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Thirty Thousand Man March: Chinese Aion Protest

aion2 — Oddly enough, those are all on one faction.

Over in China, Aion follows the suit of many other MMOs: A major bot problem. This isn’t necessarily due to NCsoft “not caring” about the gold farmers, but rather the enormous market compared to services in the West that brings in a substantial profit margin and results in a flood of input into a system that is already large enough to explode. It’s important to remember a major facet of gold farming: If there wasn’t any demand, there wouldn’t be any market for supply. But there will always be a demand, proportional to the size of the population, and legitimate players cannot be blamed for the actions of those who do buy from these services.

Players in China, however, decided that enough was enough, and staged a protest. MMOSITE estimates that there were thirty thousand people in attendance, in a protest that spanned numerous cities and lagged those areas to a slow crawl. Players created new toons adorned with names like “no bots” and “ban the bots.” Eventually, at least four servers buckled under the strain and had to be taken down for maintenance.

Of course, this inevitably received the attention of NCSoft, who attempted to disperse the crowd by spawning several Grand Chieftain Saendukals (boss), which the swarms of players quickly overtook.

You can read the entire story here: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2010-04-12/30000_aion_players_protest_bots_led_to_servers_down.shtml#ue_pic

Hopefully this sent a clear message to NCsoft to ramp up the anti-bot operations over in China. Here in North America/Europe, the bot problem isn’t nearly as large and NCsoft has brought in the G-Unit to bust gold farming. I’m not certain if there is a similar system in China.

Do You Community Like Healshot Communities?

There’s no doubt that clans make an MMO. While it is true that a title can flourish on players running around rag-tag, nothing says organized community like a healthy clan system. Clans can bring a number of their players from other games, and can liven up the environment in whatever title they inhabit to incite those who may be on the edge to join, or simply not quit.

Case in point: Alganon! Over on the Alganon boards, a clan by the name of Silent Warriors Gaming, publicized by Jon Norton, aka Healshot. Norton and his clan want to spread the word of Alganon, and he is willing to go on all number of MMO forums to let the call be heard, even if it is mostly copied and pasted from one website to the next. Healshot is looking to get Alganon mentioned on a few MMO podcasts, as well as the clan’s own podcast.

I’m not going to vouch for the community standing, or possible lack thereof, on Silent Warriors Gaming, but it’s good to see a clan taking interest in promoting a small title, even if that clan doesn’t have any posts on its own Alganon forums…

Stargate Resistance To Shut Down This January

When Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment was still filing bankruptcy while claiming that they never had the resources to complete Stargate Worlds, we were treated to Stargate Resistance, a lobby based shooter more akin to a four-classed Team Fortress than the MMO we were all anticipating. Stargate Resistance was supposed to be the cash cow to bring in some moolah for SGW. When Cheyenne routed the game over to Fresh Start Studios, I think many of us anticipated that the game would be shielded Cheyenne’s imminent full collapse. It wasn’t.

Earlier today, Stargate Resistance was fully pulled from all digital distribution websites, and is no longer for sale. A note on the Stargate website reads:

On November 16, 2010, the License Agreement between Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, Inc. and MGM Interactive, Inc. expired. As a result, Cheyenne will no longer be able to offer Stargate Resistance for sale to new customers. However, in the best interests of our customers, game play will be provided for a period of 60 days (until January 15, 2011) to customers who purchased Stargate Resistance prior to November 16, 2010. Look for more information as it becomes available.

The January shut down will mark 11 months as Stargate Resistance’s lifespan which, as user Night_Chrono puts it:

We beat APB so thats what matters at the end of the day.

More on the continuing Stargate saga as it appears.

Runescape: Security and Username Purging

: Bank it!

Here at MMO Fallout, we follow the intuitive systems that various companies use to keep your account secure. So far, the safest systems we’ve seen also happen to be the most cumbersome, such as the authenticator system used by Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft, while others are intuitive and useful, such as the on-screen keyboard that multiple MMOs have made use of.

On Runescape, however, Jagex has decided to take the fight to brute forcing, by disconnecting the login name from the character. In an update today, Jagex has implemented a system that will take effect for new accounts: When registering, players are now required to submit their email address which will be used as the player’s login rather than their toon’s username. As a person’s email address is not displayed in-game, it will be impossible to guess a person’s login information.

