Metin2 Closed Beta Content (2003-2004)

[sagor 40]

Hello, i was searching like 2 years from Metin2's Closed Beta and found something. If someone interested, they can check the links below.

I found some Korean Metin2 Cafe's from 2004:

Naver 2004 Metin2 Cafe
Daum 2004 Metin2 Cafe

and more.. But if you want, you can search for.

 

I found the Metin2.exe from 16.07.2004 on ftp.metin2.co.kr. I think its not working but if you wanna you can check.
16.07.2004 Metin2.exe
Virustotal
 

 

Magazine From 2003 METIN2 FIRST BETA
(Magazine from 2003 February. It contains Metin2 photos. Its SO SO DIFFERENT)
Article from 2003 METIN2
(Article from Metin2 2003.)
Metin2 Beta test appeal
(Lol someone won the Metin2 beta test)

Some screenshots from metin2 cafes 2004:

(Sura's first character model. He had mask before. But they removed after like 2-3 patch. I read from cafe. And he's holding the first level 1 sword model.)


(First level 1 weapon models. They're some different.)

(This is oldest photo ive ever seen from 3.closed beta. Its from 2004 March)

And more...... If I add the all contents, i cant finish. So, please check manually from the cafe links.

Edited April 22 by Metin2 Dev International
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[Helia01 2076]

we finally find out why the icafe ring was needed

[Gurgarath 2456]

I love that kind of stuff. Good findings, everything is so interesting. Including the mask thingy or the scrapped "common map" from the screenshot. I also wonder what font they used and if they used it bold back then. Thanks for those findings! It's a bummer the exe is not working / we do not have a full client from that era.

[sagor 40]

58 minutes ago, Gurgarath said:

I love that kind of stuff. Good findings, everything is so interesting. Including the mask thingy or the scrapped "common map" from the screenshot. I also wonder what font they used and if they used it bold back then. Thanks for those findings! It's a bummer the exe is not working / we do not have a full client from that era.

Thanks for reply. I found too many things but i did not put them. If I have time, i will put the more screenshots with description and extra 1 video from 2004 Korean game introduction on TV 

[Exynox 1562]

17 hours ago, Helia01 said:

we finally find out why the icafe ring was needed

Well, the answer was always there, in the source code it's referred as PCBANG, basically a Internet Cafe system where you would pay to play games (like in the good old days of our childhood). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_bang The odd thing is that payment information & management was integrated into the game, so that you'd get kicked if you haven't paid xD.

What I'd like to know is whether the PC bang functionality for Metin2 was only used during the beta, or also after the game was released.

4 hours ago, sagor said:

Thanks for reply. I found too many things but i did not put them. If I have time, i will put the more screenshots with description and extra 1 video from 2004 Korean game introduction on TV 

Please do, this is really interesting! I've had my own attempt at finding resources back in 2020. I only managed to rip whatever archive.org had saved - here's a link for the curious: https://metin2.download/file/9b2qK3SqSK4tbE1CUNSXpT5TM2Rxd95G/

[sagor 40]

A TV program, they introduce Metin2
Look at 33:00 and 38:00 around, they introducing Metin2 on TV. I was shocked because i didnt saw these maps before on this video. And events too. Can someone clip it and share to here?
 

LOL i found 1 video too
TV introduction 2 - Starts at 45:00

TV introduction 3 Starts at 25:30

Edited April 23 by sagor

[sagor 40]

First version of METIN2 - (2003 February like 1.Closed Beta)

Edited April 24 by Metin2 Dev International
Core X - External 2 Internal

[TMP4 10628]

Nice find, thank you for posting this topic.

That "2003 February like 1.Closed Beta" must be just an early concept presentation and not a playable game. There's no way they developed it then scrapped it right away and came with what we have now.

[sagor 40]

1 hour ago, TMP4 said:

Nice find, thank you for posting this topic.

That "2003 February like 1.Closed Beta" must be just an early concept presentation and not a playable game. There's no way they developed it then scrapped it right away and came with what we have now.

