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Eve Online: Your Stuff's Gone For Good

Silly Eve-izen, that’s not even from the right game. Losing items in a game where you drop everything upon death, is nothing short of not news. Players are killed, hacked, and generally die for one reason or another, on a daily basis and, whether or not we want to accept blame (Lag, account theft, etc), more often than not we are met with a simple “sorry, your stuff’s gone for good,” should we try to retrieve it.

There are three levels of item loss, as I will demonstrate:

If you want to annoy your players, allow them to be killed due to unforeseeable, yet annoying issues. Lag is chief in this category, not to mention players with easy access to exploits in the system, hacks, and other such software.
If you want to piss off your players, kill them via in-game bugs and don’t return their items. In Runescape, it isn’t uncommon for at least one update every four or five months to have some instant-murder effect, or allowing player killing in a spot it shouldn’t be. When Mobilising Armies was released, one player lost an enormous sum of money simply by talking to an NPC, and was not reimbursed despite confirmation by a Jagex employee.
And finally, if you want to get players to quit, take the items right out of their possession, by process of one of your intended features going haywire.

If you were logged into Eve Online today, or even if you weren’t, you may have logged in to find that one or more of your items were missing. Due to an unintended issue, the Eve Online ItemID recycling system ended up deleting a mass amount of items. How many? Up to fourteen thousand, to be exact. But how exactly did this bug happen?

In Eve Online, every item has its own procedurally generated ID (The ID is created when the item is created). In order to prevent items six years from launch being labeled #34054083489534890583890459348, Eve Online recycles ItemID’s back into the pool once the associated item is destroyed, or stacked with another stack of the same item. The retrieval system failed, causing items to not receive an ID when created under various circumstances, and thus disappear.

Although CCP is not returning lost items (they have no way to, the data trail is literally gone), they will be reimbursing players. Players affected are asked to file a petition with the list of items they lost due to the bug. As for how well players will be reimbursed, MMO Fallout will be listening in.

More on [MMO name retrieval failed. Deleting portion.] as it appears.

THQ: We Don’t Need No Stinkin Million Subscribers!

warhammer40000mmo915_screen — Don't trifle in no stale subscribers.

“We don’t need the kind of subscriber levels that people throw around, like a million subscribers, to make a lot of money on this title. If we get anywhere near that level, we’ll be making a lot of money.”

Why thank you, THQ CEO Brian Farrel. MMO success is, as I have said before, relative. Technically any MMO that can make a profit and sustain both its viability in the market and the love of its developers over a period of several years is a successful MMO. Back in March, EA’s announcement that The Old Republic would require one million subscribers to satiate the title’s massive budget, and that they were hoping for two million, I wasn’t the only one to become worried. As far as Western MMOs go (discounting free to play eastern titles), one million is a lot if your name is not World of Warcraft, and very few titles have hit that one million mark.

So, those looking forward to the upcoming Warhammer 40k MMO may be worried, as a number of forum threads have indicated: Will Warhammer 40k be placed on the same pedestal of Warhammer Online, where the developers expected the MMO community to jump on the title as if it were the second coming of Jesus, resulting in substandard results and the great majority of servers shutting down?

Nope! THQ wants you perfectly aware that they are not expecting one million subscribers, like some other studios. Warhammer 40k is aiming small. Not too small, mind you, but small enough that were the title to get even five hundred thousand subscribers, Farrel wants us to know that they’ll be making plenty of money. The aim is to develop the title with a small group of experienced programmers and developers, who will put out gold almost immediately, rather than beginning with flaky bronze and moving up from there.

Until then, get back into your formation soldier! What are you, some kind of free thinker? You will burn for that!

We will have more news on Warhammer 40k as E3 comes closer, so next month.

THQ: We Don't Need No Stinkin Million Subscribers!

“We don’t need the kind of subscriber levels that people throw around, like a million subscribers, to make a lot of money on this title. If we get anywhere near that level, we’ll be making a lot of money.”

