Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Marvel Heroes. I finally got my hands on Iron Man, which is great considering I have two extra costumes for him. The first (left to right) is the default armor, followed by the Shotgun Armor, and the Heartbreaker Amor costume. I believe you can still unlock the third by entering the code IM3HRTBREAKER on the Marvel Heroes account page.
Comic book reference every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Visionary Realms has announced that Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is back in full development mode. Development initially ceased following an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign, only to be revived under a team of volunteers last month. Brad McQuaid discusses in detail what the team is focusing on presently.
The Programmer’s efforts with the new network code are essential. Within 1-2 weeks we will be able to (internally) create accounts, create characters, and then log into one of the game’s zones. This requires the client to be able to connect to the servers, and the server code to be able to talk to the database. The good news is that we had some of this working before, so we can reference that.
Read the entire announcement at the link below.
(Source: Pantheon)
Defiance officially becomes free to play today. Patch 2.0, dubbed the NSFW patch, allows players to experience the entire Bay Area storyline for free, at least for PC gamers. Console gamers will have to wait until around July 15th to get their free gaming on. Free players will be limited to two character slots, two loadouts, a cap of 50 ark keys, and 35 inventory slots. The move also introduces the Paradis Patron subscription, which can be bought at the in-game store and includes store discounts and bonuses to loot, scrip, experience, and more.
You can find the entire list of updates here, as well as patch notes for today’s 2.0 update.
(Source: Defiance)
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Marvel Heroes and is one cool looking poster. Marvel Heroes 2015 is meant to showcase how far the game has come in the last year.
Do justice for MMOrning Shots every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Perfect World Entertainment has posted their most recent quarterly income, showing a strong growth in the first quarter of 2014 despite lowered promotional activity. Revenue for the international publisher amounted to $124 million, down 2.5% from the previous quarter but going along overall with a 44% annual growth. The mobile sector of Perfect World Entertainment grew from 10% of overall revenue to 15% last quarter, thanks in part to the 3D mobile RPG Fantasy of the Immortals.
The publisher is set to increase revenues thanks to their deal to publish Dota 2 and Neverwinter in China, both of which are expected to launch this year. Neverwinter is also expanding several titles in its library to more territories, including the Portuguese version of Neverwinter which launched in Brazil earlier this year. Revenue for the second quarter is expected to rise around five percent, thanks to upcoming launches in China.
(Source: PWE income report)
With Perpetuum Online now operating as a buy to play title, and the folks at Avatar Creations have posted a status report detailing just how things are getting along. Thanks to an upswing in users, five times the average player count, Perpetuum is receiving the capital investment that it so deserves. For starters, the server cluster is being upgraded and moved to a more suitable location: Amsterdam (your drug jokes here). Gamma islands are still closed down in preparation for a relaunch, along with multiple quality of life changes to the game’s UI and features.
I don’t have the freedom to tell you actual financial data, but it should be enough to say that after months (years?) of worrying about what to put on your plate tomorrow, it’s a liberating feeling to have that off of the list of things to worry about, and being able to just focus on making the game better.
Also in the works is the ability to buy and sell ingame items for Steam wallet funds. There is also a major rewrite of the engine in the works which should allow for higher resolution textures and a brand new interface. Check out the entire announcement below.
(Source: Perpetuum Online)
With players piling into Wildstar’s servers for early access, what more could a developer possibly ask for? A denial of service attack, apparently. Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney posted on the game’s Reddit to confirm that the servers were under attack and that it was being handled. Since then the servers have come back to normal.
I’ve heard from a few folks it’s a confirmed DDOS attack (real time updates, may change, fog of war, etc.). Partially handled. Servers taking in some players now, player counts rising. Ninjitsu continue.
Never underestimate the potential of anonymous basement dwellers with botnets.
(Source: Reddit)
Gazillion Entertainment has announced Marvel Heroes 2015, a culmination of a year’s worth of updates to the superhero MMO, set for launch on June 4th. Intended to highlight on how far the title has come since its launch, June’s updates also include new end-game raid content as well as alternate advancement, and a final showoff against the fire demon Surtur.
