Author: Admin

It’s Choring Time: TERA Releases Checklist For Server Merger (PS4/Xbox)


TERA is merging servers, and if you log in over the next week you can get your hands on five free character slots either in preparation for the move or to preserve more of your alts. In preparation for the movie, En Masse Entertainment has posted the following checklist of instructions to make sure you’re ready for the move. Check out the list below and click the link for more information.

  • Claim your 5 Additional Character Slots between August 13 and August 20.
  • Apply your Additional Character Slots to the server where you have the most characters (to accommodate your characters from other servers of that type) and note the total number of Character Slots you have here.
  • Identify characters on any server that you don’t need, save any important items and gold they might have, then delete them until the total number of active characters remaining on that server type is equal to or less than the total amount of Character Slots you just noted above.
  • Confirm that any Guild you might be a part of has more than two members. (If a guild drops below two members for any reason—such as characters being removed during the merge—the Guild will disband.) Or if you think it might not, remove your valuables from the guild bank.
  • Remove any items you have listed with the Trade Broker.
  • Come up with several backup character names, in case any of your favorite names are already taken on your new server.

(Source: TERA)

Chaturday: MoviePass In Bankruptcy Hell


I’d like to talk about MoviePass today, because MoviePass can burn in bankruptcy hell and I’m slightly looking forward to the inevitable criminal trials and convictions surrounding this sham of a business.

If you’ve somehow managed to avoid the last year of coverage regarding MoviePass, I’ll give a brief summary: MoviePass has been around for years, but they really gained public attention back in 2017. MoviePass is essentially a subscription-based debit card for watching movies. You pay $9.95 per month, and you can watch one movie per day every day of the month at virtually any theater, you simply pay with the card.

And I know what you’re thinking: A business that charges $10 per month that stands to lose, let’s check the calculator and round up our figures, upwards of $320 per month per member (I’m low-balling depending on your local ticket prices) sounds like a horrible idea.

You’d be right. As an investor, you’d only see slightly less of a return taking $100,000 and making it rain at a strip club. I say slightly less because $100,000 in MoviePass stocks bought in October would now be worth $1.85. I’m not exaggerating, that’s not a joke.

And I’m not going to dive into whether or not the folks at New York State investment bank Maxim Group, who continued to advise buying MoviePass stocks despite knowing their business plan, and despite its dropping value, performed any criminal acts. They made tons of money by advising people to buy stocks in a failing business. I’m just saying if you are an investor, take a moment to consider the judgement of a broker who sets a price target of $20 for a stock that closed at nearly half that before you take their advice on investments.

According to Business Insider, Maxim also helped Helios unload hundreds of millions of shares, pulling in lots of money and reaffirming their buy rating with a target price of triple the actual stock’s value. Maxim has never given MoviePass a sell rating, despite its value now being worth pennies.

And MoviePass wasn’t always run by the criminally incompetent, and ignoring the first five years of this product’s existence would be doing a disservice to the two people who founded it: Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt. During the first few years MoviePass had a mostly sustainable program that experimented with plans, including one in which you paid $40-50 per month for unlimited movies (1 per day) and the service reportedly had 20,000 subscribers at the end of 2016.

And then it was sold to an analytics firm, Helios and Matheson, who proceed to push the flight sticks all the way forward and crash the company within months. For those keeping track, Helios is the owner that introduced the horribly unsustainable $10 unlimited cost, with the goal of offsetting the losses by bringing in a massive amount of people and then collecting data from them to sell on the open data market. In short, Helios seriously overestimated the value of the data and underestimated the drive of the consumer to make the most of their money.

Like an elementary school class president who campaigns on the promise of soda machines in every hallway that dispense free Coca Cola, MoviePass faced the harsh reality of rolling back its perks and making a lot of people angry, or going bankrupt and making everyone angry.

MoviePass no longer allows you to see the same film multiple times, likely to cut down on card sharing. The company initially planned to increase prices to $15/month, which it reversed course on, and introduced peak pricing which was also reversed. It is limiting pass holders to three films per month, still a deal, but began removing some of the more popular films completely. This weekend began altering its available films to either be low-rated schlock (Slenderman) or inconvenient film times.

For three times over the past three weeks, MoviePass has actually run out of money and briefly gone dark. I have no idea where they are getting the cash infusions to keep the service going another week at this point, I can only assume that their list of investors overlaps with that of the Juicero, the $800 Capri-Sun juice presser.

Thankfully, the death of MoviePass can at least be attributed to one productive model: AMC has introduced its own pass which costs $20 per month and allows its viewers to see up to three films per week as opposed to MoviePass’ three films per month. It also, unlike MoviePass, allows subscribers to see IMAX and 3D films and offers concession discounts.

