This new MMO is coming out

Asmongold reacts to a trailer and developer interview for Chrono Odyssey, an upcoming Korean MMO that he believes has a genuine shot at being good — but only if it avoids the design traps that have sunk so many MMOs before it. The episode is less a review and more a diagnosis of what ails the genre, using Chrono Odyssey as a case study.

The core tension: time versus money

Asmongold's central argument is that MMOs succeed when they offer a reward structure that is fundamentally different from real life. People play MMOs, he says, because they want a world where success is based on time spent rather than money spent. "Nobody wants to go and play a fucking video game where a guy that's a stock trader or a Saudi Arabian oil prince just one-shots you and outperforms you or have to spend five percent of the time that you do because they have more money than you do."