Author: Admin

Warhammer 40k MMO Officially Cancelled


If this announcement sounds familiar, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. This time the announcement is official, Warhammer: Dark Millennium Online has been cancelled. Well, somewhat. In a press release today, THQ announced that the Dark Millennium will no longer be an MMO, but will instead become a single player game. So the title is dropping the “Online” and will henceforth be known as Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium, and thus is no longer a topic of conversation here at MMO Fallout.

 THQ Inc. (NASDAQ:THQI) today announced that it has refocused Warhammer® 40,000®: Dark Millennium™ from a Massively Multiplayer Online game to an immersive single player and online multiplayer experience with robust digital content, and engaging community features. Further product details, platforms and release timing will be announced at a later date.

In addition, over 100 employees have been laid off from the struggling developer. We already know that Dark Millennium was being developed with help from the Space Marine title, so the new iteration is likely to become a spiritual sequel. Dark Millennium Online was already looking at trouble with THQ acknowledging a lack of funds to publish the game.

As a side note, in a past poll 23% of MMO Fallout viewers believed either Activision or Trion should publish Dark Millennium.

(Source: THQ press release)

Age of Empires Online: Steam, Price Cuts


This is what happens when you, like me, stop paying attention to an MMO for a while. I’ll admit, Age of Empires Online has been offline for a while in my watch list, but today’s announcement that Age of Empires Online was merely worth a tweet until I noticed one important factor: When did the civilization packs come down so far in price?

Instead of spending $20 for a civilization pack, you can now pick these up for $10, which are temporarily on sale on Steam for 50% off. Persian, Greek, and Egyptian packs can be bought for $5.

So check out Age of Empires Online on Steam.

Video of the ___: Anarchy Online New Engine


Anarchy Online’s engine upgrade has been a long time coming, and while there is still some time to wait before players can enjoy the decade old MMO with brand new digs, the team at Funcom has promised to release a series of videos detailing new environments and player design.

World of Darkness: Elected Prince Deals Perma-Death


Seeing as the game will employ EVE Online’s single-server system, being elected to the leader of a city is fairly important, and besides being a great accolade to put on a resume, the Prince of a City has the power to permanently kill players. Yes, that’s right: World of Darkness is going to have permadeath in one form or another, though it won’t be as widespread as it is in the tabletop game. Hardcore.

World of Darkness is looking to be the MMO of choice for people who enjoy the concept of Eve Online’s hardcore sandbox world controlled and dominated by player interaction, but aren’t exactly a fan of flying in space ships. Following in suit of Eve Online, World of Darkness is set to only feature one server, making control of territory and the walking blood containers that inhabit it all the more important.

At the recent Fanfest, CCP talked about how each city will have a prince elected to it by players, who will be able to have players permanently killed. Compared to the pen and paper World of Darkness, however, permadeath will be much less common and something of an extraordinary event. Still, if World of Darkness keeps on the path that it appears to be going down, CCP might just make exactly the hardcore MMO many of us have been looking for.

The Secret World is set to release between now and doomsday.

(Source: GamesRadar)

Guild Wars 2: Genius Method of Catching NDA Violators.


Click to enlarge

How do you stop someone from stealing your art and claiming it as their own? You watermark it, just enough so that it doesn’t get in the way of the actual image. How does a developer stop people from violating the non-disclosure agreement and posting screenshots of, say, Guild Wars 2 anonymously? Equal levels of watermarking.

Now, the above is not a screenshot from Guild Wars 2, as posting a screenshot of such feature from Guild Wars 2 even for proof of concept is what my lawyers refer to as “digging myself into a hole” that they will later “shoot and bury me in,” so instead I’m using an old April Fool’s teaser of the Guild Wars commando class. Click on the picture to enlarge it, and you can see my email address watermarked frequently enough that you couldn’t possibly crop a usable picture.

Obviously this doesn’t prevent people from posting their thoughts of the beta test without repercussion, but it does make it impossible to post screenshots without Arenanet taking action against the account.

Reminder to all closed beta players: you’re under NDA. Don’t risk breaking the NDA, you could permanently lose access to all ArenaNet games. ~RB2

Try Out The Old Republic Free, Again!


Last weekend, Bioware invited users who had never experience The Old Republic to show up and try the game for free for a weekend. Starting today and running through the 26th, Bioware wants to scoop up anyone who did not participate in last week’s trial. Players are able to take on the first fifteen levels of the first two planets for any class or race. Trial players will not be able to use general, trade, and PvP chat, and will be unable to use the send mail or use the Galactic Trade Network.

Check it out here. A reminder: This only extends to people who have never played The Old Republic before. Previous subscribers, friend pass users, and prior free weekend players are not included.

