Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from World of Warcraft, more specifically the recently announced expansion Warlords of Draenor. Warlords of Draenor introduces a number of changes to the World of Warcraft, including player housing and a bump of the level cap to 100. Check it out when it releases next year.
Sony Online Entertainment has announced that a portion of all proceeds made this weekend in Planetside 2 will be donated to the Travis Manion Foundation to support veterans and their families. The Travis Manion Foundation honors the fallen by challenging the living and empowering veterans and survivors. You can read more about the Travis Manion Foundation at http://www.travismanion.org/
This Veteran’s Day weekend, N?ovember 9th – 1?1th, 10% of all in-game marketplace item sales in Planetside 2 will be donated to the Travis Manion foundation to support the nation’s veterans and families of Fallen Heroes.
(Source: Planetside 2 Email)
With Blizzard’s latest quarterly report showing another drop in subscribers for World of Warcraft, the internet is once again asking the age old question: Will the game go free to play? If you have to ask, the answer is no. Blizzard’s Production Director J Allen Brack stated to Eurogamer:
“We would have to rework the game pretty significantly in order to make it free-to-play. It’s not something we’re currently considering.”
That sounds familiar for some reason. Blizzard opened its convention with the announcement of the next expansion pack, Warlords of Draenor, where players will travel back in time to the Warcraft RTS era.
(Source: Eurogamer)
I once read an editorial about the hardcore gaming scene that discussed how players could stand just about any form of loss as long as it was fair and the reason could be pointed to in an understandable way. Being perpetually stuck at a specific point in a game because the boss is too hard or a level is too difficult is frustrating, it can even cause you to quit, but at the end of the day you know that it was your own abilities that stopped your progress. On the other side of this idea, you have games that cannot be completed due to hard stops out of bugs or incomplete content. S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadows of Chernobyl is a game that can come to a hard stop when you reach the final area (the Chernobyl power plant) only to realize that you not only will not survive the radiation without the highest level suit, but the game does not allow you to go back at this point and get it. If you don’t have a save file from before entering Chernobyl, you are SOL.
But even that isn’t as infuriating as not being able to progress due to a bug, and when it comes to MMOs, I can think of no other game in recent memory than Defiance that I have wound up quitting temporarily due to bugs preventing progress. I still have not completed the levels in Defiance’s Castithan DLC pack, released back in August, because it is impossible. If you haven’t played through the content, the missions involve a series of arenas where you rack up points over several waves of enemies. There are five waves per level, and at any time the game can suffer a fatal bug where the round begins but the timer disappears and so does your score, forcing you to quit or be killed and try again.
And then you try again only to have the system break again, so you can try again to have the system break again, in an almost never ending loop. Only by sheer luck did I manage to get through the first four arenas after multiple forced reboots over the course of the past two and a half months, and finally after having to restart the last arena three times, I managed to get through all of the rounds without anything breaking. I did ultimately complete the Castithan content pack, but had I not already purchased the season pass, I likely wouldn’t purchase any further DLC. The fact that such bugs are going unfixed after two months time is unacceptable, especially in a game that is working double time just to retain its players, as Defiance is.
Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.
Blizzard has kicked off Blizzcon with the announcement of the next expansion to World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor. The expansion will introduce the world of Draenor, as well as increase the level cap to 100 and allow players to instantly boost one character to 90. According to the trailer, players will also have to defend and upgrade their garrison, and characters are set to receive a dramatic graphical overhaul. According to a Q&A, Draenor will see the introduction of new stats to gear, as well as the removal of others (hit, expertise). You can read the entire FAQ at the link below.
(Source: Warords of Draenor FAQ)
Being a somewhat impatient person is rather incompatible with writing about the MMO genre, an industry where waiting is merely half the battle. Between games announced half a decade before their intended release and those launched in Korea, China, or Japan only to take a further few years to make it over to the west, it’s enough to pull your hair out over. It is especially aggravating when you figure games like Phantasy Star Online 2, who we recently found out may never release in the west at all. Then you have games like Hellgate: London, Lineage, and Dungeon Fighter Online who, despite shutting down in west, continued operation overseas.
