Ryzom is one of those titles that may have slipped under your radar. Originally launched in 2004 by Nevrax, Ryzom is a science-fantasy MMO. The game aims to create a living breathing world, offering features such as animals that hunt one another, resources that become unavailable at certain seasons, and more. The game operates on a skill-based system. After Nevrax was acquired, and the game went bankrupt, Ryzom was picked up by Winch Gate, who currently publishes and develops the game.
Starting March 9th, Ryzom is opening up the trial to include the first 125 levels (out of a maximum 250), with no time or area limitations. There are other limitations on inventory, apartment, and guilds that apply.
And as Yumeroh put it:
Despite the freedom of this new system, we would like to remind you that Ryzom can only live on through your paid subscriptions. Thank you for the confidence you have in us.
In the July 7th patch, Fear of Death is going to be removed and replaced with item curses. When a player dies now, there is the chance that a curse will land on a slot in their inventory. If the item is rare (Rare, epic, or legendary only) the curse will invert the stats of the item. More importantly, bosses now have a chance of dropping rare items in an already cursed form. So, as one Allod Online’er put it, Astrum Nival essentially took a temporary grievance that can be waited out, and turned it into a permanent grievance that must, without exception, be fixed with a cash shop item or heavy gold in the auction house.
It’s been eight months since I talked about Allods Online, and the update that added in item curses. After my post, gPotato implemented a cash shop item called the Holy Charm, which is the cash shop item described above. Also in that eight months, I believe that the holy charm has far outweighed its presence, because gPotato appears to be gearing up to remove the item, and possibly the curse mechanic altogether.
In a news post on the Allods Online website, PioPico has announced that Holy Charms are now completely free! There are no limits to how many you can buy (aside from how many you can hold), and the post does not specify if this sale is permanent or only temporary. If you do play Allods Online, there isn’t much of a reason not to stockpile these. Otherwise, if gPotato does keep the mechanic in and the sale ends, at least the prices should come down heavily in the game’s auction house (albeit, doing that they may as well rename Allods Online to Zimbabwe Online, with how high inflation would be).
Just enough time to watch the Lord of the Rings Extended Director's Cut Trilogy
Less than a week ago, I mentioned that Trion was opening up over twenty new servers for Rift’s head start, after population built up into fifteen hour long lines just to log in. Of course it is worth pointing out that, with any MMO launch, a few of these servers will be going the way of the Dodo a few months out when the game has settled down to its base population.
Not content with adding twenty three new servers, Trion is looking to throw even more realms onto the pile, with the announcement of another 31 servers that will be added in March 1st (today) for launch. The official list contains 19 US servers, with 12 in Europe divided into 9 EN, 2 DE, and 1 French. The resulting count leaves server figures at 58 North American servers and 41 European servers.
When the time does come to it, hopefully Trion will be able to merge servers quickly and efficiently. You can check out the full server list here, or by ordering Rift from one of the many MMO Fallout-trusted retailers, and then log in.
Back in the day, you may remember that Dungeon Runners was set to receive a transfer to the web browser shortly before death. Due to the nature of MMOs being the opera singers (read: fat) of the gaming genre, free to play titles have a harder time gaining new customers when that means convincing someone who is jumping from title to title to sit down for another multi-gigabyte game they may hate after five minutes. Now, games like Runescape and Battlestar Galactica and FusionFall work with small downloads, through the browser. Turbine, Sony, and Blizzard attempted to fix this as well by offering streaming downloads, where you only download a portion of the game, and the rest downloads as it is needed.
Last year in October, Frogster released a 3.5gig client for Runes of Magic, carrying the same functionality at a smaller size than its 7gig counterpart, as well as carrying higher optimization and better performance. Apparently this wasn’t far enough, as Frogster has announced through press email that Facebook and browser based versions of Runes of Magic are coming, fully functional. Expected to be arrive in Q2 2011, Runes of Magic browser edition will open up a legion of untapped customers.
I can only hope that Frogster will invite me to swim in their money jacuzzi after this update goes live.
