Author: Admin

Nexon, Hanbitsoft, NCsoft Block Korean Probe Into Gambling


You’ve most likely heard of “jackpot items,” even if you aren’t entirely familiar with the term itself. These items cost real money and only offer the chance at a high level piece of equipment, usually a very slim chance at that. I’ve been rather critical of jackpot items in the past, I’ve referred to them as taking advantage of people with gambling problems, and criticized a certain company on using it in conjunction with abusing the name of charity to gain funds.

But the question remains as to whether or not such an item constitutes gambling. While you or I might say yes, the Games Rating Board of South Korea asked ten publishers to hand over information relating to their jackpot items. The companies reportedly revealed names, costs, and currencies involved, but refused to hand over details of payout percentages. When pressed, the GRB was met with statements that the data constituted confidential company information, and was not under the jurisdiction of the GRB.

The Games Rating Board is now accusing these companies of obstructing an investigation. It is unclear at this time what, if any, ramifications these companies could face.

Week In Review: Trust In The Community Edition


I told you I’d eventually hit the Sunday deadline for Week in Review. I’ve found through MMO Fallout the deadlines I set for myself often conflict with what I’ve heard referred to as a “lack of respect for authority and tendency toward inappropriate analogies.” Personally I equate the situation more to the first few seasons of House, where the producers made numerous attempts, and failed, to provide a running antagonist for the show. The issue at hand was that the viewer knew House would never be fired, taken to jail, die, or otherwise be removed from the show. After all, the show is named House.

For a while I considered handing the reigns to MMO Fallout to another person, as a clerical manner first and foremost with no real notable effect on the website itself (aside from increased productivity). You can hopefully understand my reasoning for not doing so. So instead, I’ve dedicated more time to working and producing articles and pieces, again working on video features at some point.

1. Jagex Rebuilding Trust In The Community

Originally I wanted this spot to talk about Jagex’s upcoming convention show: Runefest 2011. In Jagex’s advertising for the event, they mention a chat about bot busting, including offering a platform for people to inject their ideas for fighting gold farmers and cheaters, as well as laying out some of their plans for the future of the game. What really caught my eye was a tweet from Gregg Baker, which I retweeted today.

Lots of strategy meetings this morning. Today is the first day we rebuild trust in the community!

I am personally interested in seeing where this goes, as Jagex’s relationship with their community has always been up and down. With issues from rampant cheating and gold farming, to Jagex’s apparent lack of enthusiasm for Stellar Dawn and corruption and incompetence in the player moderator group. No one hopes more than me that this isn’t just another PR move with no motion behind it, as Jagex has been known to pull in the past.

2. Why Were People Unsure About The Old Republic’s Subscription Fee?

Now that Bioware has officially confirmed the price of The Old Republic’s subscription, the threads have died out. That being said, did anyone honestly believe that Bioware would charge anything other than the traditional cost ($15 USD) depending on your region? I can’t even begin to count how many threads I encountered on various boards proclaiming “I won’t buy this game until Bioware confirms a monthly cost.”

For EA to charge more than $15 would be suicide for the MMO. For them to charge less than $15 would be a delightful change from the norm. Given the enormous nature (and cost of development) for The Old Republic, it was safe to assume from the start that the game would carry a traditional monthly fee.

3. Hellgate Meets Tokyo

And now my promotions for Hellgate Global are out of date. T3fun has released the Tokyo expansion for Hellgate Global, so you can no longer play the entire game with a simple five dollars. The entire announcement can be found here, along with the reveal of the base defense mode, cow room, new events, and more.

The Tokyo ticket costs 2,000 tcoins, or $2 USD, but you’ll still have to add a minimum of $5 to your account, or $10 if you want to buy the Act 3 ticket and Tokyo ticket together. If you buy both, you will have four thousand tcoins remaining, which if you aren’t a fan of the cash shop items can be held until a following expansion is released.

Otherwise, you should be able to buy the Tokyo ticket in the cash shop. It is currently selling between 360,000 and 1 million palladium. I was able to secure mine for approximately 375,000.

