Category: Editorials

Lineage II Top Reward Costs $200k Within A Year


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As I always start these types of articles: If you are the type of person who is willing to spend five or six figures in a video game, why not take a little bit of that money and invest it in something more sensible, like MMO Fallout? Everyone wins. You get to keep spending insane amounts of cash on virtual goods, and we have more capability to tell you where you can spend a lot of money. Lineage II has revealed the hero coin program, allowing players to earn rewards for the simple act of spending their cash. The way the system works is simple: For every 80 NCoin you spend in Lineage II, you receive one Hero Coin that can be saved up and spent on items in the reward store.

Here’s where the deal gets controversial. First, Hero Coins only accumulate on the character that the item was redeemed on. Secondly, Hero Coins expire on the following January 1st of every year. There are items on the cash shop that translate into well over $30 thousand being spent on the game in a single year, with the most expensive item going over three hundred grand. You can laugh and, when you come to the realization that at least one person will hit that transaction mark, slowly dissolve into tears.

(Source: Lineage II)

Brad McQuaid Responds To Vanguard Criticism


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Brad McQuaid is seeking eight hundred thousand dollars via Kickstarter for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, and not everyone is falling over themselves to hand their money over. For many, the disastrous launch of Vanguard is still fresh on their minds, an event that is causing them to be less than confident in Pantheon’s prospects.  One gamer, Clmeas left the following comment on a Kotaku article promoting the Kickstarter.

Microsoft gave him $40,000,000 to make Vanguard with almost absolute creative control and he still released an unfinished, buggy, POS of a game after 5 YEARS in development.

The comment garnered a response from McQuaid himself, noting some of the challenges that Vanguard faced in its development from internal and external sources.

Microsoft funded us to almost $30M, after which there was a regime change at Microsoft and virtually all of the people we had been working with disappeared. The new people didn’t want to make Vanguard… they really didn’t want to make an MMO at all, and if they were, they wanted a Wow-clone-beater. We broke away from them and I turned to SOE and got them to fund as much as they could. Unfortunately, it fell short of the 6 months we needed, and the game was released too early.

WoW came in around $80M and they took at least 3 years to develop it (probably more, but 3 years after they *announced* the game — I have a feeling they were already working on it).

Star Wars: The Old Republic took at least 3 years, had hundreds of people involved, and cost between $150M and $200M (no one really knows for sure except the publisher).

Anyway, just some numbers for perspective. In any case, Vanguard was released too early but if you go check it out now it’s a solid game. The world is underpopulated but beyond that I’m still very proud of what we accomplished. 

It’s good to see that McQuaid is proud of what Vanguard has become. You can check out the Kickstarter for Pantheon here or follow the link on the side-bar.

(Source: Kotaku)

Less Than Massive: The Cost of Theft


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Silicon Knights is something of a hated company here at MMO Fallout. Those of you who have followed the developer likely know that Silicon Knights licensed the Unreal Engine to develop their games, and back in 2007 launched a lawsuit against Epic alleging that the latter was unable to provide them with a finished development kit in a timely manner, instead choosing to funnel its money into the development of Gears of War and Unreal Tournament. In the lawsuit, Silicon Knights noted that they were forced to develop their own engine to prevent even further delays of Too Human.

Somewhere along the line, it was discovered that Silicon Knights had stolen chunks of the Unreal engine to create their own system, a wholesale copy and paste that even included developer comments and typographical errors present in Unreal. According to one report, 20% of the Unreal Engine was found in the Silicon Knights engine. Epic Games countersued, during which Silicon Knights actively attempted to cover up their actions, and the courts awarded them $9.2 million in damages. Silicon Knights appealed the ruling, however a judge has struck down that appeal. Denis Dyack, former President of Silicon Knights, went on to Precursor Games, the latter of which disbanded last September after a failed Kickstarter campaign for its game Shadow of the Eternals.

On the other hand, if you do have a copy of any of Silicon Knights’ games, hold on to them. Unsold copies of the games that used portions of stolen Unreal code, including Too Human, were destroyed as part of the lawsuit, meaning any remaining copies are sure to be worth something, especially if you find them still wrapped.

(Source: Eurogamer)

MMOrning Shots: A Head of the Curve


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Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Sony Online Entertainment with Dragon’s Prophet. Sony’s upcoming mounted combat update might be exciting, but it’s nothing to lose your head over. Did I say that out loud? I apologize.

MMOrning Shots: The Importance Of Free Time


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Today’s MMOrning Shot comes from Final Fantasy XIV, in particular the game’s rather odd New Year’s event where players take on the role of donning horse masks of varying colors to run around and convince the citizens of Eorzea to embrace the import of horses as an alternative mount to Chocobo. Could horses be added at some point? Possibly, if the conclusion to this quest is anything to go by. Now if you don’t mind, I have to spend some time avoiding that one guy who said he’d rather ride me than either of the two creatures. He says that, play the quest line.

Pathfinder's Backing Of Elder Scrolls Online


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Goblinworks CEO Ryan Dancey found himself in the news this week by penning an editorial defending The Elder Scrolls Online and the game’s planned subscription system. In the op-ed, Dancey states his belief that not only are subscriptions responsible for more than $100 million a year in the west, but that it is hard to imagine that the revenue from microtransactions even approaches 50% of that figure. Now Dancey’s figures are hardly scientific, but the overall point that he seems to be making is that the optimal route for MMOs (particularly Elder Scrolls Online) to take is to launch with a box price and subscription to recuperate development costs and then switch over to a system based in microtransactions with an optional subscription intact once it makes sense.

