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World of Warcraft Exploring Microtransactions

Astute World of Warcraft players noticed that the 5.4 patch brought with it an interesting new addition to the public test realm. A few players on the forum noted the sudden appearance of an XP buff item, which appears to be sold through the same cash shop as the mounts and pets currently available. The item, an Enduring Elixer of Wisdom, grants 100% exp bonus with no mention of how long it lasts.

Community Manager Zarhym chimed in later in the thread, confirming the item and explaining that Blizzard is exploring microtransactions.

We are currently exploring the possibility of adding a way for players in certain regions to make purchases directly within the game. As part of this process, elements related to this will be appearing on the PTR. We’ll provide additional updates on our plans as development progresses.

Whether or not Blizzard decides to go ahead with fully implementing a cash shop will have to be seen.

(Source: World of Warcraft)

Guild Wars 2 Unlikely To See Expansions

Guild Wars 2 was originally envisioned to follow in the footsteps of Guild Wars: A buy to play game supported through microtransactions and through the sale of expansion packs. With production steadily increasing on the sequel’s ongoing living story, ArenaNet quickly changed its focus to providing world-changing content on a regular basis for its players. Nowadays, the Living Story has four teams rotating and keeping content churning out at a regular pace. As a result of the focus on the living story, the odds of an expansion are becoming slimmer according to Mark Zadorojny, Lead Content Designer at ArenaNet, talking to Eurogamer.

“It’s something that’s on the table but it’s not something we’re focused on, because what we want to do is – our idea here is that with Living World, we can do what expansions would have done but do it on a more regular basis.”

You can read the entirety of Eurogamer’s article down below, where ArenaNet assures us that the box sales and gem sales are more than enough to sustain Guild Wars 2.

(Source: Eurogamer)

Xbox One Locks Griefers In Personal Hell

Official Xbox Magazine has a new article out detailing new, notably harsher stance on griefing. With the new Xbox One coming out, Microsoft wants to encourage good behavior while putting a damper on players shouting down their mic or sending obscenity-laced messages filled with questions about one’s own sexuality, or the promiscuity of their mother, among other topics. Rather than outright banning the player, Microsoft is working on placing them in their own personal hell, filled with the other griefers and microphone screamers. Players of low reputation will find themselves matched up with others of similarly low reputation.

“There are industry best practices we’ve looked at, about giving kudos and props to people who behave well. We’ve learned from everything we’ve seen, and we’re trying to take it to the next level. So there’ll be very good things that happen to people that just play their games and are good participants. And you’ll start to see some effects if you continue to play bad or, or harass other people en masse. You’ll probably end up starting to play more with other people that are more similar to you.”

Now, Senior Product Manager Mike Lavin has refused to call this an Xbox Hell, noting that some players might enjoy playing with other trolls. There are still a lot of kinks to be worked out, specifics to flesh out, and cobwebs to be dusted. Hopefully this will put a damper on Xbox Live’s notoriously, shall we say, talkative community.

(Source: OXM)

RuneScape 3 Arrives July 22nd

RuneScape 3 is here! Well, almost, anyhow. In an announcement released today, Jagex has revealed that July 22nd is the official launch date of the next major upgrade to RuneScape. Dubbed RuneScape 3, the update brings the full release of the game’s HTML5 client, with improved performance, graphics (seen above), lighting, and more. RuneScape’s audio engine is also receiving a boost, allowing for high fidelity music written by BAFTA award winner James Hannigan. Players will also be able to utilize the new customizable interface, along with an upgraded camera, seasonal high scores, and more.

But it wouldn’t be a major RuneScape update without something going on with the story. Following the events of The World Wakes, the world of Gielinor is once again in danger. The god who once protected the world from intervention is now dead, and the other gods are returning to reclaim their land. Entrusted as the world’s guardians, the players must ultimately decide who may stay and who may leave. RuneScape 3 will introduce the Battle of Lumbridge, a weekly event where player choices will determine the fate of many. RuneScape 3 also ushers in the first of two skills planned for this year, Divination, which will arrive a few weeks after launch.

RuneScape’s HTML5 requires Google Chrome to run.

