Author: Admin

Bethesda Wins Lawsuit, Interplay Fallout MMO Terminated


War. War never changes. And neither does litigation. Bethesda’s parent company Zenimax Studios announced today the results of the recent settlement between Bethesda and Interplay, over the rights of the Fallout MMO. In the settlement, Zenimax has come out on top, retaining all rights to the Fallout name and ensuring anything Interplay was working on is now worth zilch.

Under the terms of the settlement, the license granted to Interplay to develop the Fallout MMO is null and void, and all rights granted to Interplay to develop a Fallout MMO revert back to Bethesda, effective immediately. Interplay has no ongoing right to use the Fallout brand or any Fallout intellectual property for any game development. ZeniMax will pay Interplay $2 million as consideration in the settlement, each party will bear its own costs of the litigation, and Bethesda will continue to own all Fallout intellectual property rights.

In addition, Interplay will also lose the rights to publish Fallout 1 and 2 in 2013. You may remember that Interplay had sublicensed the Fallout brand to Masthead Studios (the Earthrise developers). In a separate filing, Bethesda sued Masthead (and settled on December 29th) for copyright infringement and assorted intellectual property violations, as it turns out Interplay was not allowed to sublicense without the approval of Bethesda, which they never received. In that case, no money has changed hands.

Is it early enough to declare Project V13 dead?

Falling Out #2: Healing Classes


Because we all know a guy like the Fighter.

Special thanks to Ryker from the Spriter’s Resource message board for the enlarged Final Fantasy sprites. Tune in for a new episode every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Earthrise Back Online


Attention Earthrise Players:

The Earthrise Servers are back on-line, all players are now able to sign in and play the latest build. At this time “Only Previously Registered Players” will have access to enter the game, we will announce when we are ready to start accepting new registrations for Earthrise.

After an extended period of downtime, Earthrise is back online. The servers have been down since a scheduled one week maintenance starting December 8th, but wound up staying down for the rest of December and into January. Thankfully the servers are back now. Full free to play has not launched yet, but previous players can get back in.

MMO Fallout: The Comic, Falling Out


The Old Republic is the worst launch ever.

This is the first episode of Falling Out, a topical comic conceived in a mind with neither writing or artistic skills. Look for new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

A Bounty Reward System Sounds Delightfully Prone To Abuse


I would like to use today to announce my recruitment for the official MMO Fallout guild presence in the upcoming sandbox MMO Dominus. Now as you all know, the traditional MMO Fallout guild presence involves little presence, organization, or the actual existence of a guild. Rather, we log in at random times, don’t have much interaction with one another, and occasionally say hello in regional chat. In this sense, MMO Fallout remains the top guild in every MMO, made up of the seventy odd percent who are not voluntarily in a guild. On the other hand, the MMO Fallout guild carries the greatest amount of bots and mule accounts known to man, but those aren’t acknowledged as real players.

Essentially the MMO Fallout Dominus guild is based on one premise: Farming bounties. Dominus recently announced the Bounty Hunter system, where a player can place bounties on another player’s head, and other players take up the bounty and attempt to kill said player. As a member of the Dominus MMO Fallout Bounty Hunter Farming Guild (or DMFBHFG for short), you must be skilled in at least one of the following:

  1. Singling out the rich: We need to know who the rich players are, as they have the most money to put on bounties.
  2. Harassing the rich: For this we need a strong fighter, someone who can take out a rich, likely well equipped person repeatedly. Trash talking and perhaps a degree in trolling or flaming is also a necessary skill.
  3. Must have no qualms about shooting unarmed coworkers in the face.

You see, the end-game here is for one member of the crew to target a rich player and continuously harass him until he places a bounty on your head. Following, another member of the guild (not affiliated through any tags) will take on the bounty and shoot you in the face. You will have ample time to store any valuables that might be lost upon death, and the earnings from the bounty will be split evenly between the hunter and the hunted.

