Children of Yggdrasil gather around for I had a story to tell
Once upon a time the creator of Ragnarok had fallen unto dispute with Gravity, undisclosed reasons, there and then he hath created IMC games to start anew. Thus began a new journey.
IMC games began with the 1st MMORPG Granado Espada. One of the first mmorpg that features MCC, Multiple Character Control, in fact you control 3 characters at once like a RTS game. It launch in Korea in 2006 followed abroad in 2007. The games from that era were still WoW and FF11 and EVE online.
GE did not have classes system instead you collect characters like pokemon via unlock them via quests or buy them (the premium characters) via premium cash.
GE launch as Pay2Play and rivaled according to few blogs that exist then FF11 due to character design that is more Final Fantasy than FF itself
FF11
Granado Espada
It feels at that time you were playing a Square-enix game online. Unlike other mmorpg which follow standard fantasy world or scifi world. IMC choose to go with Renaissance/Baroque era which gives the game ELEGANCE. This is the login screen MUSIC! listen to it! it makes you want to brew a tea and biscuits and wear a top hat and monocle.
But as you have heard from Pay2Play it turned Free2play. At first it was just paywalls (ex. lv100+ requires pay, quest that require premium item purchases, dungeons only for premium users,etc) with more content for the paying users. Eventually Developer (IMC) removed most of the paywalls to all the version and became pay2win GE that is today.
Also from that we have our fancy character select screen the Barracks Mode
On personal experience Granado Espada was the best game there is if your busy, because of its AFK leveling. Since its a RTS you can set your characters to ‘parking’ into a busy spawn area and they will kill everything within their roaming range. This is what makes the game BORING and effective. You can do other stuff while you let you character do the level grinding themselves. You can even play other games along with GE as such I played RO renewal while still playing GE in the background.
But really what makes me a fan of GE is that this game makes beautiful character designs.
also i stop playing GE since 2014 but i still follow their latest updates