You may have read that on tomorrow, May 11th, the Playstation Network will be down for nearly ten hours for maintenance. The Playstation network status page originally had Monday’s maintenance scheduled to begin at 10:30pm EST on May 11th and run until 8am EST on May 12th.
Well that isn’t happening anymore. The new maintenance begins 9pm Pacific (midnight EST) on May 11th and ends two hours later.
(Source: Playstation Network)
Daybreak Game Company has quite a history of cracking down hard on cheaters, and in a recent Reddit post John Smedley has claimed that hacking in H1Z1 is down 90% compared to last month.
The honest reality is that we’ve knocked hacking down to about 10% of what it was a month ago. We’re still working on no-clip cheaters. We’ve got a good system to track them, but we’re working on actually preventing it. Not a simple problem. Aimbotters are tough, but we’ve made great progress against them too.
Daybreak Game Company has been ruthless in its hunt of cheaters in both Planetside 2 and H1Z1, both in the effectiveness of its anti-cheat (see previous link) and the company’s habit of publicly shaming cheaters via Twitter.
(Source: Reddit)
Old School RuneScape is gearing up for its 33rd content poll, asking for player approval on changes to the duel arena, among other things. The major parts of the upcoming poll involve duel arena updates, a world switcher, clue scrolls, grand exchange slots, and more.
You can head over to the dev blog to see the entire list. The content poll may undergo some changes before it goes live, based on player feedback.
(Source: Old School)
It’s time for another Weekend Wrapper, where we look at some gaming news that didn’t quite make it to MMO Fallout’s floor.
News/Updates:
Release Spotlight:
While consumer confidence is still pretty shaky for Daybreak Game Studio, John Smedley has once again taken to Reddit to assure fans that, no, this is not the end. For Planetside 2, the team intends on working on the meta-game, the “why are we fighting” question that so far hasn’t had much of an answer aside from the experience of a massive team deathmatch.
We will be moving towards a system where resources are actually going to be a fun part of the game, and you’ll be able to harvest resources directly (in fact, that’s how you’re going to get them). and you’ll be able to use them to finally get to some of the end-game things we’ve been wanting to do – Outfit bases on new continents (and potentially on existing ones). We’re also going to be spending a lot of time to make sure capturing a facility actually matters, as well as looking at the overly-complicated capture system which can be pretty obtuse at times.
Next week will see the launch of a new game mode for Planetside 2, one that has an actual win condition.
In the months between now and September we’re going to be putting all kinds of new things into the game on a regular schedule. We’re also going to be committing to doing a better job on the Roadmap. The criticism that we do a poor job updating it is something that I think is both fair and accurate and it’s simply going to be done right.
Smedley remarks that he sees Planetside 2 being here in ten years and continuing to grow in player size.
(Source: Reddit)
Wolfenstein: The New Order completely blew me away when it launched last May, quickly become my game of the year and one of the few times I had no regrets in purchasing a full priced $60 title. It rebooted a series close to my heart with a story that presented an alternate future full of strong characters led by an even stronger lead (BJ Blazkowicz). When the game ended, I wanted more. I hoped that this wasn’t going to be just a one-off event, left alone to not see a edition for another five years.
The Old Blood is a prequel to The New Order that isn’t so much a piece of DLC as it is a standalone expansion pack. For fans of the original game, it is a welcome return to the adventures of BJ Blazkowicz. For those who haven’t dived into the game yet, it provides a solid $20 experience that is heavy on content and light on price.
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood takes place in 1946, directly before the events of The New Order and after the events of Wolfenstein 2009 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Fresh from his victory over Deathshead and destruction of the Nazi Black Sun project, Blazkowicz is back on a new mission: Find the key intelligence needed for the assault on Deathshead’s compound (in New Order).
Compared to The New Order, Old Blood is an expansion and wears that fact on its sleeve. It was developed in the span of a year and that’s painfully obvious by how certain scenes are dragged out past their welcome. The first level is a patience grinding stealth section that has you sneaking by bots on a physical track to open a door and…do it again, five or six times.
The shortened development cycle is also apparent in the level design, much of which is either completely linear or makes it impossible to complete with 100% stealth.
Where The Old Blood excels is in its Wolfenstein-y nature. Getting a headshot with a silenced pistol and hearing the soft pop as another Nazi dies is just as satisfying as ever, as is the option to run around with shotguns akimbo, blowing off limbs and causing as much mayhem as possible. Guns feel like they have real weight behind each shot.
