Author: Admin

SaveCOH Responds to NCSoft


Last week NCSoft published a press release to try and quiet the growing masses of angry City of Heroes players. Breaking their previous silence, NCSoft took to the stage to explain that attempts were made to sell the City of Heroes game, but we’re unsuccessful. And as you can see by the comments on our coverage alone, the community is having difficulty swallowing what NCSoft is trying to feed them.

In a press release by SaveCOH, the community presents several questions that they would like answered by NCSoft, including just what counts as “exhaustive efforts” in selling the game, and why potential buyers are reporting no response to their offers.

What attempts were made to sell the IP address, and how they were exhausted.
• Why a number of potential investors who came forward to try and buy the rights, did not receive a response of any kind from NC Soft.
• How NC exhausted all the option, given that the game is not due for closure until November 30, and the fact that there have only been only 32 business days since the announcement of the ‘sunset’ of the game.
• Why NC Soft did not consider combining servers, putting the game in maintenance mode and keeping it running without further developments or updates, or allowing people to create their own, private servers.
• They are calling on campaigners are also calling on NC Soft to publically name a price that they would be willing to accept for either Paragon Studios, or City of Heroes itself.
• And they want to know why a game that was running ‘well in the black’ and had seen an increase in players in the months leading up to the announcement is being closed down, while games such as Guild Wars which are running at a loss, are being kept alive.
• And why NC Soft failed to respond to an invitation from players to play the game with them, or a letter from best-selling author Mercedes Lackey to endorse NC Soft products, free of charge, for a period of five to ten years, for free, if they would be willing to work with players to keep the servers online.

Hopefully we will have more details in the near future. You can find the SaveCOH movement at http://www.cohtitan.com.

(Source: Press Release)

Taco Tuesday: If I Could Turn Back TIme


It is Tuesday and that can only mean one thing. I am either neglecting my patients for the delicious meat-stuffed corn tortillas down in the cafeteria. One of the greatest, or perhaps the greatest, fifty two days of the year. Taco Tuesday is where we get together to reminisce, throw together new ideas, or even think about how we would improve on those we’ve already made. Now if you hadn’t already figured since I make a weekly column about it: I love tacos. Soft shell, hard shell, with the fixings, steak, chicken, fish, venison, vegetarian, really it doesn’t matter. What I don’t like is when the chef prepares a delicious sauce made of rat poison and then decides to apply it to my food after I have already bought it. No refunds.

So for this week, I’d like to talk about various “events” that should have been thrown out while still just a thought in someone’s brain.

5. Planetside: Core Combat

It isn’t often that an expansion can actually damage the game it is attached to, but Core Combat managed to pull it off anyway. Core Combat introduced the idea of caverns, underground areas that could only be accessed by constantly active/inactive portals, where players would battle it out over ancient technology. By capturing nodes in the field below, players were then able to bring those modules up to the surface and gain access to equipment that placed them above their standard, non-alien tech using foe.

The caverns in Core Combat were a pain to get to, a pain to navigate through (a series of small floating bases connected by zip lines), all for a reward that wasn’t really worth the effort. And as a result, the caverns below each planet were about as populated as before the expansion went public: Zero.

4. Allods Online And Its Cash Shop

I remember years ago calling Allods Online as the Free To Play World of Warcraft, and for what its worth I still think the game had a shot at winning that title. Playing in the beta all those years back, Allods Online offered for the subscriptionless crowd exactly what World of Warcraft offered for the subscription crowd back in 2004, and we loved it. Allods Online had depth, the content was polished and the game looked great to boot. And the content promised by gPotato had us foaming at the mouths.

And then the cash shop was introduced. One mistake after another, from inflating prices 10x between Russia and North America/Europe to the whole system of “pay us when you die,” mechanic, the combined powers of Astrum Nival and gPotato managed to not just make poor decisions for the game’s cash shop, but both developers ganged up on their PR departments and made a note of beating them to a bloody pulp. In the case of the Fear of Death mechanic, Astrum Nival portrayed an astounding ability to learn absolutely nothing from its community, and replace the temporary debuff with a permanent debuff. Needless to say, Astrum Nival learned its lesson, but not before Allods Online had relinquished its title as the next World of Warcraft, and set fire to that massive pile of money that the community was just waiting to hand over.

