Author: Admin

ArcheAge 3.1 To Take Game To Its Roots


ArcheAge is getting updated to version 3.1 on January 17, so long as you are playing on the Korean servers. Among the updates are more character and item growth, potentially pointing to an increased level cap, as well as an increase in overseas trading, balancing new and veteran players, and adding/improving conveniences. XL Games hasn’t given a whole lot of information on what is coming with the update, so we’ll have to wait and see about more details as well as when the updates is coming westward.

(Source: Percy Meets ArcheAge)

2017 Predictions for 2017: 2017 Edition, Part 2: Let’s Throw Everything at the Wall


Since I’ve managed to once again push the new year predictions until it’s actually the new year, it’s time to throw everything I have in the old portfolio onto the table and get it all out of the way at once.

  1. The World of Warcraft Nostalrius successor will become a huge item among its community, bringing in thousands upon thousands of concurrent players. Blizzard will send a cease and desist order which the operators will ignore until they receive notice that they are being sued. Around that time, Blizzard will announce the Pristine Servers for WoW.
  2. Laura K Dale will continue leaking Nintendo information leading up to and beyond the release of the Switch. Behind the scenes, Nintendo will conduct major internal investigations to figure out who is giving her this information. It will turn out to be a friend of the fired employee Allison Rapp.
  3. Steam will officially hit the level of a premium television package: Hundreds of channels but only a fraction of it worth watching.
  4. Firefall will first announce that the console version is cancelled before revealing that the PC version is shutting down either simultaneously or a week or two later. Nobody will be surprised, however the last few hours will draw in a lot of people to watch the world burn.
  5. Pathfinder Online will shut down, the press won’t notice for a month and by that point most won’t bother covering it.
  6. The SAG gaming strike will come to an end with both sides making concessions. Gamers who previously took a side will go back to not pretending that they are concerned about people in the industry.
  7. Trion Worlds will launch a new game, expansion, or major update to one of their games, resulting in the servers being unusable for close to a month. People will continue to be surprised that Trion Worlds can’t handle launching anything. This will happen multiple times.
  8. Phantasy Star Online 2 still won’t come to the west.
  9. For that matter, other MMOs that the west wants will launch in Korea/China, flop because the local audience isn’t interested, then never come anywhere.
  10. More games will be re-released as HD remakes, but a lot will include extras like concept art, arcade modes, and bonus content. People will be annoyed at the idea of buying the game again, but will admit that the $20 isn’t a high price and the concept art is pretty cool.
  11. Developers will take a cue from Call of Duty and release an HD remake only to add microtransactions weeks after launch. Unlike Call of Duty, they don’t have as many bridges to burn.
  12. Resident Evil 7 will release and become the first major VR title to really “pull it off.” A streamer will admit live on camera that he just literally crapped his pants, he might even show the camera only to be banned by Twitch. (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pZNC7wQekk)
  13. South Park will release and be pretty good, but some gaming journalists and TV media will use it as a club and beat gamers over the head over a prolonged poop joke scene.
  14. Activision will announce that they are considering pulling an Ubisoft and holding off on future Call of Duty releases until they can figure out what is going on. They will deny that it has to do with the series plummeting in sales.
  15. No Man’s Sky will continue to update and add in features that should have been available on launch. The game won’t see much of a bump in users.
  16. Bulletstorm will release and sell a negligible amount of copies thanks to its high price. It will go on clearance at Gamestop within a couple of months and Randy Pitchford will call gamers entitled and cite the Duke Nukem cameo as a reason that the game is worth $50. Gearbox may or may not reveal one of the few games anyone actually wants from them: Borderlands 3.
  17. More video game movies will come out, they will under-perform and most people probably won’t be aware that they ever hit theaters.
  18. Daybreak Game Company will become the new foster home for wayward developers, picking up publisher rights for independent companies. New tiers will hopefully be added to the all access pass allowing you to play their games for a higher, but still cheaper, price.
  19. Valve will continue to get sued, and lose, over its refund policy in countries that are not America. Expect the policy to get incrementally better worldwide.
  20. More governments will start to pay attention to gambling in games, forcing rules like revealing lockbox odds and restricting who can participate. Gamers will fully realize that lockboxes are worthless investments.
  21. Troll games will become even more prevalent. Steam Greenlight will be marred in yet another controversy as a Ukranian developer uses the platform as a method of laundering money.
  22. Yooka-Laylee will launch and while it won’t recreate the nostalgia of Banjo Kazooie perfectly, it’ll still be a great game. The most ardent of purists will find some reason to complain.
  23. Another game will launch following a blatantly misleading advertising campaign. The press will call gamers entitled after nobody buys it and the advertising standards will find the developer not guilty because old men working in a bureaucratic office don’t believe that dozens of interviews and demo reels constitute advertising.
  24. Another few survival games from ex-developers who claim to have worked on STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl will head into early access.
  25. Star Citizen will miss its release dates. All of them.
  26. Camelot Unchained will launch and rather quickly drop its mandatory subscription because that system only works for a small number of titles. They will initially deny that the new system is free to play.
  27. Conan Exiles will launch and be pretty cool. The general consensus at Funcom will be that wasting money on another giant MMO isn’t worth it.
  28. Darkfall: New Dawn and Darkfall: Rise of Agon will launch. One will cannibalize the other and possibly die itself because the original Darkfall was a commercial failure.
  29. Paladins will change its name to WatchOver, Hi-Rez will continue to deny any inspiration from Overwatch.
  30. H1Z1 will bring on new lead developers, multiple times, with Daybreak announcing each time how committed they are to developing both versions.
  31. I will write a negative article about an indie developer who will email me with a not very subtle threat of lawsuit. He will immediately back down when I CC my attorney.
  32. John Smedley will announce that he has joined a new startup. Their first game will be a sandbox MMO. (Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-02-15-amazon-hires-john-smedley-to-lead-new-san-diego-studio)
  33. An indie developer will release a game that he genuinely thought was good. It won’t be, he will have a mental breakdown and pretend to have been a troll all along.

