Why Are Team Battles Becoming More and More of a “Luxury” in Modern MMOs?

Every now and then, you hear people complaining that today's MMOs are becoming less and less personable.

Many people actually feel that the top-tier MMOs that have emerged in recent years seem to be deliberately steering clear of the genre’s “traditional path,” emphasizing content and quality, prioritizing blockbuster-level single-player experiences, and downplaying the team-based elements of dungeons.Graphics are becoming increasingly refined, and combat feels more and more “satisfying,” but amid this drastically changing gaming landscape, many veteran online gamers feel left behind by the rapidly advancing times.

For example, I have a friend, C, who was a hardcore “Lineage II” player over twenty years ago. Even today, he still occasionally reminisces about those days:When he first entered Aden, he stood there dumbfounded, staring at a long list of quests and a map with no directions. Fortunately, a veteran player who happened to be passing by “picked him up” and brought him into a blood alliance. That player guided the bewildered newcomer step by step—distributing gear, teaching him how to run dungeons, and helping him complete quests—and they eventually became close friends for many years.Later on, C became a guild leader himself and took on the role of guiding newcomers. He even stayed up all night holding tactical meetings with several allied guilds to plan the conquest of a castle, rallying dozens of players to chant battle cries and pledge their commitment.

A 2005 Blog Post by a "Lineage II" Player

It is precisely this feeling of fighting side by side with so many others that has captivated C—and many other veteran online gamers of his generation. It’s much like why the World Cup becomes a topic of global interest every four years—that exhilarating sense of a group of people charging toward a common goal on the soccer field holds an innate, powerful appeal.C has played quite a few newer MMOs, but he feels that this kind of experience is becoming increasingly rare these days.

This feeling clearly strikes a chord with people. For example, when the *Lineage II: Covenant* booth and large screens have recently appeared at various in-person events, they’ve consistently drawn a great deal of interest and crowds; people have spontaneously gathered under the banner reading “Welcome Back, Allies,” exclaiming, “It’s all back.”

Developed by NCSoft and published by Tencent, *Lineage II: Covenant* launched its open beta in China today. The game focuses on capturing the nostalgic experience of the original *Lineage II* while also featuring upgrades and enhancements. It quickly attracted widespread attention from MMO players and surged to No. 1 on the iOS Free Chart at noon today.*Lineage II: Covenant* is also the first Korean MMO this year to integrate with the HarmonyOS system, reflecting NCSoft’s strong commitment to the Chinese market.

What drew me to this game is that it’s a bit like a time capsule buried for twenty-two years—opening it has brought back a flood of emotions.Over the past few years, the industry has introduced many new buzzwords for MMOs, such as “less grind, less microtransactions,” “single-player-like,” and “open-world.” But some keywords have been inadvertently forgotten: “passion,” “team spirit,” and “enduring friendships”…

Can we still get them back?

01

Reviving the Glory of the “Golden Age of MMOs”

Judging by the specific content of *Lineage II: Covenant*, the game’s core features are very clear: it brings keywords like “group battles,” “clans,” and “1,000-player sieges” back to the forefront, transporting players back to the “golden age of MMOs”—a time still filled with a sense of community.

It was the turn of the century, when the internet was just beginning to take off in China. Most households still relied on dial-up connections, and many major overseas titles found their way into the domestic market through third-party distributors. People would buy game cards at newsstands on the street and pore over the latest magazines featuring online game strategy guides;Late at night in smoke-filled internet cafes, groups of people would often team up to storm a castle, shouting their celebrations through headsets; watching their fathers and older brothers play online games from behind them was, for many, their first encounter with the joys of video games during their childhood.

It was an era teeming with powerhouse titles: the “Legend” series offered the simple, visceral thrill of looting; the “RO” series introduced many to multi-school skill builds and chibi-style graphics; while the “Miracle” series focused on the fun of numerical progression…*Lineage II* was also one of the most prominent names of its generation: it was the first to set itself apart from its peers through the Unreal Engine and exceptional artistic quality, making the Continent of Aden the first deeply immersive virtual world in many people’s memories.Features such as multi-stage class changes and class trees, as well as the heart-pounding experience of thousand-player sieges, left a lasting imprint on the entire MMO genre.

And the most distinctive feature of *Lineage II* is undoubtedly its comprehensive and deeply immersive social experience. That is precisely why the reborn *Lineage II: Covenant* serves as the perfect “time tunnel” for rediscovering the warm, nostalgic camaraderie of the past.

At the heart of this social experience is a guild system called “Blood Alliance.” It differs from conventional guilds in that it doesn’t just bring a group of people together—it also gives meaning to the activities they undertake together, and this meaning carries through the player’s entire journey in *Lineage II*.

As a member of a Blood Alliance, you and your fellow allies can enjoy a generous experience bonus when grinding monsters together; after defeating World Bosses or completing high-difficulty dungeons, the dropped rewards are typically handled by the Blood Alliance administrator, who then distributes diamonds based on contribution ratios, ensuring that everyone’s efforts are rewarded;The “Blood Alliance Store” serves as a key source for obtaining rare resources such as Guardian Spirit Vouchers and Blessing Scrolls.The Blood Alliance grows alongside its members and provides a protective umbrella for the entire group—as the alliance level increases, all members gain even more powerful bonuses. In other words, a player’s growth on the Continent of Aden is inextricably linked to the collective strength of their Blood Alliance.