In other Runescape account related news, Jagex plans on freeing up millions of account names by implementing a system where names are freed up as certain prerequisites are met. If an account meets all of the below requirements:

It hasn’t been logged into in the last year
It hasn’t been used to purchase any membership
It has no RuneScape skills of level 30 or above

The name will be put up for anyone who wishes to take it. If a player loses their username, they will be required to choose a new one upon logging in.

More Runescape as it appears.

All Points Towards Spellborn: APB Will Take Five Years

I get something of a twinge in my leg when a company somewhere either says or does something that provokes a potential customer to say “well they just saved me the cash I would have wasted checking this out,” so naturally I carry a House-like limp at all times. So when my femur fractured in three locations last week, I had a good feeling that something was up and after four or five days of investigation I came across an interview between Eurogamer and K2 Networks (also known as GamersFirst), the new owners of All Points Bulletin, to be relaunched as APB: Reloaded next year.

Currently a team of 24 people are installing a free to play, microtransaction model into All Points Bulletin, where players will be able to lease weapons in order to get into the game quicker. The game that was once promised to players by defunct studio Realtime Worlds? That is going to take a lot longer to release, in fact you’ll likely be finished with Left 4 Dead 5 by the time the fully realized APB is out. According to owner Bjorn Book-Larsson;

“Oh no [six months isn’t long enough] – we think it’ll take four or five years,”

Four or five years, so by 2015 the full incarnation of All Points Bulletin should be out. Larsson then goes on to explain that K2 Networks plans on launching APB as close to the notorious unreleased patch as possible, with the addition of leased weaponry, and a few other updates. In other words, APB is going to relaunch small to test the market, and go from there.

“After that, presuming there’s an interest in the game, we expect this to be a multi-year development process where we continue updating the game.”

Key phrase being “presuming there’s an interest.” There is still no guarantee that K2 Networks won’t shut down APB again, gut the code like a fish, and make use of its extensive customization engine. K2 has committed two years to the game, hopefully enough time to bring back old players and flesh in some new players.

It’s a good thing APB: Reloaded is launching as a free to play title. I’d hate to think my subscription money was going towards a five year long beta.

Aion: Server Transfers, Security, and More…

Given that we are nearing the end of November, and Aion is still running to the best of our knowledge, the jingling of pipe bombs at my doorstep is a good indicator that the Aion producer Chris Hager has put out a new address to the community.

Earlier this year, Aion introduced the free slightly restricted server transfer service with the hopes of one day making such a service paid for all. Hager boasts that the team has transferred over 170,000 characters since July, and that the team has learned enough from the test service to put a full paid version in effect coming next year. After January 5th, 2011, when everyone has no doubt finished clustering into the transfer service while it is still free, server transfers will become paid. Of course there will be restrictions on certain factions transferring to certain servers where they may be unbalanced.

But what would an Aion article be without talking security? In the next week or so, Hager plans to address a new security system going live on December 1st, that will entail a secondary pin system. Security has been a major issue in Aion’s history, from NCsoft account problems to fansites getting hijacked, and everything in between. If this pin system is anything like several other games, it will likely involve the player inputting a pin via a mouse click screen. I can’t really see NCsoft using a dongle system like Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft.

Pirates of the Burning Sea: F2P Delayed

Bugs! Everyone hates them and yet none of us are willing to tell them that they aren’t paying rent and need to either shape up or ship out. Sure we all talk about bugs behind their back, but apparently it’s not enough as they are still with us. Especially considering that they break hearts, delay everything they touch, and generally annoy the hell out of us.

For Pirates of the Burning Sea players, the past few weeks have not been great, and the objective date of November 22nd (according to Flying Lab being the earliest possible date, legally, due to disclosure requirements) for the big transition is not being met, and there were a few issues with players being unable to transfer off of closed servers during the recent merger. In the case of the free to play launch, glitches are being blamed, with the developers noting that they would like to spend Thanksgiving with their families, not at work fixing bugs that would have appeared had they launched today.

