三國志曹操伝 ONLINE (Sangokushi Sōsōden Online)

» see mobile.nexon.co.jp/sousouden as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the eulogy ~

In December 1998 I was fourteen, on a 33.6k modem in Turkey, and the Koei strategy catalog was not something that came anywhere near me. That month 三國志曹操伝 shipped for Windows in Japan, a tactical role-playing spin-off of Romance of the Three Kingdoms that told the war from Cao Cao's side and let you branch off the historical record into a version where he wins differently. In Japan, and later in Korea, it turned into the entry in that series people stayed attached to for decades.

Eighteen years later Nexon rebuilt it for phones. The developer was Thingsoft, a Korean studio Nexon owned, working under license from Koei Tecmo, and 삼국지조조전 Online launched in Korea on 6 October 2016. It kept the grid and the officer roster, then bolted on the parts that pay for a free game in 2016.

It landed. The game went to number five on Korea's Google Play top-grossing chart and was still charting in Taiwan and Hong Kong through 2017. A Japanese release followed on 31 August 2017 under the original title, and an English-language global build on 26 February 2018.

~ the dossier ~

~ what it kept ~

The remake carried more of the 1998 game across than most license revivals bother with. Sōsōden had been a story campaign with a fixed cast and a branching route, and the phone version kept the scenario structure and the isometric grid, then built the daily economy of a free-to-play title around them. That is a harder thing to do than it sounds, because a campaign ends and a service is supposed not to.

Koei Tecmo licensed the property and took no part in the building, which is how a Korean studio became the custodian of a Japanese series about Chinese history. The Japanese launch in August 2017 was a Korean game coming home.

~ the day it died ~

On 9 April 2020 Nexon posted closure notices in both countries. The Korean announcement said the company had examined a range of options and judged that the service could not be sustained. Sales of paid items stopped that same day after the morning maintenance, and players were told to empty their in-game mailboxes before the end.

The end came on 11 June 2020 at 11:00, and both versions went dark on that one date. Publishers normally stagger regional shutdowns by months, so the two countries dying together says the decision was made at the top and applied once. Korea had run it for three years and eight months, Japan for two years and ten months. mobile.nexon.co.jp/sousouden still resolves, and it drops you on Nexon Japan's current game list, which today leads with MapleStory.

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