Author: Admin

Planetside Shutting Down July 1st


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April and May were really exciting months for us with the release of the new Construction System, base revamp of Indar, and new population caps to improve battle flow. It’s been exciting to watch all of you experiment with base design and shift battles in new directions. A big thanks to all of you who have jumped in to try it out and given us feedback.

While we hope you are as excited as we are about the recent changes, we do have to make a more solemn announcement. On July 1st, at 4:00 PM PT, we will be closing the PlanetSide 1 server. PlanetSide 1 has a very important history with Daybreak Games and a special place in the hearts of those who work on its successor. While we have run the game for free since 2014, due to evolving business needs and technical requirements it has become necessary to conclude this service.

We hope you will take this opportunity to enjoy the remaining time available with each other and please help us give PlanetSide 1 the sendoff it deserves.

Planetside was supported likely only by the grace of John Smedley and nostalgia, and since Smedley is no longer present and Daybreak has been axing projects left and right in an effort to reduce spending, it was only a matter of time before this ancient shooter got the axe.

(Source: Planetside 2)

Guild Wars 2: World V World Poll Now Available


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Should the Desert borderlands be removed from Guild Wars 2 World vs World? The team at Arenanet is holding a community poll and wants your opinion on whether or not the changes would provide a superior play experience. Players can log in and vote at the link below.

Vote here.

Video: The Secret World Museum of the Occult


Funcom has posted a new video showing off the Museum of the Occult, a cross between a place to display your achievements and The Secret World’s answer to player housing. The museum serves as a space to show off your progress and purchase rewards.

Waiting for players who complete the entire museum is a unique item that will “really turn the tides of battle,” according to the developer post.

The Museum of the Occult is a brand-new feature that allows you to collect, display, and customize exhibits of monsters in your own personal Museum.  The Museum allows you to customize displays based on your collected achievements and lore on The Secret World’s bestiary. It is a personalized space where you are able to place full-size exhibits of monsters you’ve encountered and learned about. Once you’ve set up your Museum, you can even invite your friends to visit and bask in your glory.

In addition to offering visual trophies, players also are able to purchase new rewards, including T-Shirts designed by members of our community, pets, Grim Glamours, and consumables that grant a chance to call upon monstrous guardians to assist you in combat!

The Realistic Future of MMO Fallout


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So I can halt any fears: This is not a shut-down announcement or news that I’m getting bought out.

With MMO Fallout’s seventh (good lord) anniversary coming up, I wanted to discuss the realistic future of this website and how I see things changing in the coming months. If you’re a regular viewer of this website, you’ve probably noticed the not-so-subtle change in direction over the past year. Even if you’re not a regular, I can probably assume you have at least some interest in the MMO genre and have noticed how that has changed.

So where to begin? I conceived MMO Fallout as a spinoff of an earlier project in 2009 to document the rise and fall of developers piling onto the genre after the success of World of Warcraft. The name, and thus the current logo, reflects how success and failure has a rippling effect in the industry. Since its launch, the scope has expanded far beyond the original vision, and the industry has changed quite dramatically.

We’ve gone from a world where MMOs were quite easily defined to one where the lines have been blurred to the point of irrelevance. Everyone has a progression system, everyone has microtransactions, everyone has persistent online features, not every MMO has a hub world. With the exception of a few titles, the answer to “how is this an MMO” can only be answered with “because I believe it to be.”

In that respect, coverage has become a lot harder because I have to constantly ask how far I’m willing to stretch my own definition in order to cover something that I think is important. I’d sit down and look at a game and think “does this count? Not really, but it is 95% like another game that I did cover,” and that policy over five years has slowly diluted the overall pot. As the scope of coverage has expanded to include serious issues of consumer protection, like Steam’s refund policy, developers revoking fraudulently purchased keys, etc, I’ve had to throw those definitions out so many times that they don’t even feel relevant anymore.

