Author: Admin

Darkfall's New Investors: InternetQ


Although inevitably someone will come and tell me otherwise, investors have historically had major impacts on MMO development and direction on a fundamental level. For instance, I would never make the direct claim that Insight Venture Partners told Jagex to reverse course and start including exclusive in-game items packaged in with certain vendor cards, but if you look at the history, the two match up. Now, you could also speculate good features coming from such new investors, including the reversal of the free trade restrictions, finally thrashing bots from the game, etc.

InternetQ has announced a €2.6 million investment in Aventurine, affected by a convertible bond set to mature in March 2015, but InternetQ can convert it into equity at any time. If this takes place within 7 months of the Darkfall 2.0 launch, InternetQ will own 40% of Aventurine, with the option to buy more shares to become majority share holder.

The investment is specifically for Darkfall 2.0, the launch of free to play Darkfall in Asia, and development of InternetQ’s AKAZOO network.

With the Darkfall’s sequel launch later this year, Aventurine will have the opportunity to become a successful franchise.

Hold the phone: Darkfall is set to become a franchise? Is InternetQ suggesting that Darkfall 1.0 will continue alongside Darkfall 2.0?

It will be interesting to see the effect InternetQ has on Darkfall’s development. At the risk of sounding pessimistic, the press release tells me that InternetQ doesn’t fully understand exactly what Darkfall 2.0, or for that matter an MMO, really is and may be under the impression that Darkfall 2.0 is a standalone sequel (unless they know something we don’t)

(Source: InternetQ release)

Stuck in TERA Queue? Enjoy Some Bonus Experience


I don’t know about you, but I hate queue lines, except in those rare moments when I find myself queuing in line for the gas station to open in the morning to buy a slushie. But enough of my small town stories. The point of my story is: I hate queue lines in video games, and if I’m going to be expected to sit around in my chair and leisurely consume carbonated beverages and watch television while I wait for a queue line to diminish, well by golly I better be compensated for it.

TERA has the right idea. I noticed while logging into the closed beta test tonight that the server was under around an 800+ person queue line, with a notice that if my time in line extended over ten minutes, I would be compensated with bonus XP. Ten minutes later, the notice changed to what you see above, and I was granted 13 minutes of bonus XP upon logging in.

See? Make it worth the wait.

Darkfall: Down The Path of Trammel


Whenever the topic turns to a free for all PvP MMO, I often bring up the subject of what I refer to as “Trammeling.” It is also known as “pulling an NGE,” and occurs when a developer makes dramatic changes to underlying fundamentals of a game in order to achieve what they believe will appeal to a broader range of gamers. And like New Game Enhancements, this runs the risk that the current population who are more likely to depart may not be fully replaced by the potential for newer, more casual customers. This is not the same as Ropering, the concept of alienating potential customers by monetizing everything up to each individual breath.

Today’s topic covers death in the upcoming Darkfall 2.0 relaunch. As of now, when a character hits zero health, they enter an incapacitated state during which another player can gank them, or they can wait out the timer or hit a button the bleed out and respawn at their bind stone.

When 2.0 launches, death will work slightly different. Rather than bleeding out, when the bar empties players will revive with minimum health. Aventurine hopes this will add another layer to larger scale PvP combat as downed players will need to be ganked to ensure that they are unable to get back up and start fighting. To balance this feature out in player vs environment situations, higher level monsters will be more likely to outright execute the player, rather than simply incapacitate them.

The changes don’t end at ganking, however. When ganked, a player will enter a state of limbo, during which they will be able to equip items from their bank box and then respawn near their tombstone. This is time based, will cost gold based on how much equipment you take, and is time based: If you don’t hit a specific button in time, you are still teleported back to your bind stone.

Community reaction to this news is naturally divided. More news to come as Aventurine releases more details.

(Source: Epic Blog)

T3Fun’s Services Appear To Be Offline


Update 2: Everything is back to normal, as far as I’m aware. Games are back online and so are the websites.

Update: The T3Fun website is operational, but there seems to beinconsistent access to their games. Still no announcement on the outage.

News coming in from the Google bots and Twitter feeders is that T3Fun (better known as Hanbitsoft) is experiencing unknown technical difficulties resulting in players unable to access their website and game services. My sources believe the outage began around nine hours ago, around the time that Hanbitsoft’s multiple games were announced to be back online following server maintenance.

There has been no comment by T3Fun yet. I will keep this post updated when an official comment is released.


T3Fun's Services Appear To Be Offline


Update 2: Everything is back to normal, as far as I’m aware. Games are back online and so are the websites.

Update: The T3Fun website is operational, but there seems to beinconsistent access to their games. Still no announcement on the outage.

News coming in from the Google bots and Twitter feeders is that T3Fun (better known as Hanbitsoft) is experiencing unknown technical difficulties resulting in players unable to access their website and game services. My sources believe the outage began around nine hours ago, around the time that Hanbitsoft’s multiple games were announced to be back online following server maintenance.

There has been no comment by T3Fun yet. I will keep this post updated when an official comment is released.


Final Fantasy XIV Server Mergers Coming


We’ve known about Final Fantasy XIV’s upcoming server mergers for a long time, since December when Square initially announced them. At the time, Naoki Yoshida commented that Square would be taking a look at the server populations after billing began and judge how many servers to merge afterward. He also stated at the time that the mergers were expected to be temporary, until FFXIV 2.0 launches in late 2012 and an anticipated surge in returning players necessitates for more servers.

On the Lodestone today, Square Enix is finally ready to discuss brass tacks. The original eighteen servers will be merged down to ten, on March 27th. Players will have much of the month in order to designate a destination server to move to, and worlds will be locked as they fill up in order to prevent overpopulation.

