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Earthrise Is Back: SilentFuture Takes Over

Looks like we haven’t seen the last of Earthrise. SilentFuture announced today that they are taking over the MMO, giving the game a fresh coat of paint and a new skeletal structure, and gearing it up for launch late this year. Interestingly enough, Earthrise will no longer be a post-apocalyptic game, but rather set during the apocalypse itself. The game will release as the free to play format Masthead Studios wanted but did not have the money to achieve.

Wuppertal-based development studio SilentFuture has taken over the online science-fiction roll-paying game “Earthrise”, and is already working on an overhaul. Shut down by developer Masthead in February of 2012, the sandbox MMORPG is receiving a new background story from SilentFuture with the corresponding facelift as well as essential improvements in both gameplay and technology. The relaunch is planned for the fourth quarter of 2012.

More to come.

(Source: Earthrise Website)

Falling Out Returns. Reboot #1

Falling Out is back! And this time for good. New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, And Friday.

Kickstarters For You: Pathfinder Online

Pathfinder Online has been featured here at MMO Fallout several times, mostly to discuss the more hardcore routes that the themepark/sandbox hybrid would like to take. From old Everquest corpse runs to bounty systems and everything in between, Pathfinder is the dream of some well known names in the gaming and role playing businesses. From CEO Ryan Scott Dancey (Chief Marketing Officer at CCP Games) to Lisa Stevens (Vampire The Masquerade), Mark Kalmes (City of Heroes) and a guy named Richard Baker (3rd edition of some indie pen and paper game called Dungeons and Dragons), Pathfinder Online is bringing together all of the big names to hopefully put out the best MMO on the market.

However names don’t pay the bills, and allegedly neither do pictures of seven legged spiders. So Pathfinder Online is on Kickstarter (see: Title), and needs your dosh. The goal to meet is $50,000 by Friday, June 8th. You can head over to the Kickstarter page linked below for a trailer and much more information as to the game itself, including some cool rewards for pledging your lods of emone.

Remember: Kickstarter is a method for aspiring companies to get funding and start out on a closer relationship with their consumers. Your pledge will not be charged until the Kickstarter fund ends (June 8th in this case), and if the goal is not reached you will not be billed at all.

Kickstarter Page

Jagex Leak: Combat System Overhaul Icons

In case you don’t play RuneScape, earlier this month CEO Mark Gerhard responded to player criticism over the controversial Squeal of Fortune with the following message:

…it should be evident that we just gearing up for our most exciting and biggest content year ever……….. including a complete upgrade to the combat system later this summer!

The update may come sooner rather than later, if the above leaks via the RuneScape official wiki are to be believed. According to reports, the combat overhaul will bring RuneScape more in line with other MMOs, introducing a hot bar (which the above images would presumably fill) and balancing out the combat system to work as intended.

More information to come, hopefully soon.

World of Warcraft Subscriber Bleeding Stemmed: 10.2 Million

It seems like only yesterday that we were talking about the possible, perhaps, maybe imminent death of World of Warcraft at some point in the near or far foreseeable horizon of an unpredictable future just out of our gaze but right under our noses. Over the past few months, Blizzard has really revved up the promotion machine, offering free upgrades to Cataclysm and level 80 characters for returning, offering a free copy of Diablo III for promising Blizzard you would delay the divorce for another twelve months.

Well the promotions must be working, because World of Warcraft’s subscriber loss seems to have shorted out: From 10.3 million reported in November to 10.2 million reported in Blizzard’s latest report. You can check out the report at the link below for more information on Diablo III, Call of Duty, etc.

(Source: Blizzard Finances)

The Old Republic Dropped 400,000 Subscribers, 1.3 Million

I have good news and bad news. First the good news: Electronic Arts is reporting a net income of $76 million compared to this time last year where the publisher posted a loss of $276 million. Additionally, total revenue for the past fiscal year came to $4.14 billion, compared to $3.59 billion the year prior. On the kind-of-massively-but-not-really front, EA’s “Play4Free” games rake in around $2 million monthly.

Now the bad news: The Old Republic has dropped 24% in population since February, when Bioware revealed that the game carried 1.7 million subscribers. The Old Republic now boasts 1.3 million, which may not include the nearly forty countries that the game just launched in at the end of April.

In addition to the recent Legacy update, Bioware has the upcoming Allies update to hopefully bring in lapsed subscribers.

(Source: EA Finances)

Garry's Mod: When Your Community Is So Atrocious…

Back when I first started talking about alternatives to Lego Universe, a few people came up and recommended Garry’s Mod, a modification for Valve’s Source Engine which allows players to play a very wide variety of games from shooters to role playing to building and everything in between. Without hesitation, I said no. Absolutely not, I would not subject my greatest enemy to the blight that is the active Garry’s Mod roleplaying or building community.

