of combat, you have the standard sword swinging, duel wielding options for warriors, or ‘alchemy' combat (almost a combination between warrior/mage/range)

The problem with the game isn't the imagination factor, or even originality – it is the host company. Nexon North America Inc. (NexonNA). More about them in the ‘ugly' section.

Being able to create – and use – a totally free account is a big plus for this game, and all of the pay-to-play elements in the main storyline have been removed, as of this writing. Characters can rebirth for free once every 3 weeks, or pay to rebirth each week or more frequently. Pets cost money, and have limited summon time, but that is reset each real-life day, so the pet is ‘permanent', and if you get several, they make good storage bins/meatshields for dungeon crawling.

You can start your life in Erinn as a human, elf, or giant – but if you choose human, you can receive a free ‘assistant' character from both the race of Giants, and the race of elves, giving you in effect, 3 ‘free' characters to play with.

Movement in the game is not too troublesome, but does take some getting used to. You can click with your mouse, wherever you can ‘see' and your char. Will move there, or you can click on the mini-map to send your char. a further distance – sadly, both these movement options are plagued by glitches wherein you can not click certain areas, or the right mouse button (used to rotate the view) will become ‘stuck', causing a very wild viewing experience, or becoming ‘stuck' behind obstacles.

Sound in the game is so-so. Certain music files are very catchy (entering certain buildings in certain cities can have very entertaining musical results) but over time, most city/dungeon music just becomes tedious. Its easy enough to turn down or off in the options menu, along with game sound effects (roaring, mooing or whinnying pets become highly annoying after only a short time!)

Storage space on a totally free character is very limited, but only gets slightly better if you buy monthly service (you are far better off purchasing pets, which serve several functions, and have a 1 time cost).

If only the review could end here, the game might score a solid 7 or 8. Sadly, we must now move to the bad.

The bad – This game was originally published in Korea, and as such, all text is in Korean. NexonNA has a ‘localization team' that is supposed to translate, both the code to run the game AND the text to be seen by players in the game. Up until about mid-2009, the translations weren't too bad, and most elements of gameplay
worked correctly. With each passing month, the amount of errors in coding increased, and the game became more and more unstable. Over the past few months, it has been rare to see the game run for more than 24 hours without an ‘emergency maintenance' to reset a server, an in-game ‘channel' or monster server, etc.

Story – The first elements of Mabinogi, called ‘generations', are actually quite engaging. You get explanations for why characters can rebirth (and knocked unconscience instead of being dead). As time past, it was obvious that Devcat (Nexon's development team) ran out of ideas along the Celtic myth theme. They actually began contradicting themselves in the story line, and even resorted to placing Shakespear into the game! Ugh.

Many skills that were released ‘new' were no longer translated – if you didn't have a Korean font on your computer, you will see little sets of boxes ([] [] [] [] [][] [][]), and you needed to consult an online wikipedia for the game to decipher what it was. Many items in the game where also not translated, some of which caused game crashing problems. Untranslated gear/weapons weren't usually too big of a problem, but if you were trying to Tailor or Blacksmith an item, and the materials to make the item are untranslated…well, that makes for a difficult time figuring out what you even need! When certain key quests/events where left totally untranslated, the entire player-base had to then consult wiki's! That's no way to keep customers happy. As time goes on, more and more items are actually being ‘de-translated' (things that were in English, no longer are).

As with most online MMOG's, Mabinogi has to deal with its share of hackers, modders, and exploiters – these are nothing new- but unfortunately for the Mabi fans, the company that hosts the game didn't see fit to do anything about the rampant cheating/gold selling/botting/modding. There have been 2 “mass bans”, supposedly to stop players who were using cheats (mods), but both have resulted in many innocent players being permanently banned from the game, while in game cheaters continue to break the game.

Hardware instability – what a nightmare. When this game crashes, it crashes HARD. You normally save character data upon exit, but with the server crashes, things that had been moved from your character inventory to say a pet, or another character (traded) will simply *poof* into nothingness. For simple NPC purchased items, its not that big of a deal – but there are certain items and enchants that are very difficult to come by, and its no fun to have them disappear. “Why not ask customer support about such a thing?” you may ask – more on that in the ‘ugly' section.