“We’ve come a very long way since our original launch a year ago, and the now imminent release of Marvel Heroes 2015 alongside our massive anniversary celebrations marks the beginning of something even better.”
-David Brevik
For more details, check out the trailer below.
(Source: Gazillion Entertainment press release)
Private servers are a very stingy subject in the gaming press. Many developers don’t like to acknowledge them and, honestly, there is at least one of my contacts who will never return my emails after this article just for the act of referencing their existence. MMO Fallout does not condone private servers, nor do we allow them to be advertised in our comments section. I like to think that private servers can be an important tool for developers to gauge their audience’s expectations, however. Private servers that exist simply to cheat, to bypass a subscription, or gain accelerated experience/items will always exist, and those don’t offer much of a lesson outside of that some gamers are unwilling to invest the time or money.
As more developers are realizing, however, there is a great opportunity in classic servers. Jagex has not only maintained the original RuneScape Classic, but launched a version of 2007 RuneScape that remains updated thanks solely to the majority vote of its community. Sony Online Entertainment has, for a long time now, dabbled in classic and progression servers for Everquest. Ragnarok Online launched a classic server back in 2012, and NCSoft recently announced a classic server for Lineage II, at least the Korean version.
There are a million legitimate reasons why a developer wouldn’t want to create their own classic servers. A classic server would need some form of monetization, where a cash shop would risk driving away the target audience and a subscription would put the server in competition with those same private servers that operate for free. The developer could, however, capitalize on this very issue. A dedicated developer could offer stability and quality where many classic servers are at risk of shutting down at moment’s notice, operate on inferior server infrastructure, and are partially hand-built by the operator due to the inaccessible nature of certain MMO mechanics (server side operations).
Other developers refuse to create a classic server on the grounds that doing so would compromise their “artistic vision,” a belief that MMOs change with time and that introducing a classic server would be counter to that vision, or an admission that they made the wrong choice somewhere down the line. Further developers cite an unwillingness to risk splitting the community in half.
Happily, it appears that more developers are recognizing the potential for classic servers or those with alternate rulesets.
Private servers are a very stingy subject in the gaming press. Many developers don’t like to acknowledge them and, honestly, there is at least one of my contacts who will never return my emails after this article just for the act of referencing their existence. MMO Fallout does not condone private servers, nor do we allow them to be advertised in our comments section. I like to think that private servers can be an important tool for developers to gauge their audience’s expectations, however. Private servers that exist simply to cheat, to bypass a subscription, or gain accelerated experience/items will always exist, and those don’t offer much of a lesson outside of that some gamers are unwilling to invest the time or money.
As more developers are realizing, however, there is a great opportunity in classic servers. Jagex has not only maintained the original RuneScape Classic, but launched a version of 2007 RuneScape that remains updated thanks solely to the majority vote of its community. Sony Online Entertainment has, for a long time now, dabbled in classic and progression servers for Everquest. Ragnarok Online launched a classic server back in 2012, and NCSoft recently announced a classic server for Lineage II, at least the Korean version.
There are a million legitimate reasons why a developer wouldn’t want to create their own classic servers. A classic server would need some form of monetization, where a cash shop would risk driving away the target audience and a subscription would put the server in competition with those same private servers that operate for free. The developer could, however, capitalize on this very issue. A dedicated developer could offer stability and quality where many classic servers are at risk of shutting down at moment’s notice, operate on inferior server infrastructure, and are partially hand-built by the operator due to the inaccessible nature of certain MMO mechanics (server side operations).
Other developers refuse to create a classic server on the grounds that doing so would compromise their “artistic vision,” a belief that MMOs change with time and that introducing a classic server would be counter to that vision, or an admission that they made the wrong choice somewhere down the line. Further developers cite an unwillingness to risk splitting the community in half.
Happily, it appears that more developers are recognizing the potential for classic servers or those with alternate rulesets.
MMO Fallout 