Thanks for the reply. Yes, this is a early concept but they did a beta process and hired like 500 people on korea. When I read, theyre said "This game is so bad" many times on comments. After that, they changed the game and did 3.closed beta process with a different content. (Like 2004 February). [1-2.Closed beta process is this game i shared. (2003 version)] Sorry for bad english.

Edit: I found 2.closed beta process started on 2003 July.

16 hours ago, Exynox said:

Well, the answer was always there, in the source code it's referred as PCBANG, basically a Internet Cafe system where you would pay to play games (like in the good old days of our childhood). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_bang The odd thing is that payment information & management was integrated into the game, so that you'd get kicked if you haven't paid xD.

What I'd like to know is whether the PC bang functionality for Metin2 was only used during the beta, or also after the game was released.

They removed the PCBANG thing on 2005, because theyre did the game free to play.

Edited April 23 by sagor

[sagor 40]

Beta maps, Map1 and Map2

Minimaps on game (not sure but %80 i think)

Warrior old wait animation

Edited April 24 by Metin2 Dev International
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[Exynox 1562]

Thank you for your contribution! It has now occurred to me just how much information was available on the topic, but hidden away from the most of us simply because we haven't been blessed with speaking Korean. It would be nice if we could somehow archive everything properly within M2Dev's wiki. Having everything translated would be the cherry on top.

Nonetheless, I feel that the assets of these early Metin2 clients might still be around, buried somewhere on some Korean forum. The ruliweb page had two download links that maybe could lead us somewhere:

METIN II Beta Client 최신버젼 다운로드(서버1): ftp://211.39.150.71/pub/MetinII0_0_1.exe
METIN II Beta Client 최신버젼 다운로드(서버2): ftp://211.105.222.13/pub/MetinII0_0_1.exe

The "MetinII0_0_1.exe" filename might be a starting point? Another thing I'm planning to do is to crawl the Korean IPv4 space for public FTP servers and check whether there are any resources hosted there. It's quite a long shot, but might be worth it.

Lastly, I have a feeling that the original kraizy/2014 YMIR leak could contain these assets. To my knowledge sadly, SVN doesn't really locally store anything but the latest revision, but who knows.

[sagor 40]

3 minutes ago, Exynox said:

Thank you for your contribution! It has now occurred to me just how much information was available on the topic, but hidden away from the most of us simply because we haven't been blessed with speaking Korean. It would be nice if we could somehow archive everything properly within M2Dev's wiki. Having everything translated would be the cherry on top.

Nonetheless, I feel that the assets of these early Metin2 clients might still be around, buried somewhere on some Korean forum. The ruliweb page had two download links that maybe could lead us somewhere:

METIN II Beta Client 최신버젼 다운로드(서버1): ftp://211.39.150.71/pub/MetinII0_0_1.exe
METIN II Beta Client 최신버젼 다운로드(서버2): ftp://211.105.222.13/pub/MetinII0_0_1.exe

The "MetinII0_0_1.exe" filename might be a starting point? Another thing I'm planning to do is to crawl the Korean IPv4 space for public FTP servers and check whether there are any resources hosted there. It's quite a long shot, but might be worth it.

Lastly, I have a feeling that the original kraizy/2014 YMIR leak could contain these assets. To my knowledge sadly, SVN doesn't really locally store anything but the latest revision, but who knows.

Thanks for the reply. I found a Korean Metin2 private server group and joined. Here's the link of the cafe:

A live Korean group for Metin2, they're playing on local server


And i found more Metin2 cafe's:
https://cafe.naver.com/dongseokson
https://cafe.naver.com/lmetin2sub
https://cafe.naver.com/elley
https://cafe.naver.com/metin2l
https://cafe.naver.com/metinp
https://cafe.naver.com/metintow
https://cafe.naver.com/metincafe

daum cafes:
https://cafe.daum.net/metin2
https://cafe.daum.net/metin2love2
https://cafe.daum.net/metin24
https://cafe.daum.net/m2cafe
 

Edit: I found a live Korean LOL! He read my message on naver but he didnt respond to me :(((. I think he is a YMIR personal because he has many topics on announcement channel. I typed back but i do not think he will respond F.