(Source: RuneScape)

Ubisoft Compromised, Change Your Passwords

This is one of those “if you’ve been affected then you likely already know about it” sort of articles. Those of you who have accounts with Ubisoft were no doubt delighted to see the following email in your inbox:

We recently found that one of our Web sites was exploited to gain unauthorized access to some of our online systems. We instantly took steps to close off this access, investigate the incident and begin restoring the integrity of any compromised systems. During this process, we learned that data had been illegally accessed from our account database, including user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords. Please note that no personal payment information is stored with Ubisoft, meaning your debit/credit card information was safe from this intrusion.

If you have an Ubisoft account, either through uPlay or their other services, and you haven’t received an email, make sure to check your spam folder. Some users are reporting that the email was shelved as a suspected phishing attempt by Gmail and a couple other services. You can find out more at the link below.

(Source: FAQ)

Funcom Director Letter Details TSW Anniversary

Boy, The Secret World, has it really been one year since you graced us with your launch? Despite some hardship along the way, our good friend Joel over at Funcom is proud of what the team has accomplished over the past year. July 3rd marks the beginning of the Guardians of Gaia event, for The Secret World’s first anniversary. The event will task players with defeating the Guardians, the second line of defense for the planet against the Filth. Why are players fighting the guardians of the planet? That depends on your faction, but it primarily has to do with the Guardians breaking the secrecy of The Secret World, that they consider human casualties as an acceptable collateral to stopping The Filth, and that they aren’t very good at their job.

The event will bring in bonuses, gifts, and discounts to all players. Additionally, anyone who has ever played a Funcom game will be able to access The Secret World for a week. The event will kick off Issue #7: A Dream To Kill, where players will uncover a dark force that threatens the entire world.

Check out the whole letter at the link below.

(Source: TSW Director Letter)

Jagex Remaking Transformers Universe Within Six Months?

Back when Jagex announced that Transformers Universe was taking a full 180 degree spin and transforming itself from a traditional MMO into a League of Legends style MOBA, I removed it from our listings. After all, we don’t cover MOBA titles here and a recent poll showed that the majority of you have no interest in us changing that policy. I’ve talked a lot in the past about how Jagex has massive problems with their non-RuneScape titles, with literally every in-house project either dead in the water (Funorb) or never seeing release (8Realms, MechScape, Stellar Dawn), with the exception of a Facebook racing game called Carnage Racer released last year.

Enter Transformers Online, an MMO announced in 2011 for a 2012 release date, delayed for over a year, and the subject of a 100% makeover from MMO to MOBA because Transformers do not fish or bake bread. Eurogamer is reporting today that Jagex has confirmed that the Transformers Universe team has been scaled back, noting that most of those affected were moved over to RuneScape with thirteen being let go from the company entirely. The game will not be “adversely affected” from these changes, and the move comes from a recent decision to stray away from in-house technology in favor of an established engine. The article notes concerns from employees within the company as to the sudden change over to unfamiliar technology, and pressure from Hasbro to get the game out by the end of the year.

So where do we stand now? With the change in direction, and now a sudden tech swap barely six months before the intended release, what could possibly go wrong? My earlier predictions still stand: Either Transformers Universe will launch in a rushed and unfinished state, or Jagex will attempt to delay it further and risk incurring the wrath of Hasbro.

(Source: Eurogamer)

Age of Conan Director Letter

Funcom has released Age of Conan’s Game Director Letter for June 2013, discussing the upcoming server mergers, achievements, and more. Foremost, the process to bring all of Age of Conan under one mega-server is still going according to plan, taken on in phases in order to reduce downtime as much as possible. The next phase of the operation is to merge the US and EU servers together, which should be completed by the end of the summer. As part of the merger, Funcom will be archiving characters that have been inactive for a very long time. Note that this is different from when Funcom simply deleted low level, inactive characters nearly three years ago. An archived character will be accessible, according to the post, it will simply take a bit longer to load them the first time as they are pulled from archive.

Also noted in the letter are upcoming stability fixes and dungeon revamps. In response to community feedback, Funcom is looking into adding achievements to Age of Conan and is soliciting suggestions on how they should be implemented.

(Source: Director Letter)

Breaking Down Mark Kern

I know what some of you are thinking: Oh no, someone made a comment disparaging World of Warcraft, time for Omali to take the stage and say something along the lines of “I’d like to see you hit twelve million customers worldwide.” Well shame on all of you for not knowing me as well as you think. You’d think I had a website or something where I give my opinion on matters relating to gaming. Anyway, let’s move on.

