Author: Admin

More On LOTRO Europe


Sorry Europe.

“Hi folks,

Following our announcement on Wednesday regarding the delay of Free-to-Play in Europe, we can now provide you with a further update as to its status. It’s not good news I’m afraid. We are currently anticipating a delay of more than a week, potentially launching around the end of the month, and are still not in a position where we are able to confirm an exact date.

As you know, we were tracking a launch date of 10th September and up until recently thought this was still achievable; however, due to some major obstacles this date is simply not possible. Many of you have asked for a detailed explanation as to why this has come to be and why there wasn’t very much notice of the delay. Regarding the implementation challenges we talked about, the good news is that our Store and new servers are just about ready to roll, barring some final, live stress testing that needs to be performed.

We understand this is disappointing for you, more so because of our lack of communication in the earlier part of the week coupled with the last minute bad news. As the situation was changing literally from hour to hour, we weren’t in a position to tell you anything with any stability to it.

As we work to bring Free-to-Play to launch here, all eligible players will still continue to accrue loyalty rewards as per the rewards table on the website. We’re also laying on a bunch of your favourite live events on all servers starting next week and we’re introducing a community competition to allow you to take out your frustration on us and win some great prizes in doing so. We know this won’t substitute for the new Store and Enedwaith, but maybe it will make things a little more fun for you as you wait. Look out for announcements on all of these things within the next few days.

As always, thanks for your support and patience and a particular thank you to all of you who took the time to send us personal messages, those were awesome and really appreciated!”

So no free Lord of the Rings until possibly later this month. Isn’t it about time Turbine took Lord of the Rings back under their watch?

Lord of the Rings Free To Play Trailer: You Shall Not Pay!


This is the extended trailer for Lord of the Rings Online, which will be airing exclusively on G4TV for the next few weeks. No doubt the product of Warner Bros being the new frontman, television ads are extremely expensive.

Lord of the Rings Online Free! [Not For Europe]


NSFE: Not Suited For Europeans

Just a friendly reminder to those of you who haven’t been enjoying the head start: Lord of the Rings Online goes free to play today! Well, freemium is a more accurate description. Either way, if you haven’t already been downloading the client, you may want to start it this morning, as the seven gigabyte (ten gigs for the full high-definition client) download is going to take a while, and Turbine’s download servers will no doubt be hit by the sudden rush of players.

Turbine is fixing a bug where players are being shown too many/few Turbine points compared to what they should have. The points may take a couple days to register, for those who obtained them either through Turbine’s subscription promotion, subscription “allowances,” and lifetime subscription allowances.

Reminder: Loyalty rewards may take 7-10 days to appear in your account after the launch of Volume III, Book 2. VIP Points should appear within 2-3 days after your billing date.(Click Here) for more information on account status, points, or other Free to Play related questions.

Still no word on Lord of the Rings Europe. To those player in the US, expect major queue lines (unless you’re a VIP) for the next few weeks.

Lord of the Rings Online: Europe F2P Delay


European.

Even solely a subscription game, Lord of the Rings Online ranks in the higher tier of games that are not World of Warcraft, in terms of population. Turbine has been setting up for the past few months in preparation for the transition to partially free to play, doing everything from beefing up existing servers to adding in new servers. With today’s launch of the head start, Codemasters is having stage fright.

Unlike the United States servers, where the transition went live today, the European servers have been delayed for a yet to be announced time.

“Given the complexities and challenges faced in the preparation and implementation of the new store to work within our infrastructure, we feel more time is needed to deliver the high level of service our players have quite rightly come to expect. As a result, we have decided to delay launch to ensure that we can support the massive increase in players that we are anticipating and deliver them a Free to Play experience like none other.”

I feel bad for the European Turbine fans. I mean, sure the delay may only be the rest of tonight, or it may be next week, but it seems like the European players always get the short end of the stick. Look at how long it took Dungeons and Dragons Online Europe to transition to the free to play model after its much more Yankee counterpart.

I, on the other hand, will be downloading the client off of Turbine’s website, as my special edition (seen below) is so out of date that the client it installs won’t even update.

I used my scanner this time.

World of Starcraft II


Now don’t tell me you didn’t see this coming! There’s a mod underway, as shown above, to recreate the world of World of Warcraft in Starcraft II, showcasing just how powerful the engine is.

I don’t know whether to be more disturbed or attracted by this.

Earth Not-So-Eternal: 1 Week Later


Where did you go? My Darling...

I’ve been sitting on this for a week now, so I think it’s as good of a time as any to start talking. Back in August I wrote about Earth Eternal facing potential shut down due to Sparkplay Media running out of cash. In the ensuing week, the company put the game up for auction, where the title was sold to another, then unnamed company. Things were looking up.

