Two games with the same name

In China the name 倚天 covers two games. 《倚天》 is Metin 1, released at the end of 2001 and passed in 2006 to a Xi'an operator (陕西至尊网络) as 《新倚天》. 《倚天Ⅱ》 is Metin2, published by 中广亚广播信息网络有限公司 (brand 中广网 / CATV.net, Beijing): public beta on November 18, 2004 at 20:00, 170,000 logins in ten minutes. F (The November 8 date that circulates online is wrong.)

The April 28, 2008 order

On 4/28/2008 China's Ministry of Culture issues an order against a 倚天 operated without an import number after a change of publisher. T The scene remembers it as "the closure of Chinese Metin2" and builds the cause of the leak on top of it: a defunct publisher letting the files go.

The order hit 《新倚天》, i.e. Metin 1, operated by 至尊 without a number after the 2006 change of publisher. T CATV.net's Metin2 never closed: weekly maintenance, events and new zones without interruption from 2008 to 2012. F

What the Chinese publisher was doing during the leak months

• 7/3/2009: the official 《倚天Ⅱ》 site, two months before the leak, documents a full service. F
• Between June and December 2009 two new server zones open (网通八区, 电信九区): no merger, no withdrawal. F
• 12/3/2009: 中广网 announces 《倚天2外传》, the sequel, on a 2009 Ymir build (Sura class, Tower of Demons, quests 77-85); closed beta on December 15, 2009 at 18:00. F
• 12/9-13/2009: 《自由世界》 winter games run across at least nine server zones (the window is documented day by day, not blind). F
• 10/11/2013: in Seoul, 中广网 secures the exclusive rights to 《倚天2》欧洲版 2.0 "and later versions" for China. F

Three months after the leak, the Mainland publisher was expanding. And on September 19, 2009, while rain was publishing, the Chinese forum he published on hit its record for concurrent users, for entirely different reasons. F

So where do the files come from?

From Hong Kong and Taiwan, not the Mainland: LOCALE = big5, hongkong locale, Taiwan publisher's client. The Mainland had its own client (V5.0 of 11/28/2008, offered unchanged until 2012) which isn't the one from the leak. F The Chinese edition closed years later, from exhaustion: the last documented active period of 《倚天2自由世界》/《倚天2外传》 is mid-2013. F

The comeback

On March 26, 2026 Metin2 officially returned to China as 《倚天2：觉醒》, under a Webzen license, with state approval (国新出审〔2025〕188号) and a Xi'an publisher, 西安游狗网络科技, whose team had formed around the old 倚天, and whose administrator was a fan of the game. F It's a mirror of our own story: in the West the kids who loved the game secretly set about remaking it; in China one of them grew up, founded a company, and bought the rights outright.