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Ray Cheon: Although Mabinogi has been released in other countries for a few years, it is extremely competitive in features and graphics when compared to the current offerings in the market. In fact, Mabinogi is very modern in its own way. It's updated at least once every month and based on old Celtic myth. Mabinogi is a very unique game. Unlike most MMORPGs out there, Mabinogi has tons of things to do other than just grinding for experience points. Mabinogi is not just about leveling up and killing monsters. It's more about getting into the storyline, experiencing a true fantasy life and sharing it with other players in a relaxed yet exciting environment.

Regarding the graphics of Mabinogi, we think the style is amazing.  Most people that see it are very impressed at what we were able to achieve with the system specs.  Often times, critics of free-to-play online games judge games on graphics alone.  Something that they don't realize is that the business model directs us to create games that the majority of the installed PC base can access.  Games that push the limits of today's graphic capabilities are great, but we are not in the graphics business.  We are in the social experience business and the high end graphics market is limited in the way of delivering massive social experiences.

One testament to Mabinogi's rich features and graphics are our players.  There were many Mabinogi fans in the US who already experienced Mabinogi through Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese versions. As soon as we released news about Mabinogi's launch in the US, we were flooded with forum threads and emails from Mabinogi fans.

Ray: It took us about nine months to localize Mabinogi. With our experience launching MapleStory and Audition, we made tremendous improvements in the quality of our localization process.  Although we sometimes outsource a part of our localization, we make sure that in-house specialists have a final scrub of what goes out.  Further, we excel because our localization specialists are not simply translators that speak English and Korean. They are truly fluent in English and North American culture.  Beyond that, we tried our best to keep the translation fluid and accurate as possible by putting our best localization specialists on Mabinogi. It required time, a dictionary, a thesaurus, and constant supply of energy drinks!

Ray: This is a tough question because there's a lot I love about Mabinogi but I would have to point to its unique battle system. Mabinogi requires players and enemies to attack each other using a 'rock-paper-scissors' attack pattern in real time. Smash attacks top defense while a regular attack overcomes a smash attack – and of course, defense blocks a regular attack. You have to carefully observe your enemy's color & movement to strategically plan your next move.

We also have a great new feature coming out with our Animal Card system. In other games, you spawn your pets and your pets help you alongside your character. In Mabinogi, you have option to spawn your animal as a pet or you can play as the animal. Imagine yourself running around as a unicorn. It's pretty awesome!

Ray: I can't reveal too much information about our future updates but we are going to release Generation 2 Season 1 (G2S1) of Mabinogi in May. In this update, we are going to release Generation 2 Mainstream Quests, more maps, more dungeons, more items, more skills, and much more. Soon, we'll have plenty of details about G2 update on our website at http://mabinogi.nexon.net.

Ray: Mabinogi has brought many new players to Nexon and we really haven't seen too many MapleStory players move to Mabinogi. There were many fans in the US just waiting for us to launch Mabinogi. All of them signed up to play Mabinogi and their friends as well.

Ray: Nexon has very ambitious plans for the rest of 2008 and the successful launch of Mabinogi should just be the start to an exciting year!

Ray: Thanks to Ten Ton Hammer for the interview and thanks to all of the Mabinogi fans out there for their support. We hope all of your readers get a chance to experience the fantasy life!