StillHere

Let's start with ELEX. They're even bigger then Moonton, which is why they are the ones who distributed Magic Rush: Heroes. (Both are big Chinese gaming companies tho) Here are some of their android games still on App Store:

(1) Love Nikki: Dress Up Queen

Possibly their most popular title, and i won't deny this game actually has some effort and creativity put into it. Goes to show that they CAN make good games that are fair to F2P players. However, it can be very grindy - unless you pay money. $1-90 per purchase, btw.

(2) Merge Warfare

this one's more representative of what I'm complaining about. It never got popular. It's P2W, it's grindy, and each purchase can be between $1-$92. 3.3 star on appstore.

And a few others like Mr Love, Age of Kings, etc that are between these two in terms of originality and monetization. Their PC games are definitely much more polished.

Overall, ELEX is somewhat decent, but they definitely have aggressive monetization in every game. However, they are not the ones who primarily made MR. Let's talk about Moonton.

Moonton is the more interesting of the two. It was founded by an ex-Tencent employee, was acquired by Bytedance (the ones who made Tiktok and Douyin), which was then acquired by Savvy Games (the ones who own Scopely, and they're equally scummy). Not hard to tell it's a trainwreck atp - or maybe it always was.

however, I won't say they DON'T make good, non-predatory games. It's just that the slop outweighs the decent. Some examples:

(1) Mobile Legends Bang Bang

They pretty much copied everything from Magic Rush here lmao. That's why I'm so convinced MR was the game they had the most passion and love for. Literally most of their other titles are either copies of MR, or some other popular game. Anyway, this one's actually popular, so they got what they wanted

(2) Magic Chess Go Go

This one's a bit more unique. Surprisingly, it's really not predatory in terms of monetization

(3) Acecraft

The artstyle might look...familiar. maybe this is a good time to mention that Moonton has had many companies accuse/sue them for who copyright infringement...

(4) Mobile Legends Adventure

Again, nothing new. We've seen this many times.

See, all these games have good graphics and some even implemented new-ish concepts. But nearly every single one has microtransactions which make the game significantly easier, almost P2W. Some are blatantly so.

That's why I was so pressed about MR. A few of these (like Love Nikki, Magic Chess Go Go, Mr Love) are genuinely unique games. They have big followings and clearly had thought put into them. On top of that, both these companies know how to make even a shitty game popular. So it just really sucks that Magic Rush, despite being way better than a vast majority of these (at least considering how old it is), was never given any attention at all and just died out unlike their other slop is just so frustrating. They treated it as a cash cow and little else. If the game had been managed well, we could still have had an active fandom and a better gaming experience. But they just never took it seriously once they were past the point of no-return (ie, the point where they messed up and lost most of the playerbase due to the excessive microtransactions)

A great example of corporate greed ruining a creation put together by talented creatives with love.

First, a short history: For as long as the devs didn't get greedy, Magic Rush was actually doing well. 2015-2018 were the big years for the game, and it had only released in 2015. People were instantly interested in it. The period between release and the end of 2015/2016 was when the devs were most active, with new and exciting updates to the game every month that the players loved. Updates stopped around 2023-2024 ish, but by then, it had become a complete cash grab, so interest had obviously waned a lot. Only new legendary heroes were being released so players could spend money to get them by that time. Then the game went into maintenance mode and thats how it is to this day.

I don't have Facebook, but there's a pretty good timeline for the game you can decipher from Moonton's posts. From what I can see, it's obvious that players started leaving when there stopped being real updates to the game, with the Dev's favoring the release of new legendaries that would bring them money over any actual expansion to gameplay/story. I'm sure everyone saw the potential Magic Rush had, and also how quickly it devolved due to greed.

The sad part is: have y'all noticed the DIVERSITY in the characters? The fact that a vast majority of them have a backstory that was never really implemented in gameplay? That some characters' skillset directly corresponds to said backstory, again despite it never being expanded upon? Codex groups, mercenary quests... I'm sure there was a dedicated creative team of amazing writers and artists behind the game, whose work was ruined because of corporate greed. Nobody remembers Magic Rush for the story, but I'm sure they had it planned out.

This post on reddit details the backstory+some history. Not sure where they found it.

This is further proof. This is Chavez's backstory, and Codex groups

and these are the names of his skills. ,Ultimate Guard", " Blindside".

Its just a theory, but I bet they had story boards for all the characters and at least some planning for a story mode. There's even characters with interlinking lore (Murphy and Gorgana), meaning there are entire storylines and settings we never got to see. If you go into Campaign, you'll see what I mean.

Pretty sure these were meant to be actual locations.

