Category: Editorials

Rift: South Korea, and Let’s Talk China


Before I begin, I wanted to talk about Rift and China, namely the statement flying around that Rift will never have a snowball’s chance at matching Blizzard’s subscriber numbers unless they release in China. The above statement is, of course, completely true. The issue this raises, however, is Rift’s odds at releasing in China, which don’t seem all that likely in the near future, or really ever. The main problem Rift faces is the concept of the undead, especially since the game already carried the River of Souls event, that based its entire concept around the idea of souls being plucked from the river of souls (where everyone goes at death) to serve as an undead army.

China and the undead don’t got along well, and World of Warcraft’s expansions were delayed for multiple years, following extensive censorship, before the games could be released. Skeletons are replaced by sacks of flour and scarecrows, blood is green, even undead insignia are replaced or removed outright.

Anyway, Rift is releasing in South Korea! Running through CJ E&M Games, Rift will makes it break into the east. According to Trion’s Lars Buttler:

 “We take the Korean market very seriously as it is driven by innovation and growth in the online gaming space. By working with CJ E&M we are able to bring deep, immersive online gaming experiences to the east, and continue delivering quality games to gamers worldwide.”

Well hopefully Rift will take the Korean community better than some Korean companies take the western community. Rift was the top selling PC retail game in North American in March, according to NPD. We’ll see if this success can transition over to Korea.

Rift: South Korea, and Let's Talk China


Before I begin, I wanted to talk about Rift and China, namely the statement flying around that Rift will never have a snowball’s chance at matching Blizzard’s subscriber numbers unless they release in China. The above statement is, of course, completely true. The issue this raises, however, is Rift’s odds at releasing in China, which don’t seem all that likely in the near future, or really ever. The main problem Rift faces is the concept of the undead, especially since the game already carried the River of Souls event, that based its entire concept around the idea of souls being plucked from the river of souls (where everyone goes at death) to serve as an undead army.

China and the undead don’t got along well, and World of Warcraft’s expansions were delayed for multiple years, following extensive censorship, before the games could be released. Skeletons are replaced by sacks of flour and scarecrows, blood is green, even undead insignia are replaced or removed outright.

Anyway, Rift is releasing in South Korea! Running through CJ E&M Games, Rift will makes it break into the east. According to Trion’s Lars Buttler:

 “We take the Korean market very seriously as it is driven by innovation and growth in the online gaming space. By working with CJ E&M we are able to bring deep, immersive online gaming experiences to the east, and continue delivering quality games to gamers worldwide.”

Well hopefully Rift will take the Korean community better than some Korean companies take the western community. Rift was the top selling PC retail game in North American in March, according to NPD. We’ll see if this success can transition over to Korea.

Runescape: Once Again, Filled With Gold Farmers…


The video above showcases just one of the many sites in Runescape where botters (almost all of them gold farmers) are farming a mini-game. Now, in this particular mini-game, players must run through a maze, avoiding the creatures that roam it, otherwise they are teleported back to the start. A Splinter Cell stealth-style game. One of the creatures, as noted in the video, became stuck in place, making the maze impossible to complete. That, of course, does not stop the mass of bots from trying to force their way through anyway.

History repeats itself, and much like last time (2007), Jagex will likely not act until the gold farmers start hitting them where it hurts: The bank. A major point I’ve always thrown forward is that the 2007 trade restriction updates were put into place in retaliation not against botting, but against credit card fraud: Gold farmers using stolen credit cards to pay for membership. I’m not going to speculate on how the bots are paying for their membership this time, but I find it unlikely they are suddenly going legitimate.

So, your move Jagex.

Rift: River Of Souls Goes Out With A Fizzle…


For all intent and purpose, the River of Souls event on Rift went rather smoothly, minus some intermittent issues with a few servers. On the other hand, the much touted second and third phase that the game had been working toward lasted all of a half hour last night. As one of the players who logged off to go eat dinner at around 6pm EST, I logged back in barely a half hour later to find that the event was over, the bosses killed, the death rifts not giving items, and the world event page over.

I guess what was disappointing was not the speed of the second and third phase of the event (about a half hour for both phases compared to several weeks for phase 1), but that there were some old developers on Rift from past MMOs that such an oversight should not have been passed over, and I’m guessing it was because none of those names had a part in the event. The event itself was well maintained, phase 1 at least, and continues to show Trion’s quick response to player criticism and suggestions. Perhaps part of the mistake was having the phase 2/3 events on a weekend, and not just any weekend, the “invite a friend” weekend, that set a lot of servers back into queues when they were brought down to launch the final phases of the event.

