Category: Editorials

Final Fantasy XIV Finally Available Via Digital Download


Obtaining Final Fantasy XIV has been a test of finding a store still stocking it, and nowadays those numbers are a bit slimmer than launch (none at all, if you live by me). Strangely, up until now Square Enix has opted out of utilizing any digital distribution systems for reasons that could be chalked up to releasing 2.0 before utilizing Steam or Direct2Drive.

For now, those looking to get Final Fantasy on the cheap can pick up FFXIV on the Square Enix website, as a digital download. The cost is $20 USD, or $13.39 if you purchase in the next few days. Check it out at Square Enix’s website.

Review: Runescape: Betrayal at Falador


Runescape: Betrayal at Falador is the first novel by T.S Church set in the world of Gielinor, envisioned by Jagex, more specifically the city of Falador and the White approximate king place approximately five years before the events of the game (the quest storyline), we find the world entering into chaos.  As the White Knights work to retrieve the demolished statue of a famous knight, a mysterious woman appears out of nowhere and near death. To the north, the evil Kinshra (black knights) under the leadership of Lord Sulla plot to sack Falador and conquer the region. Closer to home, a mysterious creature is murdering travelers, and the White Knights suspect a traitor is among them.

Betrayal at Falador is a treasure trove of Runescape lore, featuring everyone you would expect in the area around Falador: white knights, black knights, the dwarves, the Humans Against Monsters cult, as well as plenty of known names. Going into the book, my initial fear was that the characters in TS Church’s mind wound contradict the personalities presented in the game. Instead, Church goes to great lengths to preserve the quirks and details of each personality, reinforcing that this is in fact a Runescape book rather than a fantasy novel with some two-dimensional representations slapped on.

Betrayal at Falador follows an enormous cast of major and minor characters, and tends to jump around quickly between them often times offering not much more than a quick scene. In fact, a majority of the book’s chapters are only two or three pages long, with a couple single pagers thrown in. Oddly enough, this works to the book’s credit. Church manages to keep an appropriate pace throughout, shortening and lengthening each character’s part as needed without fluffing or needlessly slashing any details.

The story is tense, and the characters are fleshed out enough that you actually care when one of them dies, even if they play a relatively minor role in the story. That being said, Church employs one of my most hated methods of storytelling, the convenient obscurity. I can better explain by giving an example: one character is hunting another character, but does not refer to him by name. Only after a convenient reveal is the character referred to by name, both in the narrative and in dialog (internal and external). A small complaint, but I find it obnoxious when one character refers to his prey as his prey for several chapters, but once the person is revealed in another chapter in another location entirely, all of a sudden he feels comfortable referencing by name.

Church installs some interesting takes on the Runescape lore. The mysterious woman appears by way of a Ring of Life, a magical artifact which teleports someone near death to Falador. The ring is described as rare and powerful, and only fifty existing in the world, while in the game itself the ring of life is the product of a rather low level magical spell. The wizards are able to do far more with the runes of magic than players. Additionally, Church sets out a world large enough to remind us that what we play in the game is really just a miniaturized version of the full deal. Falador, housing less than a hundred NPCs in game, plays home to hundreds if not thousands of citizens. A trip to Taverly, mere minutes in the virtual world, is a multiple day trip for our heroes.

Runescape: Betrayal at Falador suffers from what I call Skywalker Syndrome, which plagues any story where the prequel releases years after the sequel. If you’ve played Runescape, you already have a good idea who is going to die. After all, if the person is present in the game, they lived. If they are prominent and do not appear in the game, they probably die. Overall the story is still suspenseful and engaging enough to keep the reader engaged, and Church was smart enough to cast the lead role as a character whose fate is left uncertain.

Runescape: Betrayal at Falador cost me over $40 USD when I bought it in 2009, because I ordered the hardcover copy at Jagex’s website and paid twice the cost of the book in shipping from the UK. Still, the book is worth every penny, even though you will spend considerably less than I did by buying the paperback at your local boom store. Likewise, you can purchase it in ebook format and save more money and trees. The book is about 400 pages.