As always, I will revisit this list at the end of the year to see what I managed to get right. Until then, may the force be with you…or something.

Pixelmage Games: Please Take Your Money Back


As Pixelmage Games prepares to shut down, some of the more ardent backers are refusing to take their offered refunds for Hero’s Song and John Smedley isn’t entirely happy about the situation. In an update sent to backers, Smedley offered his frustration at backers wanting the company to keep the money, thanking them for their hard work, and that while they appreciate the sentiment, they want to send a message that this is how crowdfunding campaigns should operate when the project fails.

Crowdfunding gets a bad name sometimes for not delivering. By taking your money back we’re all setting an example for how every crowdfunding project should conduct itself if something goes wrong. We weren’t perfect, but there was never a scenario where we would even consider not doing right by you when it comes to your money.

Backers have until March 31, 2017 in order to apply for their refund by either Paypal or check.

Pixelmage Games was an independent studio founded by ex-Daybreak Game Company President John Smedley. The studio’s first game, Hero’s Song, was funded through Indiegogo and, due to low sales, is shutting down along with the company as a whole.

(Source: Indiegogo)

[Video] Darkfall: Rise of Agon Delivers New Video


Darkfall: Rise of Agon has put out a new video detailing changes to the game as it continues through closed beta and heads toward early access. Notable changes include the removal of spell fizzles, frontloading skills, the addition of macros, and more. You can see the a pretty comprehensive view of the changes in the video above, or head over to the official website for more details.

Crowdfunding Fraudsters: Save Asheron’s Call Gofundme


It’s been a while. Crowdfunding Fraudsters is a recurring column here at MMO Fallout where I look at campaigns on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and Gofundme that, in my opinion, need a good going over with a fine tooth comb. The use of the term fraudster does not imply malice, but rather the idea that the creator is not who he or she is represented to be, be that a skilled developer or businessperson.

Today’s subject is the Asheron’s Call Resurrection project, a Gofundme with a goal of $2 million looking to purchase/license the Asheron’s Call property off of Warner Bros as Turbine is ending support and the official servers are being shut down in January. As of this publishing, the campaign has managed to pull in $1,500 from 18 people (see above), an average of $83 per person, and several updates on the official Facebook page claim that the group has been in contact with Warner Bros. and that things are looking pretty good.

And here we come to problem number one: The goal of $2 million is a placeholder. I’ve spoken about this on pretty much every CF article attempting to crowdfund purchasing an IP, it is a horrible idea to set a goal without having an idea on how much you’ll be paying or confirmation that the company even has any intention of accepting such a deal. Let’s say for example that, by some grace of god, this group manages to just barely miss the $2 million mark by fifty grand, only for negotiations with Warner Bros. to hit a low end of $4 million and refuse to go lower. Guess who isn’t getting the IP? Guess who isn’t getting their money back? This also assumes that the claims are true that Warner Bros. is even interested in starting negotiations.

