ELOA Headed to Closed Beta Next Week; Explains "Inspirit" Dispute

Webzen has announced that the free to play, hack'n'slash MMORPG, ELOA: Elite Lords of Alliance will head to their first North American and European closed beta on October 13th. This first beta is scheduled to last approximately one week and will end with all progress being wiped. By "Closed Beta" they mean it is closed to anyone that can't find the website. To take part in this beta test, head over to the official ELOA site, sign up, and download the client.

Think ELOA looks a bit familiar? You may be right. Inspirit Online looks an awful lot like ELOA, or should I say that ELOA looks a lot like Inspirit Online....so what's the deal? Webzen and ELOA developer NPICSOFT took some time to chat with MMOCulture about the ongoing problems between ELOA and Inspirit Online (First Look Video here).

According to Webzen, Inspirit Online is an unauthorized beta version of ELOA that was published without the permission of NPICSOFT and is viewed as an illegal private server. Webzen signed the partnership deal to publish ELOA knowing about this illegal version and intends to use all means available to them to defend its new license. Webzen assures all players that Inspirit Online is already behind the content curve of ELOA and will continue to fall more and more out of date as ELOA launches and will be better supported.

"We’re very certain that the running of Inspirit Online, without any basic understanding of ELOA, will never be a match for the official content of the original game," said Dennis Choi, Founder & CEO of NPICSOFT Inc.