What Happened This Week: 5/1-5/14 Edition

I have a question for all of you who read this introductory paragraph. Have you ever rage-quit an MMO? I haven’t. I’ve quit more MMOs in the past than I can count, but they’ve never been out of a fit of rage. Single player games, yes, I’ve stopped playing because every time I played I wanted to smash my keyboard through the monitor, but for some reason I’ve never rage quit an MMO. Getting griefed by some loser in Meduli who is abusing bugs to pickpocket me and then jump onto buildings, just doesn’t get an emotional response from me.

I still remember the time I died in Runescape and lost almost everything I owned (I had invested all of my money into very high level gear for the time), and I stopped playing for about a week. Not out of anger, but I went back and started recuperating my losses, and eventually I got all of my gear back. I suppose my reaction is because, in MMOs, death is meaningful when you can lose everything on you, so for many of us it triggers a sympathetic response. In a single player game, you lose the time you spent from the last checkpoint, which simply triggers frustration at having to play through the same area or sit through the same cutscene over and over again until you progress.

1. What Did We Learn From the Sony Incident?

First of all, we learned that even people giving testimony to Congress aren’t to be trusted. The media took the story that Sony was running outdated software and ran with it like the Olympic torch. Turns out, Dr. Gene (the security expert) was merely parroting what he had heard in the media, without actually looking at Sony’s records. The servers were indeed running an up to date version of Apache. What Sony needs to do is come out and say “Yes, we had a firewall, yes we were running up to date versions of Apache” if they haven’t already.

The offer of identity protection was a good move, but will ultimately not be useful. No relevant credit card data was stolen, apart from the twelve thousand expired credit cards Sony had stockpiled on a database somewhere in the off-reaches of their systems. Sony’s stupid move in all of this was foremost trying to take the hackers head-on, but secondly placing regular data in plain text. If they hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be hearing rumors of passwords being in plain text, or credit card data being unencrypted. It simply wouldn’t be as present.

2. So What’s The News With Lineage 2?

The announcement that Lineage was shutting down in the west was rather abrupt to those of us who don’t play, to be honest the game falls into the system of only appearing in the media when NCsoft releases their financial reports to tell us how great their games are doing in Korea. Make no word about it, Lineage is still going very strong in the east, and in 2010 actually outperformed Lineage 2 by a full 10% of NCsoft’s total income. The game made up 30% of NCsoft’s income in 2010 (20% Lineage 2, 44% Aion, 2% City of Heroes and Guild Wars respectively). Lineage, to my understanding, didn’t even have official support in the west for 64-bit operating systems until late 2010.

Lineage 2 is still active according to several active players I discussed the game with, but with biases the way they are, I have the feeling Lineage II will be next on the chopping block for the west, possibly coinciding with the release of Lineage III. I’m not one for calling death, but this is NCsoft we’re talking about, they don’t take under-performance lightly.

So, I say…Keep playing Lineage 2. The game will die one day, so why not spend the time until then having fun instead of worrying about when the time will come?

3. Star Wars Galaxies Server Mergers

This one made me chuckle. Looking back at my previous article, I had to laugh thinking about how frustrated I was that I couldn’t get any information regarding the Galaxies server transfers, due to the random DDOS attacks that preempted Sony’s database being hacked and taken offline for the better part of the month.

Now that that debate is over, we can get back to the important discussion, namely how many servers will shut down when Sony finishes the free transfer system. My bet is on at least half, so about six servers if Sony does do a server merger, which likely depends on how the population shifts during the free transfer phase.

4. NCsoft Bribing Asmodians

To assist in the creation and leveling of Asmodian characters, players on selected servers with an Asmodian, level 10 or higher, will receive a huge supply of Berdin’s Amulets. Berdin’s Amulets deliver a 50% additional EXP gain from hunting, gathering and crafting. The effect lasts one hour, with a one hour cooldown after activation.

In short: Not enough Asmodian players at max level participating in PvP on select servers, Elyos players taking too much control. This is one of the big problems 2-faction MMOs have, is that generally one side steamrolls the other, causing the losing side’s members to leave, meaning an even bigger steamrolling on the following round of action. In a game like Aion, being on the losing side of faction warfare can mean never having access to certain content simply because your side does not have control over territory.

In addition to giving exp incentives for leveling up, Aion is allowing Asmodians on certain servers access to instances otherwise inaccessible due to the aforementioned fortress control. Players who do control fortresses will also be awarded greater than players on the Elyos side, as an extra incentive for participating, and succeeding, in turning the tide. You can read it all here.

5. Runescape Has The Best RP: Virtual Mafia Complete With Dirty Cops

Back in a time before research (2009), Jagex introduced virtual game pieces for Runescape, items in-game that allowed for community driven events, including stopwatches, tickers, and more importantly, dice. The introduction of dice, of course, lead to a Runescape version of craps. And inevitably, the online community being what the online community is, groups sprang up using this to scam from players. At the same time, legitimate gambling rings formed to allow for a safer environment to play.

Where there is gambling, however, there is a mafia behind the scenes shooting your friend Joey because he had sex with the don’s daughter. This may be my extra-strength medication talking, but I am fascinated by the idea of a mafia running a questionably legitimate (according to the game rules, not calling the outfit a scam), run by teenagers. If you head over to this thread, there is allegedly a clan on Runescape that uses a single world for dice games, and has a player mod either in the clan or on its payroll to mute the accounts of competing clans on their world.

If that isn’t brilliant, my name is Farmer Joe. Isn’t this the Valhalla of role playing? Here you have a virtual form of gambling, secretly run by the mafia, using corrupt police to virtually cut out the tongues of the competition. The only way this could be more extreme is if Jagex allows money to be transported in large quantities via suitcase, a Runescape version of crack cocaine for the dicing mafia to deal, and the reintroduction of player-vs-player worlds so the mafia could literally murder their competition. Or if the aforementioned teenage mafia don actually murdered his competition, although I can’t say I condone such conduct. This is the first thing that popped to mind when thinking MMO mafia:

What’s next? Runescape hookers? Already existent, just check a free to play world near a bank. In case you’re thinking about it, don’t. I already have the Runescape mafia on my payroll. You’d be surprised what those Runescapers will agree to if you package those chocolate coins with the foil wrapping and tell them it’s “rl geepee.”

That’s all for this week. Tune in next time, when I’ll be showcasing a thing. Better yet, I’ll be showcasing a thing in a place.