Editorials – Page 133

Jagex Remaking Transformers Universe Within Six Months?

Back when Jagex announced that Transformers Universe was taking a full 180 degree spin and transforming itself from a traditional MMO into a League of Legends style MOBA, I removed it from our listings. After all, we don’t cover MOBA titles here and a recent poll showed that the majority of you have no interest in us changing that policy. I’ve talked a lot in the past about how Jagex has massive problems with their non-RuneScape titles, with literally every in-house project either dead in the water (Funorb) or never seeing release (8Realms, MechScape, Stellar Dawn), with the exception of a Facebook racing game called Carnage Racer released last year.

Enter Transformers Online, an MMO announced in 2011 for a 2012 release date, delayed for over a year, and the subject of a 100% makeover from MMO to MOBA because Transformers do not fish or bake bread. Eurogamer is reporting today that Jagex has confirmed that the Transformers Universe team has been scaled back, noting that most of those affected were moved over to RuneScape with thirteen being let go from the company entirely. The game will not be “adversely affected” from these changes, and the move comes from a recent decision to stray away from in-house technology in favor of an established engine. The article notes concerns from employees within the company as to the sudden change over to unfamiliar technology, and pressure from Hasbro to get the game out by the end of the year.

So where do we stand now? With the change in direction, and now a sudden tech swap barely six months before the intended release, what could possibly go wrong? My earlier predictions still stand: Either Transformers Universe will launch in a rushed and unfinished state, or Jagex will attempt to delay it further and risk incurring the wrath of Hasbro.

(Source: Eurogamer)

Age of Conan Director Letter

Funcom has released Age of Conan’s Game Director Letter for June 2013, discussing the upcoming server mergers, achievements, and more. Foremost, the process to bring all of Age of Conan under one mega-server is still going according to plan, taken on in phases in order to reduce downtime as much as possible. The next phase of the operation is to merge the US and EU servers together, which should be completed by the end of the summer. As part of the merger, Funcom will be archiving characters that have been inactive for a very long time. Note that this is different from when Funcom simply deleted low level, inactive characters nearly three years ago. An archived character will be accessible, according to the post, it will simply take a bit longer to load them the first time as they are pulled from archive.

Also noted in the letter are upcoming stability fixes and dungeon revamps. In response to community feedback, Funcom is looking into adding achievements to Age of Conan and is soliciting suggestions on how they should be implemented.

(Source: Director Letter)

Breaking Down Mark Kern

I know what some of you are thinking: Oh no, someone made a comment disparaging World of Warcraft, time for Omali to take the stage and say something along the lines of “I’d like to see you hit twelve million customers worldwide.” Well shame on all of you for not knowing me as well as you think. You’d think I had a website or something where I give my opinion on matters relating to gaming. Anyway, let’s move on.

In the past I have had people ask what my stance on World of Warcraft’s effect on the MMORPG genre is an my answer is simple: It didn’t kill the genre, it widened the base. When people say that it hurt the genre, they conveniently leave out multiple oversights. First of all, WoW didn’t make the genre easy, what it said was “this market has potential.” Without World of Warcraft, few companies wanted to make MMOs. It was a genre that had high costs to develop, required heavy maintenance post-launch for any kind of payoff, and high risk because you had to convince gamers that the game was really worth a box price plus monthly subscription, or hourly subscription if you want to go back even earlier. All this for an audience which many developers were not convinced even existed outside of the two big named exceptions known as Everquest and Ultima Online.

I see the hardcore and more difficult MMOs like the grill restaurant in my old hometown. My hometown was so small and unknown that most stores pretty much had a monopoly on their specialty. One Italian restaurant, one hotel, one pharmacy, maybe two gas stations, one local grocery store, a bank, post office, etc. In the past decade, naturally once I moved out, the town has received a Tim Horton’s, a Dollar General, a Tops Markets, and a whole lot of other big name deals. But the old places, including the grill, are still there. They didn’t go anywhere, they just became a smaller percentage because the market grew. If you have a small handful of hardcore MMOs with niche followings, and a metric ton of casual games are suddenly thrown on top, you still have a handful of hardcore MMOs with niche audiences, they just seem smaller by comparison.