On August 31st, the Earth Eternal website and game shut down with no explanation whatsoever. After a week of patiently waiting, any attempt to log into the Earth Eternal website or game is met with a “cannot find eartheternal.com” and the game servers are providing no response.

I want to be optimistic on this, so I’m going to bring back what Sparkplay CEO Matt Mihaly said about EE riding on the servers until the host shuts them down for nonpayment. Vaulting off of that optimism, I’m still crossing my fingers for who the purchaser may turn out to be. My top choices are Jagex, Quest Online, or Acclaim (maybe not the last one). We’ll all know that we’ve woken up in hell if the purchaser is NCsoft.

More on Earth Eternal as it appears, and speaking of investing, when is All Points Bulletin getting saved?

Eve Online: Causality Video


A new trailer for Eve Online, showing how players can interact with and change the world, through death, and even a little espionage.

Crafting Crime With Crime Craft: A 1 Year Look


A long time ago...

Crimecraft launched in August 2009 to not-so-huge fanfaire over the persistent-lobby-based-shooter-on-the-Unreal-3-Engine. A modest title by any means, Vogster quickly moved the game from a subscription base to a free to play cash shop system, not unlike the Turbine model, and since then the game has been trucking along with a healthy population, healthy enough to ensure that the game will stay afloat for a good long time, at least.

Looking into my archives, I haven’t written a non-sales article on Crimecraft since September 2009, so I was quite surprised when I received an email in my inbox regarding Crimecraft. Apparently at least one of the guys over at Vogster Entertainment is a big fan of the MMO Fallout, and noted my prior interest in the title and a lack of news-stuffs since then. The email contained a promo-code with a leveling boost to incite me back into the game, and incite it did.

I’ve clocked in several hours on Crimecraft in the past week, and I am thoroughly enjoying the new changes. My biggest gripe from the launch was that the A.I in the PVE matches was a combination of too unpredictable, and too stupid. All too often it was easy to sneak up on an NPC and kill them without their AI even activating, but this time around I found NPCs moving around and actively seeking cover. If you start a shootout, other NPCs in the area may come to investgiate. The system isn’t perfect, but it is a far cry from the figures who just stood around and waited for you to shoot at them.

Luckily he only grazed my medulla oblongata.

Another great addition I noticed is the ease in obtaining weaponry. Within a few PVP matches, I had looted a decent shotgun and an assault rifle that gave me a fighting chance over my 3-shot burst SMG. Vogster wasn’t lying about the gibbing/gore mode either, as my character regularly found himself decapitated by close shotgun shells to the face.

I quickly obtained a few boosts in the form of a heart monitor that displays enemy positions on the mini-map, and a few healing drugs that can be consumed in-game. The missions, which will comprise much of your experience, are still pretty basic, not that I’m asking for more depth. You’ll find a myriad of what you would expect, each containing several tiers:

  • Kill _ with smg/rifle/pistol/etc.
  • Do ___ damage with smg/rifle/pistol/etc.
  • Kill ___ of ___ type NPC.
  • Kill ___ players carrying smg/rifle/pistol/etc.
  • Win __ matches of ___.

The more traditional missions involve going from person to person in the main lobbies, with a story centered around the protection of the city from the unruly gangs and scum that inhabit the surrounding areas, and generally involves heading into PVE instances to complete one of the above mission types.

Stockpile PVE is still all about collecting crates containing everything from weapons to drugs to crafting materials. I also had the chance to try out Safeguard, a PVE mode where players are tasked with protecting a weapons cache from wave after wave of bots, which I particularly enjoyed as the opportunities to become overwhelmed by the sheer number of bots added to the difficulty if you didn’t clear them out fast enough before the next wave spawned. Headhunter is a test of patience, although killing the prerequisite number of bots to incite the boss to appear isn’t a particularly difficult task.

Ammunition and health are much more prevalent now than at launch, with players and bots dropping both much more often. Aside from the AI, one of my biggest issues was running out of ammunition and forcing myself to die in a PVE match in order to obtain more. Now, with the expected amount of ammunition conservation, I find myself running out of ammo much less.

Oh, and in case I didn’t mention it before, the Crimecraftian in-game advertising is still present, as seen below, and still raising the penetrating question: People still use Napster?

Jokes aside, Crimecraft is still a great game worthy of a look, even if you don’t plan on forking up any cash. The game can be downloaded from the website for free, or if you really want you can pluck down ten bucks on a digital copy and get the extra perks that come with it.

Me? I think I’ll continue sporting my OG (original gangster) title, and Tommy Vercetti lookalike outfit. Crimecraft is a great game, and you might even catch me logged in now and then! My character’s name is Rastlowski, if you didn’t pick it up from the screenshots.

