Year: 2010

The Era Of Riding Initial Sales Is Over


Currently offline...

[Update 6/29/10] With the overwhelming response this article has received, both here and on other websites, I’ve posted a followup below the original article.

Mortal Online is part of a major turning point in the massively multiplayer online industry, but in a way that has little to do with the content of the game itself. I’m not talking about the engines that MMOs run on, or the way that players interact in the growing worlds, or even the size and scope of the world itself. I speak of the way these titles are run, and the communities who pay for them, the promises that are kept, and the breaking point of patience and willpower. Continue to read and you will understand why the era of false promises, infinite delays, and broken dreams is over, but more importantly, why some MMOs will die because of it (not necessarily Mortal Online).

Up to a year ago or so, the typical mantra for buying a game was if you bought a console game and you didn’t like it or it was broken, you could always sell it used for a small payback on the cost of the game. For PC games, up until around 2004, it was possible to just transfer your cd and the key to another person, like a used game sale, but without the option for turning to Electronics Boutique or a real store to sell it for you. With MMOs, on the other hand, there has never been a legitimate way to sell. You have to transfer your account with the game, which risks the account getting banned if the company detects it, leaving you with no money, and no game.

This should not be taken as a generalization when I say that a lot of MMO developers quickly latched on to this idea, and several of those used it to put a choke hold on the player. In recent years, the focus has shifted to giving an MMO enormous amounts of hype prior to release, to pump up the pre-order sales before the closed beta is even done with, the NDA lifted, and the game can be talked about. A few developers walk the same borderline of fraud that you see in commercials, where what they say isn’t technically fraud, but it’s certainly misleading. As an example, many of you have likely mocked the commercials where the advertiser states “prices starting at under twenty five dollars!” only to find that the price starts at $24.99 for a barely working piece of trash and immediately jumps to $100 for the next step up.

Before an MMO launches we are subjected to countless claims of features that are delayed for months on end, if not years, if not scrapped entirely at some point in a secret manner. But these same features are used to advertise and gin up pre-orders, and then the executives sit back and wonder why virtually every subscription MMO in existence has such a low retention rate following its first month. The player is out fifty bucks, and might even convince himself when the developer claims that the feature he wanted that was missing at launch is coming “soon” (read: following two years of delays before it is eventually cut), that he should continue his subscription for a few months just to see how the game turns out.

I am picking on Mortal Online specifically in this article because this is the MMO that really popularized the new fight against the idea that once players pre-ordered, they were at the mercy of the developer no matter how many times/years the game was delayed despite accepting orders, and how many features ended up not being in the game, or being broken, at launch. Players issued charge-backs in large numbers on Mortal Online, so much so that many third party forums relating to MMOs/Mortal Online were regularly filled with information, accounts and advocacy for players to perform said charge-backs.

The moral lesson with Mortal Online is that developers can no longer promise features, and then use initial box sales as a fund to develop those features for actual release some months down the line. After several years, patience and tolerance for this has reached its breaking point, and players are sending a message that these acts that have become so commonplace in the MMO market, are no longer going to work. The legitimate use of a charge back is gaining momentum, and I have no doubt that at this rate it will be powerful enough to utterly destroy an MMO before it even makes it out the door.

As much as I am against resorting to a charge-back, the old “shit happens” excuses just don’t cut it anymore in defending companies that launch unfinished or wholly broken MMOs. In any other video game genre, the kind of stuff developers pull would never be tolerated, and the momentum is moving in such a way that it will no longer be tolerated in MMOs either, especially when companies make the same mistakes over several titles.

Always buy an MMO with a credit card, and never preorder an MMO on Steam (in the event where you issue a charge back, you entire Steam account will be completely disabled). Remember: A charge back is not to be used as an excuse to bum-rush your way into a game without doing any research on it, and is not for buyer’s remorse. It is strictly for cases where what you are promised is not what is delivered. In the case where it is found that you issued an illegal charge back, you can be sued for wire-fraud or theft of merchandise, among other charges, depending on where you live.

[6/29/10]

I wanted to address a few comments I’ve been seeing on various websites in regards to this article, mainly that I was not informative enough with the original article. I was afraid, and apparently rightly so, after I published this that it would gather some notice from the Mortal Online community, on both sides, and it has.