So where do we find ourselves in 2012? Allods Online is a great game, now that many of the cash shop problems have been ironed out. Unfortunately, the game has burned so many bridges that its once-loyal fans aren’t coming back.

3. Jagex And The Great Fansite Lawsuit

I’ve always said Jagex has had an interesting relationship with its community. In the eleven years since RuneScape’s inception, much of that time has been one arm over the shoulder, the other holding a gun to the customer’s back. Sure, the Jagex of old appreciated fans creating websites, but if you mentioned one you could be permanently muted. The old Jagex that held Q&A’s with its community to fight off the idea that they were closed, but the Q&A could predictably hold more than half of the answers being “I can’t answer that now,” with nothing of substance stated. While Jagex has improved its community relations exponentially under Mark Gerhard, there are still old wounds yet to be closed.

But Jagex’s lowest point in PR has to be in 2006 when Tip.It published an article titled Biased Banning Raises Brows. The article sharply criticized Jagex’s banning policy, from vague bans for apparent advertising and inappropriate conduct, to banning families/friends playing on separate computers from the same house (and thus the same IP address), accusing them of being one person multi-boxing. The article also discussed the banning of players with names that would make sense in other languages, but might sound inappropriate when directly spoken in English, and Jagex’s policy of allowing accounts to exist for months, if not years, before banning them without warning and without the ability to change their names. On Tip.It, the article generated quite a bit of discussion with players offering their own stories of over-the-top permanent bans for minor offenses, or misunderstandings on Jagex’s part (banning one player for impersonating a moderator, the person in question simply expressing a desire to one day become a moderator).

So how did Jagex respond to the thread? With grace. Founder Andrew Gower showed up on the Tip.It forums to deny the claims in person. Oh and he threatened to sue the author for libel.

We are considering legal action against the author of this article on the basis of libel. It would be within the author of this articles interest to remove it and contact us immediately.

Now RuneScape was too big by 2006 and this event was too isolated to cause any PR damage, but I like to think Andrew Gower might regret having flown off the handle and seriously considered launching a frivolous lawsuit for the purpose of shutting up some random guy on the internet.

2. Monte Crisco Asks For Subscription

Of course I’m talking about Cities XL, a game some of you may not remember. Cities XL was a city building MMO by Monte Crisco, allowing players to choose between playing online or playing offline, with various perks and setbacks for either play mode. Players online were able to trade resources between cities, work together to build monuments, and generally accomplish what Sim City had not yet attempted. Then Monte Crisco added a subscription.

In order to play online, Cities XL required a subscription fee. The service itself was nowhere near worth the $10 a month Monte Crisco expected players to fork up for the ability to trade between cities, and lose their cities should they stop paying. Cities XL released during that period where multiple different types of products were attempting to launch with subscriptions attached, and like many of its fellow experiments, when it died it left a bankrupt developer. Monte Crisco went bankrupt and the sequel, Cities XL 2012, was developed by Focus Home Interactive.

1. Announcing MMOs Too Early

I bet you thought #1 would be about Star Wars Galaxies didn’t you? Well Galaxies is dead and that issue has been beaten to death. I want to talk about vaporware, in the sense that some MMOs are announced way too early, and the developer either attempts to hype it up all the way to release, or they go silent for the following decade and everyone assumes that they’ve died at the computer screen from malnourishment. Take Darkfall for instance. Darkfall was originally announced in 2001 and released in 2009. Funcom originally announced Anarchy Online’s new engine upgrade in 2007, and Half Life 2: Episode 3 was supposed to be finished five years ago.

Point being: It is important to have a game in a realistic state before you begin talking about it.

Marvel Heroes is Free: Completely Free


Ever since Marvel Heroes was announced as fully underway and with a realistic release date, Gazillion’s fans have been asking a very simple question: Will the business model follow Super Hero Squad Online? Gazillion’s child-oriented MMO starts the player out with a few characters unlocked, and requires gold (cash shop currency) to unlock further heroes as well as a membership subscription to unlock additional exclusive heroes. So will players be paying for heroes? Short answer: No. Long answer: Absolutely not. Gazillion President David Brevik wants everyone to know.

