Friday’s Falling Out (8.5 as I have dubbed it) is probably the fastest MMO Fallout has been threatened after publishing a joke. Now that the legal team has let me out of the storage closet, I can return to writing.
Category: Editorials
RuneScape Employing The KISS System
One feature that sets sandbox games apart from themeparks is that, while the latter uses a singular experience system to determine the player’s base stats, the former relies on separate leveling and generally does not assign an overall level. RuneScape is the exception to the rule, basing its combat level off of a complicated formula involving eight different skills. The formula for determining combat level (and there are three of these) is:
With RuneScape’s upcoming combat update, currently in closed beta, Jagex will be employing the Keep It Simple, Stupid rule of engagement. Three of the skills are being taken out of the equation and the formula is a simple: X + defense +2, with X being the highest combat skill from the list of attack, strength, magic, and ranged. Another effect of this is that combat levels will rise, to a maximum of 200 (over the current 138). On one hand, this might be the first time an MMO has raised the level cap without increasing the experience limit.
Why is Jagex doing this after ten years? Well RuneScape’s code is over ten years old, and in that time much of the older equipment and spells has become completely useless. By rebuilding the combat system from the ground up, Jagex is able to employ a whole host of new systems without having to deal with legacy code and compatibility issues.
RuneScape’s combat upgrade goes into open beta in under a week, when MMO Fallout will be writing a preview.
Eve Online: Hulkageddon Will Go On Indefinitely
Hulkageddon is one of my favorite MMO-related holidays, but a friend of mine recently asked: Omali, don’t you wish Hulkageddon would last forever? And I said no, friend who asks conveniently timed questions. Because then I wouldn’t be able to fully enjoy Hulkageddon. If you don’t know, Hulkageddon is a celebration in Eve Online where players are encouraged, and paid, to kill miners in massive quantities. Normally, Hulkageddon only lasts for a limited time each year, but in a post by Mittani on the Eve Online forums, Goonswarm intends on continuing to pay users for dead miners.
For every ten miners you kill, Goonswarm will pay you ten million ISK and one hundred million per ten exhumer. So far Hulkageddon has claimed more than eleven thousand ships and over two trillion in damages and twenty seven billion in rewards paid out.
Now Hulkageddon is a perfect example of emergent gameplay and capitalism at work in Eve Online. Now, Goonswarm pays people millions to destroy hulks, meaning more people are buying hulks to replace those that were destroyed. Can you imagine who is manufacturing the hulks that are being destroyed? Do you see how this comes around full circle?
(Source: Eve Online forums)
[Video] Catching Up With Hellgate
Hellgate Global is free to play, but as users have pointed out lately, you’re going to have to do a lot of grinding to get the money to buy content off of the auction house.
Our Thoughts: TERA Gaikai
TERA is 50 gigabytes. That is as many as five tens and that is terrible. For some, fifty gigabytes may be too much of an investment in terms of bandwidth or time to give TERA’s seven day trial a go. Luckily this is where Gaikai comes in. Founded in 2008, Gaikai is an online cloud-based streaming service being employed by a growing selection of MMORPGs. The trials through Gaikai are currently very limited, both in time in and content. The benefit to this, however, is that the game can literally be booted up in seconds, playable directly through your browser.
You can’t beat Gaikai in terms of accessibility. You can play without ever having to sign up for an account, entering your email address or personal information, or linking your Facebook/Twitter/Bebo accounts. At the offset, you have three classes to choose from: Warrior, sorcerer, and lancer. The preview encompasses the introduction, starting the player off at level 20 with the associated class skills already unlocked.
As you can see, the graphics have been scaled back somewhat to function properly through the browser. Following a lengthy bit of running around talking to various NPCs, receiving equipment, and a lot of walking, the player is introduced to the combat mechanics and the demo ends with the player fighting one of the game’s big-ass monsters.
