Author: Admin

CCP Responds To Star Vault’s Terms of Service


As a small website operator, I’m always interested in seeing what kind of overwhelming response can be generated when someone far more popular than me links to my story. Last week, I brought up the rather humorous story of Mortal Online’s Terms of Service being stripped directly from Eve Online’s, down to the accidentally placed “Eve Online” (seen above). Massively ran with the story and, unlike myself, they are popular enough to get a joking response out of CCP:

We shot them (the company that makes it) this message.

—
Star Vault:

We here at CCP couldn’t help but notice that our expert wordsmithing, legal poetry and cunning turns of phrase have been emulated with sincerest flattery by your technical writing and/or legal staff. In fact, ardent fans of our EULA have surfaced, themselves noticing your homage to our work. See their assessment here:http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11/09/mortal-online-plagiarizes-eve-onlines-terms-of-service/

EVE Online is a notoriously dangerous universe. So we have to caution you — in fact, we demand that you don’t follow our footsteps or use our copyrighted work. After all, internet spaceships are serious business, so probably best to keep our internet spaceship business out of your business language. Please stop using our legal agreements, and kindly remove our name from your website.

—
What are people going to copy next… our spreadsheets?!

CCP Responds To Star Vault's Terms of Service


As a small website operator, I’m always interested in seeing what kind of overwhelming response can be generated when someone far more popular than me links to my story. Last week, I brought up the rather humorous story of Mortal Online’s Terms of Service being stripped directly from Eve Online’s, down to the accidentally placed “Eve Online” (seen above). Massively ran with the story and, unlike myself, they are popular enough to get a joking response out of CCP:

We shot them (the company that makes it) this message.

—
Star Vault:

We here at CCP couldn’t help but notice that our expert wordsmithing, legal poetry and cunning turns of phrase have been emulated with sincerest flattery by your technical writing and/or legal staff. In fact, ardent fans of our EULA have surfaced, themselves noticing your homage to our work. See their assessment here:http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11/09/mortal-online-plagiarizes-eve-onlines-terms-of-service/

EVE Online is a notoriously dangerous universe. So we have to caution you — in fact, we demand that you don’t follow our footsteps or use our copyrighted work. After all, internet spaceships are serious business, so probably best to keep our internet spaceship business out of your business language. Please stop using our legal agreements, and kindly remove our name from your website.

—
What are people going to copy next… our spreadsheets?!

Bigpoint Invokes MC Escher In Concept Art


Click on the image above to see a larger version, and follow these simple steps: Starting at the room in the northwest corner, move your finger down the hallway to the large room. Head down the first flight of stairs, down the second flight of stairs, and down the third flight of stairs. Now head around the bend, through the archway, and find yourself on the same level as you started from, while remaining walking on a flat surface.

I need to lie down, my brain hurts.

Rift F2P? Over Scott Hartsman’s Dead Body


Will Rift eventually become free to play? No one can say for sure. As long as Scott Hartsman has a say, however, anyone who wants to play the MMO will have to pay up. In an interview with Eurogamer, Scott Hartsman of Trion stated that Rift is still growing, and that there are absolutely no plans to change face and make the game free. After all, the game is so pupillary, why would they reduce to 85% of the community (ala the 85/10/5 rule) paying nothing?

“One of the assumptions people make is you can just take a game and throw a switch and change the model. For starters, you’d have to decide that that would be a good thing, and I do not think it would be – that would be a fairly large net negative for Rift and Rift community.”

Sorry, folks! If you want to get into Rift, why not take advantage of Trion’s rather aggressive sales strategy? The game is on sale very cheap, very often.

Rift F2P? Over Scott Hartsman's Dead Body


Will Rift eventually become free to play? No one can say for sure. As long as Scott Hartsman has a say, however, anyone who wants to play the MMO will have to pay up. In an interview with Eurogamer, Scott Hartsman of Trion stated that Rift is still growing, and that there are absolutely no plans to change face and make the game free. After all, the game is so pupillary, why would they reduce to 85% of the community (ala the 85/10/5 rule) paying nothing?

“One of the assumptions people make is you can just take a game and throw a switch and change the model. For starters, you’d have to decide that that would be a good thing, and I do not think it would be – that would be a fairly large net negative for Rift and Rift community.”

Sorry, folks! If you want to get into Rift, why not take advantage of Trion’s rather aggressive sales strategy? The game is on sale very cheap, very often.

Jagex Removes Dice In Runescape: Fights Scams


Back in 2009 when Jagex created the bag of dice, an item that allows a player to roll a set of dice and broadcast the results to his clan chat, they didn’t exactly anticipate that players would take their invitation of emergent gameplay and go ahead and turn the item into a tool for underground gambling systems run by shady, often fly-by-night operators. And when Jagex threw the nuclear switch and knocked all of the bots offline a few weeks ago, the number of players sitting at the grand exchange (and elsewhere) advertising their dicing services rose exponentially. Barring one shattered poodle, Jagex was forced to step in and proclaim that this is why we can’t have nice things, Pepper.