As far as the fundraising goes, sure, you can sit on that cash and wait for it to hopefully, one day, maybe perhaps hit the goal, but who is to say that Warner Bros. will be on board by that point? Corporations hate when you waste their time with pointless acquisition deals that go nowhere, especially when you wasted the time and money of their lawyers and officials the first time around. Negotiations like this die at the drop of a hat from very simple missteps, or say publicity that sheds a bad light on your ability to follow through, especially when one side is talking about it as much as this group is. Loose lips sink ships.

But Connor, you say, why would they be so unaccommodating on an IP that they probably have no intent on using? Why would it be so pricey? Well, the thing about companies is that they don’t operate on the same level of thinking as you or I, their unused properties aren’t treated like that couch taking up room in the garage that’s starting to smell, to be left in the street corner with a “free” sign and hope that somebody takes it. Unless the company is in dire need of money, they don’t look at their property on the grounds of “better something than nothing.” They also look at potential buyers and size them up based on their perceived competency and generally won’t just license/sell away properties to a ragtag, loosely connected group of developers, even if the money is good.

Barring the question of funding, I can’t imagine that Warner Bros. will want to do business once they see the level of stark immaturity on display from these groups. I’ve spoken before about how these resurrection projects tend to be led by individuals with massive and fragile egos, explaining why Crowdfunding Fraudsters has already racked up a couple of baseless lawsuit threats, and already the “save Asheron’s Call” community has split in half with both sides having Facebook tantrums and block wars. The focal point of the argument is, naturally, that the crowdfunding effort is incompetent at best, maybe a little shady, and possibly just an attempt to piggyback off of nostalgia to grind some cash out of desperate fans.

But don’t just take my word for it, take a look at these gems out of the horse’s mouth itself.

Dustin removed my post and posting ability on the Resurrection page within minutes. If you want your money wasted, make sure to donate to the unofficial Gofundme with no official resources, backers or direction. AKA, get your money stolen. (Source)

Our communications with Dustin and Justin were met with a lot of double talk and misleading information. Additionally, I felt that the GoFundMe efforts are extremely premature, and there is no solid evidence that what is being said, and the amount needed is accurately portrayed. (Source)

So here you have a nobody asking for $2 million in the hopes that he might actually divert what may or may not be sufficient funding for an acquisition that the property owner hasn’t given any real indication of being willing to sell. $2 million that, barring a philanthropic millionaire, will never be raised because Asheron’s Call doesn’t have anywhere near the following required to support random money being thrown at a person to pitch a buyout. The Gofundme has been up for 8 days and brought in 18 pledges. If you were waiting for an Earth-shattering kaboom, it would have happened by now.

Put it this way: The City of Heroes spiritual sequel by Missing Worlds Media raked in $678,000 and that community was massive compared to what remains of the Asheron’s Call base. Whatever hope the game has of surviving at this point, barring the sudden entrance of a wealthy backer, lies in community-run private servers, not throwing money to two crews of pedantic, arguing children who couldn’t get past phase one without immediately falling apart and being reduced to complaining on Facebook about who was deleting whose posts. If you want somewhere safer to put your money, I hear Digital Homicide is still floating around on the net.

Pixelmage Games Closing, Hero’s Song Shutting Down


Following its Indiegogo campaign failing to draw in half of the intended goal, Pixelmage Games has announced the cancellation of Hero’s Song and the closure of the studio itself. Players who funded the game on Indiegogo and Steam can receive refunds either through Steam or by contacting Pixelmage at the address on the official website.

The announcement cites low sales but thanks backers for their support.

It’s with a heavy heart that I have to report that Pixelmage Games is going to be shutting down and we have ceased development on Hero’s Song. For the last year, our team has worked tirelessly to make the game we’ve dreamed about making, and with your support, and the support of our investors, we were able to get the game into Early Access. Unfortunately sales fell short of what we needed to continue development. We knew going in that most startups don’t make it, and as an indie game studio we hoped we would be the exception to that rule, but as it turned out we weren’t.

Pixelmage Games was founded by ex-Daybreak Game Company (previously Sony Online Entertainment) President John Smedley. Hero’s Song was supposed to be a sandbox MMO where players would create their own worlds with unique, generated histories.

2016 Predictions For The Year 2017 Part 1


2016 is coming to a close and that means starting predictions for 2017. This is the part where you make notes of everything I say and then come around at the end of February to let me know that my predictions were wrong.

