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[Community] Art Style As A Deal Breaker?

Is art style a deal breaker for you when it comes to MMOs? Or gaming in general? There is a full argument to be had on both sides on the whole graphics being more important than gameplay, one that generally revolves around the idea of low vs high resolution textures which isn’t really the topic of today’s discussion. Rather, I’m referring to players who wrote to me that they will not play The Missing Ink because they don’t like how the characters are two dimensional paper cutouts. Or other comments I’ve seen about games like Salem that have characters with tiny bodies and very large heads.

Regardless of what we like to tell ourselves and others, art style does have the capacity to make or break a game’s ability to immerse its players. I saw a lot of complaints with The Old Republic from players dissatisfied with the game’s more stylized game assets, while others found it charming and preferable to more realistic-looking graphics. On the other hand, players tend to be put off if your characters look like a slightly modified version of the training models that come with the copy of a 3D model rendering program. And then you have games where the graphics are almost too good, and you fall into the uncanny valley where they look just as disturbing.

We can go back and forth all day about how graphics are more important than gameplay, however it does play an important role in whether or not a person has an immersive experience. So what games have you refused to play because the graphics put you off from the start?

Defiance Updates Continues Plague Storyline

Defiance will be updated today to continue the plague storyline. A mysterious Irathi disease is quickly spreading, and the Ark Hunters have been tasked with tracking down a cure before it spreads too far. Players will take charge of finding the cure before it reaches the television town of Defiance, where June 17th’s episode will see the area in complete panic and distress over the oncoming storm. The update brings with it 8 new emergencies, a new game mode, 2 new pursuits, a data recorder, and a mission series that will run from June 10th to the 17th.

In the latest crossover event from Trion Worlds and Syfy, beginning on June 3rd, players will be challenged to eradicate the infection that is afflicting San Francisco’s residents and work through all new content to discover a cure in order to send it to the town of Defiance before the outbreak there gets any worse.

As with Defiance’s other television tie-in updates, today’s update is free of charge.

(Source: Defiance press release)

Face of Mankind's Successful Kickstarter

Face of Mankind is a game of player interaction, an open faction system and player-driven economy in a completely dynamic universe. Fall of the Dominion is a restructuring of Face of Mankind, transforming the MMO and bringing it into a new decade with player-created factions, improved combat capabilities, crafting, exploration, progression, and more. Nexeon Technologies launched the Kickstarter for Fall of the Dominion back in early May, and the project is hitting its final days with successful funding just out of reach. With three days to go, the team needs a little over five hundred dollars to complete the funding effort, which will likely be achieved by the time you read this.

Perhaps what is most impressive is the dedication of the community. With three hundred twelve backers donating forty nine thousand dollars, the average donation comes out to nearly one hundred sixty dollars per person, a figure swayed by the few pledges in the multiple thousands (including one six thousand dollar pledge). If you haven’t had a chance to check out Fall of the Dominion, I highly recommend checking out the Kickstarter video below.

(Source: Kickstarter)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nexeon/face-of-mankind-fall-of-the-dominion

Face of Mankind’s Successful Kickstarter

(Source: Kickstarter)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nexeon/face-of-mankind-fall-of-the-dominion

Side Quest Details Itemization

We love Side Quest here at MMO Fallout, and not just because it is refreshing to see an indie MMO that isn’t rehashing World of Warcraft with none of the appeal, isn’t a hardcore sandbox deathmatch arena filled with hackers and cheaters, and (somewhat important) isn’t run by a litigation-happy developer. No, Side Quest continues to be the gem in the corner that people don’t notice because it looks a bit like a potato chip. There is a lot of love that is going into this game, to create an experience that for once I could say I hadn’t really played before.

The latest developer diary dives into how itemization will work with Side Quest. Each dungeon holds two sets of armor for each character (class) that can be acquired both by playing solo or with other players. To encourage party play, of course, parties with multiple players have a better chance at grabbing those high-end items. Sets of armor all have “set bonuses,” along with exclusive random stat types like Crit strike or crit damage. Additionally, players can refine armor with gold and materials to improve their stats.

You can check out the dev diary at the link below. Check out MMO Fallout’s previous coverage of Side Quest here.

(Source: Side Quest)

Survarium Interview On Worlds Factory

Survarium is the upcoming spiritual sequel to the STALKER series, and our friends over at Worlds Factory managed to grab an exclusive interview with Vostok Games to ask a few questions. Survarium is a free to play online first person shooter set in a world following an ecological disaster. Players will need to team up if they hope to survive in the ruins of civilization. Survarium will be session based on segregated servers, but Vostok hopes that one day the game will be upgraded into a single seamless universe.

The good thing is that the online format of the project allows us to constantly upgrade and expand the game with new features and possibilities. So hopefully someday we can introduce a seamless Survarium playable universe as well.

You can read the entire interview at the link below, detailing game mechanics, server structure, and more.

(Source: Worlds Factory)

Eve Online and DUST514 Hit By DDoS Attack

CCP has taken down the Tranquility server cluster after a sustained denial of service attack early this morning GMT time. CCP’s task force was mobilized and suggested keeping the servers offline for further investigation. As of this writing, the Tranquility servers are still offline.

While we initially reopened EVE Online and DUST 514, we have since re-evaluated. With the highest sense of precaution we have taken Tranquility and associated websites back down for further investigation and an exhaustive scan of our entire infrastructure. We will update you more frequently via our Twitter feed (www.twitter.com/eveonline), however, an extended service interruption of several hours is expected as this process should not be rushed.