I remain convinced that the market is going to continue to support subscriptions for these games regardless of budget so long as the subscriptions are intelligently linked to a microtransaction model as well.  The evidence of ongoing success with that model seems incontrovertible and the implication that there are millions of people happily paying for game subscriptions shouldn’t be controversial to anyone who digs into the numbers.

Whether or not you agree with Dancey’s conclusion, the editorial is still a great read. Check it out at the link below.

(Source: MMORPG.com)

Pathfinder’s Backing Of Elder Scrolls Online


2013-12-17_00007

Goblinworks CEO Ryan Dancey found himself in the news this week by penning an editorial defending The Elder Scrolls Online and the game’s planned subscription system. In the op-ed, Dancey states his belief that not only are subscriptions responsible for more than $100 million a year in the west, but that it is hard to imagine that the revenue from microtransactions even approaches 50% of that figure. Now Dancey’s figures are hardly scientific, but the overall point that he seems to be making is that the optimal route for MMOs (particularly Elder Scrolls Online) to take is to launch with a box price and subscription to recuperate development costs and then switch over to a system based in microtransactions with an optional subscription intact once it makes sense.

I remain convinced that the market is going to continue to support subscriptions for these games regardless of budget so long as the subscriptions are intelligently linked to a microtransaction model as well.  The evidence of ongoing success with that model seems incontrovertible and the implication that there are millions of people happily paying for game subscriptions shouldn’t be controversial to anyone who digs into the numbers.

Whether or not you agree with Dancey’s conclusion, the editorial is still a great read. Check it out at the link below.

(Source: MMORPG.com)

MMOrning Shots: To Battle!


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For today’s MMOrning Shots, we continue our trek down nostalgia road with some very old screenshots of Final Fantasy XI. These shots are from 2002, I believe the Playstaton 2 version but don’t quote me on that.

Emperor Status Isn’t For You


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With Elder Scrolls Online just a few months away, Zenimax has been throwing information as fast as they can in the form of Q&A’s and interviews. If there is any feature that has been dramatically overhyped and probably deserves to be talked about as little as possible and probably ran its PR course the same day it was revealed, it would be the ability for players to ascend to Emperor. Official Xbox Magazine posted details on just what a player can expect to receive upon being crowned, chief among which is a permanent skill set unavailable to you dirty lower class peasants. You can read the article at the link above, I will continue treating the feature as low on the totem pole in terms of importance.

Why? Let’s face it, neither you nor I are ever going to be crowned Emperor. The way that the system will work is that the player with the most Alliance Points on the faction that wins over the other two will be crowned Emperor for a period. That means competing against your entire faction to rack up points. Ask yourself, can you compete against the guy who never leaves his house? What about the people who share a single character and are able to keep it playing twenty four hours a day? The guy who sets up multiple accounts on separate factions to farm points? The guilds who farm points? I suppose that if you can’t beat them, join them, but do you have the dedication? Or are you more likely to simply get frustrated in the effort and probably face early burnout from the game entirely.

Frankly I love the idea of games that include rewards that only a select portion of the community will ever see, giving the hardcore base something to strive for other than mindlessly grinding end-game raids for ever-increasing equipment with bigger numbers attached, and Zenimax is going a step further by giving the entire faction some nice buffs to enjoy while they have control of the empire. I would like to see some other method of crowning than simply picking the guy who has the privilege of never having to leave his computer, but I’ve gracefully acknowledged that this specific portion of the game is out of reach, and honestly was never intended for myself and 98% of the community to achieve in the first place.

And I am fine with that. There will inevitably be those who refuse to play on the principle of not having access to 100% of the content, no exceptions, but I think that the majority of the community will have an attitude similar to my own.

Emperor Status Isn't For You


Elder-Scrolls-Online-Argonians

With Elder Scrolls Online just a few months away, Zenimax has been throwing information as fast as they can in the form of Q&A’s and interviews. If there is any feature that has been dramatically overhyped and probably deserves to be talked about as little as possible and probably ran its PR course the same day it was revealed, it would be the ability for players to ascend to Emperor. Official Xbox Magazine posted details on just what a player can expect to receive upon being crowned, chief among which is a permanent skill set unavailable to you dirty lower class peasants. You can read the article at the link above, I will continue treating the feature as low on the totem pole in terms of importance.

Why? Let’s face it, neither you nor I are ever going to be crowned Emperor. The way that the system will work is that the player with the most Alliance Points on the faction that wins over the other two will be crowned Emperor for a period. That means competing against your entire faction to rack up points. Ask yourself, can you compete against the guy who never leaves his house? What about the people who share a single character and are able to keep it playing twenty four hours a day? The guy who sets up multiple accounts on separate factions to farm points? The guilds who farm points? I suppose that if you can’t beat them, join them, but do you have the dedication? Or are you more likely to simply get frustrated in the effort and probably face early burnout from the game entirely.

Frankly I love the idea of games that include rewards that only a select portion of the community will ever see, giving the hardcore base something to strive for other than mindlessly grinding end-game raids for ever-increasing equipment with bigger numbers attached, and Zenimax is going a step further by giving the entire faction some nice buffs to enjoy while they have control of the empire. I would like to see some other method of crowning than simply picking the guy who has the privilege of never having to leave his computer, but I’ve gracefully acknowledged that this specific portion of the game is out of reach, and honestly was never intended for myself and 98% of the community to achieve in the first place.

And I am fine with that. There will inevitably be those who refuse to play on the principle of not having access to 100% of the content, no exceptions, but I think that the majority of the community will have an attitude similar to my own.