My intention with this article wasn’t to bash any game in particular, but to focus on the broad-spectrum themes that lead up to Mortal Online becoming the scapegoat for a new trend. It has become all too common for developers to start talking far too specifically about a title long before those features are even finalized, or approved in some cases. Interviews about the content of the game now merely run down to throwing out whatever is in the concept stage to get the most ooh’s and aah’s. Although there’s been a few criticisms of my “poor research” in not providing examples for a few arguments, this was by design, as the instant I pointed out a single MMO, or even a selection of MMOs, I would be immediately slammed for “having a grudge” against said game/company. Rather, my goal was to indulge the reader and allow them to fill in the blanks with their own experiences.

One thing I do hold Mortal Online guilty towards, and this stands for a number of other MMOs, is the “here’s a list of features, but not all of them will be in after launch.” Before Warhammer Online launched, Mythic removed most of the capital cities, preferring to have two decent cities at launch rather than all of them in a poor state. The cities, along with the removed classes, would be launched at a later time once the game shipped. Mythic has caught up on classes, but there hasn’t been much as to when, if ever, the capital cities will see release. Given the number of MMOs that have used the undisclosed-future-release plan where the content was silently cut or radically changed, I think it’s safe to say that Star Vault’s lack of specificity was to their detriment.

I have always advertised MMO Fallout as having a focus on the MMO industry as a whole, with insights into the companies, trends, and such, but I often feel that I assume and demand too much out of my readers, by which I mean that I occasionally get ahead of myself and assume that the rest of you have been following my blog since the start (which is why I always try to begin with summaries of what is going on).

The key to this article is that the player will always vote with their wallets in the end, on the issues that really matter, and in this case that issue is the tolerance of players with regards to developers making vague promises with the hopes that the player will continue to stick on until whatever feature it is is released, assuming it is at all.

I stuck Mortal Online in because it is indeed the poster child of the reaction, but not necessarily all factors of the cause considering how newly released it is. Although MMO Fallout didn’t exist at the time, I was closely following the months leading up to the launch of Warhammer Online and Age of Conan. In both of those cases, the populations of the game plummeted following release, especially given that both of these titles broke a record on pre-orders. Although players were disappointed at their purchase, they simply wrote it up as a $50 loss and moved on.

Mortal Online got the short end of the stick because of pre-release fear rather than hype, especially when one staff member talked about their troubles with funding, that caused some players to issue charge backs out of fear that Star Vault was bound to go bankrupt before the game ever launched. Other players saw what they believed to be an irresponsible length of delays, and yes, a great number just rode on the bandwagon with the mantra that “I’ll preorder it, and if I don’t like it I can always do a charge back and troll the forums about how I got my cash back.”

Ultimately I believe Mortal Online became the poster child for this because Star Vault is a tiny company that has seen a lot of stumbles, and people decided that even if they were in the wrong, there was little to no chance of retaliation from a company with pockets so thin that they were selling pre-orders in order to fund the beta.

Here at MMO Fallout I stand up to core principles that I never give a disincentive to trying out a title. The closest you will find to reviews here are the month-in-review articles I do where I give short, one or two sentence thoughts about the MMOs that I am playing at the time. I could increase my hits by a mile by converting MMO Fallout into a website where I plaster ads, talk about why x company wants to rip you off, review MMOs based off of twenty minutes of gameplay, call John Smedley the devil, make funny photoshops of Bill Roper, and generally jump on the troll bandwagon, but I would rather give players the avenue to form their own opinions.

I crack wise-ass jokes about companies and their games, but at the end of the day you will always find me encouraging people to try out the game, no matter what the content of the article, and regularly blast trolls. I recommend people try the game out for themselves, rather than make their decision based off of a review, or something someone wrote on a forum, which is why I regularly post sales, trial information, and more avenues on how to get into MMOs for the lowest price possible. I suggest you read the following, along with the rest of MMO Fallout:

I’m not a man without morals, so I apologize to the Mortal Online community that the original article ended up coming across as a misdirected, poorly sourced flame pit. I rarely follow up articles like this, and hopefully this long-winded response will tie up some loose ends.