Eve Online Possibly Coming To Gaikai, Onlive


I have a feeling that we’re going to be seeing a lot more of Gaikai around here for the foreseeable future. Two weeks ago I talked about Turbine’s plan to bring a limited trial for Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online to Gaikai, an online streaming service where players would be able to play a very limited version without having to download a massive client. Following that news, CCP Chief Marketing Officer David Reid has talked to Eurogamer to discuss bringing Eve Online to Gaikai or Onlive in some form.

“We think it’s a really important way to not just play the core Eve Online gameplay – that you do play today principally on the PC and on the Mac – but also to add new sorts of experiences – when you think about Planetary Interaction in Eve Online right?”

It is important to note that whatever happens is still a very long way off, and we may not see anything come of this until 2013. MMO Fallout will be paying close attention for more details.

(Source: Eurogamer)

Vanguard Will Go Free To Play


The moment you have all been waiting for and already knew was coming, has come. Sony Online Entertainment has announced the upcoming free to play transition of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

Therefore, I’m happy to announce Vanguard will be the next in line of our AAA games to make this transition.  Since we’ve literally just begun on the work, I’m not ready to go into much detail.  However, I will say that you can expect something similar to EverQuest®, EverQuest® II and DC Universe™ Online when we roll-out our free-to-play offering this summer.  Once we have more information to share, you’ll be the first to know.

In addition, the announcement goes on to reveal that Vanguard will also be receiving regular content updates, and that there are some new and old faces returning to the development team.

(Source: Vanguard)

Guild Wars 2: Legit Real Money Trading, "Convenience Items" In Cash Shop


In Guild Wars 2 we have three currencies: gold, karma, and gems. Gold is the common in-game currency. Karma, which players earn in-game but cannot trade, is used for unique rewards. And gems are the currency that’s bought and used to purchase microtransactions.

Mike O’Brien has gone on Arenanet’s blog to post about Guild Wars 2’s upcoming microtransaction system. In the post, Mike notes that while the content in the shop has not been finalized, the framework is in place to support it. Mike went on to state that the policy with Guild Wars 2 will be that any player who buys the game should be able to fully enjoy it without having to continue paying, and that players should never be allowed to pay for an advantage, and that the cash shop will be used to buy cosmetic items, convenience items, and account services.

One addition that might surprise Guild Wars 2 players is the legitimized Real Money Trading system, ala PLEX in Eve Online:

We have a new player-driven market that allows players to trade gold for gems and gems for gold. If you want something, whether it’s an in-game item or a microtransaction, you ultimately have two ways to get it: you can play to earn gold or you can use money to buy gems. We think that’s important, because it lets more players participate on a level playing field, whether they use their free time or their disposable income to do it.

The cash-for-gems system will provide Arenanet with a substantial potential revenue increase, as the system has worked for Eve Online with PLEX and World of Warcraft with the recent pet addition.

We have always taken our responsibility to players seriously with the original Guild Wars, and we will continue to do so with Guild Wars 2. We believe the foundation I’ve described here is the right foundation for us to build upon, and we look forward to sharing more details with you in the future as we nail down our microtransaction content..

(Source: Guild Wars 2 blog)

Guild Wars 2: Legit Real Money Trading, “Convenience Items” In Cash Shop


In Guild Wars 2 we have three currencies: gold, karma, and gems. Gold is the common in-game currency. Karma, which players earn in-game but cannot trade, is used for unique rewards. And gems are the currency that’s bought and used to purchase microtransactions.

Mike O’Brien has gone on Arenanet’s blog to post about Guild Wars 2’s upcoming microtransaction system. In the post, Mike notes that while the content in the shop has not been finalized, the framework is in place to support it. Mike went on to state that the policy with Guild Wars 2 will be that any player who buys the game should be able to fully enjoy it without having to continue paying, and that players should never be allowed to pay for an advantage, and that the cash shop will be used to buy cosmetic items, convenience items, and account services.

One addition that might surprise Guild Wars 2 players is the legitimized Real Money Trading system, ala PLEX in Eve Online:

We have a new player-driven market that allows players to trade gold for gems and gems for gold. If you want something, whether it’s an in-game item or a microtransaction, you ultimately have two ways to get it: you can play to earn gold or you can use money to buy gems. We think that’s important, because it lets more players participate on a level playing field, whether they use their free time or their disposable income to do it.

The cash-for-gems system will provide Arenanet with a substantial potential revenue increase, as the system has worked for Eve Online with PLEX and World of Warcraft with the recent pet addition.

We have always taken our responsibility to players seriously with the original Guild Wars, and we will continue to do so with Guild Wars 2. We believe the foundation I’ve described here is the right foundation for us to build upon, and we look forward to sharing more details with you in the future as we nail down our microtransaction content..

(Source: Guild Wars 2 blog)