Category: Editorials

Marvel Heroes is Free: Completely Free


Ever since Marvel Heroes was announced as fully underway and with a realistic release date, Gazillion’s fans have been asking a very simple question: Will the business model follow Super Hero Squad Online? Gazillion’s child-oriented MMO starts the player out with a few characters unlocked, and requires gold (cash shop currency) to unlock further heroes as well as a membership subscription to unlock additional exclusive heroes. So will players be paying for heroes? Short answer: No. Long answer: Absolutely not. Gazillion President David Brevik wants everyone to know.

“We’re completely free. All the content is free and there are others things that you can buy to enhance your experience but they are completely optional. This isn’t a nickel and dime experience we’re creating.”

Marvel Heroes goes into closed beta soon. You can sign up at the website below.

(Source: Marvel Heroes)

World of Warcraft Exploit Leads To City Massacre


In some MMOs, the idea of players being able to engage in PvP combat outside of designated areas can be horrifying. Someone gaining the ability to engage in combat where they shouldn’t could go on a rampage and make use of the full loot systems in games like RuneScape, and make the lives of many players miserable before they are eventually banned. In MMOs like World of Warcraft, the threat is slightly less present. Death is little more than a time setback, the penalty paid in a moderate fee to repair armor.

And speaking of World of Warcraft, everyone is dying. In the streets, in the houses, but mostly in the main cities. For several hours yesterday, on multiple servers, a kill exploit ran rampant through the major cities of Azeroth, with low level characters mowing down players and NPCs without a second thought. The exploit was hotfixed by Blizzard, and the perpetrators have presumably been banned. Eurogamer tracked down the source of the exploit, and found quite an interesting justification for the action:

“We had to. The first account ban for using the kill hack was issued around 30 minutes before we started nuking cities. We did so because we knew it was going to be fixed,”

Now might be a good time to explain that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you are obligated to.

(Source: Eurogamer)

Earthrise Posts New HTML5 GUI


Let’s talk about the dead coming back to life. Some of you may recall a long time ago in a galaxy not so far away, that Earthrise shut down due to a lack of funds to fully bring the game over to a free to play platform. If you don’t remember, just re-read that last sentence until it sticks. Got it? Good. While Earthrise had a great PR department selling the game before it launched, the product that shipped barely made a dent in its pre-release hype. In fact, it barely made a dent in anything. After Earthrise released, it virtually vanished off of the face of the MMO press, showing up every now and then to let everyone know that the servers were barren and so were the coffers at Masthead Studios. Major problems from lag, disconnection issues, crashes to desktop, and the actual content of the game kept Earthrise from reaching its potential, and finally the game choked to death on a pretzel with the sound statement that one day, a generous necromancer known as SilentFuture would raise it from the dead.

In the original notice, Earthrise 2.0 was planned for a quarter four 2012 launch. It is probably safe to say that we’ll be looking at a 2013 launch, but just to keep the players satiated for the time being, the above screenshot was posted in an announcement that Earthrise will be using an HTML5 user interface, rather than Flash. Not necessarily the best update possible, but a positive sign that the folks at Silent Future haven’t fallen into the same black void of development that has devoured, say, the guys working on Earth Eternal’s reboot.

Then again, one could say that any news on Earthrise is good news at this point.

DUST514 Sutures Itself To Eve Online Slightly More


Good news everyone! As the DUST 514 beta continues trucking along its path towards release, CCP has added regular updates to bring the Playstation 3 shooter closer together with its older PC sci-fi MMO brother. With the release of Codex, the latest major update to the MMOFPS, players in both games will now find their experiences much tighter. Codex allows players to appoint directors in both games to keep watch on corporate activity. Corporate contracts allow Eve Online players to hire DUST 514 players to take over territory held by rival corporations. While not released with this update, CCP teases orbital strikes, allowing players in Eve to fire down on the planets below and affect the operations of their DUST counterparts.

The update also brings in a host of new content, from female avatars to new weapons and equipment, new maps and environments, and more. DUST is still in beta testing, and players can get in by registering and hoping for a key or buying the $20 mercenary pack. and obtaining the key that way.

(Source: DUST 514 Website)

Darkfall: Unholy Wars Releases Details, Wipe Confirmed


Darkfall: Unholy Wars launches at the end of November, and Aventurine is letting the details flow free. In a post on the official website, Tasos Flambouras starts off with the question many have been asking ever since Unholy Wars was still Darkfall 2010: Wipes. Short story, they are coming. Darkfall and Unholy Wars are two separate games, which presents the problem of compatibility between the two systems.

Assuming we forced things and made it possible, the DFUW characters would completely destroy the Darkfall Online characters, and I make this comparison to also give you a practical idea of the incompatibility.

Luckily, players won’t have to worry about the grind. According to the blog, players will have no problem becoming viable. Also, Darkfall Online (the current edition) will be shut down to make room for Unholy Wars. Anyone who already bought Darkfall will not have to purchase Unholy Wars. There are plans for Darkfall-related side projects, and characters from the current game are being kept for such a purpose.

(Source: Unholy Wars Website)

Kickstarter Updates: Old And New


1. SideQuest: Unfunded

If SideQuest does end up being funded successfully, I will gladly tip my hat and sell MMO Fallout to the highest bidder (minimum bid starts at $400,000), but with fifty hours left to go as of this publishing and only sixteen hundred collected of the ten thousand required, the prospects are looking bleak. If you haven’t been paying attention to previous Kickstarter articles here at MMO Fallout, SideQuest is an indie title in development by Fractal Entertainment as a free to play MMO. The game touts a fully immersive single player story as well as party based combat, player vs player, and a full collectible card game.

