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Epic Loot: Sony, Codemasters, and Blitz Looting Realtime Worlds’ Unemployed

Here in my town, there’s no better moment than when an electronics store goes out of business, generally because that means 50+% off on expensive electronics. When FYE went out of business, I managed to pick up Tabula Rasa at 90% off, and it was only one year after the game shut down! When a company starts shedding property (read: Employees), and said company is Realtime Worlds, it’s a veritable picking day for other companies to come in and get recruiting.

Sony, Codemasters, and Blitz were reported shipping off recruiters, designers, and artists to populate the nearby hotels as they pluck up ex-Realtime Worlds employees for interviews in one of their many studios. Codemaster’s chief talent acquisition manager had this to say about the company’s outlook on the ex-RTW staff:

“Realtime employees expertise is unquestionable,”

Blitz’s CEO Phillip Oliver had equal amounts of praise;

“We know that Realtime World has some fantastically talented people and were very sorry to hear the news as it broke late last week. We think Realtime Worlds staff will be pleasantly surprised at the opportunities we can offer them and look forward to talking with them.”

The administrators are doing their best to keep Realtime Worlds alive, but for the time being it is nice to see that ex-employees are getting every offer to jump back into the work force as quickly as possible.

Epic Loot: Sony, Codemasters, and Blitz Looting Realtime Worlds' Unemployed

“Realtime employees expertise is unquestionable,”

Blitz’s CEO Phillip Oliver had equal amounts of praise;

“We know that Realtime World has some fantastically talented people and were very sorry to hear the news as it broke late last week. We think Realtime Worlds staff will be pleasantly surprised at the opportunities we can offer them and look forward to talking with them.”

Final Fantasy XIV 360 Not Cancelled, Just Delayed Forever

Square Enix

If you check any gaming related website, electronics store, or wikipedia, you’ll find that Square Enix is set to release Final Fantasy XIV on the 30th of September for the PC, and sometime in March next year on the Playstation 3. What you won’t find, on the other hand, is a release date, or an acknowledgement of the Xbox360 version of Final Fantasy XIV, and Square Enix would like to rectify that.

In a recent interview with VG247, producer Hiromichi Tanaka stated that the 360 version of the upcoming Final Fantasy MMO is in fact not canned on the 360, but has rather been delayed and put on hold while talks continue with Microsoft. Going further into details, Tanaka explained that Xbox Live is virtually the only hurdle keeping Final Fantasy XIV from continuing development on the platform.

I’ve been pretty unrepentant in the past with my feelings towards Microsoft and have always backed up my philosophy that if you are a console gamer looking for an MMO, your best bet is to stick with a Playstation 3. The hurdles that the developers have been reaching with Microsoft are essentially set at Microsoft’s love of money, and their need to stick their fingers into everyone else’s cookie jar, leading to the point where a deal between Microsoft and the BBC to offer streaming BBC over Xbox Live (at no cost to Microsoft) was turned down because Microsoft couldn’t make any money off of it.

As much as I hate to play the pessimist, those who are waiting out on a 360 version of Final Fantasy XIV might as well wait in line behind those still hoping for a console edition of Champions Online, Age of Conan, and Star Trek Online, who are standing right over there with the folk waiting for Duke Nukem Forever and the rapture.

More on Final Fantasy XIV as it appears.

All Is Not Bad: Earth Eternal Has Been Sold!

I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve been in rather a slump this year. We’ve seen the closure of Dungeon Runners, Metaplace, Cities XL, Phantasy Star, and now Chronicles of Spellborn, Exteel, and possibly All Points Bulletin in the near future. So, owing to that knowledge, we take what good news we can, and more specifically that good news is that Earth Eternal has been sold!

In a posting today on the Earth Eternal website, Sparkplay CEO Matt Mihaly (one of the two remaining staff members) announced that the bidding has ended, and the game has been sold to an unnamed buyer. The buyer cannot be named currently, as the contracts haven’t been signed and all of the formalities are not finished, but Mihaly has promised that it is a known company with the pre-existing audience to give the game its due attention. As he put it:

“I’m pretty happy this company won the bidding, as I think they have the resources and the pre-existing audience to help make EE a success.”

We’ll have the company name in about a week, but until then let’s throw MMO Fallout’s rule on speculation out the window and try and guess who it is. My bet is on Jagex, who seems to have a growing interest in funding fledgling MMOs. Whoever it is, it’s a big company according to the news report (“moved astonishingly quickly for a company of their size.”).

Great! Now all we need is for Realtime Worlds to announce that they’ve secured an investor and the week might not seem so bleak.

All Points Bulletin: You Are Dead, Not Big Surprise.

The_Mummy_3_Wallpaper_1920x1200-592067 — And yet The Mummy Lives

I’m going to inject a little politics into MMO Fallout when I say that, much like when former President George W. Bush gave a direct warning to the terrorists “bring it on,” Dave Jones’ prediction and seeming lack of care that All Points Bulletin would receive poor reviews was less than intelligent. Although here at MMO Fallout, I’ve always stated not to trust MMO reviews, preferring to utilize game sales, trials (be they limited or unlimited) and generally just the player’s own experience rather than watching a video or reading on paper what the game is about.

Back in early July, not too long after All Point Bulletin’s release, I wrote up an article explaining that the game needed to find its niche and stick with it. If they were going for an MMO shooter feel, than the MMO aspect needed to be beefed up greatly. Likewise, if they were going for a large-scale shooter/driver game, than the driving and shooting needed to be overhauled to make the game viable in a market of games with much better driving and shooting, that more importantly didn’t carry a charge to play. Going off of my earlier point, I should note that despite the embargo on reviews, once the reviews from reputable sources (take with grain of salt) came in, they were less than stellar.

