Game maker NCSoft’s highly anticipated mobile game “Lineage M” is set to be released June 21, according to the company Tuesday.

At a showcase at The Raum in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, NCSoft Chief Publishing Officer Kim Taek-heon said that the new mobile game was “created to be like ‘Lineage.’”

“Lineage M” is the latest in a series of games launched using the Lineage name, starting with a desktop version in 1998. According to NCSoft, the mobile game will pay tribute to the original version of the game, which was the first online-based massively multiplayer role-playing game in Korea. It will only include the world of Aden, the first map, without the additional fields that came in later updates.

Kim Hyo-su, the lead designer for the “Lineage M” development task force, said that the game would mirror “Lineage” in the early 2000s.

Tapping into the market of nostalgic players who have drifted away from “Lineage” over the past two decades, “Lineage M” saw over 4 million preorders for the game in 32 days, beating the 3.4 million preorder record set by rival Netmarble Games for “Lineage 2 Revolution.”

Unlike other mobile games, “Lineage M” will utilize a free market system that allows users to buy and sell items directly from one another in addition to a centralized marketplace, though this type of setup for PC-based games has come under fire for encouraging an atmosphere of people paying actual cash for other players’ items.

The game will also come with an accompanying new app, M Talk, which will allow players to communicate with one another and with other allied players, even when they are not playing the game, in order to form strategy and schedule dates for group play.

M Talk is available for download starting Tuesday, when players can also begin to create their characters for use once the game opens on June 21. Release dates in overseas markets such as Taiwan and Japan, where “Lineage“ is available as a PC game, have not yet been decided. 

By Won Ho-jung (hjwon@heraldcorp.com)