Everquest II Has No Room For You F2P Folk


Subscriptions, subscriptions, subscriptions?

Those of you playing Everquest II, or really any other subscription based MMO are probably looking at your fifteen bucks a month and wondering, “Gee. I hope they don’t turn my favorite MMO into a cash-shop money farm for casual kiddies who want to pay to win,” and quite frankly your fears would be justified. When Lord of the Rings Online announced its transition over to free to play, we finally recognized that the transition isn’t just for MMOs that are on the brink of death (Ahem…Dungeons and Dragons Online), but a valid source of income, especially for publishers who love money a whole lot.

Senior Producer Dave Georgeson (or was it George Davidson?) over at Sony Online Entertainment wants to calm your fears, well at least if you play Everquest II. Responding to fears that the game would follow Turbine’s approach, Georgeson stated;

As I said in that interview, we will not be changing your subscription model. We’ve heard you folks loud and clear that you do not want items with stats introduced, you don’t want players buying their way to power, etc. Your world will stay the way it has been and we will continue to support it with new content, items, etc.

Directly from the Georgeson mouth itself. I believe the interview Georgeson refers to was back in April with Ten Ton Hammer where he was asked about subscription vs cash shop, and he had this to say:

Games that are fully microtransaction-funded are generally “easily chewable”. In other words, you play them for a month or two and then move on. (Sometimes only weeks.) Games that are subscription-funded tend to be longer-term communities and homes for players to build and grow over time. Plus, there’s plenty of room for hybrids with elements of both. In short, I doubt that subscription games will just “go away”. It’s just another type of business model.

Of course you would talk about hybrid models, what with your fancy pants $25 mount (one thumb down). More on Everquest 2 as it appears.

Project V13 To Offer Some Form Of Permadeath?


Wishing you were dead...

Ask yourself: How many MMOs on the market truly have a punishing death penalty system? Games like Ultima Online, Runescape, and Darkfall have you lose most if not all of your items upon death, but when you become rich that is really nothing more of than a minor set back. Eve Online and Face of Mankind, to name two, have a near-permanent death system, but clones are so easy to come by that death in itself is still just a minor purchase. Very few MMOs have attempted permadeath, and practically none have had any success with it. In a genre where progression over long periods of time is key to extorting-that is to say, inspiring players to keep subscribing, the idea of losing your character because of a fleeting moment where a guild ambushed you in a 10 on 1 battle, or someone decided to turn on the old speed hacks and went on a murder spree before he was banned, or even in cases of random lag/server desync.

In an interview at the Electronics Entertainment Expo, Interplay did a Q&A where, albeit most of their answers being “we can’t answer that,” they did have this to say on player death:

Death is death in the Fallout world and there are no Resurrection spells or magic wands that bring people back to life. The Master in FO1 was on one path to immortality, but even he wasn’t immune to 9mm (or plasma rifles, whatever your weapon of choice was.)

We have a pretty good handle on how we handle player character defeat in PV13.

My immediate reaction is to assume that Project V13 will feature some sort of cloning mechanism, similar to Fallen Earth (wake up in a clone machine). With my limited knowledge of the Fallout Universe, I know that Vault City in the original games ran a cloning machine that could replicate human organs. In Fallout 3, Vault 108 has a partially functioning cloning lab, where the player encounters clones of one man. In Vault 108’s condition, the clones that the machine pumped out were increasingly violent, especially towards non-clones.

If Fallout Online is set years after Fallout 3, it is feasible that cloning technology could improve to explain a cloning system in the MMO to replace a permadeath system. More details are likely to appear in the coming months…hopefully. Don’t forget, the Fallout Online beta doesn’t start for two years.

Twisted Pixel MMO: Not Really That Hush Hush

An upcoming Turbine MMO is inconspicuously referenced by contractor Twisted Pixel Games.


I thought you said Twisted Pixel...

Dear Twisted Pixel,

Saying that you are working on a secret MMO for Turbine, on your list of games no less, qualifies it as “no longer a secret.” Over on their website, Twisted Pixel Games has listed that they have just finished a contract with Turbine over a console-based MMO of no specific genre or IP. I’ve talked before about Turbine’s stated interest in a console MMO, despite a lack of information whatsoever other than Turbine’s interest in a console MMO.

