Angry Joe has an interview up with Zenimax discussing just about every aspect of The Elder Scrolls Online you can think of. I suggest watching the video, rolling in at fifteen minutes total. The interview is peppered with a fair amount of gameplay video, showing off combat including the reintroduction of first person mode, which players have been demanding for some time.
Subscription model and pricing are still in discussion, and the game is set for Spring 2014 release.
Playing 07Scape, I stumbled across a rather ingenious way to level up fletching (bowmaking) by buying logs from the general store, turning them into unfinished bows, and selling them back. You see, the genius of this plan is that the logs sell for less than the store will buy the unfinished bows. A paltry profit of four coins per bow, but it does mean that I can sit there and gain experience while sacrificing nothing in the process, so long as I can find a world where bots players are selling logs to the store. I joked over Twitter that I’d probably get banned if I were in, say, Guild Wars 2.
And then reality struck: There are actually games that would ban me for doing this. Whenever an mmo issues a mass ban for players finding a way to make money by playing NPC shop prices, I receive emails from other gamers asking how you could possibly think that such an action was within the rules. The answer is pretty simple: It is, at least elsewhere.
If an MMO doesn’t want players to be able to utilize shops in such a manner, that’s fine. That said, it doesn’t seem appropriate at all to ban players on the first offense with an attitude that they should have known all along that what they were doing wasn’t kosher. Instead of reaching for the banhammer, simply send the player a warning. Remove the profits they made, why not.
Such an activity isn’t as obvious as, say, using bot accounts or cheats. The topic of making a profit by buying from one NPC and selling to another is rarely mentioned in a game’s terms of service, instead it is hidden in the “don’t exploit stuff” clause. It isn’t as obvious to the player as the developer often thinks it is.
Playing 07Scape, I stumbled across a rather ingenious way to level up fletching (bowmaking) by buying logs from the general store, turning them into unfinished bows, and selling them back. You see, the genius of this plan is that the logs sell for less than the store will buy the unfinished bows. A paltry profit of four coins per bow, but it does mean that I can sit there and gain experience while sacrificing nothing in the process, so long as I can find a world where bots players are selling logs to the store. I joked over Twitter that I’d probably get banned if I were in, say, Guild Wars 2.
And then reality struck: There are actually games that would ban me for doing this. Whenever an mmo issues a mass ban for players finding a way to make money by playing NPC shop prices, I receive emails from other gamers asking how you could possibly think that such an action was within the rules. The answer is pretty simple: It is, at least elsewhere.
If an MMO doesn’t want players to be able to utilize shops in such a manner, that’s fine. That said, it doesn’t seem appropriate at all to ban players on the first offense with an attitude that they should have known all along that what they were doing wasn’t kosher. Instead of reaching for the banhammer, simply send the player a warning. Remove the profits they made, why not.
Such an activity isn’t as obvious as, say, using bot accounts or cheats. The topic of making a profit by buying from one NPC and selling to another is rarely mentioned in a game’s terms of service, instead it is hidden in the “don’t exploit stuff” clause. It isn’t as obvious to the player as the developer often thinks it is.
Aion’s massive 4.0 update, Dark Betrayal, launched earlier today and promptly broke everyone’s client. Due to an unforeseen issue, the new Aion launcher was taken offline for several hours of extended maintenance today when it became apparent that critical client files had gone missing from the download, resulting in players receiving a corrupt version incapable of downloading the rest of the patch. Technical oversight, or viral marketing for Dark Betrayal? Today’s update brings with it, among other changes, the introduction of two new classes to Aion: The Gunslinger and Songweaver. Players are encouraged to create new characters to test the new classes out.
Also part of the update includes additional incentives for players to join the Asmodian side. The Asmodian faction has had a historical deficiency in population on several servers, so in order to entice players to even the sides, characters on said faction are able to obtain rewards simply for leveling up on those servers. Characters on the servers Tiamat, Siel, and Israphel are the target of this campaign, however the update does not give retroactively to players who have already leveled past the rewards.
Perhaps now is a good time to bring back Aion’s test server?