Until then, get back into your formation soldier! What are you, some kind of free thinker? You will burn for that!

We will have more news on Warhammer 40k as E3 comes closer, so next month.

Cryptic To Announce New MMO: Late Summer

Back when Cryptic announced they did indeed have a third MMO planned, the lines in many of our (bloggers) heads drew together very quickly: Cryptic is owned by Atari, who is being sued by Turbine under allegations that they were trying to sabotage Dungeons and Dragons Online, so they could turn around and market their own secret Neverwinter Nights MMO (Neverwinter Nights is based on third edition D&D). When asked what franchise he would most like to work on, his answer being “Godzilla and Dungeons and Dragons.” I speculated in the article that this would reignite rumors of a Cryptic D&D MMO.

And reignite it did. In a recent interview with Bill Roper, MMORPG.com asked “Do you have anything to say to the D&D Forgotten Realms MMO rumors?”

“I can’t speak to the specifics of what we’re doing, but it’s true that we have another game in the works. We won’t be making an announcement until late summer, and we’re still a ways off from launch. I can say that this is a game and a franchise we’re very excited about. I think people are going to pleased and a bit surprised with what we’re doing in terms of the game, how we make it, and even how we sell and support it. The game is being developed around new design principles merged with Cryptic’s community-first approach to ongoing development.”

MMO Fallout will be here late this summer with all the news as to Cryptics new MMO.

Put Your Money Episode #1: ________ Station Pass

Back in January I asked a pretty simple question: Since Sony has had so much success with the Station Pass, an offer where players can pay the fee of two MMOs to gain access to eight (previously nine) MMOs, why don’t we see more packages where developers or publishers bundle together MMOs to increase subscriber numbers and population?

Put Your Money is my response to people who have been asking me just that: Put my money where my mouth is. If I’m soooo smart, then maybe I should come up with some deals. And deals I have come up with. I give to you, my ideal picks for what individual Turbine, Mythic, Cryptic (above), NCsoft, and Funcom. My goal was to hit a price with reasonable savings, while at the same time reasonable cost, with regards to number of games and their individual subscription price (as not all games have the same price). I did not include any upcoming games.

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City of Heroes: 6th Anniversary Video

Hopefully I’m not the only one whose finger hovered dangerously close to the “resubscribe” button after viewing this.

Happy sixth birthday, City of Heroes!

Asheron’s Call Graphics Upgrade: Terrain!

Turbine may just be the master of aloof announcements. In a thread titled “Oh by the way…” Community Manager Frelorn simply had this to say:

“Guess what?”

followed by three pictures of an upcoming graphics update to the ten year old Asheron’s Call, one of which you see above.

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An important note to remember is that the engine is not being changed, and a lot of limitations are still in place, namely the inability to have moving water (water will still be a static texture).

Turbine is aiming for before November for the update, before the big November update, with the idea that ‘sooner is better.’ Asheron’s Call continues to have a small, yet relatively healthy community, despite being one of the oldest MMOs still remaining on the market, and still receives regular large updates.

Despite its limitations, Asheron’s Call is still worth a look, and a two week trial can be enjoyed, with the client costing approximately ten dollars.

Asheron's Call Graphics Upgrade: Terrain!

Turbine may just be the master of aloof announcements. In a thread titled “Oh by the way…” Community Manager Frelorn simply had this to say:

“Guess what?”

followed by three pictures of an upcoming graphics update to the ten year old Asheron’s Call, one of which you see above.

An important note to remember is that the engine is not being changed, and a lot of limitations are still in place, namely the inability to have moving water (water will still be a static texture).

Despite its limitations, Asheron’s Call is still worth a look, and a two week trial can be enjoyed, with the client costing approximately ten dollars.

