Silkroad Online Forum

Zitat

Each day people in iSRO (International SilkRoad Online) pray for a new system update, such as the Job Update, Level90 Update, European Patch, Fortress War Update and of course the New Skills (level70-90).

We all know that it usually takes between 6-8 months AFTER it has been released on the Korean servers, to finally reach the International servers, if not longer.
The question we always ask ourselves is WHY does it take this long?

We need to understand that the SRO service is offered and well known within 6 (six) regions of the world.
1. Korea (Company: JoyMax)
2. International (Company: JoyMax)
3. Vietnam (Company: VDC)
4. China (Company: CIMO)
5. Japan (Company: CameOn)
6. Taiwan (Company: UNALIS)

Some of you might have already noticed that the other areas, except Korea and International, are run by other companies. Now some of you have probably already understood as to why we dont get our updates as soon as others. If you haven't got the idea i shall explain.

SRO Services in Vietnam, China, Japan and Taiwan are other companies which buy the right or license to own the name and game SilkRoad Online within their country only. For example, CIMO (company from China) paid JoyMax a certain sum to own the name and game of SilkRoad Online within China.
However, the company CIMO does NOT develop the game, but ONLY host the game on their own network and make profits via Item Mall system or if they wanted to they could choose to make the game in their country P2P (Pay 2 Play).

Because these companies HOST the game, JoyMax is the official Developer. Which means whenever a new update comes to their Korea, other companies in Japan, China, Taiwan and Vietnam pay a fair bit of money to get the update on their client within a certain time frame. For example, Korea has just released their New level 70-90 Skills as well as the Fortress Wars, within the next month or two another SilkRoad Client would have also got these updates, depending on which company pays the developer (ie. JoyMax).

Usually it takes between 3-6 months before all the other clients (except iSRO), receive the latest updates. Depending on which company paid first. If the Japanese SRO company (GameOn) paid $10,000 USD to have the patch ready within 1 month and JoyMax accepts, this means all development has been placed on the Japanese SRO, excluding even their own client at times to ensure they have the update ready within the timeframe. After the 6 months the only client left behind is the International SRO. If we are lucky they would have started translating the scripts to English and ready within 4 weeks to be uploaded to the server.

Some of you are probably thinking, well doesnt iSRO make more money?
It can do at times, but iSRO item mall cannot always bring in solid money to JoyMax. The other companies such as GameOn, VDC and so on pay JoyMax a large sum each year and/or update to have their games developed by JoyMax (which means JoyMax need to hire staff that can translate from Korean to Chinese, Japanese, etc).
Roughly speaking if you wanted to buy a SilkRoad license for 1 year it would cost you between $400,000 - 1,500,000 USD (not sure if that would include updates). Some of you are probably thinking, NO WAY.
If you have heard about CabalOnline, then you may know that the European Version was purchased for about $800,000 EURO (for one year).

If JoyMax wanted to sell the International Server at one point to another company to be hosted, it could sell for at around $10 million USD, If not more!

Hope this helps you understand, that iSRO is usually left behind by the demand of other SRO hosting companies which pay a fair bit for certain updates.

Regards,
AUST_ZoRrO (Xian)