The demo is only disappointing in the sense that at least half of the demo is wasted on the most boring section: Tutorial. Once you get to the part where there is actual combat, the demo feels almost over and all you’ve accomplished is reading through quest text. For someone who has never played TERA, this is probably not the best presentation to make them transition on to the full seven day trial. All other systems except for combat are not mentioned at all.
I’m sure TERA will eventually support a better demo on Gaikai, but this feature feels rushed and ultimately is unsatisfying and poorly marketed as a result. Even with the scaling back of graphics, the game still looks great and handles just as well as it does in the full game, but overall it just feels half-baked.
En Masse Entertainment should create a Gaikai specific demo instead of simply plucking the first area and show off more of the game, including crafting, the political system, and broker.
Diablo III Under Investigation In France, Germany, South Korea
Those of you paying attention here at MMO Fallout know from a previous article that Blizzard is currently under investigation by the South Korean Fair Trade Commission over complaints that Blizzard did not deliver on service for Diablo III players, and refused to offer refunds for those who could not access the game due to consistent server downtime. Blizzard’s offices were raided and the investigation is currently ongoing, but likely to end up in favor of the consumer.
In France, Blizzard was given 15 days by the consumer bureau to fix connections regarding Diablo III, an issue which still plagues the game in every continent. They are also asking Blizzard to compensate players for damages accrued due to downtime, and are requesting a formal investigation into the use of always-on DRM. If the server stability is not met, the consumer bureau intends on taking Blizzard to court.
In Germany, however, the issue is a little different. The Federation of German Consumer Organizations has stated that Blizzard is being held accountable for anti-trust violations. Diablo III is being investigated for not disclosing on boxes that the game required an internet connection to play in single player, as well as not disclosing that the game was unable to be resold due to the permanent connection with one’s battle.net account. Or if you want to use the original German translation, Blizzard are being investigated for Wettbewerbsverstöße abzugeben, which sounds a whole lot more threatening.
Granted, neither of the French or German groups have the power to impose punishments on Blizzard, they will have to take the company to court and have a judge hand down a verdict.
(Source: Incgamers)
Getting a Beta Perspective: The Secret World
The Secret World releases on in just a few weeks on July 3rd, and I had yet another opportunity to take a look at the beta this weekend. As you already know from our previous preview, The Secret World is an action-oriented game that plays somewhere between the button mashing of a World of Warcraft game and the more tactical location-oriented button pressing of Funcom’s other title, Age of Conan.
This time around I got my hands on the Dragon faction, a faction out of Tokyo who believe in order through chaos. The opening, however unfortunate, is the exact same as for the Templar: Long, drawn out, and boring. Luckily, it can also be skipped and some of the poor voice actors who appeared in previous beta weekends appear to have been replaced.
Foremost, we need to talk about quests. Quests are, and hold with me here, interesting and engaging. Unlike your other MMOs, you don’t pick up quests by wandering into a hub and nabbing everything in sight. In fact, you can’t. There are hard limits that allow you to only take a very small number of quests simultaneously. Every citizen of Kingsmouth and beyond is unique with their own personality. The presentation readily makes up for the much smaller number of quests available.
While there are a good amount of kill x quests, there are many more that require thought and deduction, offering little or no help on the mini-map. For instance, one of the first quests in Kingsmouth has you talking to survivors to learn more about the fog. It doesn’t tell you who to talk to or even where you should go to talk to them, that is left up to your investigatory skills. Other quests will send you on your way with a vague idea or general area, but no specific pinpoint on your map telling you where to go. Turning in quests is as easy as reporting in via your cell phone.
Perhaps what sets The Secret World apart from other MMOs in this regard is that the game has no levels. Since players are less inclined to try to rush toward end-game, since there really is none, they might feel better sitting back and enjoying the cutscenes and presentation of the quests. When I played The Old Republic, I found myself quickly bored with side-quests. The cinematics did little to numb the pain of quest grinding. In The Secret World, quests are long and spiraling and can regularly contain twenty separate parts.