More on Crimecraft as it appears.

Turbine Trucking In 8 New Servers: LOTRO


Are you an ex-Lord of the Rings Online player who enjoyed the game but couldn’t pay for the subscription for one reason or another? If so, you are very likely aware of Turbine’s highly popularized moved to free to play (with cash shop) that is coming soon, so soon in fact that many of us former players are waking up with the taste of ale and hobbit foot shampoo on our teeth. Current and former subscribers will have access to the head start on September 8th, with everyone else allowed in on the 10th.

I knew Turbine was adding new servers in preparation for the flood of new players, and eight new servers sounds much more logical when broken down across regions.

US:

  • Riddermark
  • Crickhollow
  • Dwarrowdelf
  • Imladris

EU:

  • Anduin [DE]
  • Gwaihir [DE]
  • Withywindle [EN]
  • Celduin [FR]

By former subscribers, I should point out Turbine includes beta testers in that category. So if you’re returning for the sweet free to play action, you should be downloading the client now (to beat the rush) and gearing up for the 8th when you can reserve your username on one of the new servers (free players aren’t stuck on these servers, it’s a matter of preference). Turbine, to my understanding, is not allowing transfers to these new servers.

More on Lord of the Rings Online as it descends into free to play.

Looking Back, Moving Forward: August 2010


Video of the month.

There is no doubt that All Points Bulletin stole the show this past month, showing up on MMO Fallout at least once every three days heading towards the middle of the month onward. Although Realtime Worlds announced APB carrying 130,000 active players, I have to question how many of those players are actively paying subscriptions, as I have my doubts that Realtime Worlds would be going into administration if the grand majority were pumping cash directly into the cash shop and game time veins at RTW.

August was filled to the brim with news that makes you scratch your head and question reality. Bill Roper is gone from Cryptic, I was sent a legal threat by David Allen, I had my wisdom teeth taken out and pretty much immediately went back to writing up articles despite being heavily drugged on hydrocodone, I was featured on Biobreak and Tobold’s blog.

On another good note, however, MMO Fallout now has five active backups going. For the sake of my own embarrassment, I won’t mention the incident that lead up to me being paranoid about losing my information, but irregardless I now have five flash drives, each carrying a backup of MMO Fallout that I update on a weekly basis. I backup this website daily, but I only transfer it off of my computer every Saturday.

I’m still disappointed that the Atari versus Turbine lawsuit resulted the way it did. I personally love legal drama (when it doesn’t involve me) and would have enjoyed seeing something come out of this other than secret settlements.

Warhammer Online fans rejoiced this month. Although BioMythArts Entertainment (or whatever they’re calling themselves nowadays) isn’t giving specific numbers, they are willing to announce that Warhammer Online is indeed profitable, with tens of thousands of new players streaming in thanks to the endless trial system.

Over on Sony’s front, Everquest is once again proving that although their alternate rule servers are unique, they more often than not crash due to low populations. Such is the case with Everquest’s 51/50 ruleset servers (players start at level 51 with 50 level AP) which are due to be merged into normal ruleset servers.

Unfortunately, another month brings another game shutting down. After a year of promises and well wishes, Playdom announced the shuttering of Chronicles of Spellborn, after the Facebook gaming company acquired Acclaim. Although Acclaim’s two other MMOs 9Dragons and 2Moon were transferred to other hosts, Chronicles of Spellborn was shutdown late August.

Speaking of which, Earth Eternal came very close to shutting down. The most adorable non-Asian MMO hit a brick wall running when Sparkplay announced that the company had laid off all but two employees, and that the game would be sold at auction, with high hopes that a buyer would pick up the title. Luckily, a buyer did indeed pick up the title, and we’ve received information that many of the Sparkplay employees may be making a return soon enough.

Alganon-WAIT IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK- ditched the initial client purchase completely by going 100% free to play earlier this month. While the free title is restricted in how many quests you may partake in daily, as well as a shorter level cap, players can remove these restrictions with a simple cash shop purchase.

While we’re on the subject of departures, Bill Roper announced that he would be leaving Cryptic Studios. In unrelated news, I’ve been receiving emails of gratitude for reporting on this story.

On yet another sad note, Realtime Worlds and their newly released MMO “Absolving Perot’s Blame” (or APB for short) have been pretty much a weekly staple for MMO Fallout news. What started out as a simple announcement of standard restructuring took a turn for the worst when Realtime Worlds went into administration (Bankruptcy) and announced that they were looking for investors with what was left of the team. With the recently released patch offering major updates to the game’s driving and shooting, we can only hope that these much needed enhancements didn’t come too late.