All is not lost, and assuredly the events that took place will have a lasting effect on future updates. To compensate players (like myself) who either ate dinner at the time, or were doing something else assuming phase 2/3 would be at least a few days long, Trion is offering compensation in the form of 250 otherworldly essence, a treasure box containing a random item from the event, an item to start a quest, and two achievements. The otherworldy source stones (currency for the death rifts) will continue to drop, and so will the shadetouch weapon quest.

More on Rift as it appears.

WoW: Motivating The Least Used Roles.


Those of you who play World of Warcraft and use the dungeon finder tool will undoubtedly have come across a major brick wall: You have all the roles filled out, except for a tank or healer, and not a single soul appears to be willing to take the role. Or even worse, your healer rage quits mid-dungeon, after you’d just spent twenty minutes waiting in queue for him to show up.

In the patch notes for update 4.1, Blizzard hopes to motivate players into taking these roles, by offering extra rewards for the least used classes. Dubbed Call To Arms, the new system will automatically detect which class is the least represented, and offer additional rewards for entering the Dungeon Finder and completing random level 85 heroic dungeons.

Call to Arms is meant to lower wait times by offering additional rewards for queuing as the currently least represented role. To be eligible for the additional rewards you must solo queue for a random level-85 Heroic in the role that is currently being Called to Arms, and complete the dungeon by killing the final boss.

Rewards include extra cash, rare items, elixers, pets, and very rarely mounts. Also from the announcement:

We don’t feel the tanking and healing roles have any inherent issues that are causing the representation disparity, except that fulfilling them carries more responsibility. Understandably, players prefer to take on that responsibility in more organized situations than what the Dungeon Finder offers, but perhaps we can bribe them a little.

Bribery can be a good thing, when used properly.

Runescape: No, We Don't Vet Our Moderators


I’ve been involved in more player moderator/volunteer positions with online games than I can count, and one aspect that has always remained the same is the expectation of involvement. If a player asks for help and I ignore them, I stood to be fired. If there was a player cheating and I did nothing about it, I stood to be fired. If a player was harassing other players, and I didn’t mute him, I stood to be fired. If I acted like an idiot, or made false statements, I stood to be fired. Just because I wasn’t getting paid, didn’t mean I didn’t have some expectation of reliability and professionalism.

Cue in Runescape, where I’ve always said Jagex reads their community about as well as I can read a book sitting in a chair sculpted out of lava. Jagex has taken the laid back approach of “well you are just players so if you don’t want to help others, you don’t have to.” As expected, this has simply lead to a large number of moderators who accept the position just for the fancy crown next to their name in chat, or simply to mute people they don’t like (I should note that the latter generally do not last long as moderators).

While Jagex does a decent job of culling corrupt moderators, what they should be focusing on is the indifference aspect. If a moderator is present when a player is breaking the rules, and does not report them, they should be removed. Moderators who are inactive for a period of time should also be removed. I specifically left out answering questions because with how many players are on at any given time, getting an answer from players should not be difficult.

I am not suggesting that player moderators should be forced to go hunting for rule breakers, but rather just deal with them as they appear. I agree with the sentiment that player moderators are just players, but not to the extent that they can just ignore a problem as a normal player might. And if you don’t want to enforce the rules when you see them being broken, there is also a simple answer: Don’t accept the invitation when you receive it.

It’s really not that difficult.

Runescape: No, We Don’t Vet Our Moderators


I’ve been involved in more player moderator/volunteer positions with online games than I can count, and one aspect that has always remained the same is the expectation of involvement. If a player asks for help and I ignore them, I stood to be fired. If there was a player cheating and I did nothing about it, I stood to be fired. If a player was harassing other players, and I didn’t mute him, I stood to be fired. If I acted like an idiot, or made false statements, I stood to be fired. Just because I wasn’t getting paid, didn’t mean I didn’t have some expectation of reliability and professionalism.

Cue in Runescape, where I’ve always said Jagex reads their community about as well as I can read a book sitting in a chair sculpted out of lava. Jagex has taken the laid back approach of “well you are just players so if you don’t want to help others, you don’t have to.” As expected, this has simply lead to a large number of moderators who accept the position just for the fancy crown next to their name in chat, or simply to mute people they don’t like (I should note that the latter generally do not last long as moderators).