Also back are the collection and progression systems that made us want to use all of the weapons in The New Order. Gone are the enigma codes, but the letters, gold, and other collectibles still remain. Instead of forcing the player to collect enigma codes in order to unlock new mini-games, each level unlocks its own challenge mode, reliving one of that chapter’s battles with an emphasis on stacking kill combos.
Characters also suffer from the shortened experience, never getting enough airtime to build a relationship with the player before they are unceremoniously killed off. There are some interesting, if hamfisted, callbacks like the primary antagonist being the daughter of Doctor Schabbs from Wolfenstein 3D, but I didn’t have the same love/hatred of my allies and enemies as I did in The New Order.
If Machine Games had tried to peddle this off for a full $60, I’d probably tell you to stay far away. For a $20 expansion that bridges the gap with Wolfenstein 2009, I can’t say I regret the purchase. If it helps ensure that Machine Games can justify the budget to make a full sequel to The New Order, I’m willing to oblige.
The Old Republic crew has busted up a credit selling ring spanning hundreds of accounts, taking billions of credits out of the economy and ensuring that Han Solo will never be able to pay back Jabba.
Last week, we took action against an entire selling ring. Over multiple weeks, we investigated and compiled evidence about a large Credit selling ring which spanned across hundreds of accounts and a variety of servers. To help thwart any possible reactions from this group, we simultaneously actioned every account in this Credit selling ring. In total, we banned hundreds of accounts and removed over nine billion credits from those accounts.
(Source: SWTOR)
For those of you who follow MMOs to a T, this news will not be that surprising. World of Warcraft is now seven months out of the launch of Warlords of Draenor and hitting a peak of ten million players, and the numbers are beginning to fall. Activision Blizzard announced in its first quarter filings that subscription figures dropped from 10 million to 7.1 million, bringing the number down to just above its trough before the launch of the Draenor expansion.
(Source: Activision Blizzard Q1 reports)
Perfect World Entertainment has announced the next module for Neverwinter, dubbed Underdark, will be hitting PC and Xbox later this year. Players will travel to Menzoberranzan to fight alongside Drizzt Do’Urden in a quest line written by R.A. Salvatore. Before Underdark, Neverwinter will also see the launch of Strongholds which will bring several new features including Guild housing.
In addition to Underdark and Strongholds, the team is still making good on its promise to fix issues with Neverwinter’s latest update, Elemental Evil.
(Source: Neverwinter)
Now that Jagex has joined the rest of the MMO industry with the launch of a test server for major updates, I figured I’d use the opportunity to take a quick look at the upcoming new death mechanic as it currently stands. RuneScape’s death system has been a hot topic for years, as it started out with the player dropping everything except for their three most valuable items before moving on to a gravestone system that would eventually expire and make the player’s loot available for everyone.
It strikes of casual-izing, but it has more to do with the player base itself. Those who play RuneScape likely are aware that death for most has become a trivial affair, it’s rare to actually lose something when you have a half hour to get your stuff. Jagex realized that the only people who are losing things are people dying unfairly, whether it be from bugs, shoddy servers, or if someone hits your car backing out of the apartment parking lot while you’re fighting a boss and you have to go take down the license plate number before they drive off. But I digress.
RuneScape’s death changes have been a long time coming, and I say this as someone who never dies in the game.
For the purpose of seeing the new death interface, I made an exception.
I immediately grabbed my better gear and threw myself at the fires of one of RuneScape’s bosses. Death now teleports you to Death himself, who keeps hold of your items for 24 hours or until you can pay him off. My set of Bandos armor (the three cheapest pieces) plus an amulet of fury wound up costing me just over a hundred grand to replace, with my food and grand potions cutting a rather small fraction of the cost.
You can sacrifice some of the stuff you don’t want to cut a bit of the cost off, but by my figures it won’t do much. The addition of the 24 hour timer gives you the chance to hit the bank in case you don’t have any cash on you, or to go farm some stuff to sell if you don’t have the cash at all. The timer also allows players ample time to get their goods back, god forbid either your internet go down or the servers are unstable for multiple hours at a time.
The actual economic impact will have to be seen when the update goes live, but the goal is to introduce an item and gold sink through the cost of retaining items and the loss of those sacrificed or unable to retain. As someone who rarely dies, I don’t expect to see much of an impact from this update, but the knowledge that server disconnections are easier to deal with goes a long way to changing attitude while playing.
MMO Fallout 