For those of you who have your ad-blockers on and wouldn’t notice, this website doesn’t serve ads. It has never generated a profit or a revenue stream, and I used all of my pay from writing for MMORPG.com to cover this website’s costs. So in writing, I consider two things: interest and time. People read how to fix your FFXIV demo, or about lawsuits. According to my metrics, they don’t come here for patch notes, so I stopped writing about them.

Yea, yea, stop rambling. This was supposed to be about the future.

So where does MMO Fallout go from here?

  • More coverage of important events. Game launches, developer shuffling, new studios, etc.
  • Less coverage that boils down to small patch notes.
  • More time spent following up on previous coverage.
  • Less articles that are simply regurgitating press releases.
  • More emphasis on highlighting independent developers worthy of your attention, aka why I incorporated indie development in the first place.
  • Less emphasis on vilifying indie developers through various pieces and Crowdfunding Fraudsters (but that isn’t going away).
  • More previews, reviews, game-specific editorials. I’d like to do more of these.
  • Less dead/abandoned columns. I’m looking at you, editorials section.
  • More involvement from developers and the community. I currently do interviews/collaborations maybe once every six months. This isn’t out of a lack of offers.
  • Less news for the sake of news.

MMO Fallout will always be centered on the online game industry, so don’t worry about our focus suddenly shifting to movies or cake recipes (although I’d like to look at some game-based books/movies), but the days of folding our hands and refusing to cover something because it doesn’t 100% pass the litmus test is long gone.

I want MMO Fallout to continue to exceed my expectations, and I am nothing without my readers. I respond to all emails, questions on Ask.fm, and messages on Twitter. My doors have always, and will always, be open.

And with that, let’s go back to talking about games.

Tree of Savior Bans Another 5,600 Accounts


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IMCGames has announced another mass ban in Tree of Savior. As posted on its official website, the ban targeted players using a third party program to allow themselves access to the game’s market, repair, and other interfaces outside of the game’s cities.

As part of the announcement, IMCGames also broke down exactly how these players will be punished:

– 1151 had already been permanently banned and therefore their status has not been altered
– 3462 had been previously restricted and will now be banned permanently, as this is their second known offense
– 994 will be banned for a total of 30 days, as this is their first known offense

Also worth a note is that IMCGames is now restricting access from Steam accounts that have been sanctioned by Valve. One player who had his account restricted due to chargebacks noted that he is not allowed to play Tree of Savior, receiving the message below. An IMC employee confirmed the rule in the same thread.

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Valve Bans Another Shady Developer


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In what appears to be a more coordinated approach to quality assurance, Valve has banned yet another shady developer on Steam. Developer Kut Stupid, at least as he is credited on the game’s store page, has one title on Steam: Lemurzin. It’s been on sale since November 2015 at the price of $1.99 and carries a “mostly positive” 78% approval rating.

The game is also unavailable for purchase. I’ve noted Lemurzin a couple of times over the past week for the fact that the game has a highly suspicious DLC package, the “Pterodactyl Edition.” For $99.99, you receive an upgrade to the game that changes the propeller to a dead pterodactyl. Yep, that’s it.

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One hundred smackers for that. You may notice that Lemurzin is the exact same game as ZombieRush, another game that was recently shut down by Valve, down to the fact that both games even use the “dried pterodactyl” image. There have been allegations that Kut Stupid and Arthur Kariev may be the same person/group, but there is equal likelihood that both are using the same asset pack.

ZombieRush is credited to Arthur Kariev, however it was originally submitted by Rai Studio Games, another developer that recently had its games removed from Steam for unscrupulous activity including review botting. It is indeed possible that Arthur Kariev and Rai Studio Games are the same people, and by that understanding so could be Kut Stupid.

It’s important to note that since their games have been removed, there has been no comment from any of these developers.

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Housing Hits Elder Scrolls Online In 2017


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IGN managed to interview Zenimax’s own Matt Firor, who revealed that housing is coming to The Elder Scrolls Online in the first quarter of 2017. Before player owned houses come to Tamriel, Zenimax plans on dropping an update in August that will add a customizing barbershop and an Argonian dungeon pack.