1. Hero’s Song Will Shut Down

(Editor’s Note: About 20 minutes before this article published, John Smedley announced that Pixelmage is shutting down and Hero’s Song is cancelled.)

As much as I’d like to see the game succeed, I have a strong feeling that at some point in early 2017 we will learn that negotiations to fund Hero’s Song have failed and that the game will be shutting down. John Smedley will apologize for something that many of us saw coming when the game failed to achieve even half of its $200 thousand Indiegogo campaign, which it was glad to take anyway, and the sunsetting will be followed either by the announcement of Pixelmage closing down or of its next crowdfunding campaign.

Until that happens, however, we will sit back and watch as the numbers on Steam continue to dwindle and talent continues to jump ship to other developers.

2. Star Citizen Will Continue To Disappoint

And MMO Fallout will cover none of it. Star Citizen’s development cycle feels like the end product of sitcom writers sitting around a table and creating a fake documentary about a video game’s development. The kind where the protagonist starts out with a big promise and over the course of the episode just keeps digging himself in deeper because he started off with a promise he couldn’t keep and just keeps lumping on more and more stuff to cover the initial lie. It would probably star Kevin James as Chris Roberts.

The more Star Citizen tugs along, the bigger it gets and the more incapable it seems to be of following up on its promises. The fans and backers have sat through delay after delay, the game is now years behind schedule and slowly becoming something quite different than what was promised, Chris Roberts & Co. are making pretty regular changes to the terms of service to make refunds harder, if not impossible to obtain.

For the record, I think it’s pretty stupid to think that Star Citizen will never launch, and pointlessly malicious to hope that it fails. That being said, I know how hard gamers are to please when they’ve invested $60 into a game. Star Citizen has a lot of people pledging into the three and four digits for JPEG concepts of ships. Imagine your clientele base is hundreds and hundreds of clones of your mother. “Honey why couldn’t you be more successful? I know you raked in hundreds of millions in pledges but the Miller boy down the street became an oral surgeon and gave his mother grandchildren, why do you hate me and want me to die alone with no grandchildren?”

Star Citizen in 2017 will create more frustrated backers, will continue to be the light of the universe for the optimists and those desperately trying to justify their thousand dollar purchase, and Derek Smart will be there somewhere.

3. Corgis Will Continue to Appear in Games

This is just a given. The internet loves to fixate on certain things and presently one of those things are corgis. Why not? They’re adorable! They invoke that same reaction we have to babies, with their big heads, stumpy legs, and let’s not forget the fluffy rumps. Dogs love you unconditionally, but they’ll love you even more unconditionally if you provide them with meat, bacon, or just any old food and give them a scratchin on their heads and bellies.

Corgis are already being used as holiday pets, anniversary pets, pre-order bonuses, cash shop bonuses, and more. If you’re sick of the furry little devils, and shame on you if you are, expect to see a whole lot more of them in 2017.

4. More MMOs Will Hit Consoles

And it’ll be amazing. Perfect World Entertainment has been making huge strides this year on launching their library of games on Xbox and Playstation, to great effect with both consoles. Hopefully 2017 will be the point where Daybreak’s games start launching on Xbox, along with H1Z1 and whatever shooter they were working on a few months ago. Personally I’d like to see console users get their hands on Marvel Heroes, a great alternative to a very small list of similar titles on both systems.

More over, I feel like console games will continue the shift into pseudo-MMOs, like Destiny, now that developers are no longer considering the 360 and PS3, and their multitude of technical limitations, part of the equation. I think that Destiny 2 is going to be what Destiny was always advertised to be, and while the fans will be angry that they had to wait through a full game launch and a hell of a lot more money in expansions to get the product as originally intended, that it will be worth the wait.

5. I Will Continue To be Usurped While Writing Prediction Articles

This year I noticed a trend that whenever I wait until the next morning to publish predictions, the entity in question ends up fulfilling those predictions and making me look like an idiot. I predict that in 2017, my knack for procrastination won’t get any better, and as such I will continue to lose out on the very valuable currency called “I told you so.” Don’t believe me? See #1 on this list.

2016 In Review: The Year’s Most Unexpected Events


I can’t always predict the future. No, it’s true, and I am willing to admit what may just be the only flaw in an otherwise perfect being. I’m just that humble. So yea, 2016 brought with it some big surprises, and you won’t believe #6 (because this list only goes up to 5). What happened in 2016 that you didn’t expect? Let me know how you saw it coming in the comments below.