(Source: Aion)
For some reason I will never understand, members of the free to play sandbox community have taken Everquest Next to be Sony Online Entertainment’s answer to games like Mortal Online and Darkfall: free for all deathmatching with full loot and hardcore gameplay. Apparently I wasn’t the only one wondering why Sony would make such a poor decision to force full loot pvp. On Twitter, someone asked Lead Game Designer Darrin McPherson if pvp would be forced on players, to which McPherson stated that “we avoid bad design decisions.”
Although his words were vague, likelihood points toward Everquest Next at least offering players a choice similar to the options between PvP and PvE servers on almost every other MMO on the market. Whether or not Sony will experiment with a hardcore server is up for grabs. Back in the day, Sony opened up Rallos Zek on the original Everquest, a pvp server with full loot. Sony has a habit of rolling out experimental rule servers with the Everquest brand and seeing how they perform, so a hardcore pvp Everquest Next is an absolute possibility.
In the vacuum of space, no one can hear you scream. Say what you want about Squeal of Fortune and Solomon’s Store, Jagex’s two cash shop ventures in RuneScape, but they have brought in oodles of money. 2012 has become Jagex’s biggest year to date, with income spiraling above the fifty million pound mark for the first time in the company’s history. Jagex is now the largest independent game studio in the UK with over five hundred employees, and has boasted an influx of users last year into RuneScape as well as the recent release of RuneScape 2007, a classic ruleset server.
2013 looks to be an even better year for a game that has reportedly been dying since 2005, depending on which player you ask.
(Source: Jagex press release)
In the vacuum of space, no one can hear you scream. Say what you want about Squeal of Fortune and Solomon’s Store, Jagex’s two cash shop ventures in RuneScape, but they have brought in oodles of money. 2012 has become Jagex’s biggest year to date, with income spiraling above the fifty million pound mark for the first time in the company’s history. Jagex is now the largest independent game studio in the UK with over five hundred employees, and has boasted an influx of users last year into RuneScape as well as the recent release of RuneScape 2007, a classic ruleset server.
2013 looks to be an even better year for a game that has reportedly been dying since 2005, depending on which player you ask.
(Source: Jagex press release)
WoW Insider is reporting that Blizzard’s Mobile Armory app has been hacked, with reports from players that their accounts were breached and used to make overpriced purchases as a method of laundering gold from the account. The reports included accounts with authenticators attached, and the breach appears to have involved both North American and European customers.
The report states that Blizzard GMs have apparently confirmed the breach, advising that players make use of WoW’s SMS authentication. Blizzard has taken down the mobile auction house for maintenance with no direct reference to the alleged breach.
(Source: WoW Insider)
Jagged Alliance Online recently launched on Steam, and suffice to say the guys over at Cliffhanger Productions are very happy with the results. In a press release sent out today, Cliffhanger Productions noted that in the three weeks since its launch, Jagged Alliance Online has skyrocketed into the top five most popular DLC products on Steam, pulling ahead of some of the more recently launched MMOs. As a result, the developer has been forced to increase server capacity in order to contain the mass of new players. Wolfgang Duhr, member of the Board of Directors of publisher bitComposer, had some words of praise:
“We are really happy about the rapid success of Jagged Alliance Online and would like to congratulate the Cliffhanger team on the successful relaunch.”
Cliffhanger Productions recently finished a Kickstarter for their second MMO in development, Shadowrun Online.
(Source: Cliffhanger Press Release)
Jagged Alliance Online recently launched on Steam, and suffice to say the guys over at Cliffhanger Productions are very happy with the results. In a press release sent out today, Cliffhanger Productions noted that in the three weeks since its launch, Jagged Alliance Online has skyrocketed into the top five most popular DLC products on Steam, pulling ahead of some of the more recently launched MMOs. As a result, the developer has been forced to increase server capacity in order to contain the mass of new players. Wolfgang Duhr, member of the Board of Directors of publisher bitComposer, had some words of praise:
“We are really happy about the rapid success of Jagged Alliance Online and would like to congratulate the Cliffhanger team on the successful relaunch.”
Cliffhanger Productions recently finished a Kickstarter for their second MMO in development, Shadowrun Online.
(Source: Cliffhanger Press Release)
MMO Fallout 