The team is looking at the week after Thanksgiving for launch, which you can read more about here: http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77188

Target/Walmart Pulled Final Fantasy XIV From Shelves

As per my own rules, I try to keep the product sales relegated to digital distribution, mainly because considering retail giants would require me to either include stores from a number of countries, increasing the sources I have to regularly check, or just not include any at all. So, in the effort of fairness, I only include worldwide digital distributors (Direct2Drive, Steam, Impulse, etc). For those of you living in the US, which I know for sure includes some of you, you could find Final Fantasy XIV at Target on a price cut for $39.99. I almost purchased it at the store I work at, but the item has been out of stock for weeks.

While browsing Target.com, I went to see if the website had the same price cut, and found the above image. Although Final Fantasy XIV is available on the Target website, the chain is no longer stocking the item in stores. Now, I’m sure half of you will tell me it was due to poor sales, but (at least at my store) when they reduced the price by $10 the store ran out of stock in the matter of a couple of days.

After checking Target’s website, I went on to check Walmart.com, which also listed both Final Fantasy and its collector’s edition as “not sold in stores.” Other websites I checked including Gamestop and Best Buy all seemed to have the title in stores, so as far as large chains go this appears to be isolated to Target and WalMart, but no doubt two of the largest retail giants in America.

Either way, advertising and promotion is key in MMOs, the lack of which almost killed titles like Dungeons and Dragons Online (and sent Turbine launching a lawsuit against their publisher), and Square Enix just lost a big line of publicity with Final Fantasy XIV no longer on the shelves of two retail giants in a time where what they could really use is some players picking up the game.

More on Final Fantasy XIV as it appears.

My Battle.net Account Is Locked A Lot

I started playing World of Warcraft again several months ago (and quit again after playing for a month and a half), and unfortunately I had to contact support over the phone to get some assistance. I found that, even at off-peak hours, the support queue was full enough that it required me to call back for almost a half hour just to get into the line to wait to get support for account assistance. Looking on the forums, I saw a similar glut of people looking for assistance with stolen accounts, unauthorized authenticators, etc.

Then one day I stumbled on to my spam folder, and realized something shocking and somewhat confusing: I receive more Battle.Net account spam than I do Viagra (or V!aGrA as they call it) and other medication spam, and frankly I’m no longer surprised that as many people are having their accounts stolen.

Oddly enough, spammers use the same technique that is commonly found in free to play Asian grinders, where the spam message is sent to millions upon millions of people with the knowledge that the small amount of people stupid enough to say “you mean I can get off-brand Tylenol at half the price of my local pharmacy and double the effectiveness?” will more than make up for the fact that 99.9999% will either not see it or immediately delete it. Essentially, if you’re trying to get a quarter into a cup from ten paces, taking a handful of quarters and throwing them at the cup drastically increases your chances of at least one getting in, as opposed to tossing each quarter one by one.

So don’t feel too bad, Warcraft’ers. If ten thousand of you lose your account this year to this type of email, that’s still only .08% of the game’s population, around the same lines as the 99.9% no-response rate that regular spam receives.

Actually, whenever I write an article on World of Warcraft here, spam bots swarm like pathetic little parasites. “Oh hey, Blizzard is letting me know via third party blog that my battle.net account is locked, I’d better click on this link, it’s safe.”

Well FFXIV Is Free To Play For Now At Least

I know at least one person will eventually reply with “Um, Omali, it’s technically buy to play not free to play, as you’d still need to buy the client.” Final Fantasy XIV players are coming upon November 22nd, when early adopters will start hitting the end of their second free month of game time. Just this week, Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy XIV would receive yet another extension on their free time, giving a total of three free months (two if you don’t count the free month included with purchase).

As Casey Schreiner pointed out on the G4TV MMO Report this past week, as Square Enix has a patch coming that will hopefully fix a lot of the issues, but that patch isn’t set to come until early 2011, players are likely to see a few more free months added to their game time. Until then, Final Fantasy XIV is technically a free to play title. Remember, if you buy Final Fantasy XIV and register your character before…no, that was the 19th. Never mind.

More on Final Fantasy XIV as it shuffles lazily into our path.

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