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Reminder: Age of Empires Online Shutting Down July 2014

Games For Windows Live may have been a hulking pile of poorly managed trash, but it was the pile of trash keeping Age of Empires Online…online. In case you missed it, earlier in August Microsoft accidentally updated the Age of Empires Online page to reveal that the service is shutting down on July 1st, 2014. The news wasn’t so surprising, after all the development on Age of Empires had ceased, the folks at Gas Powered Games no longer had anything to do with the game by this point, and the game could no longer sell currency or bring in new players due to the GFWL marketplace being shut down.

Games for Windows Live will be discontinued on July 1, 2014. Although it is available through Steam, Age of Empires Online requires features of the Games for Windows Live service. You can continue to enjoy all the features of Age of Empires Online as the service will remain 100% operational until July 1, 2014 when the server will shut down.

While a growing number of Games for Windows Live titles are already jumping ship and heading over to Steam, Age of Empires Online will be left behind to go down with the ship. This will leave Age of Empires Online with a server lifespan of nearly three years, and a development lifespan of sixteen months until development of new content ceased.

Square Enix Convenes Board To Stop Bad Final Fantasy Games

Siliconera is reporting that Square Enix has convened a special board of advisors to ensure that future Final Fantasy games meet the standard of quality that customers expect from the series. Where was this crew when Square Enix greenlit Final Fantasy: All The Bravest? No en la casa, apparently. The four man group is made up of Naoki Yoshida, whom many of you will recognize as the director whose leadership revived Final Fantasy XIV into what it is today, Final Fantasy XV co-director Hajime Tabata, Final Fantasy XIII director Motomu Toriyama, and Final Fantasy VI director Yoshinori Kitase.

Many of Square Enix’s other bigwigs are reportedly too busy working on their own projects to spare any time, but the inclusion of Toriyama and Tabata have already raised criticism from the community over their involvement in the games that spurred this board to be put together in the first place. Hopefully they are able to put the series back on the right path.

(Source: Siliconera)

Blizzard Wins $7 Million Judgement Against Bots

Blizzard has fired another shot across the nose of the bot community with a successful judgement against Ceiling Fan Software. The developer was embroiled in a lawsuit against the creator of Shadow Bot and Pocket Gnome for the past two years, until a judge awarded a judgement of seven million. As a result of the judgement, Ceiling Fan Software is required to cease the sale or distribution of any bot, hack, or cheat software for any of Blizzard’s games. They are not allowed to develop, patch, modify, update, or test said software, nor are they allowed to possess it at all. They may not invest, associate, or assist in the creation or updating of software that violates Blizzard’s ToS either, and this applies to any company that the defendants operate at any point in the future.

Ceiling Fan Software posted a notice of shutdown on their website.

After more than 2 years of legal battles with Blizzard Entertainment to both pursue our right to operate and our customer’s right to play WoW as they choose, we did not prevail in the suit and have been ordered by the United States District Court in California to cease our operations.

The judge ruled in favor of Blizzard under a law which prohibits “unlawful, unfair, or fraudulent business practices.”

(Source: Court Ruling)

MMOments: Character Relations

This is more of a question to the roleplayers out there. When you create alternate characters in an RPG, do you ever connect them together in some fashion or do you prefer to keep their stories separated? Have you ever connected characters across multiple games or genres? If you have, you already know how fun it can be to weave a narrative across multiple platforms, adding a bit of spice to your regular gameplay. It is one of those roleplaying mechanics that doesn’t rely on the developer doing anything, it is all up to your imagination.

Now I personally like to jump deep down the rabbit hole. My two characters in Champions Online and DC Universe are “inspired” by my archer from City of Heroes, which in my writing exists as a far off land in Champions Online with both existing as a comic book in DC Universe. The archer from City of Heroes exists in a parallel universe to my archer from Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind who, in turn, is the ancestor of my hero from Oblivion. My Final Fantasy XIV character is a reincarnation of the character from version 1.0 (not too creative there). My Guild Wars 2 characters are all unrelated but members of the same coalition, and my characters from Dungeons and Dragons Online and Neverwinter are similarly members of the same guild and keep in contact regarding their shared objectives.

Otherwise I have no opinion on the subject.

Video of the _____: Elder Scrolls Online Character Creator

I am not an adventurer, but I do play one in video games, and I’ve spent enough time in Cyrodil and Morrowind to know that not every hero is a buff, handsome man or Vogue model with large boobs. In fact, many of them have faces only a mother could love, and that’s pushing it. Luckily, as the character creator trailer for Elder Scrolls Online shows, I can once again reign terror on evil as my pot-bellied archer.