Unfortunately, Realtime Worlds is in a rut a lot of MMOs get into after they launch: Launching the game with the hopes of doing large fixes will not cut it when your players are not willing to fund you, and investors aren’t willing to supplement your coffers to implement those changes. Gamesindustry.biz is reporting that Realtime Worlds has gone into administration, which is where the company is allowed to operate until they find an investor, despite being insolvent (unable to pay their debts).

Kinda reminds you of in 2008 when Dave Jones said that APB could compete with WoW on the market.

So is this the end for Realtime Worlds? Not necessarily. MMO Fallout will be here to cover the ongoing look for an investor. I’ll start my bid at whatever is in my change box of coins.

In Plain English: Why ScapeGaming Was Singled Out

Private servers being shut down is nothing new, and as much as players like to discuss the legality of them, at the end of the day they are illegal. Now, being illegal and warranting action are two separate things. Lawyers cost a lot of money (generally around $500 an hour), so paying a lawyer to draft up a threat against little Timmy’s private WoW server that peaks at twenty people who don’t pay anything and crashes every couple of hours makes no sense from a business perspective, and odds are neither Timmy nor his friends on the server are going to just go and start paying for WoW afterwards.

It is this idea that directly corresponds to why you see only certain servers shut down, and generally they fit into two categories: Massive amount of users and profit. You may see developers shut down the private servers with the most amount of players, and that is likely because, unlike Timmy’s server, they can presume a number of those players will indeed go back to playing regular WoW, owing to a newfound belief that any large server will be inevitably shut down and their progress gone. Free servers rarely see the ire of the developer, as they can be somewhat seen as free advertising: a lower quality version to incite people into paying for the full product.

Servers that make profit, either through charging subscriptions or introducing cash shops, are the type that are most likely to face litigation, and this is exactly what happened in the case of Scapegaming. In the case of this lawsuit, launched in October 2009, the operator of the server (Allyson Reeves) was operating a microtransaction system on her server, and according to the lawsuit managed to accrue more than $3 million in fees from players.

I will admit that the extra $80 million or so that the judge slapped on for willful infringement is a little exaggerated, and unfortunately it is required by law and will be appealed (and most likely reduced), but it takes a lot of stones to set up a server you know is already legally dubious, and then go ahead and start making a profit off of it.

Cryptic Studios: Now With 100% Less Bill Roper!

Anyone who has played Champions Online or Star Trek Online knows Bill Roper, who took over for Jack Emmert after the latter left developer Cryptic Studios. And if you know him, chance states that you probably have some strong feelings about him, whether they be in the “Bill Roper is the devil,” “Bill Roper is the greatest developer ever,” or just “meh.” Knowing that, the gaming public will be either sad, jumping for joy, or casually nonchalant in their reaction to the news that Bill Roper has left Cryptic Studios.

In the following post on Champions Online’s website, Roper posted:

For the past two years I’ve had the extreme privilege of working with an amazing array of talented developers and just plain great people here at Cryptic Studios. Over the past few months my entrepreneurial spirit has become restless, and I’ve made the difficult decision to move on and look for new opportunities.

You can read the whole thing at the link above.

Hopefully Bill Roper will find success in whatever venture he chooses to move on to.

WAR’s Auction House Becoming WAR Flea Market

File this one under “how is this in improvement?” I don’t normally talk about game’s individual updates, but the upcoming patch to Warhammer Online, 1.3.6, is revamping the UI of the auction house to better fit the searching needs of the game’s players. As a result of this upgrade, all auctions are standardized to 48 hours, and Mythic has decided to remove the option of bidding on items, opting for a buyout only approach.

According to the WAR Herald, the options being removed are due to lack of popularity, so I won’t question that aspect. I do have to question how removing the aspects altogether, rather than allowing the few who do utilize them, can be an improvement. It is possible, of course, that the new infrastructure of the auction house required some of the options to be removed, but aside from a technical limitation point of view, I don’t believe there is much Mythic can say to convince me “no, this is for your own good.” I feel like I’m talking to the Apple of MMOs.

Personally in the grand majority of MMOs that I have played where an auction house exists, I’ve found myself setting up a tried and true method of selling my wares: start low, set a high buyout amount, and start gathering data on how well the items sell for. On World of Warcraft, this method has become a godsend in selling stacks of cloth and has allowed me to make a substantial amount of gold doing what is essentially a side-job.

Runescape is one of the few MMOs I can think of that only features a buyout option, although the Grand Exchange isn’t billed as an Auction House, and the system of buying and selling is 100% anonymous.

I have a feeling Mythic might offer their players some clarification, and hopefully if enough people ask for it bidding might be returned to the game.

WAR's Auction House Becoming WAR Flea Market

I have a feeling Mythic might offer their players some clarification, and hopefully if enough people ask for it bidding might be returned to the game.

Realtime Worlds: APB Is Our Focus

Realtime Worlds has released a press statement over the recent rumors that the MyWorld team has been cut, as well as cuts for the company’s MMO, All Points Bulletin. Colin Macdonald offered Develop-Online a few words regarding this past weekend at Realtime Worlds.

“The supporting infrastructure for a game inevitably changes once released, and those staff that couldn’t be redeployed to new projects in the Art, Audio, Coding, Design, Production, and QA departments have regrettably been made redundant.”

On the note of Project MyWorld, it appears as if the studio has not been cut completely, although they have seen a hit in staff. Unfortunately for the team, however, Realtime Worlds is still struggling to find a publisher for the upcoming title. According to Macdonald, the team is still looking at options.

But what about All Points Bulletin and the rumors that Realtime Worlds was looking to ship off the team?

“We’re completely behind APB, it’s got huge potential, and we’ll continue to make new content for it.”

More on All Points Bulletin as it appears.

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