In the past I have had people ask what my stance on World of Warcraft’s effect on the MMORPG genre is an my answer is simple: It didn’t kill the genre, it widened the base. When people say that it hurt the genre, they conveniently leave out multiple oversights. First of all, WoW didn’t make the genre easy, what it said was “this market has potential.” Without World of Warcraft, few companies wanted to make MMOs. It was a genre that had high costs to develop, required heavy maintenance post-launch for any kind of payoff, and high risk because you had to convince gamers that the game was really worth a box price plus monthly subscription, or hourly subscription if you want to go back even earlier. All this for an audience which many developers were not convinced even existed outside of the two big named exceptions known as Everquest and Ultima Online.

I see the hardcore and more difficult MMOs like the grill restaurant in my old hometown. My hometown was so small and unknown that most stores pretty much had a monopoly on their specialty. One Italian restaurant, one hotel, one pharmacy, maybe two gas stations, one local grocery store, a bank, post office, etc. In the past decade, naturally once I moved out, the town has received a Tim Horton’s, a Dollar General, a Tops Markets, and a whole lot of other big name deals. But the old places, including the grill, are still there. They didn’t go anywhere, they just became a smaller percentage because the market grew. If you have a small handful of hardcore MMOs with niche followings, and a metric ton of casual games are suddenly thrown on top, you still have a handful of hardcore MMOs with niche audiences, they just seem smaller by comparison.

So like I said, World of Warcraft didn’t usher in the age of casual MMOs, it simply opened the floodgates and the ensuing competition resulted in a race to the bottom to appeal to the widest group possible. Prior, the MMOs were already working on competing with each other on toning down their products. Ultima Online introduced Trammel, a shard enforcing consensual PvP, in response to Everquest’s release, a full four years before World of Warcraft came on the scene.

Mark Kern is, however, completely on target with his comments on World of Warcraft ushering in an era of MMOs where the goal was pushing the players through the leveling process as quickly as possible to get them to end-game where the “real” content could start, mindlessly grinding raids. The level curve became faster and it drew in millions of players, but at the cost of diluting the achievement of making it to end-game. As a result, people blaze through content, get bored, and leave. To top it off, they do so ignoring the massive amount of work put into quest stories, scenery, art, and presentation. So what happens? The developer puts no effort into the scenery or quests, because why bother when the grand majority will not pay any attention to them?

Kern is correct on the tragedy that is the MMO contradiction, which we have pointed out here at MMO Fallout several times. The idea that the genre built on open worlds and exploration now funnels its players from one location to another with no rhyme or reason to explore for themselves is quite tragic in itself. That a genre built on being “massively multiplayer” spends so much of its time catering to players who will play solo for most of, if not all of their time, is contradictory if not a waste of resources creating the infrastructure.

So I don’t agree with Mark’s overall fear that his Frankenstein monster creation killed the MMO genre, but I do agree that its success encouraged a generation of copycats each vying for who could make their game as easy and accessible as possible. On the other hand, we probably wouldn’t have a lot of the great MMOs we do nowadays if World of Warcraft hadn’t proven that the genre was worth investing in.

You can find Mark’s entire post at the link below.

(Source: MMORPG.com)

Marvel Heroes Refunds Pre-Sale Buyers

Marvel Heroes has kicked off the Star Spangled Sale, beginning today (June 28th) and continuing all the way through to July 8th. For the duration of this sale, all heroes have had their prices discounted, as well as costumes, retcon devices, and more. Naturally there are those who are putting their arms up in frustration, having made a purchase from the store just a few days ago, unaware of the incoming price drop. To aid those players, Gazillion has put a note in the sale announcement that anyone who has purchased a hero or costume since June 25th will be able to submit a ticket and be refunded the difference in price. According to the announcement, the costume refund will only be eligible if the difference is more than 400Gs.

To claim your refund, you must contact Customer Support, who will verify your in-game purchase and then refund your account. To contact Customer Support, login to your profile on Marvel Heroes.com and click ‘Support’ and ‘Submit a Help Request’. Then use the dropdown menu to select ‘Holiday Sale Issues’ and send in your request. Please note, due to the high volume of expected refund requests, your refund may take up to a week to process. Refunds can only be granted for items that were purchased from the in-game store; heroes and costumes included as part of a pack are not eligible for refund.

Gazillion’s policy is similar to that found in department stores, and through Steam if you can get to customer service.

(Source: Marvel Heroes)

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