So like I said, World of Warcraft didn’t usher in the age of casual MMOs, it simply opened the floodgates and the ensuing competition resulted in a race to the bottom to appeal to the widest group possible. Prior, the MMOs were already working on competing with each other on toning down their products. Ultima Online introduced Trammel, a shard enforcing consensual PvP, in response to Everquest’s release, a full four years before World of Warcraft came on the scene.

Mark Kern is, however, completely on target with his comments on World of Warcraft ushering in an era of MMOs where the goal was pushing the players through the leveling process as quickly as possible to get them to end-game where the “real” content could start, mindlessly grinding raids. The level curve became faster and it drew in millions of players, but at the cost of diluting the achievement of making it to end-game. As a result, people blaze through content, get bored, and leave. To top it off, they do so ignoring the massive amount of work put into quest stories, scenery, art, and presentation. So what happens? The developer puts no effort into the scenery or quests, because why bother when the grand majority will not pay any attention to them?

Kern is correct on the tragedy that is the MMO contradiction, which we have pointed out here at MMO Fallout several times. The idea that the genre built on open worlds and exploration now funnels its players from one location to another with no rhyme or reason to explore for themselves is quite tragic in itself. That a genre built on being “massively multiplayer” spends so much of its time catering to players who will play solo for most of, if not all of their time, is contradictory if not a waste of resources creating the infrastructure.

So I don’t agree with Mark’s overall fear that his Frankenstein monster creation killed the MMO genre, but I do agree that its success encouraged a generation of copycats each vying for who could make their game as easy and accessible as possible. On the other hand, we probably wouldn’t have a lot of the great MMOs we do nowadays if World of Warcraft hadn’t proven that the genre was worth investing in.

You can find Mark’s entire post at the link below.

(Source: MMORPG.com)

Marvel Heroes Refunds Pre-Sale Buyers

Marvel Heroes has kicked off the Star Spangled Sale, beginning today (June 28th) and continuing all the way through to July 8th. For the duration of this sale, all heroes have had their prices discounted, as well as costumes, retcon devices, and more. Naturally there are those who are putting their arms up in frustration, having made a purchase from the store just a few days ago, unaware of the incoming price drop. To aid those players, Gazillion has put a note in the sale announcement that anyone who has purchased a hero or costume since June 25th will be able to submit a ticket and be refunded the difference in price. According to the announcement, the costume refund will only be eligible if the difference is more than 400Gs.

To claim your refund, you must contact Customer Support, who will verify your in-game purchase and then refund your account. To contact Customer Support, login to your profile on Marvel Heroes.com and click ‘Support’ and ‘Submit a Help Request’. Then use the dropdown menu to select ‘Holiday Sale Issues’ and send in your request. Please note, due to the high volume of expected refund requests, your refund may take up to a week to process. Refunds can only be granted for items that were purchased from the in-game store; heroes and costumes included as part of a pack are not eligible for refund.

Gazillion’s policy is similar to that found in department stores, and through Steam if you can get to customer service.

(Source: Marvel Heroes)

Angry Joe Interviews Zenimax

Angry Joe has an interview up with Zenimax discussing just about every aspect of The Elder Scrolls Online you can think of. I suggest watching the video, rolling in at fifteen minutes total. The interview is peppered with a fair amount of gameplay video, showing off combat including the reintroduction of first person mode, which players have been demanding for some time.

Subscription model and pricing are still in discussion, and the game is set for Spring 2014 release.

