Author: Admin

Age of Wushu's Subscription Is Character-Bound


AgeofWushu

Those of you in the know are likely already aware that Age of Wushu is a free to play title featuring a cash shop and VIP subscription. What you may not have known, even if you have played Age of Wushu during its long beta period, is that the VIP subscription is bound to your character, not your account, as stated by Snail Game’s Community Moderator:

VIP will be character bound. If you have VIP currently on Blue Dragon, you will not have VIP on White Tiger.

Age of Wushu’s VIP service costs $10 per month, per character that you wish to attach it to, and offers perks including offline leveling, increased rewards and warehouse/stall space, and more. I’d like to think that the problem here is some combination of poor translation and perhaps a misunderstanding of the market. Taken for what it is, VIP is basically a package of time-based perks that you buy from the gold shop. It isn’t a traditional subscription in the sense that you enter your credit card details and the game bills you monthly, you have to manually top off your account with gold and purchase the package.

Owing that, Age of Wushu’s VIP being character bound isn’t really surprising or unprecedented, even if it doesn’t invalidate complaints by some players that the service should be account-wide. Perhaps the mistake is that the VIP package sounds too similar to the traditional subscription services we’ve come to expect from other MMOs, which explains why some players are surprised that the benefits are character-bound. Either way, the reaction I’ve seen to this has been pretty mixed, with players split pretty much down the middle in support/rejection.

Age of Wushu’s Subscription Is Character-Bound


AgeofWushu

Those of you in the know are likely already aware that Age of Wushu is a free to play title featuring a cash shop and VIP subscription. What you may not have known, even if you have played Age of Wushu during its long beta period, is that the VIP subscription is bound to your character, not your account, as stated by Snail Game’s Community Moderator:

VIP will be character bound. If you have VIP currently on Blue Dragon, you will not have VIP on White Tiger.

Age of Wushu’s VIP service costs $10 per month, per character that you wish to attach it to, and offers perks including offline leveling, increased rewards and warehouse/stall space, and more. I’d like to think that the problem here is some combination of poor translation and perhaps a misunderstanding of the market. Taken for what it is, VIP is basically a package of time-based perks that you buy from the gold shop. It isn’t a traditional subscription in the sense that you enter your credit card details and the game bills you monthly, you have to manually top off your account with gold and purchase the package.

Owing that, Age of Wushu’s VIP being character bound isn’t really surprising or unprecedented, even if it doesn’t invalidate complaints by some players that the service should be account-wide. Perhaps the mistake is that the VIP package sounds too similar to the traditional subscription services we’ve come to expect from other MMOs, which explains why some players are surprised that the benefits are character-bound. Either way, the reaction I’ve seen to this has been pretty mixed, with players split pretty much down the middle in support/rejection.

Paragon Studios Discusses Its Closure


coh

It’s been five months since City of Heroes shut down, and the more we hear about the events surrounding the closure of Paragon Studios, the less realistic that NCSoft’s explanation that they had “exhausted all options” seems to become. Gamasutra has published a very informative piece on the closing of Paragon Studios, detailing how Paragon Studios management attempted to buy out the studio, its employees, and its games. Due to a last minute roadblock, the deal fell through and we all know what happened next.

“It was very much a surprise. We all were really working as if things were going to work out. … It was business as usual right up until the last day.”
-Matt Miller, former lead designer at Paragon

You can read the rest of the three page article at the link below.

(Source: Gamasutra)

MMOrning Shots: Fighting Dungeons


DFO 2013-04-06 10-50-27-28

At level 11 in Dungeon Fighter Online as part of my traditional “race to the bottom” whenever an MMO shuts down, and I can’t help but notice a distinct lack of dungeons. And fighting. Why is it that 85% of the creatures you fight against don’t even bother fighting back? Does my character have bad body odor?

City of Steam Unveils The Wilderness


wildernessgroup

It feels like forever ago that Mechanist Games was running the last City of Steam closed beta weekend, so it’s easy to forget that the developer is still plugging away at its browser steampunk MMO, and boy do they have something cool to reveal. In the latest developer blog, we are given a look at a new feature coming to City of Steam: The wilderness. Those of you who played City of Steam during the beta weekends will be familiar with the basic structure of the game: Similar to games like Guild Wars, you have areas where players run around and trade, turn in quests, and buy and sell items, where there is no combat. Then you have the instanced areas where the action takes place.

So City of Steam really didn’t have any open world combat zones that you’d see in a traditional MMO, at least not until now. Mechanist has revealed the wilderness, an open zone where players can fight mobs, fight players, and not even be in a group.