So with that in mind, let’s look at the top five MMOs we can’t have, and by we I mean people in the Americas and Europe.
Despite what some of my readers may believe, I don’t talk about ArcheAge’s content updates to tease you, but I agree with the frustration that I see in many of these articles. ArcheAge, unlike its brothers and sisters, gets so much coverage from western outfits that you’d think the game had already been launched here. Every mention of patch notes and content updates is another reminder of the game’s continued delay and unclear future for westward expansion.
The “why we don’t have ArcheAge” coverage also instills a constant chilling reminder as to the recent business issues surrounding the game’s would-be western publisher, Trion Worlds, between several rounds of layoffs, server mergers, the poor reception of Defiance, allegations of neglecting overseas publishers leading to Rift being shut down in several foreign territories, and the continued difficulties surrounding End of Nations. ArcheAge will eventually release in the west…hopefully. Maybe.
I decided to stick Phantasy Star Online 2 as number four on this list because it is technically playable. While Phantasy Star Online 2 is likely to not hit western markets, due to an alleged lack of faith in the game’s ability to be profitable, many gamers have already signed on to the Japanese servers using an English patch. This process should be made easier when the game releases a localized version for English speaking Asian regions.
NCSoft has refused to censor Blade & Soul for the west, but if an uncensored MMO falls in the woods and no one is able to play it, does it make a sound? Blade & Soul has the backing of NCSoft, but the game has quickly dropped down in sales to the levels of Lineage II and “other” and is likely to continue dropping. If the game continues to do poorly, it is possible that the game could be shut down before it ever has the chance to be localized.
But NCSoft isn’t the kind of company that cuts an MMO loose just because it hit some hard times, right?
Lineage is particularly painful not just because the game continues to operate in its native Korea after being shut down in the west, but it is outperforming every single one of NCSoft’s other games. Lineage has been NCSoft’s #1 top selling game for the past year and has grown exponentially over the past several quarters. Despite its healthy population in Korea, however, the game was not performing well in America and Europe to continue supporting the localized version.
The good news at least is that while Lineage I is over aside from private servers, Lineage Eternal will probably release before the world ends.
Black Gold Online is likely to release before any of the other games on this list, but it is the most interesting concept so I decided to put it at number one. If you don’t know, Black Gold Online is by the creatively brilliant minds at Snail Games who brought us Age of Wushu, and carries one of the more interesting monetization models of recent titles. It is difficult to understand, and I am not entirely sure that I have explained it properly, but the game has no cash shop or subscription, but instead monetizes drops in some fashion.
So far all we have seen is this concept in theory, and it could go either way in terms of its reception. Assuming we ever get it.
Being a somewhat impatient person is rather incompatible with writing about the MMO genre, an industry where waiting is merely half the battle. Between games announced half a decade before their intended release and those launched in Korea, China, or Japan only to take a further few years to make it over to the west, it’s enough to pull your hair out over. It is especially aggravating when you figure games like Phantasy Star Online 2, who we recently found out may never release in the west at all. Then you have games like Hellgate: London, Lineage, and Dungeon Fighter Online who, despite shutting down in west, continued operation overseas.
So with that in mind, let’s look at the top five MMOs we can’t have, and by we I mean people in the Americas and Europe.
Despite what some of my readers may believe, I don’t talk about ArcheAge’s content updates to tease you, but I agree with the frustration that I see in many of these articles. ArcheAge, unlike its brothers and sisters, gets so much coverage from western outfits that you’d think the game had already been launched here. Every mention of patch notes and content updates is another reminder of the game’s continued delay and unclear future for westward expansion.
The “why we don’t have ArcheAge” coverage also instills a constant chilling reminder as to the recent business issues surrounding the game’s would-be western publisher, Trion Worlds, between several rounds of layoffs, server mergers, the poor reception of Defiance, allegations of neglecting overseas publishers leading to Rift being shut down in several foreign territories, and the continued difficulties surrounding End of Nations. ArcheAge will eventually release in the west…hopefully. Maybe.