Please Do Not Dull The Pain, Quit Now

Story time! Last year marked my second year working for an unnamed football stadium, selling unnamed alcohol to rich suite owners and family members of players. Seeing as how the uniform required black shoes, I purchased a slightly cheap pair and used my free time to break them in. As much as I tried, however, I couldn’t get the shoes to properly break in: They were uncomfortable, painful even. Still, I didn’t want to return them (no receipt) and I didn’t want to buy another pair of shoes, so I lived with it, and eventually pain turned into uncomfortable, which turned into not much at all. After a few short months, I found myself sitting on the edge of the bathtub clipping my toenails when I caught a glimpse of my heels: Deep red, scabbed over, torn to shreds. As it turned out, my shoes were gradually grating away at the backs of my feet.

All too often I hear of players who stick with an MMO, despite despising every minute of it, and it makes me think back to this moment. I’m not referring to players who are unhappy with one or two aspects of the game, I mean the person who hovers over the “cancel subscription” button everyday and wonders why he bothers playing, for the one or two minutes he logs in each day to check on patches and updates. I have tried to find an answer to why people would torture themselves in an entertainment sense (or in my case a physical sense) and my only explanation is the player waits too long after they become bored, and eventually lose all interest. Perhaps that player is looking towards the future to some mythical patch that will fix all of his woes, but ultimately that patch will not come. It usually isn’t the one or two mechanics that he puts his blame on, he simply does not enjoy the game, and nothing short of that game becoming some other game will pique his interest. For example, you can fix all the bugs you want on Toontown Online, I still won’t play because the game is for children and is developed for in such a fashion.

So my advice to you players: Do it. Hit that “cancel subscription button.” Trust me, as someone who runs through MMOs like milk cartons, you won’t find that much of a difference in your life without the logging into an MMO to patch it, aside from the lack of a slow drain on your bank account. If you have to go through twenty MMOs to find the one that fits what you are looking for, then so be it. Remember: MMOs are an investment, in both time and money. You don’t finalize a loan, a car, a bank account, or a house without shopping around the competition, and MMOs should be the same.

And remember: Quitting an MMO doesn’t suddenly mean you “hate” the company or the game. Long streaks of boredom happen, especially in long-term grind games. If you feel you may one day regain interest, just do what I do: Leave the game installed. Take a break, play some non-subscription games, and perhaps return during a welcome-back week.

But back to the story: I left off in December, and it is May. Thanks to my unwillingness to ditch my shoes, I still have marks and bruises that have persisted for going on five months, on my heels and the “knuckles” of my toes. You can still see on my heels where the scabs were at one point and, in an event that may be completely unrelated, my shoe size has actually gone down by a half-inch.

I’ve since burned those shoes.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: Don’t let a small issue becoming a glaring problem by ignoring it, or you might find yourself completely turned off of something you once enjoyed (or with a slight hobble).

Fallen Earth: Do Not Fear 80% Layoffs

Layoffs post-launch are not new in the MMO world. Once an MMO has launched, and most of the post-launch bugs are taken care of, a large part of the team (many working under contract rather than full employment) are let go. Think of it as seasonal work, but working on a video game rather than stocking shelves at a Wal Mart around Christmas time. A lot of people are not aware of this factor, however:

So when the announcement came that Icarus was restructuring and had laid off a reported 80% of their staff, I was not all too surprised. In an interview with Massively, Marketing Manager Jessica Orr revealed that a team of 110 employees was reduced to around 35, not including GMs, customer service, and (assumed) janitorial staff. Orr also doused rumors that the impending layoffs were the reason Lee Hammock had resigned, noting that he was offered a position at another company. Oh and future updates should not be impacted.

So there you have it. Fallen Earth is triple A and here to stay! As NCwest’s President put it…No, he was talking about Tabula Rasa.

On another note, take this bias spin as you will, being that unless Icarus has been planning their major patches with this layoff in mind all along, future updates will indeed be affected by having a smaller team. Are these layoffs post-launch normal? Absolutely. Is this a sign that Fallen Earth is in danger? No, nowhere near it.

I mean, it’s not like Fallen Earth is so empty that you are constantly the only person within /who range, right? But that’s a topic for another day.

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