1. Wildstar’s Continued Existence

This one surprised me more than anything, and while the legion of doomsayers run around the net every year calling for the impending deaths of World of Warcraft, Eve Online, and every other game under the sun, this one had good reason behind it. NCSoft is not known for its kindness and understanding when it comes to under-performing titles, and I have made a few attempts to explain why Wildstar is in a bit of a different situation.

If you look back at the titles that NCSoft has shut down, they mostly all share one common bond: Money, not the individual game’s money but NCSoft’s money. These cuts came at a time when NCSoft was doing poorly overall as a company and needed to shed some of its liabilities, which meant losing their games/subsidiaries that were struggling or failing to make a profit. It happened to Lineage, Tabula Rasa, Exteel, City of Heroes, etc. In the case of City of Heroes, we learned that while the game itself was profitable, Paragon Studios was not.

So Wildstar survived 2016 against all odds and despite the fact that free to play and Steam just gave a momentary boost to their revenue. At this point, Wildstar is living on borrowed time. While I won’t outright claim its sunsetting in 2017, I will say that should NCSoft hit some financial trouble again this year, Wildstar will be the first thing scuttled to save the ship.

2. Daybreak Game Company and Turbine Entertainment

If Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online become part of Daybreak’s all access program, you can just hook that IV of nutrition right into my arm and funnel my checks straight to whoever is in John Smedley’s old office, right next to all the stuff that Columbus Nova has pawned off to save a buck, because I am never leaving the house. I’ve said a few times that my dream is that other multi-game publishers take a note from SOE and have an all access pass, and you know what? They don’t.

Turbine is moving away from gaming and going into the mobile app pseudo-games, a world where mediocrity isn’t just rewarded, it pays enough to afford Super Bowl advertising money. I think most of us expected that Turbine would spin off the two MMO teams into their own company, although it was likely more blind prayer that they wouldn’t just shut the whole division down and shutter everything, but who could have seen Daybreak Game Company coming? The company whose name is synonymous with slowly carving up the remains of Sony Online Entertainment like it was a delicious honey baked ham.

The plus side is that Daybreak doesn’t own Standing Stone Games, so this agreement likely won’t see much (if any) in the way of holiday layoffs. But seriously, Daybreak, that All Access. Get on it.

3. Korea Makes Cheat Development a Criminal Offense

This could only happen in a country where eSports is as big as it is in Korea, and I’m not talking about North Korea where Kim Jong Un most recently not only took all three top spots in the World Overwatch League, but also managed to pull in Most Handsome/Intelligent Gamer. This is South Korea, where pro gamers are treated like gods, where your account is associated with your social security number, and where there is a ton of money to be made in cheating.

Creating cheats in South Korea is now punishable by up to $43 thousand in fines or a maximum of five years in jail. You have to assume that the punishment will fit the crime, and that most cheat makers will be handed a hefty fine based on whatever profit they were bringing in. It seems highly unlikely that anyone will face an actual jail sentence of more than a week or so, unless the penal system is exceptionally harsh in Korea.

No, not that Korea. You don’t even want to know what happens if you’re caught aimbotting against Lil Kim.

4. Digital Homicide’s Existence

What can I say about Digital Homicide that hasn’t already been said about Milli Vanilli? It had fifteen seconds of fame and now nobody cares. The only time you hear them being brought up is when someone says “hey, remember Digital Homicide? I may be living in squalor but at least I’m not that guy,” and everyone goes back to eating their KFC (Nashville Hot now in stores, big thanks to KFC for being smart enough not to sponsor this article).

From the outset, Digital Homicide seemed to be like every other mediocre indie developer, a fragile ego hastily compiling the kind of shoddy work that you normally make before you start showing your work to the public, and not only showing it to the public but placing it for sale. Their existence had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Steam’s Greenlight program was broken and not serving its function, a mountain of garbage built by the ultimate garbageman himself, James Romine (or Romaine if you read my earliest pieces).

But not content with merely saturating the store with heaps upon heaps of copy and pasted assets, Romine took the meta one step further by launching an active lawsuit against a Youtuber for criticizing his games. The lawsuit went nowhere and is currently in limbo waiting for dismissal by the judge, but not before pulling the ultimate bastard move: Serving Valve with a subpoena for the identity of 100 users in the hopes of finding out their identities. Finally deciding that they had had enough, Valve dropped the hammer and cut its ties completely with Digital Homicide, destroying the company financially and sending Digital Homicide back into the depths from which it had surfaced.