I decided to stick Phantasy Star Online 2 as number four on this list because it is technically playable. While Phantasy Star Online 2 is likely to not hit western markets, due to an alleged lack of faith in the game’s ability to be profitable, many gamers have already signed on to the Japanese servers using an English patch. This process should be made easier when the game releases a localized version for English speaking Asian regions.
NCSoft has refused to censor Blade & Soul for the west, but if an uncensored MMO falls in the woods and no one is able to play it, does it make a sound? Blade & Soul has the backing of NCSoft, but the game has quickly dropped down in sales to the levels of Lineage II and “other” and is likely to continue dropping. If the game continues to do poorly, it is possible that the game could be shut down before it ever has the chance to be localized.
But NCSoft isn’t the kind of company that cuts an MMO loose just because it hit some hard times, right?
Lineage is particularly painful not just because the game continues to operate in its native Korea after being shut down in the west, but it is outperforming every single one of NCSoft’s other games. Lineage has been NCSoft’s #1 top selling game for the past year and has grown exponentially over the past several quarters. Despite its healthy population in Korea, however, the game was not performing well in America and Europe to continue supporting the localized version.
The good news at least is that while Lineage I is over aside from private servers, Lineage Eternal will probably release before the world ends.
Black Gold Online is likely to release before any of the other games on this list, but it is the most interesting concept so I decided to put it at number one. If you don’t know, Black Gold Online is by the creatively brilliant minds at Snail Games who brought us Age of Wushu, and carries one of the more interesting monetization models of recent titles. It is difficult to understand, and I am not entirely sure that I have explained it properly, but the game has no cash shop or subscription, but instead monetizes drops in some fashion.
So far all we have seen is this concept in theory, and it could go either way in terms of its reception. Assuming we ever get it.
Richard Garriot has released a video detailing Shroud of the Avatar’s progress six months in. The video details housing plots, placing items, crafting, and dungeon exploring. The crafting system is rather interesting, with the player creating the individual parts of the item before combining them at a smithing table for the final product. The player then sneaks into a prison via passages disguised as false walls and aids guards in bringing down an escaped Kobold. You’ll have to watch the video to see everything, which clocks in at under a half an hour.
Distributed Denial of Service Attacks are an ever-increasing problem over all sectors of the internet. What was once a rare occurrence has become nearly commonplace with many medium to large services. Most recently, the Extra Life charity event was brought down temporarily due to a denial of service attack. Google has launched Project Shield, a service to offer their own DDoS mitigation software to other websites.
In a news post released today, Jagex has revealed that RuneScape has come under heavy DDoS attacks over the past year, causing disruptions in service as well as heavy latency and disconnections for players. Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard posted an apology to players for the inconvenience caused by the attacks, laying the blame at the feet of gold farmers and bot makers. Gerhard stated that Jagex is boosting their infrastructure and is working with authorities to track down the source of the attacks.
I wanted to take this opportunity to assure you that we have, are and will continue to work tirelessly, preventing as many of these attacks from affecting your gameplay as we can. We have recently made a multi-million pound investment in our global IT infrastructure to deal with the continued attacks and are working with a number of service and security providers to eradicate the issue completely. We are also working closely with worldwide law enforcement agencies to bring the people responsible for these attacks to justice.
You can read the entire announcement at the link below.
(Source: RuneScape)
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us straight from the vault under the What Could Have Been category, and is indeed one of the first screenshots of Stargate Worlds ever released to the public. Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment put this out in 2006. For added pleasure, enjoy a snippet from the last press release in 2009 assuring us that the lights are indeed still on.
Our official response is that the lights here are still on and the development team is working hard every day to get this game built. Team members are in the office seven days a week to deliver Stargate Worlds. Brad Wright is the Stargate expert and a creative consultant on Stargate Worlds who advises us on the story; unfortunately we had not recently updated him on our progress or the impact from the current global economic crisis, and he was not fully aware of the continuing progress on our game.
MMO Fallout 