Level Up! Games

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Level Up! Logo
Type
Founded 2003
Headquarters 11th floor, Pacific Star bldg., Makati City, Philippines
Key people Ben Colayco, Founder
Industry Online Games
Website http://www.levelupgames.com

Level Up! (also known as Level Up! Games or LUG) is one of the leading publishers of online games in the Philippines, Brazil and India. The company is notable in the Philippines for being the pioneer of online gaming in the country, when it released Ragnarok Online. With over 11 million registered Filipino gamers, the company has strengthened its status as the leading online game publisher in the country.

Contents

[edit] History

The company began in April 2003 as the first online gaming publisher in the Philippines . Demand for MMORPGs quickly spread, and by June 2003, Level Up! services could be received anywhere in the country from a number of affiliates. The company brought Pay to Play online services to the Philippines, including OZ World by Ozmedia and Ragnarok Online by Gravity Corp., the first localized MMORPG in the Philippines.

In January 2005, Level Up! expanded to Brazil and India where the firm made its first attempt at offshore expansion.

Late 2005, negotiations between Level Up! Games and Philippine Telecommunications Company PLDT were made known. The complete merger between the two companies was set in early 2007. [1] This merged Level Up! with a rival gaming company, NetGames, which was owned by PLDT.

In early 2007, the merger took place. With Level Up! as the surviving company, games offered by NetGames were integrated into Level Up!. [2] The merger was dubbed Level Up 2.0, and the implementation of the new website of Level Up! which reflected the 2.0 transition of the company was headed by O'Neil Buena & Keith E. Morales.

Level Up! offers online game distribution for the Philippines(Free-To-Play Server) , India(Free-To-Play Server) & Brazil.[3]

In October 2007, Level Up! joined the Free-To-Play MMORPG model by introducing the Valkyrie server of Philippine Ragnarok Online. [4] 2 months later, Level Up! converted the Thor server into Valhalla, a non-PK (Player-Kill) Free to Play server.

[edit] Services

[edit] Brazil

[edit] India

  • Ragnarok Online
  • Freestyle
  • Oz World (Oz Online)2
  • GunZ The Duel (Gunz Online)
  • Power Football
  • Arcademics Games 4
  • Casual Games 4 - Blox Forever, Presidential Paintball, Pearl Diver, Bug On A Wire, and more.

[edit] Philippines

1 Offline Service
2 Discontinued/Idle Service
3 Coming Soon
4 Newest

[edit] Criticism

Level Up! has its share of grievances from players, and its most notable are the following.

  • There are allegations that Level up! has bad customer service, especially in Philippines. It was also reported once on both Philippines and Brazil servers where Game Masters are caught bullying newbies and abusing their given power, resulting in the reduction of powers of Game Masters.
  • Many players misinterpreted Level Up!'s stance in regards to account responsibility as lack of care for the players. Level Up! previously referred hacking cases to the cybercrime division of CIDG, instead of resolving hack cases internally as it was previously done. However, insider information revealed that their refusal to process hacking cases is due to the increasing amount of hack case frauds, where unscrupulous players stage a hack incident to increase their items.
  • Allegations of tournament riggings, Game Master bribery or personal preference have all been decried by players, but currently, no such proof of mentioned anomalies was ever made public or known, and are dismissed as mudslinging or black propaganda.
  • Level Up! earned the ire of players when in 2005, Sheila Paul conceded to the number of 3rd party program users in Ragnarök Online, appealing to its users to use such programs responsibly. This was overturned later by the introduction of its no-bot Thor server, and later, in Valkyrie, and then in Valhalla, whose policies were patterned after Thor. This allegation was posted in a news article however, reps from Level Up counter stated that the interview vs. the article was made in a way to make it sound like that the company adheres to the 3rd party usage contrary to the company's true standards.
  • Level Up! launched the Thor server, promising utilization of RagDefender, jRO's (Japan Ragnarök Online) answer to 3rd party programs like bots. However, upon closer inspection, it was not using RagDefender to defend itself from 3rd party program penetration, earning more ire from its players.
  • Level Up! Ragnarök Online Pay-to-Play servers have been reported that players can dupe items, which ruins the virtual economy of the servers. This kind of exploitation let other players to quit the game. Later on, Level Up! has done a "Wipe-out" and "Rollback" to the servers to remove dupe items, which is a big controversy upon players paying the game time they purchase but did not progressed leveling their characters as rollback occurred and made players to quit the game.
  • There is a tendency that Game Moderators cannot manage Ragnarök Pay-to-Play servers and Valkyrie efficiently, due to highly population of bots which seems to impossible to ban them. Except Valhalla where Game Moderators focus their jobs here.
  • There was this called "Midgard Police" that ONLY EXIST in Philippine Ragnarök Online in which Level Up! planned, whose role is to supervise and jail suspected bots. There are times that players (not really bot) were suspected and jailed them, after days being jailed they were banned without really knowing if they are using such bot. Innocent players complain about this mischief and made them a decision to quit.
  • Rumors, that a reason that Level Up! merges with PLDT NetGames is, because of flaws of Ragnarök Online game in 2006, the players have quited. If players have quited, Level Up! will gain no profit by means of buying a game time and players will play other games such as PLDT NetGames has. In this case they will still have profit if Level Up! gains access to NetGames' online games.

[edit] Ownership

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ PLDT finally buys into Level Up! Games
  2. ^ Netgames, Level Up eye big guns for joint venture.
  3. ^ Games Distributor Level Up! Protects Multi-Country Network With Fortinet Solutions 2004
  4. ^ Ragnarok Online Philippines Valkyrie Free to Play Server Promotional Video.
  5. ^ GL Meeting Minutes
  6. ^ Dear Loyal Khanatics
  7. ^ The OZ world website on LU still stands, however registration and top-up of game load is disabled.
  8. ^ Pangya Philippines to close on January 25, 2008
  9. ^ Official Statement from Philippine Rose Online
  10. ^ Crazy Kart

[edit] External links