“We’re completely free. All the content is free and there are others things that you can buy to enhance your experience but they are completely optional. This isn’t a nickel and dime experience we’re creating.”

Marvel Heroes goes into closed beta soon. You can sign up at the website below.

(Source: Marvel Heroes)

World of Warcraft Exploit Leads To City Massacre


In some MMOs, the idea of players being able to engage in PvP combat outside of designated areas can be horrifying. Someone gaining the ability to engage in combat where they shouldn’t could go on a rampage and make use of the full loot systems in games like RuneScape, and make the lives of many players miserable before they are eventually banned. In MMOs like World of Warcraft, the threat is slightly less present. Death is little more than a time setback, the penalty paid in a moderate fee to repair armor.

And speaking of World of Warcraft, everyone is dying. In the streets, in the houses, but mostly in the main cities. For several hours yesterday, on multiple servers, a kill exploit ran rampant through the major cities of Azeroth, with low level characters mowing down players and NPCs without a second thought. The exploit was hotfixed by Blizzard, and the perpetrators have presumably been banned. Eurogamer tracked down the source of the exploit, and found quite an interesting justification for the action:

“We had to. The first account ban for using the kill hack was issued around 30 minutes before we started nuking cities. We did so because we knew it was going to be fixed,”

Now might be a good time to explain that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you are obligated to.

(Source: Eurogamer)

Earthrise Posts New HTML5 GUI


Let’s talk about the dead coming back to life. Some of you may recall a long time ago in a galaxy not so far away, that Earthrise shut down due to a lack of funds to fully bring the game over to a free to play platform. If you don’t remember, just re-read that last sentence until it sticks. Got it? Good. While Earthrise had a great PR department selling the game before it launched, the product that shipped barely made a dent in its pre-release hype. In fact, it barely made a dent in anything. After Earthrise released, it virtually vanished off of the face of the MMO press, showing up every now and then to let everyone know that the servers were barren and so were the coffers at Masthead Studios. Major problems from lag, disconnection issues, crashes to desktop, and the actual content of the game kept Earthrise from reaching its potential, and finally the game choked to death on a pretzel with the sound statement that one day, a generous necromancer known as SilentFuture would raise it from the dead.

In the original notice, Earthrise 2.0 was planned for a quarter four 2012 launch. It is probably safe to say that we’ll be looking at a 2013 launch, but just to keep the players satiated for the time being, the above screenshot was posted in an announcement that Earthrise will be using an HTML5 user interface, rather than Flash. Not necessarily the best update possible, but a positive sign that the folks at Silent Future haven’t fallen into the same black void of development that has devoured, say, the guys working on Earth Eternal’s reboot.

Then again, one could say that any news on Earthrise is good news at this point.

DUST514 Sutures Itself To Eve Online Slightly More


Good news everyone! As the DUST 514 beta continues trucking along its path towards release, CCP has added regular updates to bring the Playstation 3 shooter closer together with its older PC sci-fi MMO brother. With the release of Codex, the latest major update to the MMOFPS, players in both games will now find their experiences much tighter. Codex allows players to appoint directors in both games to keep watch on corporate activity. Corporate contracts allow Eve Online players to hire DUST 514 players to take over territory held by rival corporations. While not released with this update, CCP teases orbital strikes, allowing players in Eve to fire down on the planets below and affect the operations of their DUST counterparts.

The update also brings in a host of new content, from female avatars to new weapons and equipment, new maps and environments, and more. DUST is still in beta testing, and players can get in by registering and hoping for a key or buying the $20 mercenary pack. and obtaining the key that way.

(Source: DUST 514 Website)

Darkfall: Unholy Wars Releases Details, Wipe Confirmed


Darkfall: Unholy Wars launches at the end of November, and Aventurine is letting the details flow free. In a post on the official website, Tasos Flambouras starts off with the question many have been asking ever since Unholy Wars was still Darkfall 2010: Wipes. Short story, they are coming. Darkfall and Unholy Wars are two separate games, which presents the problem of compatibility between the two systems.

Assuming we forced things and made it possible, the DFUW characters would completely destroy the Darkfall Online characters, and I make this comparison to also give you a practical idea of the incompatibility.