Downtime – like other MMOG's, Mabinogi must be taken offline from time to time for maintenance. The really bad part about NexonNA is their time estimating ability. More often than not, an estimated downtime of 2 hours becomes 5. Estimates of 10 hours can easily become 24. If this happened infrequently, most players could accept it as part of life, but it is rare for even 1 maint. A month to come in on time.

GM's – mythical in-game entities, supposedly originating from the very offices of NexonNA. Okay, that's real cynical, but not too far from the truth. 2 years ago, you could come across a GM (game master) in almost any populated space; now – you won't see one at all except for the rare events where they show up for 15 minutes, and then its not to deal with game issues. GM's used to respond to customer ticket complaints – players with offensive names, offensive pet names or players who were cheating – could be summoned to the GM (nice ability!) and they were forced to change names, change behavior, or be banned. That hasn't happened in years.

The ugly – Skills not working correctly. This is a problem in any game, if things aren't programmed right. It becomes an even bigger problem when things that used to work, now don't. Trying to use certain skills in this game will not only result in NOT killing your opponent – YOU will most likely be the one to end up dead!

Premium service – I probably should put “premium”, as NexonNA tweaked the premium service, removed much of what the player-base wanted, and for several months, housing (a premium means of buying/selling items to /from others and self storage) has not been working correctly. This brings us to the non-existent…

Customer service. 2 words that NexonNA has NO IDEA what they mean. Players are supposed to ‘file tickets' whenever they have in-game issues. That's a nice idea, but when CS is so understaffed it takes months or YEARS (yes, you read that correctly!) to get a response, what good is it to a paying customer? Players have posted on the official Nexon Mabinogi Forums that tickets have been filed for more than a year, and are still unanswered. I personally have had tickets ignored for weeks, then I was given an auto response. By far the funniest (if it wasn't so sad) was one which thanked me for playing MapleStory (another Nexon title) in its closing line. I've never played that game, and I re-checked my ticket indicator – I had clearly noted it as Mabinogi.

One tiny bright spot is that NexonNA will sometimes extend events or premium services when the game is down, or offer some token freebies from the cash shop, but that is the only thing they will go out of their way to do. If you lose an item due to server crash, they can replace the item (they don't always) but they will not replace the enchants placed on it, or restore the color of the item. You will receive a totally random color, unenchanted item back from them. Again, for run of the mill items, that wouldn't be a problem, but it is almost always the enchants, or the rare color that gives an item its value/power/usefulness.

I look at it this way – how would you feel if your insurance company replaced your Babe Ruth autographed baseball with a Wal-mart purchased one, and then said ‘just be happy with it'? No one wants to work for weeks/months to save up the gold or grind out the dungeons, just to get that rare purchase/drop taken by a crash, then replaced with trash.

There are also issues with loss of 'premium cards' - purchased with real dollars. When an item that players have spent real money on is taken away, with no explanation, and no re-imbursement, players get angry.

Understaffed – that is the only reason any of the player-base can come up with for NexonNA's lack of customer support. For several months now, Nexon officials have openly admitted on their official forums that the ticketing system is broken – yet nothing is done to remedy it. They have gone from 2 official forum moderators, to 1. Their official forums is the only way to even reach someone at Nexon, and players with complaints are often forum banned – simply for pointing out the errors in the game, preventing even that small avenue of contact. Nexon has THE WORST customer service department of any online gaming company I have ever dealt with. It would have earned this game a 0/10 rating, if that were the only criteria. Again, one potential bright spot – NexonNA has a new CEO. Keep an eye to see if changes are made in the company that presents this game.

This list of ‘the ugly' is actually quite a bit longer than this, but I decided not to list out every single problem this game has. Basically, you could still download this game, and play a free character – but the question is…for how long? The near daily random crashes and new skill glitches, and lack of translation may render the game unplayable in the near future. Even if they don't, You could face a random ban, with no explanation from the company as to why your account was locked. I do NOT recommend investing time in this game, unless changes are made at the corporate level.

Final score – After playing Mabinogi for 3 years, I give the current state of the game a 2/10. Problems in-game are almost never fixed, and new rushed patches introduce even MORE problems to the game. In fact, I've uninstalled the game from my computer. All good things must come to an end.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 09/22/11

Game Release: Mabinogi (US, March 2008)