4. Healers Healing Healers, My Only Weakness!

As a solo player, my worst fears come true whenever I see my arch-enemy: The double healer mob group. Continuing talks on Hellgate Global, I came across a moderately sized group of Riders, centaur-like creatures that have strong melee, strong defense, and strong ranged attacks. The group of five or six were accompanied by two Dragoons, the mob that heal other Riders. As I would attack one dragoon, the other would heal it. If I attacked the Riders, the dragoons would heal it.

This can be chalked up to bad balancing on T3fun’s part. The fight would have been over much sooner if it weren’t for the fact that there was no cooldown on the Dragoon’s heal ability. As long as I was shooting, the Dragoon was able to endlessly heal the damage I dished out at a faster speed than I could dish it. I did eventually kill the one Dragoon making the rest of the fight much easier, but only because it bugged out and stopped moving completely.

5. John Smedley: “We Always Wanted To Make DC Universe Free.”

I’m going to do what few have done before and say that John Smedley is a good businessman. He may not be friends to hardcore gamers, but he is a good businessman. He has a good eye where the market is trending and has done a great job with DC Universe and the other recent Sony MMOs. I’ll even go further and say that the cancellation of The Agency might have been a good thing, as I’ve said before Sony never appeared too enthused about the project to begin with.

But moving forward, I wanted to take a look at Smedley’s comment about free to play being their original vision for DC Universe, and it makes me wonder if DC Comics had something to do with the game being subscription at the start. To me, he is conveying that Sony wanted to make DC Universe a free to play title from the start, but some outside force stepped in and said “no, you must have a box price and subscription.”

Such is the game of politics and MMOs.

Faxion: He’s Dead, Jim.


If Faxion left us any wiser, the MMO has parted us with yet another harsh reminder that the free to play market is not the safe haven that it was once thought to be. For every triple-A game that loses its subscription tag, from Lord of the Rings Online to DC Universe, City of Heroes and Everquest II, the competition only increases, while at the same time key titles releasing in various states of unfinished has taken its toll on public tolerance. Of course there is also a lesson to be had in the developer putting faith in the game despite a low launch, and not laying off the entire staff. UTV Ignition did not pay heed to that lesson.

Either way, another chapter in the long line of MMOs has ended, and the Faxion servers have shut down for good (or at least until someone buys the game and re-launches it).

Faxion: He's Dead, Jim.


If Faxion left us any wiser, the MMO has parted us with yet another harsh reminder that the free to play market is not the safe haven that it was once thought to be. For every triple-A game that loses its subscription tag, from Lord of the Rings Online to DC Universe, City of Heroes and Everquest II, the competition only increases, while at the same time key titles releasing in various states of unfinished has taken its toll on public tolerance. Of course there is also a lesson to be had in the developer putting faith in the game despite a low launch, and not laying off the entire staff. UTV Ignition did not pay heed to that lesson.

Either way, another chapter in the long line of MMOs has ended, and the Faxion servers have shut down for good (or at least until someone buys the game and re-launches it).

Help I Can’t Connect To City of Heroes!


The “Hellgate: Stuck At Waterloo Bridge” article went over very well, so I’m expanding the series. If you are like me, you woke up this morning and immediately checked your account on NCsoft’s website, and booted up that old City of Heroes client you hadn’t touched in about a year. Again, if you are like me you were met with a “cannot connect to server” error, in which case you missed the above warning at the verification page.

Earlier this year, NCsoft discontinued the separate client for City of Heroes. In order to play, you will need to have the NCsoft launcher and may or may not have to download the game over again. I had to download around three gigabytes of data. For those of you who would rather not jump on the horse before it’s born, so to speak, you can check your account info on NCsoft’s website. If your account has been activated, you will see your City of Heroes profile marked as a playable and free account.

Happy brawling.

Help I Can't Connect To City of Heroes!


The “Hellgate: Stuck At Waterloo Bridge” article went over very well, so I’m expanding the series. If you are like me, you woke up this morning and immediately checked your account on NCsoft’s website, and booted up that old City of Heroes client you hadn’t touched in about a year. Again, if you are like me you were met with a “cannot connect to server” error, in which case you missed the above warning at the verification page.

