Category: Editorials

Guild Wars 2: Now On Mac!


Blah blah blah, no gamers on Mac, etc etc. With that out of the way, Arenanet has good news everyone! As of right now, Mac players will be able to download and play Guild Wars 2 on a native client. Currently in beta, the client supports all of the features that Guild Wars players enjoy on Windows. In order to download the client, players need an active Guild Wars 2 account, and the game can be downloaded through the account management section of the Guild Wars website.

The Mac Beta client is available immediately for all Guild Wars 2 players. It shares the same features and connects to the same live game servers as the PC client. Anyone who purchases Guild Wars 2 can now play it on both PC and Mac.

Check it out. Keep in mind that this is a beta client, and may have bugs that are not present in the Windows client. Guild Wars 2 on the Mac requires OSX 10.7 or later, Intel Core i5 or later, at least 4GB of ram, 25GB of hard drive space, and runs well on a variety of Mac computers from iMacs, Macbook Pros, and Mac Mini.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

Bots Are Choking To Death In RuneScape


It must be Christmas. No, my calendar says September. This week (hopefully) marks the reveal of Botany Bay, and on Sunday Jagex announced that they would begin silently banning bots starting Monday. Well the bans aren’t exactly silent, as players are spotting (and video taping) bots spamming gold farming websites in key areas. The bots have been recorded spamming for several minutes, before inexplicably choking and dying, presumably being banned thereafter.

This month, Jagex announced a new method of detecting and banning bots, both collection and advertising, as well as a way for players to take part in the process and sentence bots to death in a Salem-esque trial. Why the flashy, and rather unnecessary, showmanship? When you spend most of your time banning bots, sometimes you want to have fun doing it, according to a recent Q&A. The alternative goal is to give the players instant feedback that the developer is indeed taking action against bots and gold farmers.

Big Darkfall Announcement Coming…Maybe, At Some Point.


Darkfall. The game hasn’t been featured here at MMO Fallout much lately, in fact not since June when Aventurine announced that the client price would be suspended in favor of simply subscribing after the trial runs out. Meanwhile, Aventurine is still plugging away at Darkfall 2.0 (or Darkfall 2010 as many of you know it), and Community Liason Unuldur appeared on the forums last Friday to announce an upcoming announcement:

Hello Darkfallers!

Apologies for the delay. We have an important announcement to make this Monday and we needed to turn our attention there.

And yes, I realize that it is already Tuesday. So what was the announcement? It wasn’t made. Granted, Aventurine is only off by a day, so we’ll have to wait and see what the important announcement is.

(Source: Darkfall Forums)

KTERA Free To Play Server A Success, Permanently Added


While we’re on the subject of TERA, let’s take a look back at its Korean counterpart. Earlier this year, I mentioned that the folks over at KTera were testing a free to play server. The server was originally set to remain active until August 9th, when the project would be pulled and Bluehole Studios would determine how viable TERA would be in the free to play market. Well, August 9th has come and gone (over a month ago) and I’ve received a few emails asking me to follow up on the previous article.

First of all, the server run was extended until August 30th, and according to mmosite.com, has been extended permanently. The free to play server, in addition, carries a permanent 2x experience buff as well as extra loot from quest rewards. Players are able to transfer their characters from the free to play servers to the subscription servers, although the article does not specify if the opposite is also true. It also notes that there is no cash shop on this server.

No word on free to play TERA in the western hemisphere, but given the apparent success of the server in Korea, an announcement seems just over the horizon.

(Source: mmosite)

TERA: Buy 1 Get 1 Free, Amazon


What is better than one copy of TERA? Endless shrimp at Red Lobster is not a valid response. The answer is TWO copies of TERA for the price of one. Moving along from the shellfish, Amazon is currently running a deal on the digital version of TERA:

Until September 22nd, you can pick up TERA for $9.99 USD (an 80% discount). With it, you will receive a promotional credit for $9.99 which can only be redeemed on TERA. The credit is good until October 15th, but you will have to actually buy TERA before September 22nd. An unusual, and rather unnecessarily complicated method of delivering the key, but what can you do?

The moves comes on the forefront of TERA’s server merger in North America, bringing the number of servers from eleven to three. En Masse is also introducing a new protection on accounts: deleting characters now requires a seven day wait if that character is above level five. The cool down timer for joining guilds is also being increased to two weeks.

(Source: TERA Website

Monday Night Cap: Daily Questing


Welcome to your night cap, for Monday September seventeenth, star date two zero one two. Daily activities are a great way for MMOs to keep their communities interested and playing. From a design stand, it directs the more casual crowd to a list of chores that can be completed even if the person doesn’t have much time to play. They can also introduce players to certain features that they might not have found or tried on their own.

Take Guild Wars 2, for a recent example. Every day players are tasked with killing x number of mobs, x type of mobs, collecting x number of materials and completing events. With fast teleportation, the entire daily list can be completed in a half hour or less, and offers a nice reward for completion. By spacing out the events, players are essentially pushed into exploring the world.