Luckily, players won’t have to worry about the grind. According to the blog, players will have no problem becoming viable. Also, Darkfall Online (the current edition) will be shut down to make room for Unholy Wars. Anyone who already bought Darkfall will not have to purchase Unholy Wars. There are plans for Darkfall-related side projects, and characters from the current game are being kept for such a purpose.

(Source: Unholy Wars Website)

Kickstarter Updates: Old And New


1. SideQuest: Unfunded

If SideQuest does end up being funded successfully, I will gladly tip my hat and sell MMO Fallout to the highest bidder (minimum bid starts at $400,000), but with fifty hours left to go as of this publishing and only sixteen hundred collected of the ten thousand required, the prospects are looking bleak. If you haven’t been paying attention to previous Kickstarter articles here at MMO Fallout, SideQuest is an indie title in development by Fractal Entertainment as a free to play MMO. The game touts a fully immersive single player story as well as party based combat, player vs player, and a full collectible card game.

So why will SideQuest come away from Kickstarter with a low 15-20% of its goal? Perhaps it was the note that Fractal Entertainment doesn’t really need your money in order to make SideQuest a reality, the game is going to be completed no matter what the outcome of the Kickstarter funding. So rather than donate to ensure that the game sees the light of day, players are more likely to withhold their cash, regardless of the rewards offered, and wait and see if SideQuest is worth paying into in the first place.

2. Project: Gorgon

Finally an MMO for people who don’t want their hand held. Project: Gorgon aims for the old school MMO crowd, for players who desire a game that rewards exploration, an MMO that requires you to think before you act, and more importantly: An MMO with a crafting system. So Project: Gorgon aims to bring back the best of the old school (including being able to drop items on the ground and have them actually appear, apparently) with the new fangled contraptions like questing and guild mechanics. Players will have to deal with permanent, game altering changes, including being bitten by a werewolf and having to choose between rushing to find a cure or allowing their new found powers to consume them.

Oh and you can change into a cow, and provide your milk to other players. No, I’m not joking.

Fallout MMO Back On The Table? Zenimax Working On F2P MMO


It’s been a while since we’ve had an opportunity to talk about the long dead Project V13, since January when Bethesda won its lawsuit against Interplay and subsequently terminated the Fallout MMO. Meanwhile, Zenimax Studios continues its long development of The Elder Scrolls Online, an MMO adaptation that has left fans curious and the media rather underwhelmed. But with the lawsuit now over and done with, players want to know: Will we ever see a Fallout MMO?

The answer is possibly. Rich Vogel, formerly of Bioware, has joined Zenimax Studios under a brand new development team, Battlecry Studios. So far Zenimax has only commented that the team is working on an unannounced project, however job listings at Battlecry are looking to fill the position of monetisation designer. The MD’s jobs entails designing an economy around the unannounced game, managing prices of virtual goods and maintaining a balance between the free and paid currencies.

Now remember that there is no specific mention of Fallout anywhere, but with The Elder Scrolls already undergoing the MMO treatment and Bethesda’s determination to grab the MMO rights back from Interplay, it stands to reason that this could be an online Fallout title.

Global Agenda Was Not Financially Successful, GA2 In The Works


It looks like Darkfall won’t be the only MMO getting a revamp in the next year or so. In a post on the Hi-Rez forums, Shadow Control discussed the current iteration of Global Agenda, as well as the future of the brand. In the post, he reveals that while Global Agenda was not a financial success, the team learned a lot about the game, lessons that eventually made their way into Tribes: Ascend. But as he points out, Tribes is more of a niche-oriented brand, geared towards a far more hardcore audience than Global Agenda.

The majority of the responses was to release a new version of GA ‘GA2’ with a PvP focus and make that as good as possible. So we are currently in the process of making that game. We will use a lot of the GA assets, some of the maps, and some of the game modes. We plan to add new maps, game modes, class weapons, and build it all on our newest platform.

Hi-Rez hopes to have Global Agenda 2 in beta sometime mid-2013. Whether or not Global Agenda will remain operational after the launch of its sequel will have to be seen. Hi-Rez is also working on its MOBA title, SMITE, as well as continued support for its first person shooter, Tribes: Ascend.

(Source: Global Agenda)