In response to the growing complaints over spam, scams, and shady business, the dice have been disabled and will be removed upon the next content update. Mod Mark commented:

Don’t gamble! There are too many people who will try to scam you or alter the odds in their favour. It’s never supported by JAGEX unless it’s about gameplay (like the duel arena). It’s likely that dice scammers will move over to another method of trying to scam you, so please, be vigilant and remember… if it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably a lie.

Of course, dicing will simply be replaced by another popular method, assuming one hasn’t already. Still, busting bots and blasting a scam method in succession is rather impressive, even if the latter was essentially Jagex’s own Frankenstein’s monster.

Earthrise Moving To Free To Play: December 1st


Earthrise is one of those MMOs that journalists (or myself) look at and cringe. We’d love to see it succeed, because we support indie developers, but since we can’t cherry pick the news coming out of the title to put it in a better light without compromising our integrity, the end result is the perception of a group of writers forming a circle and kicking the company to death. On the other hand, my biggest problem with such MMOs is when the developer charges premium rates for a product that is not, by any means, premium quality. Look at Runescape, which could never have gotten away with a $15 monthly subscription back in the old days when it looked like this.

Then again, I consider any announcement of free to play to be a good thing, and that is exactly what we are here to discuss. Masthead Studios announced that Earthrise will be making the big dip into free this December. The actual transition does not take place until early next year, the December 1st date is for current and former players who had already purchased a copy of the game to play for free.

“The free-to-play model will offer convenience for players, it will not be ‘pay to win’ with items that ruin the balance of the game.”

The team plans to roll out the free to play system in a manner in which players can access without the servers crashing, and rather than opening the floodgates will be allowing players in intervals.

“Meanwhile Earthrise will be used as a test for the new free-2-play model and Masthead will limit the creation of new accounts. Invitations will be sent to selected new players and a new sign-up option will be provided. All existing subscribers will receive a number of invitations to bring their friends in the game. “

Mark Your Calendars: Lineage II Free To Play


What do Lineage II and Ragnarok Online have in common? Nothing. Last month, NCSoft announced that Lineage II will mark the next product in their line to make the great transition to free to play, and what a transition it promises to be. Dubbed “Play Your Way,” players can still opt to pay a subscription for bonus loot, experience, and more, or they can opt to play the entirety of the game absolutely free. There are no content locks, so you can experience all the game has to offer completely free of charge.

The home page for Lineage II now displays a release date of November 30th. Head over to the link for more information, but it appears our source from the previous article was spot on that this would follow in lockstep with Innova’s service in other regions:

Anyone can play for free. However, if you pay the monthly subscription, you get permanent 2x Exp, SP, Drops, Spoils.Item store includes items like Buff Milks, 30-day rent-a-Buffpet, 30 day rent-a-Mount, New Hair Accessories, etc.

Funcom Q3 2011 Finances


Because most of you probably don’t care to read up on it yourself, MMO Fallout is committed to bringing you the important information from each quarter’s financial reports. Yesterday, Funcom revealed its third quarter finances to investors, and there is plenty to boast about. Revenues increased 55% in the third quarter compared to the second, but Funcom expects the fervor to somewhat die out, and has predicted a loss in revenue in the upcoming fourth quarter due to a foreseen diminished interest in Age of Conan.

The Secret World is “progressing well,” and the team is putting the final touches on squashing bugs, improving optimization, and balancing content. The game is still set for an April 2012 launch. Funcom’s final figures are rather low due to the development costs of The Secret World and a number of free to play games. In their “target scenario,” The Secret World will sell 30% more clients, and a healthy retention is around 490,000 subscribers. In their “Conan prediction,” Funcom expects only slightly better retention than Age of Conan (280,000) and one million sales in the first year.

Some more interesting information:

  • The cost of hosting Age of Conan since launch has been 18 million, excluding bandwidth costs.
  • The Secret World will cost approximately 4-8 million over the same time span, reducing costs greatly.

Final Fantasy XI Is Crazy On XI-XI-XI: 14-Day Trial?


Do not adjust your monitors, the title of this article has been transmitted as intended: Final Fantasy XI has released a 14 day trial. Still surprised? So am I, but apparently the folks at Square Enix decided to pull down one barrier for entry into the aging-yet-enormous-to-an-almost-intimidating-degree MMO. If you were holding off on trying Final Fantasy XI due to whispers of Play Online and its less than stellar service, you’ll be happy to know that Square Enix patched out PO some time ago.

All you need to sign up is your first name, last name, captcha code, and an email address. And if you do decide to buy the game at the end of your trial period (or any time before), you can enjoy 50% off of the complete package.