Category: Editorials

Cleanup In Aisle 5! SOE Community Explodes In Response To Europe Deal


In the land of MMOs, few have ginned up more controversy than Sony Online Entertainment. Sony announced that they would be partnering with Alaplaya, gaming division of ProSiebenSat.1 to publish most of Sony’s MMOs in Europe, transitioning European players off of Sony’s account system and on to PSS. The deal has an astounding laundry list of negative impacts on both the North American and European communities which you can read here at EQ2Wire, and the drama only increased when allegations arose that PSS once had a policy of publishing personal details of its customers, and how Alaplaya’s current library is mostly filled with cheap free to play Korean grinders with pay-to-win cash shops, servers riddled with exploits and gold farmers, and mostly absent GMs.

The community has exploded over this news, and the forums were set ablaze by angry customers resulting in numerous posts deleted and users banned for “excessive negativity,” including Morgan Feldon of EQ2Wire. Sony has been mostly silent, saying little more than that the deal is not a done deal and nothing is set in stone yet, while ProSiebenSat has set up a forum and has been talking to users about specific complaints.

There will surely be more information on this as it appears.

Jagex Hires David Solari As Chief Marketing Officer


Jagex today announced the hiring of David Solari as the company’s new Chief Marketing Officer. David Solari is the former Vice President of Codemasters, where he oversaw the release of Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Archlord, and RF Online. At Jagex, Solari will take over and oversee all Jagex marketing activities.

According to the press report, Jagex sees 2012 as “scheduled to be one of the most significant years in the studio’s history.” Jagex currently has three MMOs, Stellar Dawn, 8Realms, and Transformers Online, scheduled for release this year, as well as the continued maintenance and weekly updating of the company’s current staple: RuneScape.

David Solari’s effect on Jagex’s marketing is sure to be seen in the coming months.

(Source: Jagex email press release)

Aion: Truly Free Coming To North America


Last year, NCSoft announced the upcoming free to play transition of Aion…in Europe. In a rather unsurprising move, the developer announced today that North America will be following. Players will have access to all of the content in Aion free of charge, without restrictions on zones, housing, mounts, quests, etc. In addition, NCSoft promises robust cheat detection to ensure that bots won’t take a choke hold over the game.

As a head start, NCSoft will be launching a “Rallying the Troops” event, offering new players a chance to check out the game with no time limit, but a level cap of 40. Returning players will have the ability to have their accounts reactivated for 14 days in the run up to the launch of Truly Free.

Aion Truly Free hits this spring.

(Source: Aion Truly Free)

Rift Raids Southeast Asia Via Asiasoft.


World of Warcraft has shown us that when it comes to dominating the marketplace, Asia is just as important as the West. In an article on Games Industry, Trion has announced a partnership with Asiasoft to bring Rift to multiple Southeast Asian countries.

“Asiasoft, with its deep reach into Southeast Asian countries, is an ideal partner to realise our goal of bringing original connected experiences like Rift to gamers everywhere.”

(Source: Gamesindustry.biz)

Guild War 2 Trumps TERA, Play While You Queue


Someone must have told Guild Wars 2 developer Arenanet that I was comparing MMOs based on how they handle server queues. At least so far in the beta, TERA compensates players who spend more than ten minutes in line for their server with a period of bonus experience upon logging in. I didn’t point this out in the TERA article, but you can actually leave the game without logging in and still receive the bonus.

Guild Wars 2 says sucks to your queue line assmar. Martin Kerstein has posted over at Guild Wars 2 Guru that instead of throwing the players in line and punishing those who join fuller servers at launch, Guild Wars 2 will simply move the player to an overflow server temporarily while they wait in line on their home server. Once the line opens up, you can head back in without delay.

Let me explain what an overflow server is and what it does. It is a technology we also use as our version of a queuing system. When a map or a world you want to log into is at capacity limit, the game will ask you if you want to play on an overflow server – so you can actually play while you are in a queue. Once space opens on your world, the game will ask you if you want to join your friends on your world. And you keep all the progress you made while you were playing on the overflow server.

(Source: Guild Wars 2 Guru)

Mortal Online Wasn’t Hacked


Here at MMO Fallout, I’ve developed a pet peeve over the distinct difference between being hacked and having an account breached. Hacking requires some amount of technical prowess to accomplish, such as exploiting a vulnerability in an sql database to retrieve a list of passwords, or in the case of NCSoft back a couple of years, using an exploit in the client to log into a random person’s character and steal their items. When someone breaches an account by way of keylogger, guessing the password, or having access to an account with higher privileges, the account was compromised, not hacked.

In the case of Mortal Online, yesterday a player obtained access to a GM account and went wild on the server, deleting structures and altering some player’s accounts. It’s important to note that the person was not able to access payment details, and apparently the extent of the damage was destroyed assets, some players had their passwords changed, and some players were banned.

So Star Vault, as they announced, had a “security breach,” but the company was not hacked as some outlets are reporting. I just want to reinforce this difference because with the recent hacking at Steam, Square, Sony, etc, the announcement that a company has been hacked is just another fear of one’s credit details being stolen.

The more you know.

(Source: Star Vault)

Mortal Online Wasn't Hacked


Here at MMO Fallout, I’ve developed a pet peeve over the distinct difference between being hacked and having an account breached. Hacking requires some amount of technical prowess to accomplish, such as exploiting a vulnerability in an sql database to retrieve a list of passwords, or in the case of NCSoft back a couple of years, using an exploit in the client to log into a random person’s character and steal their items. When someone breaches an account by way of keylogger, guessing the password, or having access to an account with higher privileges, the account was compromised, not hacked.