MMOments: One Man's Ban Is Another Man's Treasure

Playing 07Scape, I stumbled across a rather ingenious way to level up fletching (bowmaking) by buying logs from the general store, turning them into unfinished bows, and selling them back. You see, the genius of this plan is that the logs sell for less than the store will buy the unfinished bows. A paltry profit of four coins per bow, but it does mean that I can sit there and gain experience while sacrificing nothing in the process, so long as I can find a world where ~~bots~~ players are selling logs to the store. I joked over Twitter that I’d probably get banned if I were in, say, Guild Wars 2.

And then reality struck: There are actually games that would ban me for doing this. Whenever an mmo issues a mass ban for players finding a way to make money by playing NPC shop prices, I receive emails from other gamers asking how you could possibly think that such an action was within the rules. The answer is pretty simple: It is, at least elsewhere.

If an MMO doesn’t want players to be able to utilize shops in such a manner, that’s fine. That said, it doesn’t seem appropriate at all to ban players on the first offense with an attitude that they should have known all along that what they were doing wasn’t kosher. Instead of reaching for the banhammer, simply send the player a warning. Remove the profits they made, why not.

Such an activity isn’t as obvious as, say, using bot accounts or cheats. The topic of making a profit by buying from one NPC and selling to another is rarely mentioned in a game’s terms of service, instead it is hidden in the “don’t exploit stuff” clause. It isn’t as obvious to the player as the developer often thinks it is.

MMOments: One Man’s Ban Is Another Man’s Treasure

Aion 4.0 Launches

Aion’s massive 4.0 update, Dark Betrayal, launched earlier today and promptly broke everyone’s client. Due to an unforeseen issue, the new Aion launcher was taken offline for several hours of extended maintenance today when it became apparent that critical client files had gone missing from the download, resulting in players receiving a corrupt version incapable of downloading the rest of the patch. Technical oversight, or viral marketing for Dark Betrayal? Today’s update brings with it, among other changes, the introduction of two new classes to Aion: The Gunslinger and Songweaver. Players are encouraged to create new characters to test the new classes out.

Also part of the update includes additional incentives for players to join the Asmodian side. The Asmodian faction has had a historical deficiency in population on several servers, so in order to entice players to even the sides, characters on said faction are able to obtain rewards simply for leveling up on those servers. Characters on the servers Tiamat, Siel, and Israphel are the target of this campaign, however the update does not give retroactively to players who have already leveled past the rewards.

Perhaps now is a good time to bring back Aion’s test server?

(Source: Aion)

Everquest Next Avoiding Bad Design Decisions

For some reason I will never understand, members of the free to play sandbox community have taken Everquest Next to be Sony Online Entertainment’s answer to games like Mortal Online and Darkfall: free for all deathmatching with full loot and hardcore gameplay. Apparently I wasn’t the only one wondering why Sony would make such a poor decision to force full loot pvp. On Twitter, someone asked Lead Game Designer Darrin McPherson if pvp would be forced on players, to which McPherson stated that “we avoid bad design decisions.”

Although his words were vague, likelihood points toward Everquest Next at least offering players a choice similar to the options between PvP and PvE servers on almost every other MMO on the market. Whether or not Sony will experiment with a hardcore server is up for grabs. Back in the day, Sony opened up Rallos Zek on the original Everquest, a pvp server with full loot. Sony has a habit of rolling out experimental rule servers with the Everquest brand and seeing how they perform, so a hardcore pvp Everquest Next is an absolute possibility.

2012 Is Jagex's Best Year Ever

In the vacuum of space, no one can hear you scream. Say what you want about Squeal of Fortune and Solomon’s Store, Jagex’s two cash shop ventures in RuneScape, but they have brought in oodles of money. 2012 has become Jagex’s biggest year to date, with income spiraling above the fifty million pound mark for the first time in the company’s history. Jagex is now the largest independent game studio in the UK with over five hundred employees, and has boasted an influx of users last year into RuneScape as well as the recent release of RuneScape 2007, a classic ruleset server.

2013 looks to be an even better year for a game that has reportedly been dying since 2005, depending on which player you ask.

(Source: Jagex press release)

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It: