Yogurting was a Korean Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game released in 2005.
The story was as follows: you are an Ordinary High-School Student attending either the modern Estiva Academy or the more traditional Yoitsuki Academy. One day, the student body wakes up to find that almost all the teachers are missing, there are strange penguin creatures everywhere, and monsters have infested both campuses. Worse still, every other school aside from Estiva and Yoitsuki has vanished. Even though no lessons are being taught, no-one can relax because of these events. This would come to be known as the Endless Vacation Phenomenon.
Because most of the adults have gone missing (and the rest are clueless), the Absurdly Powerful Student Council rises up to take charge and organize an investigation into the E.V.P.. Meanwhile, the World Trees on both campuses have begun to resonate, opening up a portal to another dimension where a mysterious artifact known as "the antique" is said to reside. So it's time to buck up, be awesome teenage heroes, and figure out what's going on.
There are four types of weapons that you could use: Blades (swords), Gloves (fists), Mura (headphones) and Spirit (backpacks). Though you could switch between them at will, you could only master two of them; mastering a weapon gave you access to that type's special attacks, skills and passive abilities. Blades and Gloves were best for melee characters, while Mura and Spirit characters focused more on magical attacks and support.
Yogurting was notable for its extremely cute graphical style, costume designs and the ease of leveling (and, on a similar visual note, for its amazingly psychedelic, dance-heavy promotional trailers
). However, there was one very big hurdle to playing: it was only ever in Korean, Japanese or Thai and there were very few English guides available. The typical English speaker had to stumble through a lot of dialogue choices and incomprehensible menu screens when they first started playing. The Japanese client, the most popular for English speakers of the three, also barred any non-Japanese IPs from playing the game, and registering for the game in the first place was a challenge in itself for foreigners.
1UP.com awarded Yogurting second place in a "Worst Games, Best Names" article.
As one may note from the usage of the past tense in the above paragraphs, it's also a Defunct Online Video Game - the game was sunsetted in Korea and Japan in 2010. The Thai-language company and community tried to hold on and even keep the game going, but they too eventually had to shut down in March of 2011, resulting in the game going dark permanently. The developer focuses, these days, on its military shooter titles, with no indication given that Yogurting will have a successor or revival.
On November 2014, Yogurting was revived as a mobile puzzle game called Yogurting Pop!. Unfortunately, the game shut down on October 28, 2015.
Yogurting provided examples of:
- Genki Girl - Anya, the representative for Estiva and the game's overall mascot character. That girl you see in all those dance videos? That's Anya.
- Personality Blood Types - You choose your character's blood type during character creation. This determines which weapon you start with.
- Rank Inflation - Missions are graded, and you need a B+ or higher to "pass" and advance.
- Token Mini-Moe - Nana, Anya's younger sister and the representative for Yoitsuki.
- Transfer Student Uniforms - Clothes are unique to either Estiva or Yoitsuki; you're not allowed to wear the uniform of the other school.
- Word Salad Title - "Yogurting"?!