As the limit for how many people can take a bounty is ten, the guild will preferably be composed of eleven members, ensuring that no one else is able to take on bounties for our members. Remember, this is all satire and the point is to discuss potential exploits in a bounty hunter system.

Video of the ____: Planetside 2 Shows Off Ground, Aerial Combat


The latest video from Planetside 2 comes from Sony’s publishing partner, The9. You may remember The9 as the Chinese publisher for World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Free Realms, and Hellgate London. Details in the video aside, you can see some glimpses of ground combat, aerial combat, and vehicle combat, and boy does it look good.

Planetside 2 is set for release hopefully this year.

Picture of the ____: The Old Republic /breakdown


Leave it up to the internet to find even more humor in an already humorous bug. In The Old Republic, players discovered that using the emote /getdown causes your enemies to be unable to target you properly. Bioware has stated that no one has been banned or warned for this, so dance to your heart’s content!

If you can’t read the signature, this was made by Nikolai Trashev, who you can find here and see his other work at Minicrit.com. Check it out, his art is well drawn and hilarious to boot.

Star Trek Online Early Access Begins January 5th


Set your sonic screwdriver to maximum extermination! Sorry, wrong franchise. As announced last year, Star Trek is Cryptic’s second title to make the transition to free to play, although the wait may feel like forever and a day. If only there was a way for Cryptic to allow past subscribers a chance to get into the game before the full launch and before all the new free players mob the server, so perhaps jaded ex-subscribers can get a decent look at how the game has evolved without server queues, crashes, and lag.

Well I have an answer to your oddly specific request: You can. Starting January 5th, Cryptic will reactivate all existing accounts to enjoy the splendor that is travel across the galaxy. You have to have purchased the game at some point, however. Trial players are not included in this offer.

You can check out the free to play matrix to see what will be available when the update goes live tomorrow.

(Source: Dev Blog)

(Free to play matrix)

Earthrise Servers Have Been Offline Since December 8th


What a poor time to schedule a “Why Aren’t You Playing” article.

Due to restructuring of our activities and change of the server location, the Earthrise servers will be going offline for 1 week between 8th of December and 16th of December. During that time you will not be able to login and play the game. All accounts will be compensated with added value to their free to play status when the game goes free to play in 2012.

It appears that when Masthead Studios took down Earthrise to migrate servers, they also decided to throw in some upgrades. As a result, the servers are still down with an estimated relaunch of “when it’s done.” Possibly January. Hopefully January.

At this point, as I had posted previously when progression has been made and it is decided to release the game in a more playable mode it will be posted. The negativity in the comments do not speed the process up at all. We do applogize for the delay but more effort is being made to full polish the build before any release.

Oops. In the meantime, is anyone up for a game of M2?

(Source: Earthrise Forums)

Bethesda/Interplay Lawsuit Settled, Nothing Specific Released


It’s funny how some banners look better in your mind before you put them on paper. Good news everyone! According to Duck and Cover, a premiere Fallout fan site, a settlement has been reached between Bethesda and Interplay over the ongoing lawsuit pertaining to Fallout Online (or Project V13).  For those in need of a jump to the brain, back in 2007 Interplay sold the Fallout franchise to Bethesda under the agreement that Interplay would develop the Fallout MMO, with the understanding that such a title would be in full development by April 2009. When that date came and went, allegedly with no real progress, Bethesda launched a lawsuit against Interplay for failing to meet their side of the bargain.

This recess was extended, and then they recessed for lunch. After the lunch recess, the court room was locked to everyone except attorneys and clients. When our source asked why this was the case, our source was told it was because they were working out a settlement. The following day, another source called the court reporter to ask what the next hearing schedule for the case was — this source was told there was no schedule as a settlement had been reached.

More information, according to Duck and Cover, is set to be released this month. Until then, let the speculation continue on the future of the vaporware MMO known as Project V13.

(Source: Duck and Cover)