Admin

Diaries From RuneScape: November In Review

RuneScape is going to be a regular game for the Diaries From column, published on the last Thursday of each month and covering the entire month’s worth of updates.

1. Prifddinas Part 2 – 9/10

The elven city of Prifddinas has quickly become one of my favorite updates of 2014, and not just because I’ve been waiting for this update ever since it was teased way back in 2004. I went through high school and ended up one semester away from my bachelor’s degree in the time Jagex took to put this update out. There are kids playing RuneScape today who were still in diapers when the city was first teased. It was a really long time ago.

Prifddinas is a giant skilling hub, a place where high level players can theoretically go and virtually never have a reason to leave. There is a ton of content, from pickpocketing elves to finding hidden titles, unlocking pets and other rewards, and I have only managed to scratch the surface.

Clan Amlodd (Divination and Summoning) – Shadow creatures are useless as a divination training, since they don’t drop cores enough to be a viable alternative. The only time I’ve found myself killing shadow creatures is when a daily task dictates it. Otherwise this area has the convenience of an NPC to trade your summoning pouches in for a small amount of shards to make summoning less of a money sink.
Clan Ithell (Construction and Crafting) – This is my new favorite area in the game. The harps provide semi-afk crafting training with the bonus reward of harmonic dust that can be used to upgrade your dragon pickaxe and hatchet. Next to the harp room is a big rock containing soft clay next to a potter’s wheel and furnace, making crafting dailies much more convenient. When the area first released, mining the maximum fifty crystal stone per day and turning it into flasks was a great money maker before the market flooded.
Clan Hefin (Agility and Prayer) – If there is one skill I hate training more than crafting, it’s agility, and this area is right up my alley. I haven’t touched the new agility course, but I should since it is the fastest course and offers various rewards for completing laps. Generally I only have enough patience for agility to grab the twenty thousand (forty if you have bonus exp) agility experience for participating in the daily mini-game. The prayer section is a money sink, for 130,000 gold you can buy and clean crystals for prayer experience. If you are really rich, you can clean thirty stones per hour, spending 3.9 million for 279,000 experience. A much better alternative to buying and grinding bones, if for convenience over price.
Clan Meilyr (Dungeoneering and Herblore) – I don’t have 95 dungeoneering so I can’t comment on just about anything in this section. Harmony moss is interesting, you buy seeds for 50 thousand, and then plant them on skill-specific posts. The moss grows by gaining experience in the related skill, and the final product can be used in potions or sold for a small profit. I love combination potions since I can finally ditch my super sets, and I like the idea of certain potions requiring you to find the recipe in dungeoneering. It offers an extra incentive to go dungeon diving.

2. Treasure Trail & Community Tools – 8/10

Treasure trails are RuneScape’s treasure hunting mini-game, scrolls found from monsters and through other activities that offer puzzles and clues that must be followed to find rewards. If you’re lucky, you can find insanely expensive equipment/cosmetics. Otherwise you are 99% of the community and find a few low level items for a half hour or so of hunting. I don’t have the logistics to figure out if the rewards are statistically dropping at a better rate, but I like the idea of introducing new and better stuff while removing less desirable rewards.

I’ve found that the majority of players fall into two categories for the player examine feature: those who haven’t touched it and are at the default settings or those who have set their account to private.

3. Heart of Stone Quest – 6/10

I didn’t enjoy this month’s quest. RuneScape’s quest system has been rough ever since Jagex brought the world into the sixth age and made it so each quest set before then is a flashback or a memory or something. Heart of Stone is supposed to be an introductory quest to the elder gods, a topic that if you’ve been keeping up with the quests will seem out of place since your character has marinated in the topic for years. Every once in a while Jagex will go back and bring in a quest to introduce players to a certain idea, throwing consistency into the wind when your character who has known about these topics for years suddenly has no idea what they are.

As an introductory quest, it feels like everyone else is doing the fun stuff. You show up in the quest after all of this interesting stuff happens, and the quest is over before the really interesting stuff will happen, and knowing Jagex the sequel is at least six months away, if not a full year or more.

The first and second batches for Prifddinas are going to keep myself, and many other players, busy for a long time to come. By giving a more tolerable way to train the most intolerable skills, hitting end-game content is looking a lot more realistic.

Only 50 Teams Completed Coil of Bahamut

Naoki Yoshida took some time out of the day to publish a new Letter from the Producer, discussing the upcoming fan festival in Tokyo, Japan, and last month’s implementation of patch 2.4. Released on October 28th, patch 2.4 introduced the Coil of Bahamut, finally bringing its related storyline to a conclusion. Less than a week later, on November 2nd, the first team successfully defeated Bahamut. Defeating Bahamut has proven to be a difficult task, however, as only fifty teams across all servers can say that they’ve succeeded.

