I hate limited edition goods, because they always leave me feeling like I need to hoard them before some indeterminate time where they go away to possibly never return. In this case, I’m referring to the awfully tasty caramel iced instant coffee by Starbucks, which they’ve described as “limited time.” What a tease, to bring out a new flavor only to say “enjoy it while it lasts.”
But I suppose I should make this topic relevant to MMOs. Whenever I unsubscribe from an MMO, reading about missing live events ultimately makes me less likely to resubscribe. Like a good number of my fellow gamers, I have a psychological addiction to vanity pets, and the knowledge that one is locked away because I didn’t play during the precise week makes my brain throw its arms up and say “well alright I’ll stop bugging you to resubscribe now.” This is why I made a big stink about Cryptic offering separate pre-order bonuses but then offering them on the cash shop. I distinctly remember Cryptic stating that, in order to obtain all of the sets of ships, uniforms, etc, players would need to buy multiple copies.
1. Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself, Darkfall.
Darkfall is one of MMO Fallout’s big names right now, likely because of the whole Darkfall 2.0 relaunch and the related hubbub over the possibility of a character wipe. If I may say so, this whole issue might have ended at article #1 and simply continued in August with more information, if it weren’t for Aventurine’s response, which was a complete disregard for why players might be upset at the news and a refusal to offer more information. The announcement was made far too soon, and now Aventurine is stuck between a very well updated rock and a hard place to auto-run against.
I think that Kimoshu on the Darkfall forums gives a very good explanation:
I think one of the biggest concerns players have is having to replay the same game with a few tweaks to it and fresh characters grinding out a lot of the same shit with the same powergap issues not addressed. AV often oversells their updates/expansions(Not that they are the only company to do this mind you…) and also with the rampant afk macroing on players and bugged out mobs as well as free afk stat gaining(swimming) that the majority of the community took part in(Guilty myself for several days of afk swimming in 2 years) I worry that AV will not enforce their ToS and we’ll be back to square one.
Casual players who refuse to break the ToS to gain skills/stats AFK get fucked in DF massively. I hope in 2.0 this gets addressed so that either casual players can still compete without having to set up afk macros or find their spot at the public watering hole for the night.
If AV enforces their ToS this time around finally with real punishments for AFK macroing and DF 1.0 accounts get compensation of free game time and maybe some meditation points then I have no issue doing a full wipe and would accept it gladly. If they wipe, give no compensation AND don’t enforce their ToS I honestly don’t know if I’ll stick around. I probably will because I love the game but it’s going to seriously be a huge pain in the ass to spend 6-12 months leveling again to get a competitive high-end character while others spend a month to get there with programs playing the game for them when they aren’t even there.
2. Crimecraft Bleedout Comic Ships This Week?
You’ll remember last December marked the start of Crimecraft’s episodic single player campaign and effort to dramatically improve the storyline of the game. Since then, the first season of Bleedout has long since finished and Vogster announced that the art seen in each opening/closing cinematic would make its way into a comic book. Initially on sale on Amazon for a release back in April, the comic has been pushed back more and more, and finally is set to ship this week (July 15-19 according to Amazon).
Hopefully the comic will ship.
3. I Don’t Live In The UK, And NCSoft Wouldn’t Award Me A Turd
First off I want to thank those who offered their support when I wrote the article about NCsoft having journalist awards, but I don’t live in the UK and thus do not qualify. That being said, I hardly think I am a blip on NCSoft’s radar large enough to be considered even if the awards did include the United States.
4. Prime Invokes Thoughts of Star Wars Galaxies
5. Please Stop Asking Me To Report Every MMO Shut Down
Over one thousand MMOs launched last year in Asia. I’ll say that again: One thousand. Do you know how many titles worldwide shut down? I have no idea, but I know for certain that I only report on those that release in the west, first of all, and secondly those that have an actual presence. You may notice titles that gather a respectable following but still do not appear here on MMO Fallout because of a lack of what I call news-worthiness. That being said, I get saturated with requests to do similar articles to the “What Happened” series every time some random Korean-launched MMO with little to no presence in the west shuts down, or when a small group goes bankrupt because their only source of revenue is localizing Asian cash shop titles and maintaining the servers, yet the can’t manage to do that.
MMO Fallout 