In the case of Mortal Online, yesterday a player obtained access to a GM account and went wild on the server, deleting structures and altering some player’s accounts. It’s important to note that the person was not able to access payment details, and apparently the extent of the damage was destroyed assets, some players had their passwords changed, and some players were banned.

So Star Vault, as they announced, had a “security breach,” but the company was not hacked as some outlets are reporting. I just want to reinforce this difference because with the recent hacking at Steam, Square, Sony, etc, the announcement that a company has been hacked is just another fear of one’s credit details being stolen.

The more you know.

(Source: Star Vault)

Limited 14 Day RuneScape Members Trial


[UPDATE: THE TRIAL APPEARS TO BE UP AND RUNNING AGAIN, CLICK HERE]

Earlier this month, I talked about how now that Jagex has rid the game of the more troublesome bots, a limited members trial sounds far more feasible. After all, while the free version of RuneScape offers an overwhelming amount of content, the two games are segregated at a level where a subscription should be experienced rather than teased. Granted, I didn’t think Jagex would already have had something in the works.

While there hasn’t been an official announcement, players are reporting that newly created free accounts are being offered 14 days free membership with certain limitations. The details right now are foggy, given most of my information is coming from questionable sources, but the trial appears to be limited to new accounts only, and the trial may be region-restricted. My sources in the UK were the only ones to receive the below message upon creating a new account, while those in US, Canada, and Germany were unable to.

Today is Sunday, so it is possible that Jagex will have some sort of formal announcement this week. For now, however, the trial doesn’t seem to be fully rolled out.

Into The MMO Fallout Archives #2


It’s spring cleaning time again here at MMO Fallout, and I still have over 130 never-been-published drafts to go through.

  • Jagex Doesn’t Understand Economics. (2010)

The economy of Runescape is delicate like a flower. No, a better analogy would be a kitten perched on a clothesline above a pot of boiling water that happens to be sporting a grease-fire. Everyone wants to pet the kitten, but all it takes is one careless player, one clan with greedy intentions, or one developer with no foresight or training in economics, and suddenly we find ourselves wondering if kitty was fried before he was boiled, or the other way around.

For those that haven’t figured out, I canned this article for being a little too aggressive. I still stand by the point of the article, and may bring it back in a more fact-oriented manner, but the essential information of the article was so: Jagex’s economy can be fixed by removing the high-alchemy spell from the magic book. High-alchemy is a spell that generates massive amounts of wealth out of garbage that couldn’t be sold in such high quantity, at a price higher than selling to an NPC vendor.

  • Cheating For The Fun Of It: RuneScape Style

I’m going to infuriate a lot of people when I say this, but I’m very tempted to start botting in Runescape. I would do it on an alternate account, of course, whose membership I would pay for with a game time card just in case Jagex tried to link my two accounts to each other. I wouldn’t sully my actual account by cheating on it, as my ethics tell me not to cheat to gain a competitive advantage, and I wouldn’t use it to get easy high levels. In fact, I’m aiming to get very low levels.

The word count for this article, I kid you not: Exactly 666. Now this article was based off of reports at the time that players were being rolled back for botting without having certain items taken away while equipped. So it was possible to bot one’s way to 99 in a skill, obtain the skill cape, be reset to level 10 and still be wearing the cape. Now, I referred to this as making a penalty for cheating into a symbol of status, and I cut it (to the best of my memory) because it came off as far less satire and far more “material that would get me blacklisted by any self-respecting developer.”

  • Manage Your Lives: A Public Service Announcement (2010)

Everyone has frustration and anxiety, and take it from me when I say you should go to everyone who advises you to bottle it up, and explain to them exactly where they can shove their wisdom. Venting your frustrations, even if you have no audience, is healthy. The last thing you want to do is hold it in and ignore it, and hope that everything will just get better over time, because it doesn’t. Things don’t just get better because you hope they do, you have to take action, and possibly kick a few asses in the process (not literally).

This article I wrote out in its entirety and then scrapped, because it wasn’t as much for my audience as it was for me. I wrote this during an extremely stressful point in my life, and upon reflection it revealed a lot of personal details that I would rather not share.

  • There’s a Name For MMOs Without Grind (2010)

I often see people complaining about grind in MMOs, generally that they want less grind, or in some instances no grind at all. Now, there is a name for MMOs with no grind: Dead. Offline, shut down, bankrupt, kaput, I could go on all day. Despite what you may be lead to believe, grind is an integral part to keeping an MMO alive in the long run, and it is a feature that isn’t going anywhere for the time being.

This one never made it to publication because it was beating a dead horse. The idea of complaining over grind in an MMO is absurd, because those same people given their wish will complain that the game is a “race to end-game,” and quit just as fast.

  • The Term MMO Has Been Diluted (2011)

Among my feedback, I get a lot of requests to de-list games like Crimecraft, Neverwinter, and Global Agenda that are technically not MMOs, and the more this website evolves and “real” MMOs are being added in, the harder the list is becoming to maintain, and the less excuses I can come up with to keep the games listed. Given recent announcements, I have decided to de-list Call of Duty Online, but I wanted to expand upon the idea of MMOs from concept to implementation.

This article was the most disappointing to me, partially because I set out to form a line that ultimately came down to “because they said so.” I want to revisit this article at some point in the future.