While there’s more to FFXIV than just end-game raiding, to those players who practice vigorously every day, aspiring to be the world’s top players?as a gamer you have my utmost respect. I know how painstaking such an undertaking can be, and I thank you for taking such great interest in these challenging encounters. For those of you still making your way through, or preparing to step foot into the Final Coil?only about 50 teams have cleared the entirety of the Final Coil across all servers, so there’s no need to rush.

Final Fantasy’s fan festival in Tokyo will show off yet another glimpse at the MMO’s first expansion, Heavansward.

(Source: FFXIV)

Less Massive: Ubisoft Offers Unity Compensation

Assassin’s Creed Unity launched on November 11th, and since then has proven itself to be quite problematic for Ubisoft. The seventh major installment in the series of the same name launched with heavy technical issues, from performance problems to humorous graphical glitches (as seen above). Since the game launched, Ubisoft has launched at least two major patches with the third coming this week, and has been busy cleaning up the public relations end of dealing with dissatisfied customers.

As compensation, Ubisoft has discontinued the season pass, making the upcoming Dead Kings DLC free for everyone. Owners of the season pass or gold edition are eligible for one free Ubisoft game, including very recent releases like Far Cry 4 and The Crew. You can find more details at the link below.

(Source: Developer blog)

Perfect World Q3 2014 Finances

Perfect World International has released their third quarter finances for 2014, and the results are bound to be interesting. For the quarter, the developer/publisher reported a 5% increase in revenue to $158.7 million USD, although gross profit decreased slightly from the same time last quarter, and the company posted an operating loss of $3.8 million. Mr. Robert Xiao, Perfect World CEO, attributed revenue growth to the strong performance of DOTA2 which the company publishes in China, as well as Forsaken World and CrossGate Mobile. The blame for the quarterly losses, however, is being pointed at the U.S subsidiary.

In view of U.S. subsidiary’s recent performance and near-term business outlook that are below our expectations, we recognized acquisition-related impairments in this quarter. However, we are still confident in the long-term prospects of our U.S. subsidiary given its strong R&D and operational capabilities as well as promising pipeline.

Xiao expressed hope in the US subsidiary’s long term prospects, noting its “promising pipeline” as well as strong R&D and operational capabilities.

(Source: Perfect World Entertainment)

RuneScape Subscription Price Increase in 2015

Jagex has announced today that 2015 will see an increase in the price of RuneScape’s subscription. While the new price and date have not been finalized, current subscribers can rest easily knowing that your rate will be grandfathered in at the usual rule: As long as it doesn’t lapse for more than 14 days. Additionally, Premiere Club will reopen on December 1st, allowing players to lock in their rate by buying a full year in advance with extra rewards.

If you’re a member when the price rise happens, you’ll see no change. You’ll stay at your price as long as your active membership started before the date of the price rise. This applies for all previous grandfather rates, for those of you who’ve been subscribed for a long time.

We will update with more information when it becomes available. Check out Jagex’s Runefest presentation on 2015’s upcoming updates here.

(Source: RuneScape)

Valve Changes Trade Policy To Reduce Fraud

Valve has updated their policy on game trading in Steam, requiring a one month wait period before giftable games can be traded.

All new games purchased as a gift and placed in the purchaser’s inventory will be untradable for 30 days. The gift may still be gifted at any time. The only change is to trading.

The move is part of an ongoing effort to clamp down on steam key resellers using fraudulent credit cards to buy and quickly distribute keys. Games can still be gifted normally.

(Source: Steam)

Community: MMO Fallout Ethics Q&A

I’ll be honest with you folks, I am poorly prepared this week. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I’ve been snowed into my house with no internet since last Monday, I haven’t had the capability of doing anything other than a few news pieces on my barely passable Chromebook. So instead of trying to catch up on current happenings for this week’s Community article, I’d like to instead talk about the recently posted ethics policy here at MMO Fallout. I’d like to talk about why this website exists and why I got into this field, as well as answer a few questions that I seem to get pretty often.

So about myself. The concept for MMO Fallout was started out of my fascination with the idea of games shutting down. I found it amazing, the idea that the games that cost the most (box plus subscription) also had the caveat that they would eventually become unplayable should the developer whim it. While focusing on MMOs, I started MMO Fallout as something of my learning tool, a creative outlet to track how I’d progressed as a writer while going through college. In all honesty, I never expected this website to get off of the ground, coming from a website that had less than 10% of the current traffic.

The trust of my readers is what made MMO Fallout what it is today, and continues to be the driving force behind its expansion. I could never see myself throwing that trust away with shameless click bait, pandering, sensationalism, and outright lying.

So here are a few questions on ethics I’ve received over the past few weeks:

1. Have you ever accepted gifts from developers?

Yes, and I have immediately given them away through this website. To date, the only ones I can think of are the Line of Defense/Alganon comics and the SMITE god pack/gems. Anything I win through random giveaways on other websites, I enter as just a normal person using an email that (hopefully) can’t be traced back to MMO Fallout.

2. When you talk about products on Twitter, are they sponsored?

No. MMO Fallout doesn’t have any sponsors presently and never has. Whenever I talk about a product on Twitter, that’s just me sharing something that I enjoy as a consumer. If we ever are sponsored, it would be clearly disclosed, and only for something that I personally believe in.