Edit2: And if you want research something, use DeepL for translating. This is so good and im using this while searching something.

Use daum and naver for searching too. Its like Google search engine on Korea.

[sagor 40]

Big F.

Edited April 24 by Metin2 Dev International
Core X - External 2 Internal

[Gurgarath 2456]

This topic is making me ecstatic! First time I have seen such assets and trust me I have crawled the net and the archives a lot to find an old client and old informations on the game. I love to understand what was there back then, how they changed it, why and so on. This map with that minimap looks like a first iteration of the Chunjo map and it looks fantastic. I think the village map is still around in our client nowadays.

It would really be fantastic to find an old client. It is definitely a gem. We should definitely archive everything that we can to piece the things together.

About PCBang, there was also a feature on China that would disallow people to get addicted, after 3h of overtime, you would receive half of the rates, and after 5h, you would not get anything from playing the game. There was also skills for Sura with which you could only target dead bodies to "aspire" something from them. Many scrapped things from the game that I would love to properly understand and even, see by myself.

[b6d4a82c15 85]

This thread gave me such a nostalgia hit, I think trivia like this is even more interesting than the game itself.

Regarding the old client... Im suspecting there should be something like google dorks but in naver? Instead of looking for the binary file itself one could look for other metin specific file names. Although I think it'd have the same success rate as "scanning entire korean ipv4 subnet" lmao.

I have a chinese connection active in the metin2 community (and surprisingly there are still like 1-2 small chinese servers that still get active players). But Im afraid he wouldn't know any koreans who happen to have the beta client on their pc. And I think that's the most realistic way of obtaining this client. Either through a YMIR employee or through some 20 year old harddrive from a 40 year old korean guy lmao. It's funny when they say nothing is ever lost on the internet... the biggest lie ever

[sagor 40]

after the researchment. i think the game is developed for only money, not like metin1. so, i dropped the researchment of the game. i never do any search for this game. all the koreans are hates too much to game. theyre saying this game is shittest game ever. in short; ymir fcked up the game like 20 years ago. they failed. its not my words, %95 of the koreans are said this. good luck to everyone. i dropped my metin2 diary right now.

This game is so fun old days because the old days was good, not the fcking game.

[Helia01 2076]

37 minutes ago, sagor said:

after the researchment. i think the game is developed for only money, not like metin1. so, i dropped the researchment of the game. i never do any search for this game. all the koreans are hates too much to game. theyre saying this game is shittest game ever. in short; ymir fcked up the game like 20 years ago. they failed. its not my words, %95 of the koreans are said this. good luck to everyone. i dropped my metin2 diary right now.

This game is so fun old days because the old days was good, not the fcking game.

[Gurgarath 2456]

On 5/1/2024 at 3:06 AM, sagor said:

after the researchment. i think the game is developed for only money, not like metin1. so, i dropped the researchment of the game. i never do any search for this game. all the koreans are hates too much to game. theyre saying this game is shittest game ever. in short; ymir fcked up the game like 20 years ago. they failed. its not my words, %95 of the koreans are said this. good luck to everyone. i dropped my metin2 diary right now.

This game is so fun old days because the old days was good, not the fcking game.

A bit sad to drop it like this because the finance behind it was considered bad. There are still many things to uncover regardless of how the game was financially designed, let's not forget it is one of the most popular MMO in Europe and probably NA appart of World of Warcraft. This game is a piece of videogame history and the more we can uncover, the best we can grasp the ideas behind. And oh boy, there was and there still is!

[b6d4a82c15 85]

11 hours ago, Gurgarath said:

A bit sad to drop it like this because the finance behind it was considered bad. There are still many things to uncover regardless of how the game was financially designed, let's not forget it is one of the most popular MMO in Europe and probably NA appart of World of Warcraft. This game is a piece of videogame history and the more we can uncover, the best we can grasp the ideas behind. And oh boy, there was and there still is!

As far as I know, the reason why metin was pulled from korea was exactly this: it wasn't profitable enough.

Edited Thursday at 11:55 PM by b6d4a82c15