The dungeon pack represents a new form of content delivery that Zenimax is aiming for, creating smaller, almost episodic content for players to come back to.

“It’s interesting to see what happens when you take away the subscription model away,” Firor explained. “You don’t see a hardcore playstyle – like playing for six months and then quitting – we don’t see that. We have a lot of players who will play for two or three weeks because they want to get through a zone and then stop. Then they come back two months later for another month, because there’s no pressure to play all of it at once.

Housing is a staple of the Elder Scrolls series, so it’s not surprising that players have been clamoring for it since the game initially launched. Housing joins recent major revelations, from the impending launch in Japan to content scaling to the player’s level.

(Source: IGN)

Funcom Shutting Down Lego Minifigures Online


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You know that there is trouble when a developer actively points out the best time to get out of their contract. We learned earlier this year that Funcom’s license with Lego Minifigures Online ends in October 2016, so there shouldn’t be a surplus of surprise that the title is being sunset at the end of September.

It is with a heavy heart that we announce that LEGO Minifigures Online will be closing on September 30th, 2016. We know that many of you are still enjoying your adventures in the game, and this has been a difficult decision for us to make but unfortunately, the time has come to retire LEGO Minifigures Online.

Lego Minifigures originally launched as a free to play game in 2014. When the title failed to meet expectations, Funcom transformed the game into a buy to play model, effectively locking out anyone who had previously played but not purchased anything. The poor performance of the model was attributed to overestimation of buying power, according to Funcom’s quarterly report from May 2015.

(Source: Funcom)

Nerf The Hammer: McCree/Widowmaker Downgraded In Today’s Patch


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It was nice of Blizzard to provide us with this PR snapshot of McCree and Widowmaker side by side, because the two are the focal point of the first big balance patch for Overwatch. Launched on PC today and coming to consoles as part of a larger patch on a later date, players will either be crying foul or rubbing their hands in glee at the knowledge that two of Overwatch’s more problematic characters have been chained back a bit.

McCree’s balance brings his pistol damage from 70 to 45, while reducing the wait before he reloads by more than half (.75 seconds to .3 seconds).

McCree was performing too well against all targets, making him feel like a must-pick in many situations. By reducing the damage of his alternate fire, McCree is now significantly weaker against tanks like Roadhog and Reinhardt, but still maintains his lethality against smaller targets like Tracer and Genji.

Widowmaker, on the other hand, has been equally buffed/debuffed in various areas. While the base damage of her scoped shot has been reduced by a fifth (15 to 12), the damage multiplier on headshots has been boosted from 2x to 2.5x. Additionally, players must now wait for the unscoping animation to finish before scoping again. Finally, her ultimate now costs 10% more.

In the right hands, Widowmaker can often feel unstoppable—even when just landing body shots instead of critical heads shots. The changes to her alternate fire weaken body shot damage while leaving her headshot damage unchanged. Additionally, we felt her Ultimate ability, Infra-Sight, was coming up a little too frequently, especially considering its impact on the game.

In short: McCree can’t take down tanks as easily and Widowmaker can no longer one-shot even characters like Tracer with a hit to the body, preventing her from dominating the battlefield as she was before. Also on the block for a balance is D.Va, although she will be made more powerful. Unlike McCree or Widowmaker, D.Va’s balancing patch is going to take a bit more time to iron out the specifics.

(Source: Blizzard)

Wild Terra Successfully Voted Through Greenlight


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Developer Juvty Worlds has announced that their open world sandbox MMO Wild Terra has successfully been voted on by the Steam Greenlight community. Juvty thanks the nearly six thousand users who voted to pass the title, bringing it to the top 5 voted games and winning the approval from Valve.

With all of the recent hubbub over developers fraudulently buying votes and reviews, it’s good to see a small developer that can be trusted. I’ve had a few chances here and there to play Wild Terra and have found the game to be very enjoyable.

More coverage of Wild Terra to come.

(Source: Juvty Worlds press release)