The sequel, Return to Canifis, I will review when I have an opportunity to read it.

Most Surprising Act of 2011: Runescape Nukes Cheaters


Ever since Jagex’s inception, their fight against bots has been rather reactionary and ineffective. From 2001 with CAPTCHA codes and fatigue, to the random event system that probably claimed more players who had left the keyboard or lost connection than their intended targets, and so on. From 2005 onward, Jagex continued updates on an escalating basis to combat gold farmers who, despite massive bans and the shut down of Runescape classic to all but a few, continued growing at an even larger scale. In 2007, Jagex restricted trade to small imbalances, implemented the anonymous trading of the Grand Exchange. For over three years, Jagex implemented updates to soften those restrictions, and in 2011 all of that work went to waste when Jagex released the restrictions on trade and the gold farmers came back in an even greater force than they had four years prior.

So when Jagex launched the bot nuke and knocked the servers offline for the better part of the day, I joined a few other MMO journalists in awaiting the results, and were we ever surprised. Even after waiting for a couple of days, the bots hadn’t come back. The chatter on the cheat websites was of panic, and despite the attempt to keep their customers, the bot writers only seemed to be able to make big announcements of further upcoming announcements.

Bots still exist, don’t get confused, but those that continue on have nowhere near the complexity of their deceased brethren. Writing a bot that can click on specific sections of the screen in a specific order is easier to defeat than a bot that can fight dragons more efficiently than I can. So after years of telling myself that Jagex would never get rid of the bots due to a combination of incompetence and apathy, I can say that this year Jagex not only made me eat my shoe, but made me eat it dry.

Kudos to you, Jagex.

Video of the Year: Ascend A Friend, Rift


Sure, it may be a blatant parody of the Old Spice guy, but does the Old Spice guy fight invading aliens with a Corgi? I didn’t think so.

Runner Up: Your Mom’s Video Blog, Age of Empires Online

I’ve had a corn sandwich.

Final Fantasy XIV Server Mergers Coming After Billing Begins


Now that I can shut up about services being hacked…I think it goes without saying that Final Fantasy XIV is long due for a server merge, and that the sparse population on many servers is only going to get worse when the billing starts and only those willing to remain monthly remain. FFXIV 2.0 is a long way away, and for now Square needs to focus on their current customers. Naoki Yoshida has posted that the server merger will be discussed in more detail once Square has a better idea of how many are sticking around once billing begins.

We will first analyze the number of players in the game after the billing service begins.
Based on that analysis, we will be running a simulation where the maximum concurrent access during the peak hours will become somewhere around 1500 to 2000 per World.
* The above number is provisional and not a finalized number.

More information is expected around mid to late January.

Trion Hacked: Details Still Sparse


Is anyone else getting tired of hearing every month of new developers being hacked? Trion announced today that their servers have been breached, and a database including usernames, encrypted passwords, birth dates, email addresses, billing addresses, and the first and last four numbers of associated credit cards was accessed.

There is no evidence, and we have no reason to believe, that full credit card information was accessed or compromised in any way. We have already taken further action to strengthen our systems, even as we, with external security experts, continue to research the extent of the unauthorized access.

Head over to Trion’s website to read the whole announcement and for more information. Users are required to change their passwords, reset their security locks, and choose new security questions. Those who follow these steps will receive three free days added to their account, regardless of whether or not they are currently subscribed.

(Source: Announcement)

Most Aggressive Developer of 2011: Square Enix


When Final Fantasy XIV launched in September 2010, it drew a backlash from its userbase the likes of which haven’t been seen since Sony Online Entertainment implemented the Combat Upgrade and New Game Enhancements in Star Wars Galaxies back in 2005. For an MMO, it was one of the most disappointing releases of 2010. The development team was “reshuffled” and a fair amount of people were fired. Naoki Yoshida was put in charge and Square Enix would later come out to state that Final Fantasy XIV had done a fair amount of damage to the brand name.