Well at least we know that the Turbine Console MMO is official. Only thing to wait for now is a name, a theme, a genre, a payment model, a release date, cash shop, control scheme, which consoles, and a few other minor details. My only question is: I wonder what part TPG had in the development, and how far it is from release?

Looking forward to more news on the Turbine Console MMO.

Mythic Is Taking Back WAR EU


TERA Time!

Mythic wants its babies back, especially in Europe where hosting has been handled by GOA. Earlier this year, the MMO developer took back Dark Age of Camelot, that GOA had been hosting for the game’s European life-span. Now, in a move that I’m sure will surprise anyone playing WAR Europe Edition, Mythic is taking back Warhammer Online…in Europe!

Servers will transition over the next few weeks, and Mythic has promised that all of your information will transfer over to the new servers. More information is coming soon.

Allods Online Replaces Unpopular Debuff With Unpopular Debuff


Why so Cursed?

Previously on MMO Fallout:

You heard it poorly translated here first, MMO Fallouters! It’s good to see that the word has finally reached Astrum Nival, even with all the Western Allod’ers whose “Russian friends” claim that the Russian version is now “a barren wasteland” and are not trolling at all I swear. There are a number of people angry over the replacement for fear of death: armor curses that can only be removed by cash shop items, but that is another story for another day.

You heard it here first…well, second. It almost feels like back in April that I last talked about Astrum Nival, Gala-Net, and Allods Online, and quite frankly I am disappointed at my seeming lack of ability to play on this cesspool of bad public relations. In fact, I would go as far as saying only Cryptic Studios can rile up their base in a fit of rage to match what follows an announcement from Gala-Net.

To those of you who have slipped out of the loop, Allods Online is a recently released free to play Russian MMO that has garnered quite a bit of controversy this year, all of it surrounding the title’s cash shop. The game itself is of top quality, especially compared to the over-saturated free to play cash shop market, but ever since the cash shop opened in February developer Astrum Nival seems to be digging themselves deeper and deeper into a growing pit of flames.

In February, the controversy began with the price of items in the cash shop, with a focus on the fact that there was a 1,000% increase across the board for cash shop items compared to the Russian version, that I specifically held back on writing about until I could confirm that the prices were indeed intentional. Not only were the prices intentional, but were followed by a patch that made Perfumes much more useful. Perfume is a cash shop item that is used to remove Fear of Death, a debuff that stacks and adds 25% drop in stats per stack, up to four times, and at end-game can take hours of waiting or a nice sum of gold. With the patch, not only did leveling become slower, but monsters became tougher and resurrection by another player now incurred Fear of Death. As I put it:

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

It took less than a week for gPotato to announce that the prices would be coming down on cash shop items, which I had pointed out was moot as now the focus had turned on the Fear of Death and perfume mechanics. March brought restructuring to the cash shop. In April, while gPotato was busy pinning all of this on Astrum Nival, I noted that the Russian patch notes indicated the removal of Fear of Death, following a player-driven poll asking which feature players would most like to see removed. I also noted at the end this item cursing feature that was set to replace Fear of Death, but that I didn’t have much in terms of details on it at the time.

Fast forward to June and here we are. In the July 7th patch, Fear of Death is going to be removed and replaced with item curses. When a player dies now, there is the chance that a curse will land on a slot in their inventory. If the item is rare (Rare, epic, or legendary only) the curse will invert the stats of the item. More importantly, bosses now have a chance of dropping rare items in an already cursed form.

The only method of removing the curse is through a cash shop item that must be either bought on the cash shop or through the auction house (from those who purchased it on the cash shop) for a hefty sum. So, as one Allod Online’er put it, Astrum Nival essentially took a temporary grievance that can be waited out, and turned it into a permanent grievance that must, without exception, be fixed with a cash shop item or heavy gold in the auction house.

More on Allods Online as it appears.

Global Agenda Going 100% Guild Wars Model


Free stuff, free stuff everywhere.