Yet they never made anything adjacent to that, and I'm guessing it's because they thought it'd be easier to just monetize newer, half-assed characters instead of adding a new gamemode that would actually enrich the game. I don't know what the playerbase wanted at that time, but I don't think they would've protested to a new gamemode, and they DEFINITELY didn't want more money-grabbing events and legendaries!

Plus, the devs never really listened to the players anyway. The whales were the only demographic they catered to. Balancing was rarely done, legendary teams were (and are) way overpowered. World mode was entirely skewed towards higher-paying players. F2Ps were pushed out of the competition. But no game can survive for long only on whales, and that's exactly what happened.

On top of that, the community was a bit toxic. People DID make friends that compelled them to stay, but there could've been a lot more that could be added to Alliance Play. A massively multiplayer online game NEEDS a good community to thrive. If you're gonna let whales and other top-end players bully others and win every event, you'll never be able to pull in or retain newer/casual players - which make up a big part of the playerbase of any game!

The gameplay itself is quite polished for something from 2015, I'll give it that. Moonton and Elex are big companies. They know how to make their games work. I'll upload a history here of their other games, too.

It's a shame, however, that they never cared enough about magic rush to treat it as anything more than a cash grab, despite it being a game they took inspiration from (read: asset flipped) for a couple of their other works, meaning there had been a lot of effort and creative energy poured into it. And they knew it was good.

MR still has active players to this date, some who still P2P, and even a few fans who make content on the game online (ಥ⁠‿⁠ಥ). It goes to show they could've made it last a long time, people are willing to play if some fundamentals issues with the game are solved. Yet, they just never showed it much attention or love. I'm guessing they wanted to "keep up with the times" and release newer games - better graphics, newer controls, more ways to monetize- but lacking the soul of Magic Rush, Moonton's first and most original project. At least with their other games, it's obvious what the intent was behind their making (again, they do have good games they put some thought and passion into. I'll put a history here later, it might be surprising).

Got this from an advanced material chest (in equipment)

finally 5-starred my Thanos (god of PvE tbh)

And got Ruby to gold quality (might stop using her though ಠ⁠,⁠_⁠｣⁠ಠ we'll see)

But at least I got an extra level of Trial Privilege cause of her!

Realised how cute Watson looks and moves in Magic Squares! (Never used him before cause why would I?)

Finished Fractalia for like the first time this season (at my level, I can barely scrape through on easy mode, but it takes soo many tries and brainpower 😭). Worth it tho, the rewards are ☕

Only had the energy for Fractalia cause I had an extra gem for Crusade and just swept it. They're a similar kind of grind ಠ⁠︵⁠ಠ

Finally caught up with Ancient Ruins! (For now)

Also completed today's Subterra on my own cause the game is too dead to find a lobby. Had to play at a lower level cause of that. Do help other players if you can 🫶

Doing my part in Alliance Mobilization 💪

Burning through Abyss (at lv 85, even Hard mode isn't difficult at all. I can literally auto-kill enemies)

Finished War Guardian, my love (no, I will never sweep it ಠ⁠ ⁠೧⁠ ⁠ಠ )

No events to grind today 🥳

I have a list of reports of people I scouted in the area around the alliance turf in my mailbox and I slowly go through them, attacking each castle until it's at 0% and gets blown up forever (cause theres little chance the players will log in ever again). Feels nice to mostly be done :) I'll make another list soon tho :))

The only kinda bad thing that happened was that I lost 26 arena ranks and couldn't get them back. It's ok tho, I'm still in the same division :D

so this is her in-game backstory

her codex groups (underrated source of lore).

Teleporters: because her ultimate causes her to end up in the middle of the enemy formation

Easterners, Assassins, Who Am I? : lore-related

Girl power: self-explanatory

her backstory isnt linked to anyone else's tho.

she actually appears in many other games/films/theatre so she's prob the most well-known character in this entire game

her character's already quite interesting and badass, but the best thing is, like a few others in the magic rush-verse (eg Karas the Tengu), she's based off an actual figure from folk tales

wiki intro for Diaochan (dont ask me to read the actual folk tales lol)

they were quite accurate with her backstory, but its cool that they rebranded her as an assassination artist. Femme fatale to actually fatal - she's not a bad hero too, check out my edit and see how amazing her design, skillset and voicelines are. they took the "killing" part seriously ;D

in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, her story ends at Dong Zhuo's death, but in opera/storyteling versions, she's most often executed by one of the officials (which i think is unfair cause those men were the ones dumb enough to fall for her thinly-disguised 'trap' + she was literally doing everyone a service by killing a tyrant ) but oh well (the trap in question was her basically pretending to attempt suicide to "prove her love" to them both -_-)

this could've made for an interesting design but all games featuring her have the same pink petals/flower aesthetic. not complaining tho.

literally just go and read her wiki. it really isnt long and she's quite interesting, there's a lot i couldnt cover here :)

isnt she just really cool ✨