Nexon: Not just for fantasy players anymore.  While this isn’t Nexon’s newest marketing tagline, it might as well be.  Free-to-play pioneer Nexon has recently announced that their newest offering, Combat Arms, has officially topped the 1 million user mark since opening the beta back in July.  The microtransaction model went live on October 1st with the opening of the ‘Black Market’ ; Nexon’s in-game item shop that allows players to spend real world money to further customize their characters.

Doing a bit of a well deserved celebratory dance, Nexon has chosen this milestone to bring out even more first person shooter goodness via a patch introducing a new area map and a revolutionary new form of shooter combat.  Not holding any punches, Nexon is really going all out with this one by introducing the ‘Waverider’ map, a European hilltop town (don’t ask my why they named the map waverider, I personally haven’t seen many surfing spots in European hilltop towns) that will now be the game’s largest playing field.  If new areas to explore and combat in weren’t enough, Nexon’s amping up the selection of available weapons, two supply cases, special event gear, and a mercenary character for the Halloween season.

Bobafett rises again!

OK, perhaps our favorite intergalactic bounty hunter ISN’T making an appearance in Combat Arms, but Nexon IS introducing a new game play mode, previously unseen an any first person shooter.  This new game mode, appropriately called “Bounty Hunter” features a hide and seek game play format, whereby one player is randomly tagged as the ‘bounty’ (booty?) and will then be hunted by other players.  The longer Bobafett the player can manage to evade the sharp eyes of other players, the more in game cash they earn.  In other words, find a dang tight hiding spot, park your butt there, and rack up the coinage, provided that Sargeant Snipe isn’t watching your back with a bullseye painted all over it.

“Nexon is dedicated to providing an interactive online gaming experience with our high quality games that are easy to pick up and entertaining at every level,” said Min Kim, vice president of marketing for Nexon. “Combat Arms’ successful commercial launch demonstrates the game’s huge mass appeal and validates market demand for great, free-to-play, online experiences.”

And while Combat Arms is one of the hottest new titles in the free-to-play marketplace, it’s not just the game’s fast paced action that keeps players coming back for more.  The game also features a plethora of socialization Web 2.0 community tools including buddy lists, clan systems, and a messenger system.

“We’ve received overwhelming feedback from Combat Arms players who loved the mix of the fast-action FPS game play and ability to communicate with other players in-game,” said Herb Yang, producer of Combat Arms. “People are really embracing the socialization features of Combat Arms, especially the built-in features enabling people to track their personal performance as well as to create and join clans, personalize their clans with items such as emblems, and participate in official clan matches on dedicated servers.”

While I’ll fully admit that my experience with Combat Arms hasn’t been exactly ideal (I play CA on a mac via bootcamp), and I’m sure there’s an added Windows native component that I’m missing, it still looks and feels more or less like Counterstrike, minus the price tag.  I found the action to be simple and intuitive to pick up, and battlegrounds are fairly well balanced, thereby making even the n00bs enjoy some devilishly good ‘ha!  Gotcha!’ action.  Since opening the doors just under 5 months ago, Nexon’s Combat Arms has gone from zero to hero.  Wasn’t there another highly hyped free-to-play first person shooter coming out sometime soon?  Oh yeah…ummm, Battlefield Heroes – what’s up?