5. SAG Goes On Strike, People Stop Paying Attention

You could virtually count in seconds how long it took for the Screen Actors Guild to go on strike and for the public/press to stop taking notice. I find the whole ordeal laughable, not because I am anti-union or disagree with what the strike is demanding, but because the games industry overall is a pretty despicable place to work in and, if I had to offer advice to the folks currently on strike, it’d be to take a nice safe paycheck in the growing animated/CG film industry. This isn’t the part where I say “the industry is sleazy, deal with it or leave.”

If you take the time to actually read the demands of the SAG union, they’re pretty tame. A bonus for every 2 million copies sold or 2 million subscribers up to a maximum of 8 million, aka four payments. They want standard safety equipment/people on set to prevent unnecessary injuries, reduced hours, and an updated contract that was written in 1994 when video games were about as serious a product as Big Bird’s Speak and Spell, except less valuable as a market commodity.

The reason I say that the strike makes me laugh is because, at the end of the day, this industry can be pretty horrible. We’re talking about companies that, with little or no shame, pull tactics like $10 online passes to harass the second-hand market, where Microsoft was willing to risk shooting its platform in the head with the initial (revoked) decision to restrict used games, cut out entire parts of the world by launching an online-only console and simply refusing service to countries because they didn’t feel like it, where Capcom demands you pay more money to unlock content already installed on the disc, where companies shamelessly announce that selling you more DLC is a higher priority than actually fixing their product. And let’s not go into how poorly game developers can be treated, this isn’t a contest to see who is more abused.

So I can’t say I have too much confidence that the bean counters in the industry will take the strike seriously, you can tell them that even though they’ll save money by hiring scab actors that the quality will likely drop, all they’ll hear is that they’re saving money. While there are countless numbers of passionate people who love their work on all levels of gaming, from the lowly QA tester to the philanthropic president who really likes video games, I can’t help but feel that the people that SAG is targeting would gladly sacrifice quality for the sake of not putting a little extra in the collection plate. They’ve been doing it for years. How does that satisfy the shareholders? Pro-tip: It doesn’t. Worse comes to worst, they’ll sacrifice a beloved franchise with a predatory mobile port for some upfront cash, then kill off the studio and fire everyone involved before they can collect their bonus.

If this industry has to go back to having the developers themselves provide their untrained voices, I fear that’s exactly what they’ll do, and nobody should have to suffer through another fully voiced Ultima.

Grab Your Compensation Packs In ArcheAge


It’s a regular day in the neighborhood as Trion Worlds is once again apologizing for a bad launch bringing its servers down for a very long period of time. If you logged into the fresh start, or even the legacy servers, over the past couple of weeks, you are entitled to a list of freebies including 15 days of extra Patron time for existing Patrons.

As a thank you for your patience and understanding while we work through recent server difficulties, we are offering the following FREE rewards to all players who logged in to ArcheAge between 07:00am PSTon Dec. 10 and 07:00am PST on Dec. 22:

  • Bound Iron Eviscerator (Legacy) OR Bound White Reindeer (Fresh Start) mount
  • 15 Day Patron Time Extension (PATRONS ONLY)
  • 50x Warrior’s Medals
  • 50x Merit Badges
  • Login Badge

Redemption follows the usual rules: Log on to the Glyph website and you will find the available packages on the list at the price of free. Redeem them to your chosen character and they will be available in game. For those of you receiving both the patron extension and other items, please note that they are two separate packages.

(Source: Trion Worlds email)

Turbine Reneges On Private Server Plans, Shutting Down Asheron’s Call


Turbine Entertainment has announced that Asheron’s Call and Asheron’s Call 2 will shut down on January 31st, 2017, following the news this week that Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online would be spun off into a separate company with Turbine continuing to focus on the mobile gaming sector. Those of you who have followed the game for the past few years now will no doubt be wondering what happened to those private servers that Turbine announced nearly three years ago?

They aren’t coming. According to a post on the forums, while private servers were planned, the team at Turbine was unable to make the plans a reality.

We had hoped to be able to hand off our servers to the community, so our most loyal players could continue their journey through Dereth. Unfortunately, this is something we were unable to do.

Both games will be free to play until the servers shut down, with new account creation disabled entirely.

(Source: Asheron’s Call)