Civilization Online is an upcoming MMO by XL Games and currently enjoying a closed beta in South Korea. While the title isn’t currently dated for a western launch, you can take a peek at the Korean beta by watching the video embedded below. The footage was recorded by Youtuber Surreal MMO.
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Bungie, advertising the upcoming expansion for Destiny. The Dark Below is set to hit consoles on December 9th, and costs absolutely nothing if you purchased either of the special editions and redeemed your season pass. Otherwise it costs $20 standalone or $35 for the season pass.
The Dark Below increases the level cap to 32 and adds in new story missions involving The Hive. With their newfound levels, players will also be able to acquire new weapons, equipment, and indulge in one new strike, three new competitive arenas, and a new six player raid. Playstation users will have exclusive access to a new raid, The Undying Mind.
Gear up for the MMOrning Shots raid every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
(Editor’s note: minor language)
When it comes to indie development, I consider myself to be a big fan of the genre. After all, gaming would look monumentally different if the small, poorly funded developers of the early days, and even those of the modern days, didn’t throw caution into the wind and give ideas a shot that the AAA developers had tossed aside, like sandbox and horror games. Still, being a section of the gaming industry that literally anyone can get into, indie gaming today has become something of a Big Brother household. A few people with talent fighting for attention with a whole lot of egotistical nuts who either don’t have the abilities to find a job in game development, or are unhirable due to their unprofessional conduct.
Recently, Jim Sterling over at The Escapist posted a let’s play video of The Slaughtering Grounds, and his impressions of the game were not good. In response, a Youtube account called “Review the Reviewers” popped up with a copy of Jim Sterling’s video with a text overlay going point by point and making childish remarks about the video (it starts with “I’m Jim Sterling and I’m a fucking idiot). The video appears to have been created by the developer since it was posted as an announcement on the game’s Steam page, and the developer now uses the Steam username “JimFnSterlingSon” in the game’s community hub.
The video response posted by the developer is one of the most childish meltdowns I have ever seen here at MMO Fallout, and fits in easily next to Mike Maulbeck’s rant on Twitter and Phil Fish’s regular diatribes leading up to his eventual self-termination from the industry, in the realm of witnessing occupational suicide in action. How did the game get on Steam? Simple, the developer promised free keys to anyone who voted for the game through Greenlight. It’s amazing how many people you can rope in by offering free stuff, even if what you’re giving away isn’t worth what little effort you had to do to get it. Evidently this didn’t translate into much traffic, because Steam Charts shows an all-time peak of 3 players.
The internet, in its infinite capacity for a Sherlock Holmes level of investigatory prowess, quickly discovered that Slaughtering Grounds isn’t just a bad game by a developer who censors the forums and likely creates fake reviews, but a game filled with stock blood splatter images sourced from Google, stock assets from the UNITY store, and stolen art used in advertising, which the developer has since blamed on a third party and removed from the store page after at least one poster claimed to contact the original artist.
The developer has decided to try and embrace the hate, so to speak, by changing his username to JimFnSterlingSon and posting a contest thread asking people to leave a comment on why they hate the game and then promote that comment elsewhere on the internet, in return for a free copy of said game.
Just remember, Valve wants to decrease curation by phasing out Greenlight altogether and allow anyone to put their games on Steam. When that happens, you can expect many more stories like this to pop up.
October was a month of expansions, layoffs, and delays. We saw a developer get their game pulled off of Steam after one of the staffers tweeted expletives and a death threat at Valve’s Gabe Newell. Arenanet caused a furor in the community by updating the gem trading tool to be less user friendly, and then responded to player complaints by going on the offensive and calling the posters unconstructive ranters. Gaming for Good raised $20 million for charity, and Playstation Plus increased its prices in several territories.
There is plenty more than happened this month, but this is just a rundown of some highlights from MMO Fallout.