While Jagex does a decent job of culling corrupt moderators, what they should be focusing on is the indifference aspect. If a moderator is present when a player is breaking the rules, and does not report them, they should be removed. Moderators who are inactive for a period of time should also be removed. I specifically left out answering questions because with how many players are on at any given time, getting an answer from players should not be difficult.

I am not suggesting that player moderators should be forced to go hunting for rule breakers, but rather just deal with them as they appear. I agree with the sentiment that player moderators are just players, but not to the extent that they can just ignore a problem as a normal player might. And if you don’t want to enforce the rules when you see them being broken, there is also a simple answer: Don’t accept the invitation when you receive it.

It’s really not that difficult.

Rift: Authenticator Now Available for iOS


Rift has been at the top of my security hitlist for a couple weeks now, ever since Trion announced the release of Coin Lock, a security feature that, by their own admission, did little to improve security. Rather, in my own suggestions, I have always praised the mobile authenticators, noting that although they are not foolproof, they subscribe to the most pressing issue in account security: distancing the account from the computer, and when dealing with account theft, nothing accessible through the computer should be used. This means nothing sent to emails, dynamic codes, and more.

The Rift authenticator has been available on the Android devices for a while now, with promise that the app would come to iTunes in some fashion. Today, Trion announced that the security app is now available. The Rift Authenticator goes for a whole $0.00 (USD) and works on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, and requires OS 3.0 or higher to install.

The authenticator is easy to set up. Simply install it, head over to riftgame.com, log in, enter the authenticator code you are given, and voila. You are required to answer a secret question to add the authenticator, which will hopefully work to stop account theives from adding their own authenticator to an unprotected account (as was an issue with World of Warcraft).

As for the app itself, you are given a handy meter showing how much time is left before the code is no longer useful. The code changes every 30 seconds, and is 8 numbers long.

Posted from my iPad. For the sake of not-very-funny humor.

Earth Eternal Is Coming Back…To Japan…


Unfortunately for those of us in the states and Europe, our hopes that Earth Eternal was picked up by Time Warner were dashed when it was announced that a Japanese company, Sankando, had bought the title and was planning to re-release it under the name Ikimonogatari. Unfortunately, this is where the news descends from triumphant to disappointment: Sankando will only release Earth Eternal in Japan, at least for the time being.

Right now our focus is on the Japanese release. We are investigating our options for an English re-release.

My guess is that Sankando wants to test the game in home territory before they go ahead and launch international operations, or invest the money in translating the game to other languages. That does, however, raise some valid skepticism as to the game’s viability and odds of reaching the Western audience. Earth Eternal was, to scope the game broadly, a bare bones browser version of WoW, albeit with adorable characters, that financially collapsed so hard, there is a black hole where the Earth Eternal offices used to be.

Hopefully the Sankando team will pull a Fantasy Earth Zero (In Japan) and turn Earth Eternal into a financial profiteer. MMO Fallout will continue supporting the game, although I have to admit I may refuse to change the category title. The game will always be Earth Eternal.

Mortal Online: Link Facebook, Get Discount(?)…


As someone who works in brick’n’mortar store customer service, I’m often presented with the question; “is it seriously a sale when a $10.99 item is put in sale for $10.50?” and the answer is, in a certain sense, yes. The sale may not be particularly good, but given the new price is smaller than the last, it is indeed a sale.

About a week ago, I wrote on the upcoming expansion to Mortal Online, titled “Dawn,” and that the Star Vault team was also working to implement a feature to connect your Mortal Online account to your Facebook. As an extra incentive, the team decided that players would be given a discount to their subscription price if they linked accounts.

Well, Star Vault has unveiled the Facebook connect feature and the discount is, to say the least, negligible. Starting at five friends on your friends list (well that disqualifies me immediately), the savings amount to .25 Euro, or thirty six cents USD. The sales progress up to 750 friends, where the discount reaches 1.25 Euro, or $1.80.

As for wall spam, Star Vault promises the messages to be minimal:

In return for providing you with a discount, Mortal Online will sometimes make small posts to your Facebook wall when major events occur for you as a player; however, these are quite rare as we know nobody wants what could be considered spam!

More on Mortal Online as it appears.