The Legend of Mir 2

The Legend of Mir 2 (미르의 전설 2) is a sprite based isometric 3-D massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Korean-based Wemade Entertainment. There are currently four versions available; Korean Mir, Chinese Mir, Taiwanese Mir, and European Mir.

While being moderately successful in Europe, it has been incredibly well received in Asia, and was the most popular MMORPG in China in 2002 and 2003, with over 250,000 simultaneous users being reported.

Mir 2 continues to officially run in both Korea and Europe, albeit with lower player counts.

The sequel, The Legend of Mir 3, has a very similar gameplay but has updated graphics, as well as providing larger maps. It has not quite reached the popularity levels of its predecessor, and has so far been released in the same countries as Mir 2, as well as in the United States.

Characters
Players have the option of playing one of four professions, with no more than three characters per server. Professions range from Taoist, healers who use magical and melee attacks. This the support class of mir and not suited to solo game play. Taoist can summon pets to assist in battle, poison targets and heal; Warriors, who are the tanks of mir use melee attacks and have the highest defense and attack attributes of all classes;Wizards, these depend on magic and can kill multiple monsters with ease using AoE spells. Wizards have low health and defense against physical damage and are especially weak against higher level warrior magic attacks; Assassins have taken over as the primary melee damage dealing class but have much weaker defense attributes than warriors. Conversely this instead of undermining the warrior class, has strengthened its position and clarified it's role as the 'tank'.

Assassin
In 2008 the long awaited new class was announced in Korea and was later released with Mir 2 USA. The Assassin class is a melee class but with low defense and low accuracy. Assassins more than make up for this with the sheer speed of their attacks. The assassin can also learn to paralyse or poison a single target as well as hide from both players and monsters. Assassins use both HP and MP pots at a very fast rate which can prove difficult to finance.

Warrior
Warriors are incredibly strong characters that use their brute force to hack away at their enemies. Warriors are generally the easiest character for new players due to their higher maximum health, defense and ease of play. The main drawback of the warrior is the cost of items as well as the fast depletion of the duration of these items due to the number of times the warrior is hit in combat.

Wizard
Wizards are a magic based class using magical ranged attacking due to their inability to sustain melee damage. Similarly, wizards rarely use melee attacks against their enemies, instead preferring to kill multiple mobs from distance with powerful magic.

Taoist
Taoists are largely dependent on hunting in a group as its strengths are as a supporting class. Due to the supportive nature of the class, the harder the situation the players find themselves in, the more a tao will prove its worth. Taoists are famed for their ability to survive. Taoist, combine both physical and magical attacks although at a lower level than other classes. This has led to a number of different playing style including the economical but slow leveling method of players treating their tao like a low leveler level warrior. Taoists are considered the hardest class to play.

PK
Players are allowed to attack and kill other players ingame for any given reason, though it is generally frowned upon. Once a player has killed another player they are labeled with either yellow or later, red, that informs other players that they have killed somebody recently. Red players are not allowed in most cities and are generally ignored by NPC's. Red players are also fair game to other players, a punishment for their PK status.

Another punishment is the chance of cursing your weapon from the death of another player. Curses cause weapons to deal less of a melee blow. Increased number of curses will render a weapon useless.

While attacking another player, the attacker will be labeled with a Brown player name. Any other player can attack and kill the offending player without accumulating PK points.

Point System
Players are labeled with a PK status after successfully killing another player. Each kill is considered 100 PK points. One point is removed every minute. Following the point system
 * 0-99 Points - The player continues to have a white character name, even though the character still has PK points.
 * 100-199 Points - The player's name will turn yellow, a symbol that the player has killed somebody recently.
 * 200 and above - The player's name will be red, showing that the player has killed at least Two people. While red the player can be killed without any ill effect to the attacking player. Red players will lose almost all of their bag when dying. Some players joined guilds specific to player killing, resulting in characters that could spend months if not years waiting for their PK points to expire.

Any towns that are guarded by a Guard, Archer Guard or a Town Archer will attack any red named player on sight. This stops any red named players from entering towns, or if they're already in the town it decreases their safe areas dramatically. The damage caused by a guard or archer is considerably high, requiring only a few strikes to take down even the highest level character.

European Mir
The Italian company Game Network is responsible for the operation of the European version of the game. Game Network originally had their own satellite television channel, but it was canceled due to lack of funding.

In the 2007 yearly review and the September quarterly review, Digi-Bros made it clear they not only intended to replace Mir but also another MMORPG service they provided, the Myth of Soma.

"Revenues from "Legend of Mir" and "Myth of Soma" subscriptions fell from €178 thousands to €32 thousand, and titles will soon be replaced by a new generation of games accessed from the portal for the European Market, http://www.gametribe.com. Construction of the portal will be completed during the first half of the year."

Since early 2005 Game Networks Mir website has been rarely updated. The forums itself continued to thrive until February 2008 when the hosting company replaced the default pages of the forum with a notice that they have been closed. The forum and the database powering it continues to operate though without the ability to post it has become somewhat of an archive.

Recently, as of January 2009 GNOnline released a statement on the Mir website stating the Legend of Mir 2, 3, and the Myth of Soma will be closing at the end of March.

Cheating and Exploits
Early in the games history cheating became a prevalent issue among players of all versions of MIR. Many if not all cheats were designed and programmed by Chinese developers for their version of the game, most exploiting elements of the game such as the client handling most of the affects from spells with exception to damage, mana and health. This lack of server-side restriction allowed players to simply continue moving when a spell that was designed to immobilize them was used, or allowed them to continue running even though the damage should have caused them to stop. Other effects were purely for appearance, allowing players to have their weapon appear enchanted with spells beyond their level while offering no additional melee damage.

Some exploits even went so far as making use of the servers clustering technology to duplicate items in heavy serverload periods. This duplication exploit caused severe economic distress in the online game's market, flooding the market with items that should not have been as available as they were.

Chinese MIR
Mir 2 is operated by Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited, established in December, 1999. In September 2001, Shanda published Mir 2 as its first game. Later in November, 2003 Shanda acquired the controlling stake in Actoz who owns 50% of the copyright for Mir 2.

Another game by Shanda, The World of Legend, allegedly infringes on copyrighted Mir 2 content, prompting legal action by Wemade.