But despite this, Square Enix refused to give up. Rather than shut the game down, Square threw years of precedent into the garbage and did what none of us could have seen coming: They opened up and started listening to their players. Instead of laying off staff, Square expanded the Final Fantasy XIV team to accommodate the larger work load. Instead of expecting players to pay each month for a broken game, they suspended subscriptions for over a year, and even delayed the Playstation 3 release until (estimated) a 2012 release. Since September 2010, Final Fantasy XIV has gone under update after update to implement what players were asking for, and remove what they had never wanted.

Final Fantasy XIV 2.0 is set to release at some point in late 2012/early 2013, and until then players will be asked to start paying a reduced subscription rate in January 2012. 2.0 is said to be a major overhaul of the game, so much so that Square feels confident in basing the release of the Playstation 3 version around it. If Square can find success in the years and millions of dollars they spent reviving this game from the ground up, well it puts them above certain other developers who simply hit the kill switch when accounting didn’t report the numbers they were hoping for.

Runner Up: Trion, Rift

If anyone needs to be commended for the most aggressive marketing campaign of the year, it is Trion with Rift. I hate to use the phrase “shoving it down our throats,” but since Rift got past the initial “our servers are crippled because we didn’t expect this much success,” the company has gone on to throw everything but the kitchen sink at potential customers, only prior to throwing the actual kitchen sink. For the fact that Rift has been with us less than a year, the game has gone on sale more often than most multi-year MMOs. Rift ads can be seen anywhere an MMO website can be found, and for a while potential and past players were invited on a regular basis to come back for a few days and play for free.

In the end, however, I had to give the award to Square Enix. An aggressive marketing plan is great, but even if you hate Square Enix, Final Fantasy, MMOs, or any combination of the three, you can’t ignore the sheer dedication it takes to spend the time and money that Square is to fix what they wholly admit was a result of their arrogance. You can argue that the game should have never shipped as it did in the first place, but it did. It happened, and this is how Square is fixing it.

Stay tuned for a new award every day throughout the end of December.

Planetside 2 Now Accepting Beta Applications


Planetside has always been a standout IP. When the original game launched way back in 2003, the idea of a shooter where hundreds of players could participate in a single battle, where instances were nonexistent and everyone fought on the same world, and your actions could determine the outcome of a war, was virtually nonexistent. Even now as 2011 comes to a close, the number of companies willing to take on such a task has barely budged at all, and several projects promising an updated version of what Planetside offers are either still in development or caught somewhere in limbo.

When Planetside 2 launches at some point between now and the apocalypse, you will be able to jump in free of charge. Before that point, why not sign up for the beta and have a chance at trying it out free of charge? All you need is a Station account and the ability to sign in and click the “I agree” box.

(Source: Planetside 2 Website)

The Old Republic Coming To Australia, New Zealand


It’s been a while since anything was said about The Old Republic’s launch in Australia and New Zealand, or for that matter the lack of a launch in either territory. Luckily, Senior Lead Community Manager Stephen Reid announced on the official forums today that Bioware is aiming for a Spring 2012 launch, around March 1st. Granted, a great deal of players have likely already purchased the game and are currently playing on North American servers, but no doubt this announcement will please those who would rather wait.

We can confirm that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be launching in Australia and New Zealand in the spring of 2012.

Right now we are targeting March 1st, but that could change as our number one priority is making sure that customers have a great service to play on.

For those of you who may have already imported the game, we will be investigating solutions to allow you to continue to play on a local server once they come online in March.

(Source: The Old Republic Forums)

Picture of the ____: Runescape Christmas Feast


The Orb of Oculus is an item in Runescape that allows players to set up rather impressive screenshots. Taken at the Christmas holiday event released today, this is a reminder as to how far Jagex has brought Runescape’s graphics in the past few years.