Mana Mundi

**Mana Mundi** is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game developed by RusSoft, originally developed in the Philippines in 2005, and was expanded later into Asia and into Global servers by 2006. It still continues to be a popular online game played to the present, and has created a sub-culture of gaming that emphasizes customization and player creativity.

Infamous in the world of magi for being for its setting mirroring a majority of the major factions, with just changed names, its popularity with sleepers and more tech-friendly magi has kept the game going despite being an old game and newer MMORPGs releasing throughout the decades. Known for popularizing a highly customizable character, item, and NPC system, players of Mana Mundi have freedom in creating their own personalized player characters, NPCs, settlements, weapons, and armor. Animation customization implemented with a customizable Martial Arts system allowed for varied fighting styles for different classes as well. The main appeal according to most players is the extremely detailed magic and spell system, which was based on actual Magic and how it's cultivated by magi. It remains the most popular MMORPG in the Philippines. It is secretly run and developed by a team from the Snake Tong's Information Division, which started as a passion project that got turned into a fully fledge MMORPG by the Business Division.

## Game Summary

The game is set in a fictionalized version of the Border Realm/Border Zone, referred to in the game as Mundi. Players get to choose from a wide list of Playable Races, which influence the region they spawn in, as opposed to the Generic Human race, which allows for the player to choose which region they start in. Mana Mundi, MM for short, features open sandbox gameplay, which sets it apart from many conventional role-playing games. In players are not led by a linear narrative or a series of predetermined quests like in traditional RPGs. Instead, they are placed in a dynamic and harsh , massive world world where they must create their own stories, goals, and adventures.

The lack of conventional quests in Mana Mundi contributes to a sense of freedom and exploration. Players are not guided by a quest log or markers on a minimap; they must actively explore and interact with the game's world and other players to uncover opportunities and challenges. This open-ended approach allows players to immerse themselves deeply in the game's lore, environment, and mechanics.

The game's world is unforgiving and often hostile, characterized by a fantastical but at the same time modern setting with a diverse range of factions, cities, biomes, and creatures. Players can choose to be traders, mercenaries, thieves, farmers, or even build their own settlements. The absence of a structured quest system means that players have to engage with the world around them in meaningful ways to progress and survive. This might involve recruiting a team of other players and even creating their own factions with various skills, establishing supply chains for resources, and participating in combat or trade. The gameplay encourages experimentation and emergent storytelling. Players can make their mark on the world by shaping their characters' abilities, relationships, and achievements. The game offers opportunities for different playstyles, allowing players to focus on base-building, exploration, combat, or any combination they prefer. The vast customization features also allow for players to create their own unique items, characters, classes, their own NPCs in their bases, and even creating their own lore in their respective regions.

Due to the highly intricate magic system in the game, the most common or "meta" class builds players choose fall into the mage archetype. Despite the enduring magic meta, players would still choose non-magic classes or builds that do not focus entirely on magic as still viable alternatives as combat and PVP rely on technical skills in combat, such as dodging, blocking, parrying, and maneuvering in combat, as opposed to MMORPGS at the time where combat consisted of just "idle point and click" mechanics and relying solely on character stats.

## Factions

Mana Mundi started with several pre-existing factions established in the game that controls specific territories in Mundi, and is composed of multiple NPCs that make up the faction's ranks, be it lower or highest ranks. They can also be joined by players in order to access faction-exclusive items, skill training, and classes. Some factions were destroyed throughout the years of the game's lifespan due to players either joining opposing factions and taking over their territories, or simply eliminating every NPC in the faction and forcing player members of said faction to either defect or join a different faction, as factions are wiped out once no members remain.

Many factions are based on actual groups in the world of magi, which garnered controversy initially with the Grand Order, the Martyrdom, and even the Eight Courts, who viewed their inclusion to be compromising the existence of magi to sleepers, but this is mostly due to the higher ups of each factions not understanding fantasy videogames. After a year of debating and realizing that the game did little to make people actually believe in magic and the magi that practice them, they soon turned their attentions to different affairs.

Factions based on actual mage groups include:

**The Arcaneum** - the mage-centric faction based on the Grand Order, includes diverse classes, weapons, magic types, and character motifs fitting the multi-cultural nature of the Order. Their in-game territory covers the European-style region known as Hermetica.

**The Hands of God** - the religious faction based on the Martyrdom and is the primary faction to join for players who wanted to utilize Christian-inspired weapons, classes, spells, and want to start with a PVP "Casus Belli" against other groups which the Hands of God deem as heretics and start as hostiles to them. Their in-game territory covers an archipelago region thematically named "The Holy Sea".

**The Five Dragons** - the mage-centric faction based on the Eight Crimson Courts. It is the faction that utilizes East Asian motifs, specifically Chinese and Korean, when it comes to their items, spells, NPCs, and especially martial arts. They start off in the notoriously misty and mountainous region known as Tien-chi. The Five Dragons are known to be the most common faction that engages in large-scale PVP.

**The Black Hand** - a modern/urban fantasy style faction that was started after the game was released, and was established by members of the Snake Tong who played the game and wanted to use Snake-style fashion and combat in-game. The faction is known for it's highly customized NPCs, which were made by actual Snake Tong members who use the profiles of Snake agents as materials for NPCs. While they did not use actual member names, most of the NPC designs are rather accurate to the people they are inspired from. One example was the NPC known as "Mistress Pheonix", the faction leader and the strongest NPC in said faction and is clearly based on Fenghuang. They control the territory jokingly renamed as "Pelepens" by the players in the Faction. Originally it was called the Pearl Islands.

At the moment, player-made factions have become the majority, taking over most regions and resulting in regular PVP battles for territory.