MMOrning Shots: Guild Wars 2Spooky

I have a deep hatred for mass-group bosses in MMOs. There isn’t anything appealing to me about a creature that requires at least thirty people beating on it for fifteen minutes straight, if not longer, and can flick its wrist and kill most of the support or DPS classes in one or two unavoidable hits. You don’t know what is going on because the clutter of people has caused an information overload in terms of flashing lights and swords swinging about, and the sheer number of people present cause the game to lag and FPS to drop, and soon you’re in a slideshow.

So mass-group bosses just aren’t my thing.

Star Vault Private Placement For Steam

Star Vault has announced the private placement of 2.6 million SEK in shares to allow for greater development and hone in on a launch on Steam. The issue includes ten million B-shares among several private investors at a price of .26 SEK per share to Markus Hodell, Magnus Uppsäll, William LW Nock and Joan Mir. According to the announcement, obtaining the capital required to bring Mortal Online to Steam was not possible with a simple rights issuance.

Henrik Nystrom commented on the placement, noting his enthusiasm that the revenue will spur development and prepare Mortal Online for a boost in traffic once it is available on Steam.

An example of major updates that many players looking forward to for months is a developed territory-system we call Dominion. This will give players many new play features where one can design their own cities and provide various services to other players. This is a long-sought systems that require large playing surfaces then it’s up to the players to be creative in designing their cities. We estimate that these areas will begin to be launched beginning in October 2013 and continue accelerating until the first quarter of 2014.

You can read the entire announcement at the link below.

(Source: Aktie Torget)

Raph Koster's MMORPG.com Q&A

Raph Koster performed a live forum Q&A on the MMORPG.com forums, answering questions about his views on the industry present and future, and boy were the questions interesting. When asked about an MMO mimicking pre-Trammel Ultima Online, Koster stated his disbelief that a modern Ultima Online could work, and that the “whole gankfest thing” is a relic of the past that simply doesn’t work anymore.

To me the essence of sandboxiness that was in UO and SWG is not about the PKing. It is about a simulated world, a functioning economy, a low power difference between high and low level players, and a system that doesn’t push you into combat as the only way to play the game (or even classes).

Koster also states his belief that MMOs haven’t moved much since the days of Metaplace, aside from the ever increasing budgets. He believes that while Grand Theft Auto hasn’t influenced the genre since GTA 3, Minecraft has proven far more influential. There is a lot more to read, and you can find the entire Q&A at the link below.

(Source: MMORPG.com)

Weapon Bonuses Make Sense In Defiance

Defiance is a game all about shooting guns, which means that making those guns actually fun to shoot is pretty integral. In Defiance, the random nature of weapons dropping with attributes didn’t always work out to the benefit of the user, such as a sniper rifle with melee bonuses, or single shot guns with increased rates of fire. To remedy this, Trion has released patch 1.105.

The new patch alters drops so that weapons will stack bonuses with each tier of rarity, making rare weapons always more powerful than their lower counterparts. It also ensures that weapons don’t have bonuses that are of no use to their play style.

Our previous system had some quirks that led to weapons receiving bonuses that didn’t always make the most sense: single-shot rocket launchers could have bonuses to their rate of fire and sniper rifles could provide chances to light enemies on fire (cool) with melee attacks (uncool). Weapons also sometimes had effects that weren’t satisfying (like a self-revive bonus. We’ve never heard someone exclaim “man, this bonus is great! I can’t wait to die now!”).

The patch applies this effect retroactively, making your current inventory all the more useful. Check out all of the changes at the link below.

(Source: Defiance)

Darkfall: Unholy Wars Short On Subscribers

Today’s Taco Tuesday discussion comes to us from the Darkfall: Unholy Wars forum where a rather interesting event has taken place. In a recent stream, Aventurine’s own Creative Director Claus Grovdal revealed some of his own hopes for future content. Grovdal wants to see a new class introduced, one that would deploy turrets and function as a support class much like engineer classes in other MMOs. He would also like to see repeatable prowess quests, introduce more quests into the game, and provide more loot for players, as well as improving the user interface, which Grovdal apparently does not like.

Grovdal also revealed that the game currently holds twenty thousand subscribers, which is quite a feat for a small developer. Unfortunately, he also notes that Aventurine wants thirty five thousand total to cover expenses, putting Darkfall well below its target. With Grovdal as the new creative director, hopefully he can put a plan into action and bring Aventurine up to its target subscription count.

(Source: Stream)

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