Earlier this year, NCsoft discontinued the separate client for City of Heroes. In order to play, you will need to have the NCsoft launcher and may or may not have to download the game over again. I had to download around three gigabytes of data. For those of you who would rather not jump on the horse before it’s born, so to speak, you can check your account info on NCsoft’s website. If your account has been activated, you will see your City of Heroes profile marked as a playable and free account.

Happy brawling.

Star Wars: The Old Republic, Dec 20th Release


You can cancel your preorder cancellations, as despite EA’s previous claims that The Old Republic could slip into early 2012, the publisher announced today that budding smugglers (and the other less important classes) will be able to log in before Christmas. North American players will gain access on December 20th, while European players will get their keys on December 22nd.

“This is an incredible moment for everyone at BioWare and our partners at LucasArts who have dedicated their lives to build this extraordinary game. We appreciate the patience from the millions of fans who have been waiting for the game’s release.”

You can head to the above link to see the price structure for multiple month subscriptions. For people in regions where The Old Republic isn’t being sold, you will still be able to buy the game and play on either the NA or EU servers, Bioware has already confirmed that there will not be any IP blocking. You’ll still have to pay the high shipping fees for a boxed copy, or have someone you trust in the appropriate region buy it for you.

City Of Heroes: Past Subscribers Come Back Early


City of Heroes: Freedom, the MMO’s foray into free to play, begins sometime this coming week. To entice past players back into the game, NCsoft is reactivating old accounts ahead of time with premium membership, a tier for those who had previously subscribed to the game.

It’s important to note the warning in NCsoft’s announcement that the account reactivation is rolling and not instantaneous, so you may not get in for the first day or so. You also won’t have access to any of the VIP features, including premium power sets. posting on the forums, and a few other restrictions you can find in the side-by-side comparison sheet.

More to come on City of Heroes: Freedom, very soon.

Would You Look At That: Mytheon Shutting Down


If you haven’t heard of Mytheon, it was developed by Petroglyph, the company behind the upcoming End of Nations and Rise of Immortals MMOs. Alright, you haven’t heard of Mytheon. Turns out neither has the rest of the press (including myself) because Mytheon announced it would be shutting down way back in July and none of us noticed until just this week.

For those thinking of getting one last shot in before the game goes down, don’t bother. It’s already offline, since when I can’t say for sure. Mytheon’s twitter account hasn’t been updated since April. Mytheon was such a small launch that I’m not even sure the game ever fully left open beta. How embarrassing for us.

Hopefully the development team at Mytheon was able to find work in Petroglyph’s other upcoming projects. Mytheon may have flown so far under the radar that it was picked off by a wayward swingset, but it’s always a tragedy when people not only lose their jobs but see the project they’ve worked on for years crumble at the push of a button.

More Fallen Earth Free To Play Information


GamersFirst has a good year ahead for it, with the upcoming transition of Fallen Earth to a free to play medium. In a recent dev blog, G1 goes over some information regarding what free players, subscribers, and past customers can expect when the game makes its official move on October 12th, and there is a whole laundry list of items that will annoy free players and delight past customers alike.

Foremost, GamersFirst seems to have taken note of the community reaction to the free to play matrix released, including the surprise many felt that the developers would allow unfettered access to the mail system, auction house, and trading. While G1 hopes that the chip limit will do its job in holding back gold farming on a massive scale, they acknowledge that these freedoms may be taken away from free players at any time if the bots get out of control. The chip limit is ten red chips for free players.

But for now, some good news. Players who are subscribed to Fallen Earth when the transition goes into effect will find that their remaining time has been converted to Commander Premium level, the highest tier ($30 a month). Furthermore, G1 has also mentioned that anyone who has ever bought a Fallen Earth key in the past will be offered a premium discount to Commander tier, $20 a month, a thirty three percent saving and just a little more than the Wastelander cost.

More information as it appears.