Even though the basic concept of the wilderness is a giant open level with respawning mobs, there’s more to it. There are going to be public events in these areas, random rare mob spawns and some other things we’ll talk about soon.The areas being public also mean that you’ll sometimes be fighting for mobs; well, we might eventually have a way to settle your differences in there… We have some other ideas brewing that we may share at a later time.

City of Steam is still set for sometime after lunch, but before Duke Nukem For…no sorry that joke doesn’t work anymore.

(Source: City of Steam)

Jagged Alliance Online Coming To Steam


jagged1

Cliffhanger Productions has some good news. The latest update from the Shadowrun Online Kickstarter deals with introducing armor and what effect it will have on players in the upcoming MMO when it comes out (hopefully) later this year. On the other hand, the folks had some good news about Jagged Alliance Online, which not so long ago launched its 2.0 version: It is coming to Steam.

We are bringing our current released game Jagged Alliance Online to Steam and we have been getting in more artists and QA to help us work on SRO.

Jagged Alliance Online can currently be played via web browser through Gamigo’s game services.

(Source: Kickstarter)

MMOrning Shots: Dragon's Prophet


7Droan_is_a_town_full_of_workers_who_seek_their_fortune_in_the_nearby_mine

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes from Sony Online Entertainment and Runewaker, for the upcoming MMO Dragon’s Prophet. Players can capture, train, and ride their own dragons, and if this screenshot has anything to say, there are also towns and large pointless steering wheels? Imagine if that thing broke and fell off, you’d have a few dozen people dead! Dragon’s Prophet needs and equivalent of OSHA.

MMOrning Shots is a (somewhat) daily line of screenshots from various MMOs. Most are taken in-house or come to us in press releases, but if you would like your screenshot featured, send it over to contact[at]mmofallout[dot]com with the subject “MMorning Shots.”

MMOrning Shots: Dragon’s Prophet


7Droan_is_a_town_full_of_workers_who_seek_their_fortune_in_the_nearby_mine

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes from Sony Online Entertainment and Runewaker, for the upcoming MMO Dragon’s Prophet. Players can capture, train, and ride their own dragons, and if this screenshot has anything to say, there are also towns and large pointless steering wheels? Imagine if that thing broke and fell off, you’d have a few dozen people dead! Dragon’s Prophet needs and equivalent of OSHA.

MMOrning Shots is a (somewhat) daily line of screenshots from various MMOs. Most are taken in-house or come to us in press releases, but if you would like your screenshot featured, send it over to contact[at]mmofallout[dot]com with the subject “MMorning Shots.”

Greed Monger Is Back On UNITY


GM_Dragonwm1

Greed Monger is the upcoming sandbox MMO being created by Electric Crow Games and the subject of a very successful Kickstarter project just a few months ago. Originally set on the UNITY engine, at some point the folks at Electric Crow Games decided to switch over to the HERO engine, which many of you will recognize as the same engine used in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Well that didn’t last long, as the Easter announcement confirms that Greed Monger has indeed changed back to UNITY.

We had some issues that caused us to step away from Unity and head into the world of the Hero Engine. It was a major decision considering all that we had done already and without being 100% certain how much of our already existing assets could be migrated into Hero. Well, the truth is, we switched back to Unity not long after we switched to Hero. Aside from the issues of the revenue model, no cross-platform support and other things the player base has been expecting, the engine just wasn’t a fit for us.

You can follow the link below to see the full explanation as to why Greed Monger was moved to HERO and subsequently moved back.

(Source: Greed Monger)

Darkfall Unholy Wars Launches April 16th


Darkfall01

Darkfall is launching April 16th. Is the game ready for launch after five months of delays? That is not for me to say at the moment, considering the game is still under a nondisclosure agreement. Aventurine has announced today that they are going ahead and gearing up for launch in mid-April, bringing the relaunch of Darkfall to gamers homes all over the world. Unholy Wars brings with it major changes to the Darkfall we all knew and loved, including a brand new method of leveling, a new UI and improved graphics, as well as changing the way players choose their combat roles.

The Darkfall community who participated in the beta provided the development team with invaluable feedback a lot of which led to additions and changes to the game, and will lead to many more in the near future. We believe the game has benefited greatly through the Beta process, and we are excited about what lies ahead. We know we have a lot of work to do and we will never be satisfied as we strive to make Darkfall Unholy Wars the best PvP MMORPG experience.

You can read the full announcement below. Darkfall Unholy Wars has been available for some time for pre-order, with existing members receiving a discount on the initial purchase price.

(Source: Darkfall)