Daily quests are especially nice in sandbox games, where the player might be overwhelmed by the vast number of choices of activities, but don’t have much in the way of guidance. RuneScape is introducing its own list of daily activities, to give the player a set of tasks to get them going, offering bonus experience for participating.

And yes, daily quest timers are also used to herd players and place artificial limits on content. Certain MMOs place timers on when you can raid dungeons, or how much experience you can obtain in one day (Final Fantasy). Some titles limit how many times you can pull a reward from a boss. This is a controversial, and well disputed issue among various communities.

A developer would tell you that the reason is wealth difference, and that they don’t want a player who can only raid once or twice a week to feel at a disadvantage to someone who has the time to raid ten times a night. The player’s side is that they pay the subscription (or whatever the model is) and therefore should be able to raid as much as they want. Another argument by the community is that MMOs are a time investment, therefore the players with more time should naturally have an advantage over those with less.

So dailies aren’t perfect, but they do aid people like myself who often quit MMOs not out of bad quality, but simply because they lose our attention. On the other hand, having dailies linked to multi-day events can result in an alienated player if for some reason they miss a day and have to start over.

How do you feel about dailies?

Night Cap: Save City of Heroes, Save NCSoft


Welcome to your night cap. If you pay attention to MMO news, odds are you already know that City of Heroes will be shutting down this November 30th. That is, of course, assuming NCSoft completely dismisses the overwhelming support given by the community and Paragon Studios to keep the game running. But for all intent and purpose, let’s assume the train is already halfway over the bridge, and the bridge is out. There is no turning back, the game is over. For the sake of this conversation.

NCSoft is growing its collection of disenfranchised customers. Auto Assault was shut down rather than humoring potential buyers, Dungeon Runners had a small but loyal community who also shot back at NCSoft when the MMO shut down. And I don’t think I have to point out the vile, and rather justified, hatred over the closure of Tabula Rasa and the fraudulent firing of Richard Garriot which left a $28 million hole in NCSoft’s pocket and a big dent in their revenue.

So assuming that talks break down and NCSoft refuses to change their minds, the end result can only be even more angry ex-customers. And where does NCSoft win in this equation? If City of Heroes was not drawing a profit, well the answer is obvious. But if the game was performing well as the players and Paragon Studios would like us to believe, then the benefits for NCSoft are rather foggy. Rather than making whatever profit was to be had from City of Heroes, apparently NCSoft would rather take no income at all. Then again, as NCSoft’s markets shift back over to Korea, and the Western hemisphere has shown little signs of interest in their import MMOs (Lineage, Aion), perhaps NCSoft doesn’t put much merit into what the North American and European markets think.

I have very little doubt that someone will open up a private server, so odds are people will still be enjoying City of Heroes, whether or not NCSoft sees a dime from it. Of course, MMO Fallout does not endorse the legally grey are of the internet that is the private server.

Good night.

Funcom Former CEO Under Investigation, Insider Trading


I’m happy to see that I am not the only person who was baffled when Funcom’s CEO Trond Arne Aas suddenly up and flew the coup before the launch of The Secret World. As many of you already know, Funcom’s stock tumbled following the launch of The Secret World, from $17 to $2.23. Luckily, and perhaps in a well timed move, Trond was able to sell off 650,000 shares, possibly with the knowledge that The Secret World would fail to meet even Funcom’s lowest expectation of sales.

And if you are thinking, “gee, Omali. That sounds a lot like insider trading,” you would be correct. According to an insider at Funcom, reported to The Escapist, Trond Arne Aas is under investigation by Norway’s Financial Services Authority and OSE. Aas is claiming that, as he had stepped down as CEO, he had no access to sales figures until Funcom posted its latest financial details.

The source states that he would not be surprised if Aas ultimately winds up in jail.

(Source: The Escapist)

Ryzom Backs Up On Character Wipes, For Subscribers


It appears that wiping your game eight years after release may not be as popular as Ryzom’s developers anticipated. Following the announcement that Ryzom would be merging down to one server, wiping all characters in the process, community response has resulted in those plans being nixed partially. As long as a player is subscribed at the time of the servers going down, they will not be wiped.

All subscribed accounts on the day of closing of the current servers will keep the appearance, the name but also the levels and skill bricks of all characters that are on the account.

Additionally, the server merge has been pushed back to September 29th.

(Source: Ryzom Website)

Line of Defense Will Be On Steam


Small update on 300AD. While certain factors have prevented Alganon from being released on the digital distribution platform, I can confirm through several anonymous sources (all of them named Derek Smart) that Line of Defense will be available on Steam.

“LOD is definitely coming to Steam; since I already have my other games on there.”

MMO Fallout will hopefully have beta keys to hand out when Line of Defense goes into beta at some point in the near future.

(Source: Email)