Before I go into the news story, I’d just like to make one of my opinions public: I have a very big hunch that the era of B-list MMOs keeping the $15 a month fee is moving towards its end. Obviously I can’t predict where the market will wind up, but I earnestly believe that we are in the beginning of a shift where we will see a number of MMOs lower their subscription price, go freemium, or entirely free to play. Developers are seeing how many more players they can grab at a lower price, with the influx of new people paying far outweighing the group who was willing to pay the full price. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and despite complaints by a very vocal minority, the benefits can far overshadow the negatives if done correctly.

Global Agenda, being a part-MMO title that launched this February, became so successful that Hi-Rez had to add a new server to accommodate overseas players. I do get the hunch that, much like a certain Cities XL game that came out in 2009 and shut down in March, Global Agenda’s paid MMO side is not doing as well as the company had hoped. Oddly enough, this seems to be a trend with games that release with one half free, one half paid content, unless the game’s name is Guild Wars of course.

Hi-Rez Studios announced today that Global Agenda is going free to play (well, the subscription portion was), and speaking of Guild Wars, Global Agenda will be channeling Arenanet’s policy of having the game itself be free to play, with option paid expansion packs. Expansion packs are expected to release only once or twice per year, at rates similar to non-subscription game expansions (I haven’t purchased a non-subscription expansion since the Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons. Twenty to thirty dollars sounds about right). Token awards for pre-subscribers will end on the 25th of June, and Hi-Rez has assured us that if the level cap expands, players will not need to buy an expansion pack to access the higher level cap.

Global Agenda is one of the few MMOs I don’t follow too closely, and I’m quite certain that the community will fill in the blanks behind this change, but look at it this way: At least Hi-Rez didn’t take the path of Cities XL and simply close up shop because not enough people were subscribing.

By the way: Global Agenda is 33% off on Steam until July 5th. What great timing.

Thar Be Sales On Steam, Landlubbers!


Updates:

  1. The sale is over. Go home.

↓ – “Activation and download may take up to 48 hours after purchase.”
♣ – Paypal is not accepted if paid in pounds or Euros.
♥ – 30 days only applies to new Station accounts.

VOIP Ads? In My All Points Bulletin?


More likely than-BUY NOW AND SAVE CASH

Gentlemen, start your pitchforks. A detail savvy player on the All Points Bulletin forums has discovered that, in addition to requiring players to pay a subscription (be it in hourly increments or in monthly flat fees), Realtime Worlds has also decided to place advertisements in the game’s VOIP feature. And what could be better than getting advertisements in a paid game? Paying an addition fee to not hear them. RTW is offering 30, 90, and 180 day specials to not hear advertisements.

According to Community Officer Toxico, who was quick to respond, the advertisements only play every three hours, while loading a district. The prices are pretty cheap, starting at about one dollar for 30 days (40 rtw points). People naturally don’t like advertisements, but if one ad every three hours is enough to ensure RTW won’t be charging for VOIP, I think the APB players will survive. You always have that mute button when entering a district.

More on APB as it appears.

Mortal Online Compensation Coming


Currently offline...

To expect an MMO to launch with no down time is ridiculously out of line. Despite the utilization of closed beta, open beta, and finally head start, the servers that run an MMO are usually ground down to the core in the opening month. Lag, random crashes, and more plague the game and launch issues are so common that the rule of thumb with MMOs is that those who are not patient should not become early adopters.

Now, I may come off as being a little more brute than necessary. Server crashes are often fixed in the first few days of launch, and lag disperses as players move out from more crowded areas. Occasionally, however, the server hits hurdles that bring the game down on a regular basis. As a recent example, Darkfall last year had a several month period where it was virtually impossible to buy the game. Those of you who remember World of Warcraft’s launch are probably in the fetal position underneath your desks right now. In many of these cases, the developers ask for the hand of forgiveness by compensating players for lost game-time.

Mortal Online’s servers have not been doing well since launch, and saying that is an understatement. Maerlyn, of Star Vault, announced that there is compensation coming for players, that is being decided by management. While they are still working on fixing the server stability issues, for now the servers will be staffed all day long in order to allow for a manual reboot in the case of a crash, which will cut down on the duration the servers are offline following a crash.

More on Mortal Online’s compensation model when it appears.