Look, let's be honest, the most striking newcomer on this week's charts is Eclipse: The Awakening. Dropping on Thursday, September 11, the title punched its way straight into 18th place. Securing such a debut in the middle of a brutal warzone packed with rolling MMORPG releases is quite something.

The signs of a massive hit were there before launch. Serviced by Smilegate and developed by N픽셀, the game sailed past 1 million pre-registrations early on, and last month's character creation across 24 servers wrapped up well ahead of schedule. Pulling in number one on the Apple App Store on day one and the Google Play Store by day five proved that the pre-launch hype wasn't just corporate smoke.

The secret sauce behind the success is what the developer calls 'MMOLite'. Mixing four classes, eight weapon types, skill fusion, and a divinity system to craft your own combat style while dialing down grind time and competitive pressure hits the bullseye for players exhausted by traditional MMORPG burnout. Keeping Monetization while smoothing out the fatigue and unpredictability of repeat purchases is a distinct differentiator.

Now, the real test is long-term survival. For cross-platform MMORPGs on mobile and PC, breaking into the top 10 is rare, and holding the upper echelons for over three months is even rarer. Take Zeus: God of Pride, which also debuted at 16th only to slide into a steady descent. With the autumn MMORPG rumble in full swing, the real question is how long this momentum can actually hold.

Right after its August 13 launch, Freestyle: Reboot copped heavy flak over performance gaps and Monetization concerns when it turned out the in-game shop wasn't entirely stat-free. After an aggressive overhaul just five days later that completely revamped the Monetization model and doled out refunds, stray players trickled back, nudging the game up to 32nd. But this week, the title slumped 12 spots down to 44th. Lingering distrust over the VIP system and a formidable barrier to entry built by veteran players have flashed warning lights for its long-term run.

Palworld also slid 5 spots down to 28th this week, marking its fifth consecutive weekly decline. The natural post-launch buff that pushed it to 13th back in July is fading away. It doesn't help that subsequent patches have been limited to minor bug fixes and balance tweaks. To make matters.worse, a heavyweight challenger in the open-world survival crafting genre has arrived. Animo, an open-world monster-taming RPG developed by Pocketpair, smashed 28 million global pre-registrations and officially launched on September 16. With the demand pool for open-world creature-healing games softening up around Palworld, a massive chunk of those players is likely jumping ship, making a comeback all the more difficult.

Starcraft and Starcraft 2 are riding an upward wave side by side. Starcraft climbed one spot to 9th this week for its second straight weekly rise, while Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty bumped up 2 spots to 27th. The ASL Season 22 running from August 17 to October 17 is injecting energy across the entire franchise, and an offline-crowd event called 'Zantgdae: Starcraft' rolled out on September 6. Meanwhile, Starcraft 2 fans have been glued to the GSTL team league, reviving the format after 13 years from August 18 to September 27. Add a surprise Starcraft franchise announcement at BlizzCon last weekend, and interest in the IP has exploded after a long hiatus.

Elsewhere, Wuthering Heights is experiencing a steady slide amid a content drought ahead of its major update slated for September 30, while MMORPG heavyweight Lineage also saw its ranking dip under pressure from rival titles. Meanwhile, World of Dokkaebi, gearing up for an October 8 launch, continues to warm up the engines, maintaining its position this week thanks to pre-registration events, showcases, and the selection of Park Ji-hoon as a promotional model.