Make a wish, kids, because Blizzard just donated one million dollars to make your wish come true. Last year, Blizzard ran a two month long charity drive with a simple premise: Purchase a Pandaren Monk pet for $10 USD, and 50% of that purchase will go towards the Make-a-Wish foundation. Despite the usual complaints on the forums, over two hundred thousand of Blizzard’s subscribers pulled their wallets out and made a purchase during that time period.
Although 50% isn’t nearly as much of a percentage as I’d like to see companies (especially Blizzard) give from a non-tangible item that costs barely a couple hours to code into the game, given that the Pandaren wasn’t made for the charity, I think I can give it a pass. The sheer girth of the donation, combined with Blizzard being up front about how much they were donating, makes it an alright move in my books.
Meanwhile the PLEX for Haiti event ended last week on Eve Online, with more than forty thousand dollars being donated. In Eve Online, if players donated PLEX, it was converted directly into cash and sent to charity.
Back when Cryptic Studios was more like “Cryptic plans for a company,” Perpetual Entertainment was taking care of Star Trek Online and another title, Gods & Heroes, an Ancient Rome MMO set in a realm of Cyclops, Gladiators, and more. Thanks to several rounds of layoffs by Perpetual Entertainment in 2007, Gods & Heroes was put on indefinite hold until 2008, when the company went belly up and had its carcass picked at by various developers. Perpetual was sued by their PR firm for holding back money as an incentive to get more buzz about the title, as well as bribing reviewers for good scores.
Much like how Cryptic picked off Star Trek Online, it is only natural that someone would pick up Gods & Heroes. Heatwave Interactive just so happens to be that vulture, and is happy to take the assets and move the game forward to release status. Heatwave is looking to gather an elite group of past G&H beta testers to give them information on where to go with the latest incarnation. They want to stay true to the title, and Perpetual’s vision for it.
Gods And Heroes is on board for a release date not yet set in stone, but Heatwave says they don’t want to take “another three or four years,” so I would bet my money on late 2010 at the earliest, with 2011 a more likely candidate. With the number of games shutting down in 2010, it’s always good to see a previously doomed title being revived.
Allods Online is a very interesting title, not only because of the game itself but the community and the developers that surround it. Allods has what very few developers can boast about, a community where even though players complain about certain aspects, they are very ready to admit that they will continue playing, because the game is just that good. Just that good is exactly what Allods Online is, a shimmering glow of light in a sea of your run of the mill Asian grinders (Yes, I’m aware Allods is a Russian game), a title looking to be the World of Warcraft of the Eastern Seaboard:
Until, of course, those Ruskies ruined it for us. For anyone who plays Allods Online in North America, your jaw likely dropped when you logged in just a few days ago to find that the long awaited cash shop had finally opened, to the tune of ten times the price of the Russian version of the game (Every website I’ve visited parrots twenty times, but $2 to $20 is what we in the mathematical world call “ten times”). Mark this is the first major blunder of gPotato. Granted, at this point teasing the frothing-mouthed community would be about as smart as dangling your tasty fingers in front of a T-Virus infected Doberman on steroids, so gPotato waited about a day and came out with the next bombshell: The prices were intended. Missing the point entirely, gPotato attempted to calm down the crowd by assuring them that more items would hit the cash shop soon.
So you’re walking out of the crumbly mess that is the Allods Forums and thinking to yourself: “Well, at least that was the worst of it,” in which case you would be promptly crushed by two tons of irony. The latest patch to hit the Russian server (as patches normally do hit Russia before swarming over to the West) is less of a bombshell and more of a nuclear “whoops.” Actually, that’s a good idea. You heard the term coined here first folks, the “nuclear whoops.” Back on topic, the latest patch brings in sweeping changes to Allods Online.
Perfumes are the game’s method of removing Fear of Death, a debuff that lowers stats 25%, stacking up to four times, on a timer that increases as you level up. Previously, at end game the timer maxed out at 45 minutes, and perfumes could be purchased through a daily quest, or through the game’s gold shop. Fear of Death could also be removed by paying a lump sum of gold, and negated in many instances by being resurrected by a player. gPotato must have known its community wanted more, because carousing through the latest Russian patch notes, I found the following:
Increased amount of experience required to achieve levels of 20 to 40.
Spells resurrection is now subjected to objective effect of Fear of Death in the absence of the effect of Patron.
Number of health and damage caused by high-level monsters slightly increased (up to 25% at 40 m level).
So not only do monsters hit more (up to 25% more at higher levels), but it takes longer to level up, and being resurrected now subjects you to Fear of Death. Numbers one and three are pretty irrelevant to the overall point, but I’d like to take a closer look at number 2, because this is something a lot of Allods Online’ers have pointed out to me: What this means is that Heroic Instances, which cannot be exited, now have a requirement for perfume. As perfume lasts for 30 minutes, and costs approximately 75 cents per bottle, the Allods Online forums were kind enough to do my math for me and figure out that raiding at end-game will cost an easy minimum of $50 per month. Mounts were added into the game as well, but if you want them to be at peak efficiency you’ll have to buy feed from, where else, the gold shop.
Here’s an interesting note: Players are boycotting the cash shop, not by not playing the game, but by continuing to play for free. Presumably, the idea is to load on the cost to Gala-Net to host the servers, while throttling their income by not paying for anything in the cash shop. Pretty sneaky, sis.
Granted, this isn’t all coming from the community. The original team that developed Allods has been long gone since the days of the closed beta, making it not at all unbelievable that the game has taken a 180 in terms of direction and planning, from a title that was once about never having to pay a single cent, to a title about paying to keep yourself out of virtual hell. Rather than making a game where your income comes from many players paying small sums, Gala-Net decided to turn the title into a game where no one pays anything, because everything is too overpriced, and a subscription to another MMO is a much better deal than paying that same $15 on a couple days worth of perfume.
There are plenty of theories as to why these events are taking place, with the target audience closing in on itself as each day passes, with questions being asked: Is gPotato really that out of touch with how much players are willing to pay?
Allods Online is a great game at its core, and the support shown to it by its players is astounding on all levels, and really why I considered making this weekend Allods Online exclusive. The players are voicing their support for the title and making real suggestions: Bring the prices down and we’ll pay. Make the game a monthly subscription and we’ll pay.
Allods hasn’t “launched” yet, so it isn’t too late for Gala-Net to throw in some quick changes to the cash shop to get themselves back on the player’s good side. No developer should sit and watch their reputation thrown into the trash before release, and that is quite a big feat considering the warm receiving Allods was getting just a few weeks ago.
MMO Fallout 