AusFrag, an Australian web host, has announced that they will no longer be hosting Garry’s Mod servers due to the massive number of distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) associated with the game.

AusFrag is no longer supporting Garry’s Mod due to network abuse. We have been slapped with a massive bandwidth bill that could potentially close our doors if we continue to host this game. We have found Garry’s Mod servers are targeted almost daily in DDoS attacks which we do have protection to an extent but we are still billed for domestic packets the scrubber doesn’t filter.

From my time in the Garry’s Mod community, the DDoS attacks come for a variety of ridiculous and immature reasons: Jealousy from one server owner to another, servers are regularly attacked for running anti-cheat scripts or by banned griefers, and even Garry’s websites are attacked on a regular basis by cheat makers and their community, some of whom create and sell the very DDoS tools that the banned cheaters use.

Now, obviously DDoS attacks occur on other games, but this is the first time that I have personally seen a host drop support for a game entirely due to how widespread and common the issue was. It is a shame because Garry’s Mod still have amazingly talented people working on modifications and special servers, unfortunately the band of cheaters, pre-teen children and their DDoS scripts are ruining the experience for everyone.

I used to enjoy Garry’s Mod for the roleplaying servers, but stopped as each one fell one-by-one to DDoS attacks from “competing” (in the words of the other server owners) roleplay servers. Eventually I just didn’t have any time to find a good server and stopped playing altogether.

Garry’s Mod: When Your Community Is So Atrocious…

AusFrag is no longer supporting Garry’s Mod due to network abuse. We have been slapped with a massive bandwidth bill that could potentially close our doors if we continue to host this game. We have found Garry’s Mod servers are targeted almost daily in DDoS attacks which we do have protection to an extent but we are still billed for domestic packets the scrubber doesn’t filter.

[Roblox] Opening The Toybox Part 2: For Parents!

Check out part 3: Gallery

Part 1 of Opening The Toybox was all about Roblox as a game and a company. Hearing about subscription prices, user demographics, and whatnot is great but we shouldn’t lose sight of why MMO Fallout has looked into Roblox: Parents. With the exception of Lego Universe, I have often found (and I’m sure most parents will agree with me) that so called kid-friendly games are overflowing with less than savory players. Coming from the games I play on a regular basis, the community of Roblox is a light in the dark wilderness of the internet. All forms of the hateful, obscenity laden internet seem to die at the borders of this online game, giving way to nothing more than a pleasant community with kids who just want to play games and have a chat.

And Roblox does have a team of moderators and community managers to not only filter out the bad eggs, but to keep the community engaged. Ever since I mentioned the ability to buy Robux in part 1, I’ve had a few parents asking me to clarify on a particular issue of child safety: Buying Robux without parental consent. For its part, Roblox does not keep credit card numbers on file, instead using third-parties such as Paypal to handle processing as well as pre-paid cards in stores. In addition, there are daily and monthly spending maximums to reduce the amount of “friendly fraud” possible. As for building, Roblox allows a much more free-form building mode than Lego Universe, while keeping fairly close in tune with the feeling of building with Lego, Megablox, or similar toys. All players have their own personal area available to them for free, which they can fill to their heart’s content for their own personal enjoyment, or to create their own game for others to enjoy as well.

Roblox offers much of what parents would like to see in an online game: A pleasant community filled with similarly aged players, a staff that moderates and quickly removes any offending players/objects, and the kind of safety that prevents your kid from running off with the credit card and spending a few hundred on hats. Your kids will have fun, more fun for free than many other games offer, and you can rest assured that they are in a safe environment.

This is part 2 of a 3 part Roblox series. Next week for the final issue, I will take a look at some more interesting creations picked by both myself and the Roblox staff.

Earthrise MMO Is…Back? Countdown Appears On Website

During its short life on earth, Earthrise followed a well known and much feared trajectory of MMOs: Releasing far too early and never gaining a following. Of course it doesn’t help that the game comprised of little more than grinding combat and crafting, coupled with performance issues that drove away much of the user base. In December, Earthrise dropped its subscription fee for existing players with the promise of full free to play to come at a later date. After the servers went offline for a full month due to “maintenance,” Masthead Studios announced that the game would be coming to a close in February, citing lack of resources.

Well something is afoot over at the Earthrise website. A countdown has appeared leading up to 6pm Eastern on May 10th. Did Masthead Studios find an investor? I find the prospect likely.

(Source: Earthrise Website)