Oh and AMC isn’t constantly on the verge of bankruptcy, unlike MoviePass. MoviePass’ new subscription plan ($9.95 for 3 movies) goes fully into effect on September 15, and according to CEO Mitch Lowe there are still investors willing to stick around and they have confidence that the service will be able to pull itself up under this new subscription plan.

Other than that, I have no opinion on the matter.

Perfect World Announces the Torchlight MMO, Finally


The folks at Runic Games have been talking about a Torchlight MMO since day one, meaning today’s announcement has been more than a decade in the making. Perfect World Entertainment and their new studio Echtra Games today announced that Torchlight Frontiers is in development, an MMOaRPG from the minds that brought us the two Torchlight games that many gamers still hold in high regard.

“Evolving the Torchlight universe into a shared world has always been a goal for the franchise, and I’m excited that we’re finally able to make it a reality,” said Max Schaefer, CEO of Echtra Games. “Torchlight Frontiers will be a living, breathing universe that will still feel uniquely Torchlight, while we add our own creative spin to the game. The team is building something truly special, and we can’t wait for fans to play it for the first time at Gamescom and PAX West.”

Perfect World has described Frontiers as a shared, persistent, dynamically generated world, meaning we may be seeing more of an instanced, hub-like MMO as opposed to one that is 100% open world, ala World of Warcraft. More information can be found on the official website. Frontiers will release on PC, Xbox, and Playstation

(Source: Perfect World Press Release)

[Not Massive] Germany Allows Swastikas In Games/Depictions of Hitler


Depicting Nazi imagery in video games has been illegal in Germany for quite some time now. The law has come under a fair amount of criticism over the years as while it has a “social adequacy” rule that has allowed films and TV series to get by (Inglorious Bastards for example), video games have not been subject to the same treatment. Developers responded to these rules often going down humorous routes such as Soldier of Fortune 2’s storyline being rewritten to replace Nazis with robots that take over the world and then start imitating human life (a prequel to Job Simulator to be sure), and The Last Crusade showing a world where Adolph Hitler leads the Black Square regime

Well it looks like the times they are a’changing, and Germany will be allowing on a case-by-case review the approval and age-rating of games depicting Nazi imagery such as the Swastika and Iron Cross, as well as the character of Adolph Hitler. According to Games Wirtschaft, the catalyst for this change was the 2017 release of Wolfenstein 2, where in order to skirt German regulations, developer MachineGames removing Hitler’s mustache and having him referenced in the game as the Chancellor.

It should be noted that this is not a blanket approval of Nazi imagery, and that games will still have to be approved to ensure that they are within existing German law.

(Source: Games Wirtschaft)

H1Z1 Launches On Playstation 4


The day is here: H1Z1 has finally launched as free to play on Playstation 4. Launch day brings with it a new content drop, introducing two new weapons (an RPG and a sniper rifle), a new vehicle (the five-man ARV) and new launch bundles as well. H1Z1 on Playstation 4 was built from the ground up for consoles, streamlining the interface, control scheme, and inventory for faster paced games that feel at home on the console’s controller.

“Everyone here at Daybreak Games is thrilled with the overwhelmingly positive response to H1Z1’s debut on PS4,” said H1Z1 Producer Terrence Yee. “Ten million new players in our first month in Open Beta is an incredible milestone, and our entire development team has worked tirelessly to build on that early success. We’re beyond excited to officially launch H1Z1 on PS4—this is our fully realized vision for battle royale on console.”

Today also marks the launch of the first season battle pass. Playstation gamers can unlock up to 30 rewards from three tiers (free, premium, PS+) for completing missions and leveling up. The battle pass sells for $5.49 USD.

(Source: H1Z1 Press Release)

 

RuneScape Classic Officially Shuts Down


The earliest commercial version of RuneScape has shut down today after seventeen years of service. RuneScape Classic, previously known just as RuneScape, launched in 2001 with a handful of servers and an even smaller handful of developers, going on to amass far more interest than creator Andrew Gower could have ever anticipated. In 2004, RuneScape launched a major update to its engine, introducing RuneScape 2 and relegating the initial version to the now unsupported “Classic” title.

Jagex has kept the Old School servers online for fourteen years despite not officially supporting the product, and eventually shut down the ability for new accounts to even access the servers due to the sheer number of bot accounts and Jagex’s inability to provide updates due to the game no longer being supported. Account registration was periodically opened up over the years, and in May it was finally announced that the servers would be brought down for good due to accumulating bugs and Jagex’s inability to keep the game properly supported.

Players gathered to watch the servers come down for one last time today, with the event permanently etched in digital stone via the Twitch link below.

Diaries From RuneScape: Old School Mobile Beta


I went into Old School RuneScape’s mobile beta with two questions in mind: How well this game would run on my Google Pixel (original, non XL), how well it would perform in my office which is a lead-wrapped dead zone, and how many seconds it would take my Pixel to be drained of its battery. Sorry, make that three questions.