Therefore, in *Lineage II*, a Blood Alliance is far more than just a chat room or a place to check in daily for rewards—it is a small world built collectively by all alliance members. The stronger the bonds between allies, the stronger both the Blood Alliance and its individual members become.This design, in turn, encourages players to interact more with real people within their clans. Through these genuine social interactions, friendships, brotherhood, and a sense of camaraderie—where members stand together through thick and thin—are fostered.

In fact, back in those days, many guilds established rigorous organizational structures and diplomatic principles. They emphasized financial transparency, collective ownership, and decision-making through referendums, ensuring that all dozens of members felt a sense of participation.Some players summarized this as the “Aden Spirit”—in Aden, no one truly fought alone; every player was a part of this collective bound by a sense of honor.This team system, which still seems quite ahead of its time today, has profoundly influenced the design of MMO guilds; the influence of *Lineage II* can be seen in many subsequent online games featuring group battles.

"Lineage II" Blood Alliance Management Guide Published by a Top Player in 2005

And the siege battles—a hallmark of *Lineage II*—further amplify this sense of organization.

Siege battles require attacks to be launched with the Blood Alliance as the smallest unit. They test more than just the timing and coordination of damage output among the Warrior, Mage, and Priest classes: the castle itself features a complex architectural structure, including inner and outer walls and a relic chamber.Capturing such a castle often requires the coordinated efforts of multiple Blood Clans. Therefore, to organize a successful siege, you must cultivate diplomatic relations and forge alliances with other friendly clans on a daily basis.On the tactical level, it is also necessary to dispatch scouts to gather intelligence and plan attack routes and tactical arrangements. During combat, the entire team must coordinate seamlessly to ensure that the frontline absorbs damage, the backline deals damage, support maintains sustain, flanking attacks are executed, and all members work together to operate siege engines—all as part of a well-organized sequence of actions.

The Spectacle of Siege Battles in the Original "Lineage 2"

All the planning and mobilization that took place over several days leading up to the battle ultimately culminate in that single siege—and seeing dozens or even hundreds of members from your alliance and allied alliances celebrating victory alongside you makes that sense of accomplishment feel infinitely greater.

In some old blogs and forums that are now hard to access, we can still find posts shared by players more than twenty years ago. Some ran around spreading the news of victory after successfully capturing a castle; others wrote that their guild organized an offline dinner party that surprisingly drew a crowd of two hundred people;and there were even “GGs” who found their true love—“MMs”—within their blood alliances and eventually got married. These authentic accounts, written in the slang of the early internet era, clearly demonstrate the powerful sense of unity inherent in the blood alliance system itself.

Blog posts published by *Lineage II* players around 2004

As for today’s *Lineage II: Covenant*, it is truly the first *Lineage II* mobile game in China to be developed in-house by NCSoft and launched on mobile platforms. By choosing to preserve the authentic gameplay system of the original, it helps players rediscover that sense of community.

They’ve even gone a step further to build on this foundation—not only will the iconic battlefield experience from the mainline *Lineage II* series be faithfully recreated in *Lineage II: Covenant*,but through in-depth optimizations to the engine and server architecture, they’ve upgraded the “1,000-player siege” team battle experience to “1,000 players on the same screen,” making the sense of a massive army closing in even more visible and realistic.

At the same time, *Lineage II: Covenant* has achieved cross-platform play between PC and mobile devices, allowing players to traverse the Continent of Aden more conveniently and connect with other members of their Blood Alliance.It’s clear that *Lineage II: Covenant*, returning 22 years later, has preserved the most valuable social framework from the golden age of MMOs and is striving to bring back large-scale group battles and blood alliance collaboration in a way that better suits today’s players.

02

Putting Old Wine in New Bottles

This also brings up a discussion that has long been overlooked by many in the industry: Given that social interaction in MMOs was so thriving back then, why has this social enjoyment been downplayed in modern MMOs? In my opinion, it is largely a passive choice dictated by the changing times.

On the one hand, as companies gain more R&D experience, the systems in MMORPGs are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Newbie tutorials, auto-pathfinding, matchmaking mechanisms, and quest flows are all maturing, and various strategy guides are circulating more easily thanks to the growing popularity of social media. Players no longer rely heavily on veteran players to help them navigate the game world, which has reduced many opportunities for naturally forming relationships.

On the other hand—and more importantly—the players who stayed up all night grinding in internet cafes more than twenty years ago have now mostly entered the workforce, started families, and found their free time increasingly fragmented.Coupled with the increasingly fast pace of modern life, players no longer have enough free time to be online as intensively as they did back then—spending long hours leveling up, camping at specific spots, exploring maps, and completing daily quests.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t miss the authentic fun of MMOs—as was clearly evident from the enthusiastic response on social media during the open beta promotional period, those players from back then haven’t forgotten the younger versions of themselves who used to charge into battle alongside their guild brothers.