Coming in November:
Gaming News:
Still in Development:
Want to get into the next Warhammer MMO but don’t want to shell out $40+ dollars for a founder pack? Now you can buy the $15 Pioneer’s Founder Pack. The package includes 15,000 RTP to spend at the rogue trader, a character slot (ork only), a special helmet, a close quarters weapon, first blood badge, pioneer badge, backpack cage, founder’s lodge forum, name reservation, and the ability to buy the early access game module in 2015. The package does NOT include a full game key, which must be purchased separately, nor does it offer access to all items at the rogue trader.
(Source: Eternal Crusade)
In the latest Behind The Scenes post, Jagex has unveiled a list of updates set for release in November. The first, which will go live later today, is a double experience weekend lasting from midday October 31st to Monday, November 3rd. Members will receive double experience (3x experience for skills that have bonus experience) and 1.2x experience for free players. The first full content update of the month is the second part of the Elf City update introducing more of the city of Prifddinas. The city update includes training areas for agility, prayer, divination, slayer, the ability to craft crystal vials which hold two separate potions, and more.
Later in the month, treasure trails is set to receive an update adding in new rewards and updating clues with new puzzles and items needed to solve said puzzles. Players will also be able to reroll rewards for a chance at better loot. The first quest in the elder-god series is also set for release this month, tasking players with hunting down criminals with the use of a golem.
Throughout November, Jagex will also be opening the Well of Goodwill. Players are encouraged to donate gold, items, and bonds to charity, with Jagex donating $1 per five million gold donated as well as the full value of bonds. You’ll be able to choose which of the three charities your donation goes toward.
(Source: RuneScape)
Bethesda has announced that the on-again off-again first person shooter Prey 2 has been officially cancelled. The original Prey, released in 2006, put players in the role of Tommy, a Cherokee who finds himself in the middle of an alien invasion. The game ended with the phrase “Prey will continue…” Since its release, the status of Prey 2 has been in constant limbo, with confirmations every year or so that the game was in development, on hold, back in development, back on hold, etc.
At PAX Australia, Bethesda confirmed that the game has been cancelled with Pete Hines stating:
It wasn’t up to our quality standard and we decided to cancel it. It’s no longer in development. That wasn’t an easy decision, but it’s one that won’t surprise many folks given that we hadn’t been talking about it. Human Head Studios is no longer working on it. It’s a franchise we still believe we can do something with — we just need to see what that something is.
The sequel was to be set years after the original Prey, and follow a human bounty hunter on an alien world.
(Source: PCGamesN)
If you’ve been waiting patiently for the Pathfinder Online Early Enrollment period to begin, well you’re going to be waiting a bit longer. In a post on the Goblin Works developer blog, Ryan Dancey announced that early enrollment will be put on hold until the developer can deal with issues relating to stress tests and server capacity.
We have set an internal objective of being able to handle 2,000 simultaneous connections, and 100 characters active in a single Hex as our minimum threshold for server performance. This reflects our expected peak concurrent activity for the first 10,000 players in game – roughly what we anticipate during the first 90 days of Early Enrollment activity. Currently the server does not reliably meet that benchmark.
The blog post does not mention a timeframe for when early enrollment will launch. Stay tuned.
(Source: Pathfinder)
Path of Exile developer Grinding Gear Games has announced that the MMOARPG will now accept payment in the form of Karma Koins. Interested customers can find Karma Koin cards in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico. The cards are available in denominations of $10, $25, and $50.
For now, your first redemption in Path of Exile will net you a free Voidgate Portal Effect.
(Source: Path of Exile)
Adventurers will have the opportunity to continue the fight against the dragons in Neverwinter next month, with the launch of the latest module Rise of Tiamat. The new module follows the ongoing story played out in Tyranny of the Dragons and the Siege of Neverwinter event, bringing players together to fight back the cult of the dragon and prevent them from summoning draconic goddess Tiamat. Can players stop Tiamat from returning? Spoiler: No, but you will have the opportunity to slay the five headed dragon, one decapitation at a time, and send her back to the hell she climbed out of.
Rise of Tiamat goes live November 18th.
(Source: Neverwinter)
MMO Fallout 