3. Do you have a personal Twitter?

No, and if it wasn’t for MMO Fallout I wouldn’t have a Twitter account at all.

4. Are there any conflicts of interest that we should know about?

I used to be a GM for the MMO Xsyon. This does not affect my coverage of the game.

5. Do you receive advance copies of games?

I haven’t to date.

6. Has MMO Fallout ever run a sponsored article?

No, but I have had a lot of inquiries from online casinos.

7. How much does MMO Fallout make from advertising?

I don’t make enough in a week to buy a 25 cent gumball.

If you have any other questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.

Old School RuneScape Polls Integrity Issues

How do you tackle issues of player integrity in a game where everything is voted on? You poll it, of course! The latest poll to hit Old School RuneScape deals with the issue of player activity and whether or not Jagex should deal with some less scrupulous, even if not exactly evil, behavior.

Players are asked to vote on dealing with AFK-training, players trading wealth between games, trust staking, and untradeable items being retrieved for free when lost to PvP. Options available are to do nothing, to implement a fix based on further polling, or to fix without a poll. Currently the majority opinion (based on 21,000 votes) is that none of the issues need to be dealt with at all.

As for the previous poll, the new continent was approved with a whopping 90% yes. 86% of players approved ten new achievement diaries, with 80% voting for elite diaries. The rest of the polls did not pass the 75% threshold, including repeatable tasks, another attempt to lower the voting threshold from 75% to 70%, an abstain option from voting, the option to change your vote, and changing the minimum requirements to vote (but just barely).

(Source: Old School RuneScape)

[Editorial] A Moratorium On Pantheon Articles

Those of you who read this website know that I hate to kick a guy when he’s down, so let me just preface this by saying that I believe Brad McQuaid is a good person, that Pantheon is being developed with good intentions, and that the man behind it is overall a nice guy.

So without further ado, I won’t be writing any more news pieces on Pantheon crowd funding attempts, and hopefully you will all understand why.

Back when Pantheon first launched its post-Kickstarter private funding campaign, I just had to write up a piece on how unappealing the campaign looked to potential backers, not to mention how poor the rewards were. Visionary Realms wants $5 a month just to post on their forums and $15 a month to chat with the developers during live streams. Feedback, something most developers (especially those desperately seeking an audience) would accept for free. I also noted that these plans give you absolutely nothing when the game actually comes out, presuming it ever does, and suggested my own plan to get people involved in a way that gives them more reason to subscribe, fund the game, and hand out rewards that will make people want to pledge.

Well that idea wasn’t taken, and apparently the website funding isn’t going too well because the company has turned to yet another source of income: Patreon. Patreon, for those of you who have never heard of it, is a bit like Kickstarter except your pledge is recurring. Patreon has become a good source of income for people who want to cut the advertising and give their audience the chance to fund directly. For Pantheon, it is yet another sign that the audience might be there, but they aren’t exactly chomping at the bit.

I actually held off on this piece for a couple of days to see how the Patreon would go, and so far only three people have signed up to the tune of $17. This time the proposed rewards are even worse than the forum subscriptions. $20 a month minimum gets a message sent to you in chat, on a screenshot of Pantheon. For $100 you can have a screenshot sent of an NPC you name. For $200, well, you get your name at the end of the credits.

Furthermore, Visionary Realms wants one thousand dollars minimum just to release a monthly progress video, and judging by the reward tiers they fully expected that some people would throw in hundreds of dollars for the most menial of rewards, as opposed to simply heading over to the main website and donating there for game-related goodies.

There are a lot of problems with Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, but the primary one that I see is that Visionary Realms needs to stop treating it like it is already a hot commodity. This kind of attitude requires leverage, and at this point Visionary Realms doesn’t have any. The fact that even with its community, only three patrons have contributed ($17 total) should say everything about community enthusiasm.

MMOs need money, and money requires an active and loyal community. If you want money just to play ball, most people are going to go elsewhere, diminishing your active community and making your proposal look even worse to potential investors. When Pantheon does fade quietly into the dust, those same people who had been interested at one point will look back and say “boy I’m glad I didn’t pay anything into that.” Maybe by then Brad Mcquaid will look back and wonder how things would have changed if he had figured out how to bring in people rather than try to monetize them right at the door.

But then again, this is just my opinion.

Elite: Dangerous Refunding More Orders

Elite: Dangerous backers angered at the recent announcement that offline mode is being cut may be able to get a refund after all. Initially Frontier Developments announced that they would offer a refund providing the customer had not played the game at all. Now, judging by a post by David Braben, the scope may be opening up.

We initially declined some people’s request for refund as our records showed they have already played Elite: Dangerous online. After listening to many of the comments I received after my AMA here, we have since re-opened these requests and informed those people that we will be contacting them so that we can fully understand their individual situation before making a more informed decision.

(Source: Elite: Dangerous)

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It: