ArcheAge Unchained is here and the servers are already being pounded like a Salvation Army drum.
Unchained has been in the works for a couple of years now and aims to provide a different service for ArcheAge players who wish to avoid the pay to win aspects of the main game. As a buy to play game, Gamigo has promised that Unchained will not allow you to buy your way to power. Starter packs begin at $25.99, although you might be better off waiting for a couple of days until the initial rush dies down.
Would you please sign my petition? It looks like Postal is finally back for a full sequel.
MMO Fallout was sent a link by a guy to a currently unlisted trailer for Postal 4: No Regerts. The trailer showcases some random scenes from the game, but includes some information on the plot:
Several years have passed since the events that devastated the once proud town remembered as Paradise. The only two to walk away from the cataclysm unscathed, the hapless everyman known as the Postal Dude and his loyal companion Champ, drive aimlessly through the scorching deserts of Arizona looking for a new place to call home. After a fortuitous gas station rest stop ends with their car, trailer home, and the rest of their worldly possessions stolen, all the Dude’s seemingly got left to his name is his canine cohort and his bathrobe, and neither of them smells all that great. However, on the horizon, the duo glimpses an unfamiliar and dazzling town that beckons to them. What untold prospects lie within? Fame? Fortune? Maybe a bidet or two? Edensin awaits.
POSTAL 4: No Regerts is a satirical and outrageous comedic open world first person shooter and the long-awaited true sequel to what’s been fondly dubbed as “The Worst Game Ever™”, POSTAL 2! (No third game is known to exist.)
Postal 4: No Regerts follows the satirical violence that has been a theme of the series for the past twenty years. The first Postal released in 1997 as a top down shooter that inspired a lawsuit from the United States Postal Service. Postal 2 launched in 2003 as a first person shooter on the Unreal 2 engine, and later spawned a multiplayer expansion as well as a full single player expansion (Apocalypse Weekend). Postal III was built by Russian developer Trashmaster Studios and it wasn’t good. The game has been disowned by Running With Scissors who actively encourage gamers to not buy the title. Postal 2 received a second expansion in 2015 in the form of Paradise Lost.
The trailer appears to be set to coincide with the release of Postal 4 in Early Access, which means that release should be right around the corner. The trailer was uploaded on October 8, but since MMO Fallout was not included in the mailing list we have no idea when anyone in the press actually received it. Video description currently leads to a nonexistent store page.
Daybreak Game Company looks like it’s getting closer to announcing a reverse Voltron move, splitting the business into multiple parts for one reason or another.
We’ve been following this for quite some time. Earlier this year, Daybreak began registering trademarks for new studio names that appear to be centered around its major IPs: Golden Age Studios, Darkpaw Games, Rogue Planet Games, Bronze Age Studios. Just this month, Daybreak filed for another trademark: Dimensional Ink Games. The purpose? Your guess is as good as ours, the filing just occurred three days ago.
Daybreak’s statement about the latest round of layoffs is even more telling:
“We are taking steps to improve our business and to support our long-term vision for the existing franchises and development of new games. This will include a realignment of the company into separate franchise teams, which will allow us to highlight their expertise, better showcase the games they work on, and ultimately provide tailored experiences for our players.”
The running theory with the trademarked studio names was that Daybreak would basically be splitting off their games into separate shell companies for some purpose (maybe to sell them). Daybreak’s latest comments seem to confirm that theory. Dimensional Ink has a Twitter account that was set up this month and has yet to post anything.
We will have to wait to see what this week’s news brings.
It’s 8:30p.m. on Friday here in New York, which means the folks at Blizzard HQ in California are about to go home and most Youtubers are probably polishing off their nightly news videos. So much like Daybreak choosing to lay people off, Blizzard naturally picked this as the best time to release their response to the week’s controversy following the suspension of Hearthstone player Blitzchung.
For those who managed to avoid the news completely, Blizzard suspended Blitzchung from the Hearthstone Grandmaster tournament and forfeited his winnings after he made a pro Hong Kong statement during an interview. Both interviewers were fired as well. The firestorm on the internet has been massive with a Blizzard boycott trending on Twitter, players posting their account cancellations/deletion, and a social media campaign that inexplicably saw Mei becoming a front for the Hong Kong movement.
Blizzard President J. Allen Brack has officially commented and the response is exactly what you would expect out of a company hoping nobody will see their statement at 5:30 on a Friday. The statement naturally denies any influence from China or motivation to appease Chinese benefactors. Brack continuously cites the Blizzard mantra “every voice matters” in his statement defending silencing a person based on their political view, and claims that Blitzchung was punished not for his statement but for the “divisive and deliberate way” he expressed it.
Brack also notes that Blizzard will give Blitzchung his winnings and reduce his suspension to six months. The casters are also suspended for six moths. Brack provides absolutely no reason for why the casters were suspended. Activision head honcho Bobby Kotick has remained silent.
Daybreak Game Company is laying off more people, a statement that has become all too familiar over the past couple of years. While an official statement has not been made by the company, Daybreak (now ex) programmer Alex Hoffman posted that today was his last day at the company as part of a “studio wide layoff.” There have been no confirmations of how many were let go or how many remain at the studio.
I got let go from Daybreak Games today. So I’m looking for a job.
Gamigo has dumpstered an idea so fast, the news was barely able to report the original story.
Today’s ArcheAge stream caused a bit of an uproar when Gamigo announced that they were going to allow gifting premium items from the cash shop on ArcheAge Unchained. Since Unchained is supposed to be the version that didn’t support pay to win, the community had a bit of a problem with this strategy. As a result, a number of viewers took to the ArcheAge Reddit to voice their concern.
And Gamigo has listened, and immediately put out a statement that this is no longer going to be the case. The statement has been pasted below for your viewing pleasure.
Hello everyone,
The ability to gift items from the in-game premium marketplace has been disabled for ArcheAge: Unchained.
We are committed to ensuring that our revised game-play experience meets the expectations of our supportive community and is in no way clouded by our past. We considered allowing the ability to gift from the marketplace due to the items being trade restricted and cosmetic. In hindsight, it’s easy to understand how gifting could circumvent the items being bound. The decision to remove gifting was unanimous internally and so it is passed into order.
We’ve worked closely with you over the past six weeks to refine offerings in the premium item shop based on the following criteria:
-All premium items are cosmetic in nature, or provide a non-essential game-play service (renames, costumes, character appearance customization, or UCC)
-All premium items are bound to the character that purchased them and are not tradable through any in-game system (mail, auction house, storage chests, player-to-player trades)
-The gifting of premium items has been disabled
We stand behind our approach to delivering ArcheAge: Unchained and more importantly, remain devoted to you. Thanks for your continued support.
Black Desert has a new world boss on PS4 in the form of Nouver. Pearl Abyss released the new boss earlier this week along with a new world boss timetable. World bosses spawn across all worlds simultaneously and share their HP across all servers. Nouver drops a sub-weapon box that contains powerful items allowing players to maximize their AP.
“Nouver is a force of nature that rules over the Desert. Adventurers who attempt to face the behemoth dragon will have to fend off sandstorms, heatstroke and hypothermia to just get to the dragon. Then when you get there, you need to face the beast itself! But with great risks come great rewards, and it is possible to get a mighty item from Nouver.”
With Blizzard being tossed into a shallow grave and spat on by the public reaction to it banning and stealing thousands of dollars in prize money over a player expressing support for Hong Kong, it was only a matter of time before other developers showed up and used this opportunity to score some quick PR points. And who else is best to show up to the conversation than Epic Games which is 40% owned by Tencent, a company behind much of the backlash to western companies supporting Hong Kong.
In a statement to The Verge, Epic’s spokesman said:
“Epic supports everyone’s right to express their views on politics and human rights. We wouldn’t ban or punish a Fortnite player or content creator for speaking on these topics,”
Tim Sweeney personally backed this statement on Twitter, expressing “Epic supports the rights of Fortnite players and creators to speak about politics and human rights.”
Blizzard just can’t catch a break. When the dumpster fire that was Blizzard’s PR kerfuffle occurred yesterday, folks like myself noted that if Blizzard thought the situation would get better, they were dead wrong. If anything, it’s going to get worse. Much worse.
Following the news that Blizzard had banned a Hearthstone player and rescinded his tournament winnings over comments in support of Hong Kong, and then fired the two broadcasters interviewing him, the news has been rolling in of more PR fallout. Over the course of yesterday, Blizzard employees covered up company signs in protest, the Hearthstone Reddit has been overwhelmed with boycott posts, and Blizzard locked down its own subreddit in an attempt at damage control.
The latest to come out was an American team in the Collegiate Championship held up a sign during their match that said “Free Hong Kong, boycott Blizzard.” As you would expect, the stream immediately cuts away. You can find the stream at the link above. The team had already lost the game at the point where they held up the sign.
Blizzcon begins the first weekend of November. It should be fun.
Today has not been great for Blizzard following the company’s decision to silence and ban a Hearthstone competitor during the Grandmaster tournament after he expressed support for Hong Kong during a live interview. In their attempt at damage control, Blizzard released a statement and then shut down comments on the website. The Blizzard Reddit has been locked.
The Hearthstone Reddit is flooded with players proclaiming that they are professionally done with Blizzard. The Blizzard boycott is trending #11 on Twitter. Now employees are making their dissatisfaction known. As posted by Kevin Hovdestad on Twitter, Blizzard employees came into work this morning and made their disagreement with management’s decisions known by covering up the company’s “Think Globally” and “Every Voice Matters” signs.
With Blizzcon coming in just a few weeks, Blizzard’s response to the spiraling outrage will be interesting.
MMO Fallout 