The answer is surprisingly well on all accounts. I didn’t have much reason to doubt that my Pixel could run RuneScape at a good framerate, although I will never underestimate the ability for phones to mess up running the kind of software that computers of 10 years ago could pull off without a hitch. The game equally performed well in an area where Youtube videos regularly have trouble loading (thank you Cricket), and ultimately it drained by battery only slightly less quickly than I assumed it would.

Mobile Old School answers the demand for when you still want to play RuneScape uninhibited by having to go to work, school, or other obligations. It’s honestly the perfect game to port over to mobile, considering 80% of the leveling in the game is best played while having something else do to and not looking at the screen. Jagex designed the user interface from the ground up, and it makes intuitive use of the touch screen controls in order to present a game that is not horrible to play over a long period of time.

I was afraid that the awkward finger tapping controls of your average phone game would compound the already slightly awkward controls of RuneScape, but Jagex has managed to pull off a rather smooth system. Many actions in the game are notably slower than their PC counterpart, especially anything that would require you to right click (hold your finger on screen), but OSRS compensates making it rather easy to right click NPCs even when they are moving. Clicking anything while your character is running can be a chore, but then again I find it equally a chore to do so in the full version.

The only parts of Old School RuneScape Mobile that I didn’t like were factors that ultimately have nothing to do with the phone itself. Tapping the screen with my fingers is responsive, but everyone’s fingers become fat sausage links when you’re dealing with a game that tiles its buttons on what feels like a 10×10 pixel radius. There’s also the matter of battery, which RuneScape just ate a percentage of in the time it took me to write this previous sentence. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the fact that cell phone batteries these days just suck, and if you’re the kind of person that wants to game on their phone or do anything more taxing than idling, and doesn’t carry around a battery pack, I unfortunately can’t help you.

Thankfully Old School RuneScape Mobile uses the same accounts, same characters, same servers as its desktop version, so when you get home and you’re ready to play on the big screen, you’ll be able to transition without a hitch.

[Video] RuneScape: Meet Darren


This week Jagex released the latest trailer for RuneScape, introducing players to Darren, an adventurer who learns that you can’t just start off fighting three headed dragons.

“Anybody who has played RuneScape over the years will know that seizing adventure with both hands will take them on a journey across the game world, whether that’s battling three-headed dragons, sailing the seas of The Eastern Lands, or even interacting with the gods themselves. The new trailer introduces players to Darren as he begins his own adventure to smite King Black Dragon and make great friends along the way.”

The new trailer coincides with a promotional partnership with Twitch Prime. Prime members can redeem a RuneScape package this month containing one free month of membership, Umbral armor, a flame blade weapon, a companion pet, two umbral chests (loot boxes), and 15 treasure keys and 200 runecoins (cash shop currency). You’ll need to link your Twitch Prime account to your RuneScape account, this promotion runs until September 19.

All weapons/armor given as part of the promotion are cosmetic overrides.

(Source: RuneScape)

Valve Implements New Policies In Response To Developer Scams


Steam has played host to some malicious developers in the past, from Ata Berdyev to James Romine of Digital Homicide, but this week saw Valve’s lacking moderation pushed to a new level as several developers started uploading fake items to their in-game inventories with the intent of either directly defrauding or assisting in defrauding players. One game, Climber, changed its logo to Dota 2’s to further the scam while a third game actually changed its name to Team Fortress 2, logo and all. All of these games have since been removed and their developers permanently barred from releasing future titles, but the fact that the incidences occurred at all has shined a big light into how poorly Valve moderated its systems.

As reported by PC Gamer, Valve has begun requiring approval for game name changes, and has added in extra protections to make sure you don’t accidentally trade items for a fake indie game version. The trade screen will now flash a warning requiring the user to accept twice before trading items to a game that they do not own or have never played.

“We also started requiring approval for app name changes, and have more planned to address this sort of problem that we couldn’t get done in one day,”
-Tony Paloma

(Source: PC Gamer)

Steam: Rend Enters Early Access To Mostly Positive Reviews


Team-based survival game Rend has entered early access on Steam this week, and the reviews are so far looking mostly positive. Developed by Frostkeep Studios and published by the same, Rend is a game inspired by Norse mythology that tasks players with building their faction’s stronghold and then of course battling it out with both other players and creatures that populate the landscape.

Initial response has been positive, with the game gathering a 75% mostly positive rating on Steam.

“Since we first announced Rend, we have been developing it side by side with our players through Pre-Alpha and Alpha testing and by gathering feedback through Discord and our official channels,” said Jeremy Wood, co-founder and CEO, Frostkeep Studios. “Our goal has always been to transform the way players interact and participate in survival games while delivering on the fantasy that they have come to expect from this genre.”

Frostkeep Studios is an independent developer whose list of talent includes names from vanilla World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and League of Legends.