It’s been years since the servers went dark, but if you mention Master X Master (MXM) in certain corners of the internet, you’ll still get a reaction. Some people remember it as the "NCSoft Smash Bros," while others just recall the heartbreak of a game that vanished only seven months after it officially launched.
Honestly, the way Master X Master died was weird. NCSoft didn't just turn off the lights; they practically scrubbed the game from existence, deleting websites and forum histories as if they were trying to forget a mistake. But for those of us who actually played it, the game wasn't a mistake. It was probably the most innovative thing to happen to the MOBA genre since Smite decided to move the camera behind the player's head.
The "Tag" Gimmick That Wasn't a Gimmick
Most MOBAs are built on commitment. You pick a hero, and you're stuck with their kit for forty minutes. If you get countered in the draft, well, good luck. Master X Master threw that out the window with its Tag System.
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Basically, you picked two characters—Masters—and could swap between them mid-fight with a flick of the mouse wheel. It sounds like a small change, but it completely broke the traditional logic of a lane.
- You could engage as a tank like Statesman from City of Heroes, soak up the enemy’s initial burst, and then instantly swap to a glass-cannon assassin like Sizuka to finish the job.
- Because each Master had their own separate health bar, tagging out was often a desperate defensive play.
- The unused character would slowly regenerate health while "on the bench," adding a layer of resource management that made every 1v1 feel like a high-speed chess match.
The skill ceiling was astronomical. I remember seeing players use the tag mechanic to "dodge" crowd control—because tagging in a new Master actually cleared certain status effects. It made the game feel more like a fighting game than a tactical strategy title.
A Crossover That Actually Made Sense
NCSoft has always had a bit of a "villain" reputation in the MMO world (just ask anyone who played WildStar or City of Heroes), but they have an incredible stable of IPs. Master X Master was their attempt to pull a Blizzard and create a shared universe.
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Seeing Rytlock Brimstone from Guild Wars 2 standing next to Jinsoyun from Blade & Soul was a trip. But it wasn't just fanservice. They pulled deep cuts, too. They included the Death Knight from the original Lineage and Mondo Zax from WildStar.
For a second there, it felt like NCSoft was finally acknowledging its history. They even brought back Statesman, which was a huge olive branch to the City of Heroes community that had been mourning since 2012. It’s bitter irony that those fans got their hero back only to have him taken away again a few months later.
Why It Didn't Stick
So, if the mechanics were tight and the roster was stacked, why did it fail?
There isn't one single reason, but the monetization and the PvE grind definitely didn't help. Master X Master wasn't just a MOBA. It had a massive PvE component—actual dungeon crawling with bosses and loot. In theory, this was great. You could take a break from the salt of ranked matches and run some stages with friends.
The problem? NCSoft tied the two modes together. To unlock and upgrade your Masters for PvP, you often had to grind the PvE stages. For the hardcore MOBA crowd, who just wanted to log in and play Ruins of the Titan (the 5v5 map), being forced to run the same robot-infested factory twenty times to get a stat boost felt like a chore.
Then there was the marketing. Or the lack of it.
NCSoft released Master X Master in June 2017. By November, they announced the shutdown. They barely gave it time to breathe. It’s hard to build a player base for a competitive game when the publisher seems ready to pull the plug before the first major patch even hits. Some players on Reddit still argue that the game was just "too Asian" for Western audiences, or that the WASD movement scheme (instead of the traditional click-to-move) alienated League of Legends purists.
But honestly? It felt like NCSoft just didn't want to spend the "unreasonable" amount of money required to compete with the giants. They saw the numbers weren't hitting Fortnite levels of growth immediately and decided to cut their losses.
What Master X Master Left Behind
Even though you can’t play it today—there are no official servers and the private server scene is mostly just a group of dedicated fans sharing old assets—MXM’s influence is still there if you look for it.
The idea of a "WASD MOBA" has been toyed with by other developers, and the "tag-team" hero mechanic has popped up in various mobile brawlers. But nobody has quite captured the specific blend of action-RPG and lane-pushing that MXM had.
If you're looking for something that captures that specific itch today, you're mostly out of luck. You can find "spiritual successors" in the indie scene, but the polished, high-budget crossover feel of NCSoft's roster is gone.
Actionable Insights for the Genre Fans
- Look for private server projects: Groups like "Save MXM" have existed in the past, though they often hit legal walls. Keep an eye on community discords for "archival" projects.
- Explore WASD-based battlers: If you loved the movement, games like Battlerite (though also in a maintenance mode) or newer "WASD" action games are your closest mechanical relatives.
- Study the "Tag" mechanic: If you're a game dev, the MXM tag system remains a masterclass in how to implement character swapping without breaking game balance—until the "wombo combos" got too out of hand, anyway.
Master X Master was a victim of bad timing and a publisher with a short fuse. It tried to be three things at once: a MOBA, a dungeon crawler, and a "Greatest Hits" collection. In the end, it was perhaps too ambitious for its own good.