Keep your thinking caps on, folks. For every brainless killing quest in The Secret World, there are plenty more that will strain your mind and put your investigatory skills to the test. Of course many players will simply have a browser open or beg in chat for answers (the latter being incredibly obnoxious), but there is a sense of accomplishment when you finally figure out the answer.
For example, another quest has you entering the house of a doctor to access the log files on his computer. Your only hint is a photograph that shows fireworks and a hint on the computer about the “song of the seasons.” The answer requires some knowledge of classical music, and I won’t spoil it here. I almost have to question if The Secret World will lose some appeal with its crowd because if you don’t have good deduction skills (or knowledge of classical music), you will probably just wind up looking the answers up online, and that will become annoying after a while.
Crafting in The Secret World is very similar to Minecraft, where you build gear by placing the building blocks in the correct pattern on a grid. Unfortunately, at least in my humble opinion, crafting is still very difficult without reading outside sources and guides for help. In fact there is a crafting guide on the Secret World main page that does an amazing job of explaining the ins and outs of weapon creation.
Combat, as I mentioned before, is a mixture of strategy without going as far as the intricate systems of other games. You will mostly be building energy to pull off attacks that use up said energy, and in the meantime many of the mobs have attacks that need to be dodged. There is a certain level of strategy required in combat, as you have limited space in your active and passive skill section to fill.
We’ll see how the next beta goes. Until then, I still haven’t burnt myself out of The Secret World. The more I play, the more engrossing that the game becomes. Player vs player combat was still absent from the beta but will appear next time.
TERA Launches With Strong 7-Day Trial
When you launch your game with both a client cost and a subscription, gathering new customers after the initial rush of early adopters can get pretty hard. In recent years, level-based trials with no time limit have replaced the one to two week trials of the past. Another hard wall that developers have faced in bringing in new customers, even with the free trials, is the growing size of game clients. Back when Dungeon Runners shut down, the developers noted that a large percentage of players would never even finish downloading the client, and Dungeon Runners was free!
TERA launches its seven day trial with some pretty generous offerings. Players are able to level up 8 characters to level 23 on one server (assuming you can do that in seven days), with some restrictions to certain chat channels, trade brokers, and player vs player combat. Trial accounts are also not allowed to vote in the elections, so put your vote-rigging plans to rest.
Additionally, if you don’t want to take on the 50 gigabyte installation that is TERA, you can try the limited Gaikai streaming trial. There is nothing to install for this trial, however it only lasts 30 minutes and you are restricted to the warrior, sorcerer, and lancer classes. Additionally, Gaikai services are only available in the United States and Europe.
Hit up the link below for details on both the 7-day trial and the Gaikai streaming demo.
(Source: Try TERA)
DUST 514: High End Gear Will Cost Mere Cents
DUST 514 is CCP’s first entry into the MMOFPS realm, where players battle out across thousands of planets for the contractual obligation of players in Eve Online. As with any free to play games, DUST514 will have a cash shop and players want to know what is for sale and how much will it cost? Shacknews reports that high end gear will cost about a quarter. Why? You lose it on death.
“We’ve got to make sure we’re pricing things at the right level, because if you die [you lose these things].”
That same high end gear can still be obtained through regular gameplay, making it entirely possible to play without spending a dime.
(Source: Shacknews)
Darkfall Client Becomes Free, Subscription Reduced
As we’ve already announced: Aventurine plans on removing the initial cost of Darkfall’s client. Rather, players will simply have to subscribe once their trial is over (or any point in the middle) in order to start enjoying the world. Additionally, Aventurine will be dropping the subscription price from its current point of $15 a month to an undisclosed amount.
All of this goes live on June 29th. Starting June 27th, existing players will be given two free days to return, during which time skill gains will be increased. The promotion runs until the launch of Darkfall 2.0, at which time the game may or may not wipe and may or may not go free to play. Probably not.
(Source: Darkfall Epic Blog)
MMO Fallout 