Day: January 21, 2010

Age of Conan Downtime/Character Deletion Today


What about the rights of that little girl?

If you are reading this and have not heeded my own, Funcom’s, and other’s warnings to save your inactive, low level characters from deletion, you are too late. As of earlier this morning, Age of Conan’s servers went offline for what will be a twelve hour downtime. Characters that have been inactive for at least seven months prior to today, and are under level 20 (and still in the tutorial) will be deleted as part of an effort to consolidate data, and in preparation for upcoming server mergers.

Naturally there will be players who will complain over this idea, and I did mention in the past article that this would end up being perceived as a grab for money by some, and a threat to others. However, in Funcom’s defense, setting up a separate database with unused characters is not worth the resources it would take to port them back into the game at a future date, especially considering it would likely cost the user money, at a price not worth spending on a character that has yet to make way out of the tutorial. I also noted that a lot of the criticism was coming from players who had no intention of playing either way, a group I have noted several times in the past whose feedback should be ignored at all opportunities.

More on Age of Conan, such as the upcoming server mergers, as it appears.

New Categories: Rumor Mill, Hot Topics


Although I regularly bring up my disdain for writing about rumors here on MMO Fallout, I regularly report on MMOs that fall within the levels of not completely confirmed, but at the same time not confirmed to be false either. Although I intended the Upcoming category to be used for MMOs that are in development, eventually it got to the point where there are so many titles flying in and out of each state: Rumor, confirmed, not confirmed, confirmed, still a rumor, not going to happen, and back again.

So I created a new category to deal with those MMOs that aren’t quite confirmed, the Rumor Mill. Rumor Mill games fit under one of the following categories:

  • Confirmed, but unnamed: Blizzard’s MMO is an example of this. We know Blizzard is working on an MMO, but we have no name and no other information. When Blizzard names this title, it will find its place in the Upcoming category.
  • Unconfirmed: MMO ideas rise and fall like flies, every 24 hours. The prospect of a Harry Potter MMO was born and died practically overnight, not to mention a Halo MMO, and other ideas. This is the main meat of the Rumor Mill, titles that have been hinted at but not officially confirmed.
  • Uncertain Of Release: If an MMO’s release is in question, I will also place it in the Rumor Mill. Naturally, the Fallout MMO and Stargate Worlds qualified for this category. This is one of the rarer cases, and if a title is confirmed to not be coming out, the category will simply be deleted, rather than moved over to defunct.

I have received a few emails, both joking and serious, calling the way I treat categories “elitist,” but in all honesty it is simply to keep the website organized. There are slightly over 40 games with their own category, and as cluttered as the “live” section is, will be growing over time, and yet I still don’t hold a candle to mmorpg.com, that follows every MMO and currently has over 400 titles listed.

So in order to remove the strain from the “live” section, I set up a new category to move the more popular titles over to. Hot Titles is where you’ll find the most discussed games on MMO Fallout. Not necessarily the most popular player-wise, but that have the most news coverage. For example, Age of Conan is actually the hottest topic on MMO Fallout, although “Age of Conan nude” comes under less than 1% of those search terms.

Jagex: Making Threats? Get The Police…


Update: For reasons I was unable to uncover, this article was originally published as a blank slate. Although I lost what I had written, I was able to recover the original draft and reupload it. Remember to always keep a backup of your work!

You're going to need an attorney...

“Gonna kill myself.”
-Any MMOer

How many times have you typed that out in chat? In jest, of course, not in a serious manner. Something goes wrong, you get killed, you lose something, you accidentally destroyed your favorite and most powerful weapon, or someone backstabbed you and the only conveyance of your disappointment in yourself or the game is to make an off-color joke about suicide.

Unfortunately for players, and unlike Walt Disney, Jagex doesn’t find suicide very funny, in any context. Following a somewhat high profile suicide that was posted on the Runescape forums several years ago, Jagex has since been taking threats of suicide very seriously, no matter what context it may be in. Players reportedly threatening suicide in order to have their accounts banned started receiving this message instead:

But a talking to may not be the only thing you receive. MMO Fallout has received several reports and accounts of players being reported for threatening suicide, only to have the police show up to investigate a reported threatened suicide. It appears Jagex has joined a small group of developers who are taking no chances and forwarding all threats to the proper authorities.

I know this is going to get some comments about free speech and taking jokes too seriously, but the difference between “I’m gonna kill myself” and “I’m gonna kill myself” is nonexistent when in the form of text, unless the sarcasm is very explicitly pointed out. This is one issue online that many people continue to forget, and are surprised when what they say is taken verbatim.

I am not going to try to force my sense of humor down your throat (because it is far less appropriate than jokes about suicide), just keep in mind who may be listening in. You don’t joke about bombs in an airport, and you don’t joke about guns in a school, so don’t be surprised when your joke (by perception) is taken with less humor than you would like it to be.

G-Unit Reports: No Critical Security Issues


G-Unit doesn't handles account theft.

Our game servers, account databases, and support sites are under constant attack and being probed for any vulnerability. It’s a war that by no means is over.
-Scott Jennings, NCsoft on Aion.

There may not be a fight between gold farmers and developers as intense what is going on between Aion and the gold farmers. Not simply definable as a growing feud, this battle has turned into all-out gang war, with NCsoft going as far as bringing in G-Unit (no, not that G-Unit) to fight off the hoard of bots and spammers. The gold farmers have also stepped up their part of the fight by doing their best to steal as many player accounts as possible, not to mention launching countless attacks against NCsoft’s security systems.

Scott Jennings, in a recent note to the community, affirms players that they are continuing the monitor systems, and have confirmed that there are currently no critical issues with the NCsoft account security. NCsoft will continue to audit their security systems, and players can expect changes to come this year, continuing the security updates Guild Wars and other NCsoft titles received last year.

Following the high profile, and very sobering (as described by Jennings) cyber attack that breached the systems of Google and a host of other companies, it is difficult for players to feel that their information is safe. Unfortunately all we can do is watch and try our best to keep our information safe, while at the same time hoping nothing happens over on the developer’s end.

More on Aion, Security, NCsoft, and more as it appears.

Everquest II: Leveling To Be Made Easier


New Expansion, New Level Cap

The typical MMO Expansion rules include new zones, occasionally a new class or two, perhaps a new race, and increasing the level cap. Of course, this eventually presents the problem that once you raise the level cap several times, it becomes a very long process for newer players to jump into the game and knock their way up to end-game, compared to those who had been in the game long enough to level with it.

So naturally, every now and then you have to increase the speed that players level. World of Warcraft did this by increasing the experience gained by quests in some levels and reducing the experience needed in other levels. Everquest 2 started with a level 50 cap, and now features a level cap of 80.

In response, Sony is releasing a patch to make the leveling smoother. Levels 1 to 65 have not been made shorter, but the experience has been mixed around to make the process much smoother. Levels 65 to 75 require less experience, and quests in this range will give more experience to adventurers. This is a good move, especially considering that several times during Everquest 2, there were levels that required more experience than further levels, an issue that will be fixed with this patch.

More on Everquest 2 and its leveling process as it appears. Sentinel’s Fate hits next month.