It would be easy to have forgotten about ROSE Online, a Korean MMO from Gravity Interactive, though it has had a pretty bumpy history. The game was originally launched back in 2005 but effectively went into maintenance mode back in 2016 before ultimately closing up shop in 2019. It also had a rather ignominious end in Japan, where Faith-Inc. laid off staff in 2019 and filed for bankruptcy in 2020 even while promising new content.
That crash-and-burn was not the last word, however, as ROSE was taken up by publisher Rednim Games to bring the game back, and sure enough, it has done exactly that with an official early access launch today, complete with a spiffing new trailer from last week and a client that’s ready to be downloaded now.
For those who are unfamiliar, players start life as a Visitor in ROSE, where they’re given a wooden sword to bonk foes with until level 10. After that, players can choose from one of four classes – Soldier, Muse, Hawker, or Dealer – after which they can dip into some advanced classes at level 100. As for gameplay, ROSE promises a “free-roaming level up-based MMORPG” experience with clans to join, clan vs. clan PvP to engage in, monsters to fight, and different planets to explore. The MMORPG is scheduled to go live at 1:00 p.m. EST, while an FAQ from November notes the game is free-to-play with a cosmetics-only cash shop.
As for how long early access will run, there are no specific details yet, but the publishers noted in September that an early access launch was needed as a result of being a small team. “As most of you are well aware, there are issues with the game that have been here for more than a decade or two,” the dev blog notes. “As a team with limited resources, we’re not in a position to create a ‘perfect’ vision then implement it in the traditional alpha/beta/release model.”