So why will SideQuest come away from Kickstarter with a low 15-20% of its goal? Perhaps it was the note that Fractal Entertainment doesn’t really need your money in order to make SideQuest a reality, the game is going to be completed no matter what the outcome of the Kickstarter funding. So rather than donate to ensure that the game sees the light of day, players are more likely to withhold their cash, regardless of the rewards offered, and wait and see if SideQuest is worth paying into in the first place.

2. Project: Gorgon

Finally an MMO for people who don’t want their hand held. Project: Gorgon aims for the old school MMO crowd, for players who desire a game that rewards exploration, an MMO that requires you to think before you act, and more importantly: An MMO with a crafting system. So Project: Gorgon aims to bring back the best of the old school (including being able to drop items on the ground and have them actually appear, apparently) with the new fangled contraptions like questing and guild mechanics. Players will have to deal with permanent, game altering changes, including being bitten by a werewolf and having to choose between rushing to find a cure or allowing their new found powers to consume them.

Oh and you can change into a cow, and provide your milk to other players. No, I’m not joking.

Fallout MMO Back On The Table? Zenimax Working On F2P MMO


It’s been a while since we’ve had an opportunity to talk about the long dead Project V13, since January when Bethesda won its lawsuit against Interplay and subsequently terminated the Fallout MMO. Meanwhile, Zenimax Studios continues its long development of The Elder Scrolls Online, an MMO adaptation that has left fans curious and the media rather underwhelmed. But with the lawsuit now over and done with, players want to know: Will we ever see a Fallout MMO?

The answer is possibly. Rich Vogel, formerly of Bioware, has joined Zenimax Studios under a brand new development team, Battlecry Studios. So far Zenimax has only commented that the team is working on an unannounced project, however job listings at Battlecry are looking to fill the position of monetisation designer. The MD’s jobs entails designing an economy around the unannounced game, managing prices of virtual goods and maintaining a balance between the free and paid currencies.

Now remember that there is no specific mention of Fallout anywhere, but with The Elder Scrolls already undergoing the MMO treatment and Bethesda’s determination to grab the MMO rights back from Interplay, it stands to reason that this could be an online Fallout title.

Global Agenda Was Not Financially Successful, GA2 In The Works


It looks like Darkfall won’t be the only MMO getting a revamp in the next year or so. In a post on the Hi-Rez forums, Shadow Control discussed the current iteration of Global Agenda, as well as the future of the brand. In the post, he reveals that while Global Agenda was not a financial success, the team learned a lot about the game, lessons that eventually made their way into Tribes: Ascend. But as he points out, Tribes is more of a niche-oriented brand, geared towards a far more hardcore audience than Global Agenda.

The majority of the responses was to release a new version of GA ‘GA2’ with a PvP focus and make that as good as possible. So we are currently in the process of making that game. We will use a lot of the GA assets, some of the maps, and some of the game modes. We plan to add new maps, game modes, class weapons, and build it all on our newest platform.

Hi-Rez hopes to have Global Agenda 2 in beta sometime mid-2013. Whether or not Global Agenda will remain operational after the launch of its sequel will have to be seen. Hi-Rez is also working on its MOBA title, SMITE, as well as continued support for its first person shooter, Tribes: Ascend.

(Source: Global Agenda)

Funcom Reverses Layoffs, Anarchy Online Engine Update, Steam


You were paying attention when Funcom stated that the layoffs back at the end of August were temporary, weren’t you? In the latest Flash Point podcast, Joel Bylos went on to explain that the rehiring process has already begun, with three of the ex-Funcom employees brought back to the team. On the end of The Secret World, Funcom will continue its tactic of monthly issue updates, adding in a wide range of new content to the MMO.

In other Funcom news, Anarchy Online is coming to Steam. In the monthly update post over at the Anarchy Online forums, Producer Ilaliya explains that the Steam-compatible version of Anarchy will be available as soon as a few kinks are worked out, some to do with in-game bugs dealing with the Steam overlay, the other to do with internal scheduling over at Valve. Additionally, the long awaited upgrade to the Dreamworld Engine for Anarchy Online is coming along, with public beta testing to start hopefully early next year. This upgrade will bring with it a multitude of changes to Anarchy Online on a graphical and functional level, including the ability to add armor as additions to a character rather than the old painted on look.

(Source: Flash Point Podcast)

(Source: Monthly Development Update)

The Future of RuneScape: Jagex Talks RuneScape 3


In a recently released live Q&A, Jagex talks about RuneScape 3, the next iteration in the RuneScape development line. Noting that the Evolution of Combat update coming later this year is not the same as RuneScape 3. Instead, Jagex views a set of benchmarks as what would constitute RuneScape 3, being an overhaul in the overall experience. Over the next couple of years, the aim is to improve the experience in audio, graphics, the interface and world map, among other features. With the introduction of HTML5 support, coming soon, is that the game will look and sound better, as well as run smoother than the current Java platform.

Unlike when Jagex introduced RuneScape 2, and allowed players to continue playing RuneScape Classic, RuneScape 3 will not leave behind RuneScape 2 servers. The reason is that RuneScape Classic to RuneScape 2 was such a massive update to the game that Jagex could not seamlessly bring players over, where as RuneScape 3 is seen as a natural progression of the game. There are no plans to release classic versions of RuneScape 2 servers. Additionally, Jagex is actively working on getting RuneScape working on additional devices, aiming at possibly next year.

A lot of what Jagex talks about is still rather cryptic. Among the features teased are the ability to gather items during normal game play to offer up to a player’s chosen god. The details are scarce but it seems to imply that some form of factional system is coming to RuneScape, allowing players to choose which gods they want to support. Another goal is to make player vs player combat more enticing, especially to players who normally would not bother with the activity. Additionally, there are two skills as well as player owned shipping ports coming next year.

There is plenty more to find out in the video, which is well over an hour long.

(Source: RuneScape Q&A)