GunZ: The Duel

GunZ: The Duel
File:Gunz The Duel logo.png
Developer(s)	MAIET Entertainment
Publisher(s)	MAIET Entertainment KOR: Netmarble
Engine	Realspace v2.0
Platforms	Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	June 2005 (Beta Edition) KOR: June 2003
Genre(s)	Third-person shooter
Mode(s)	Online multiplayer, online campaign

GunZ: The Duel (Korean: 건즈 온라인), also known simply as GunZ, was an online third-person shooting game, created by South Korean-based MAIET Entertainment and managed on an international gaming portal by ijji games until management shifted to the Aeria Games gaming portal in March 2012.

In the first week of May 2013 (1st on the forums 5th on the homepage), Aeria announced that the game would be cancelled on May 31, and that the forums would be deleted June 31. They would only refund AP purchased during those final 4 weeks. AP purchased in prior months/years used to build characters would not be refunded to players.

This closure happened 2 months following the announcement that GunZ 2 would be released for free in English on Steam.

It was free to play, with a microtransaction business model for purchasing premium in-game items. The game allowed players to perform exaggerated, gravity-defying action moves, including wall running, stunning, tumbling, and blocking bullets with swords, in the style of action movies and anime.

Gameplay

In Quest mode, players, in a group of up to 4 members, went through parts of a map for a certain number of stages, which were determined by the quest level. In each stage, players were required to kill 18 to 44 creatures, and the game ended when every member of the player team died or completed all of the stages. Quests could take place in the Prison, Mansion, or Dungeon map.

Players could make the quests tougher and more profitable by using special quest items to increase the quest level that could be bought from the in-game store or obtained during a quest. Quest items in-game were stored in glowing chests that spawned where the monster that it came from died; certain items could have been dropped depending on the monster killed. Players ran through these to obtain an item randomly selected from the possibilities of that monster. The items obtained depended on the monster that the chest came from. By sacrificing certain items in combination, players could enter a boss quest. Boss items were obtained through pages and other boss quests, and pages were obtained through the in-game shop. The quest system was designed to reduce the amount of time needed to prepare for boss raids that are typical in many other online games.

A player is congratulated for killing multiple players in a short amount of time.

A significant and unique part of the gameplay was the movement system. Players could run on walls, perform flips off of them, and do quick mid-air dodges in any direction. Advanced movement and combat techniques were commonly referred to as "K-Style" or Korean style; a variety of techniques fell under this category. These usually exploited the game's animation and weapon switch systems through a series of animation cancellations to allow the player to perform another action rapidly after the first. One example was the wall cancel; unlike the normal slow method of running on walls, the player can simply jump, dash mid-air in the direction of the wall, and upon hitting it slash or stab with their melee weapon. This would cause the player to gain height with each successive timed dodge-slash, and it was possible to stay in the air near walls and travel along them indefinitely using this method. This, in addition to the fact that these techniques were possible as a result of exploiting flaws in the animation system, has resulted in them being controversial but they became largely accepted as part of the game.

GunZ's networking system in most parts of the game was peer to peer. Players connect to other players through their client, instead of through a central server.

The closed beta for ijji GunZ ended on November 17, 2006. ijji GunZ subsequently went live on November 29, 2006. The live service included clan wars and quest mode. The premium item shop was opened on January 8, 2007. Quest mode was updated on February 14, 2007. New sounds and voice narrations were added to the game on May 9, 2007.

In 2011 the source code of GunZ 1.5 became available online.

Critical reception

PC Gamer UK awarded Gunz a 55% review score. MMOHuts gave the game a 3.6 out of 5.

Sequel

Main article: GunZ 2

In July 2008, MAIET signed a contract to release the sequel for GunZ, titled GunZ: The Second Duel. The Second Duel was to be created more inline with what the creators had originally planned for the original game. In March 2009, MAIET pushed back the date of release from 2009 to 2011, citing "new materials".

See also

• ijji
• Netmarble

References

• 2007 Official Gazette of the United States Patent and Trademark Office page 982
• Dec 11, 2008 Prevention of cheating in on-line interaction page 11 Operational Example 0195: "The example is described with reference to an on-line game known as GunZ - The Duel" (MAIET Entertainment, Korea), but the characteristics of the examlpe are equally applicable to many other games."