The most likely suspect is probably the overwhelming amount of FPS games in the market in Korea at the moment. Every year a good number of them pop up for players and simply players still are playing the older FPS games already out, which leaves the newly released MMOFPS games shiny interiors empty.
The solution Korean MMO developers found for this problem? Move to the third-person view. The transition to this can be seen in games released just prior to this year's GStar convention with Alliance of the Valiant Arms offering a third-person view in its options and the recent English release of Tank Ace which uses a full third person view.
Now it seems the wave of change is coming in full force with the announcement of Dizzel, Project E and Phychic all sporting the third person view and each is feircely advertising the MMOTPS genre. It wouldn't be surprising to see other new Korean shooters such as Quake Wars Online to become TPS games or at least offer it as an option to players.
This is still new territory for Korean developers though the change from first person and third person is not an easy one, especially for developers used to the first person view. The view of the cross hair and items around the player must use special scales or the cross hair will not align correctly and the surrounding will look distorted. These are problems Western developers have faced in the early days of TPS games on consoles.
A great example how the change affects gameplay is Team Fortress 2. It has a hidden third person view for players to use but because the core of the game is made as a FPS the crosshairs and surroundings does not look right and is extremely hard to play with.
Next year will be interesting for Korean shooters with all of these new TPS games being released. It will be a test for them and only the most refined will succeed. While FPS games in Korea will without a doubt continue to succeed but this change of pace welcomed.