For up to the minute updates on Eve Online and DUST514’s server status, follow Eve Online on Facebook or Twitter.

Eve Online Could Be Receiving Steam Workshop Treatment

This Eve image is still current, right? I’m sure someone will tell me if it isn’t. Rejoice, netizens, for Eve Online is on Steam! What’s that? Eve Online has been for sale on Steam for longer than MMO Fallout has existed? Oh. Well, starting today (if today is May 30th), you will be able to purchase Eve Online subscriptions as well as PLEX through Steam itself, rather than through CCP’s billing system. The program to allow subscriptions directly through Steam was launched alongside Darkfall: Unholy Wars.

Enough about that, though. According to CCP, the developer is looking further into Steam integration, including the Community Hub and even Steam Workshop, a hub where players can create and submit their own custom content for various supported titles.

“Other aspects of Steam we are potentially very interested in are the Community Hub and Steam Workshop. Our community team has already started looking into the possibilities here, and we would love to hear your feedback on this as well.”

No clue on what players would be able to create via Workshop, and hopefully more details will be coming in the next few months. It is worth noting that the new subscription plan does not extend to existing accounts at the moment.

(Source: PC Games N)

Recent Structural Changes To MMO Fallout

Hello everyone,

You may or may not be aware of MMO Fallout’s recent downtime, stemming from a concentrated attempt at breaking into our WordPress database. The attack was unsuccessful, however it brought the website down for most of the day. In response, we are making some back end changes to beef up security. The most notable change on your end is that our URLs have been drastically altered down to a simple p=[numbers] formula. With that knowledge that doing so would result in killing MMO Fallout’s ranking with search engines, we made the decision because shorter URLs will benefit our security in the long run.

I like to talk about security here every once in a while because it gives our viewers a behind the scenes look at how vile and destructive the internet can be. Now consider that MMO Fallout has no financial incentive: We sell nothing so breaching our walls would accomplish absolutely nothing. We have no customers, and as such no customer databases to break into. We have no advertisers apart from that Google Ads bit you see at the top. And still, the attempts to break into this website continue to rise every month, almost doubling with each month’s passing. These are mostly random drive-by hackings by bots that have no one at the controls and have no idea who we are.

I’ll say that again: Most of our breach attempts are almost by happenstance. I was amazed when I checked our logs one month after I installed a new security apparatus and found that there were just short of seven thousand bad login attempts between mid-April and mid-May, and well over twenty thousand 404 intrusions (this apparently indicates that someone is phishing for holes). Over thirty one thousand events logged for that one month, on a website that is famous by almost nobody’s standard, and one which admittedly just got a lot less popular since a good 75% of our traffic is based in Google/Bing/Yahoo and that was just reset.

The URL change isn’t the only thing we’ve done, and was necessary because another system we put into place actively prevents us from using long URLs for our links (long links sink ships, I hear) but I really don’t want to go into what those systems are for the sake of security. As I said in a previous post, MMO Fallout may occasionally break while we test out new systems, and I want to thank all of you for sticking with us.

With the summer on us, I am continuing work on some higher quality entertainment to bring you all.

Daily Dose of Melodrama

I almost decided to hold this off until a Community Monday, but in a way it is almost too good to hold back. I found this post floating around several MMO forums, so stay with me if you have already read it. It is a letter by a gamer who refuses to play Darkfall because there is a subscription price, and he doesn’t want to send the message that subscription MMOs are “acceptable.” To add to the drama, the thread I found this post in was prefaced with “I read this post on another forum…and quite literally wanted to vomit.”

There might be more humor in taking the poster at their word, that the thought of someone with a different opinion made them quite literally nauseous.

The Deal Breaker

This is a message mostly towards the devs, but also a statement for my fellow gamers. I’ve seen bits of Darkfall for quite a few years now. I originally lost interest during my highschool years when everything else in life bogged down on me. Seeing it on steam, I was excited and even pondering whether or not to purchase it like I always wanted to. Then I saw the business model…

That death sentence for any mmo in 2013; $15 a month. Can you even fathom how utterly dissapointed I was? I’ve seen gameplay videos of this game; they look interesting! Fun! Good! I really, REALLY wanted to play this game soooo badly. $40? Sure! I don’t mind paying a good lump of cash for an mmo. Pay once to play forever mmos are by far my favorite; unfortunately that wasn’t the case here.

I still considered buying the game for awhile, but eventually came to the conclusion that in doing so, I was making a statement not just to the devs of this game, but all devs for any mmo, that subscription fees are acceptable. They’re not. Cash shops; expansion packs; things like that are more than welcomed. But blatant subscription fees are a thing of the past. An ugly archaic practice that can not compete with other business practices these days. Something I have to vote ‘no’ at with my wallet

It’s the deal breaker for me, and I’m sorry to see it happen to what looked like a really good game. I hope those of you playing this game are enjoying it thoroughly for that extra $15 a month. As for the rest of you considering whether or not to purchase this game, take into consideration what paying may mean for the rest of the gaming community. What will those added votes, your payments, do to influence the industry later on? Are you alright with the return of the subscription era? Do you wan’t to motivate developers and publishers to find compromise in better business models that don’t tax players? Think long and hard about this before you hit that ‘purchase’ button.

Best of wishes.

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