Name duplicate rules on characters and retainers are based on whoever has an active subscription as of March 26th, and then on which character is older. Linkshells will be deleted, as will friends/block lists.

(Source: Lodestone)

Earthrise Shutting Down Today For A Better Tomorrow


“We did our best to revive the game in 2011, but the time was not enough to keep up with the user requirements. There is a huge interest in high quality open world sandbox MMORPGs, unfortunately the big publishers do not show any interest in the genre. It is unfortunate that low budget companies like ours are trying to bring innovativeness in the already saturated MMO market. I hope that one day an independent studio will be able to release the long anticipated open world sandbox MMO, which everyone is talking about, but no one is making. We tried, but did not succeed. We would like to apologize to those who were disappointed from Earthrise and to thank everyone who supported us during the years.”

The MMO industry every year becomes a less friendly place for independent developers, thanks in part to the Rule of Saturation. Unlike Square Enix, who have the coffers and investors to pour millions of dollars and well over a year to bring Final Fantasy XIV to a state that could be called enjoyable, Masthead Studios does not have the same kind of funding and as such has announced today that Earthrise will close down.

In a post on the official forums, The Editor mentions that the developer was unable to find an investor, but that this may not be the end for Earthrise:

“We don’t abandon the Earthrise project completely. But it will be postponed for better times. We even thought to continue providing services for game for free, but it would still require investments. Instead of that we decided to focus on other projects, but it will be Ostiak, who can give additional information. Meanwhile we will keep the Earthrise forums and we will still use them. I hope one day I will put much better news there.”

Earthrise had a free to play version that partially launched in December for previous account holders, and then the servers went offline between December 8th and January 7th for server maintenance.

(source: Earthrise Forums)

Falling Out #12: TERA Testing


If it’s any consolation, Black Mage generally lasts about a week into launch before getting banned for bug exploitation.

New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

TERA: Not Wiping After Open Beta


There’s a phrase I once heard that goes along the lines of “in MMOs, the betas are like the infantile stage of release. They need to be wiped, regularly.” The folks at En Masse Entertainment, however, feel differently and will not be wiping characters when open beta transitions to head start. Rather, their mantra is:

The feeling of playing a character you know will be wiped — it sucks.

In fact, if you take the Frequently Asked Questions thread by its word, En Masse might have considered keeping characters over from the closed beta, except the developer is implementing a brand new starting experience between closed and open beta. The FAQ continues to state that En Masse wants players to enjoy the open beta enough to pre-order (if they hadn’t) and be able to continue on with their characters.

This is hardly a big deal, all things considered. Open beta lasts for three days (April 19-22) with almost a week following before the game heads into a three day head start, so seeing this as a fractured six day (estimated, figuring in the inevitable server queues and down time) just brings it in line with most other MMO’s launch schedules.

(Source: En Masse Forums)

Preview: 8Realms


Jagex has come a long way from being known solely for RuneScape. Over the past few years, the British developer has released their own mini-game portal, bought up a few iOS and browser properties, and published their first microtransaction based game, War of Legends. In the coming future, they have plans to release two fully fledged MMOs (Stellar Dawn and Transformers) and the topic of this article: 8Realms.

8Realms is an MMORTS that strives for accessibility. Developed on HTML5, the thought of finding a computer that doesn’t meet the minimum requirements might require installing the game on your toaster, but only if you have a model earlier than 2005. I did have stability issues attempting to play on my iPad, which Jagex has promised will be improved at some point in the future.

Players start out in ancient times with little more than a few burning buildings, a handful of workers, and enough provisions to just about prolong your citizen’s starvation. The multi-hour long tutorial covers anything and everything you might need to know about 8Realms, so by the time you make it to the Classical age, the world doesn’t seem that frightening. Over the course of leveling up, players will take their kingdom through eight ages, taking advantage of new technology and expanding their kingdom into the surrounding areas and beyond.

8Realms is somewhat simplified compared to other MMORTS titles you may have played. Rather than overwhelming the player with a labyrinth of menus and buttons, the most important information is easily accessible either directly on the HUD or one or two clicks away. Resources are easy to keep track of, having only four to manage (three for a good few hours entering the game) and indicators of stock, production rate, and maximum storage clearly visible on the HUD. The difficulty ramps up in an elegant curve as you learn new concepts and mechanics, progressing at a speed where the game doesn’t suddenly shower you with new difficulties, but never slows down as to become insultingly simple.

Combat is a numbers game of building up a massive force and raiding/capturing other territories for their delicious resource-filled centers. Inevitably you will compete against other players for resource positions, leading to rivalries and even the potential for alliances. Alas, an action game 8Realms is not.

The cash shop system in 8Realms is one of the more balanced and less invasive I’ve seen in the genre, and Jagex has committed to ensuring that the game doesn’t devolve into a pay-to-compete system. Most of the items available through the cash shop have negative aspects to consider alongside any benefits they may provide. None of the items last more than a few hours, and virtually any item that speeds up efficiency in one area will reduce efficiency in another, a balance that starts to take a toll when your timers start hitting the 10+ hour range.

Jagex states that 8Realms is best played in short spurts and casually, and I completely expected to play in such a fashion. What I did not expect heading into 8Realms was to actually enjoy the game. In my tenure writing on MMOs, I have played every Evony clone to stumble out of the internet drunk and fumbling for my wallet, and not only is 8Realms not that drunk, it might just be the first game in the genre I came out of thinking “you know, I actually enjoyed myself.”

8Realms doesn’t take itself too seriously as a game with its goofy and immature advertising and animated images. I find myself continuing to log in each day because I want to, rather than a feeling of obligation that has pushed me away from other similar titles. I’m also rather impressed that the total lack of any sound effects in 8Realms had no bearing on my enjoyment of the game once the initial awkwardness wore off.

Oh and Mod Thor is a jerk.