The reason why Tea House has been paying attention to *Lineage II: Covenant* is, on the one hand, because it has chosen nostalgia as its product angle; on the other hand, we want to focus on how the Chinese server team views the current changes in the social landscape and effectively leverages the concept of nostalgia.

With the launch of the open beta for the Chinese server today, many longtime *Lineage II* players have decided to return after initially taking a wait-and-see approach. Combined with the game’s specific gameplay systems, I think the developers have a very clear understanding of how player needs have evolved over the past two decades.

For example, they’ve added a class summoning system that wasn’t present in the original *Lineage 2*—players choose a primary class to use in the early game, while still retaining the familiar class selection and class change paths; later on, they can use the class summoning system to draw characters of different classes and then use those characters to change classes.

It’s clear that the original intent behind this class-switching mechanism was to provide more freedom of choice within the existing class system. Now, a single account allows players to freely switch between multiple classes and unlock complete progression paths.This significantly reduces the cost of starting over—players no longer need to create new alts and gather gear from scratch just to experience different classes, as they did in the past, saving a great deal of time. It also facilitates guild collaboration, allowing players to more flexibly fill frontline, healing, and damage-dealing roles during guild raids.Players can pay to speed up the class summoning process or take a “laid-back” approach and unlock classes for free—the pace is entirely up to them.

This mechanism is highly representative of the current philosophy behind *Lineage II: Covenant*: it’s more open and offers greater freedom, helping players significantly reduce their workload and stress; it minimizes meaningless, repetitive tasks during gameplay, allowing players to devote their precious, fragmented gaming time to the most essential and rewarding experiences.

This core concept is also carried through in every aspect of the Chinese server. For example, the Chinese server team has retained the offline idling mechanism from the international version.Compared to the original *Lineage II*, characters can now automatically hunt monsters and accumulate experience in-game after logging off, freeing players from having to spend long hours online camping in the wild to gather resources.They have also launched a server-wide cross-server trading system and eliminated the “pay-to-lock legendary gear” business model, ensuring that top-tier equipment can be obtained exclusively through open-world hunting, boss battles, and dungeon drops. All types of equipment, materials, and resources can circulate freely, and cross-server trading will be enabled in future updates.

Looking at this series of new mechanisms, it’s clear that *Lineage II: Covenant* takes a thoughtful approach to nostalgia. Rather than simply replicating the original, it reorganizes the most cherished social experiences from twenty years ago into a pace that today’s players can comfortably enjoy.The classic core elements that bring players together remain unchanged, but the barriers to entry have been lowered; blood alliances and raid battles are still important, but players no longer have to endure the high online commitment required back in the day.

Twenty years ago, players could devote a great deal of time to the Continent of Aden; twenty years later, it is Aden’s turn to actively adapt to players’ changing gaming habits.

03

Bringing Life Back to the Corners

As the entire genre has evolved over the past two decades, many MMOs have adapted to this “fast-food” era by becoming lighter and faster. Solo progression, automatic matchmaking, and bite-sized character development have gradually become the norm. “Lineage II: Covenant,” on the other hand, has emerged as a “social outlier” against this backdrop. But I believe it has indeed carved out its own niche in the market.

This space may not be very large, but it has the potential to become lively again and reignite passion.Gathered here are a group of loyal users who were caught in a market vacuum as the MMO genre “retreated” toward single-player experiences, as well as some new players curious about the genre. What they need is a game that can let them “experience a proper raid one more time.”

In fact, if we turn our attention to the neighboring SLG genre, we’ll find that leading titles are thriving in areas such as alliance ecosystems, large regional servers, and cross-server warfare.Essentially, they are also drawing players back into a system of social organization—which is precisely what MMOs used to excel at. Some game producers have even told Teahouse during industry discussions that many new MMOs, which seem to focus on retro nostalgia, can actually attract nearly half of the new “Gen Z” users.Among the next generation—and the generation after that—there will still be a segment of players who remain captivated by the core joys of MMOs.

This is where *Lineage II: Covenant*’s strength lies.The Continent of Aden, Blood Alliance sieges, gatherings at the foot of Qiyan City, and shared memories from the internet café era serve as a natural emotional bond. Compared to a brand-new IP that must build social consensus from scratch, *Lineage II* has a shared starting point experienced by an entire generation of players, making it better suited to rekindle the value of alliances, team battles, and collaboration among friends.

Judging by the series of changes the team has made to *Lineage II: Covenant*—including class switching, offline idling, guild benefits, and revamped siege gameplay—this game, crafted by a team that “understands players,” truly serves as the “spark” needed to rekindle a sense of “human connection” and ignite the passion for team battles.

Many people may not have played through a full raid in quite some time. But perhaps the most valuable aspect of *Lineage II: Covenant* is that it doesn’t let that sense of longing remain merely a nostalgic memory.

It brings a group of people back together on the continent of Aden, allowing veteran players to reunite with those they once fought alongside, and helping new players understand that the most moving moments in an MMO often happen when someone stops for you, when someone charges into battle with you, or when someone remembers your name after victory.