Rift’s head start launched out the door yesterday, and almost immediately the title was punched in the throat, dragged into a back alleyway, and beaten with a metal club for all of its bandwidth. Of course, those of you familiar with MMO launches will be well aware of the launch-day queue lines, matched and surpassed only by lines for new rides at Disney Land. Everquest added one new progression server due to the overwhelming demand. Trion, on the other hand, has added over 20.
At the start of the day, Trion had added in 13 servers, comprising of seven US servers. Over the course of the day, ten more servers were added to continue alleviating stress on existing shards. Depending on how the game goes at the true launch, more servers may have to be added to compensate for the additional, additional load.
Being who I am, I have to add my voice of pessimism. Once the pre-launch hype wears down and the post-free-month community settles in, the excess servers will likely be merged. Of course, Rift could continue growing after launch, in which case you are free to take this article, sharpen the edges, and use it to murder me in my own apartment.
I'm legally required to remind you to game responsibly.
Today’s “Absolutely Brilliant!” comes from user Gnatbug on the MMORPG.com forums. Gnatbug has a list of rules for how to go about buying an MMO, and although he may be a little too selective (#4), he hits right on the money.
Rule #1) Never Pre-Order unless you have played in the open beta of a game!
Rule#2) Never buy a lifetime subscription before you have played a game!
Rule#3) Always google the game to find out what others think, then make up you mind.
Rule#4) If Cryptic is developing…a game WAIT 5days before buying it …Just to make sure it has content!
Rule#5) HE WHO HAS GAS …Travels at the back of the line!
In the past, Everquest has been one of the few MMOs to dabble in, shall we say, unconventional alternate rule servers. Sure, most games you come across nowadays have some combination of PvE, PvP, and RP, and you can’t get much better than a PvP-RP server, when striking someone with your sword as you scream “you must construct additional pylons!” before your World of Warcraft guild gives you the final boot for “vagrant sarcasm.” But that was years ago when I was still interested in Starcraft. The problem with alternate rule servers is that updates have to be coded once for each ruleset, to balance and work out bugs. As Ultima found out, your bastard sword (their word, not mine) of Gargoyle slaying worked fine when gargoyles were NPCs, but when they become a player race, the weapon is suddenly very overpowered.
The Age of Conan team has desired to implement alternate rule servers, and up until now just haven’t had the utilities. In this month’s monthly development update, Craig Morrison talks about how some players just aren’t satisfied with the level of ass-whooping they can dish out in AoC, and want to take that limit further:
“However, as we have gone on we see that there is clearly a very dedicated, and very loyal, group of players who long for a more brutal and demanding PVP environment. It has become increasingly apparent that the desires of that section of our playerbase simply want something a little bit further away from the experience that the mainstream majority are comfortable with.”
Can you guess what that mechanic is? Trust me, if you just blindly dive into an article, the surprise isn’t ruined from the start. Funcom plans to implement two (one for US, one for EU) PvP servers for Age of Conan, featuring full loot. The following rules will apply:
One character limit, no transfers.
No NPC guards.
PvP re-enabled in Tortage areas that were previously removed.
Other PvP systems may be changed.
The specifics are not in on the Age of Conan loot system. Morrison was able to confirm that equipped gear will likely be off-limits from looting, and that the loot will likely be a combination of inventory items and generated loot (so Age of Conan is becoming like the 2008-early 2011 PvP in Runescape?). Expect more news before the server launches in early May.
We hope to have the new rule-set ready to roll out in early May, but we will hopefully deploy a version to the PVP test dimension prior to that for some public testing. Keep your eyes on the weekly community updates for more information as to when that will happen.
The only thing I love more than reading financial reports is reading financial reports auto-translated by Google. With the release of Mortal Online’s 14-day trial, our next bit of discussion pertains to the company’s annual financial report, released a little earlier today. The short: Mortal Online is remaining stable, growing at a small rate. Star Vault has plans to increase advertising in the near future, but requires more money as the previous ad money was spent on development. Although the subscriber rate is growing at a positive pace, Mortal Online has yet to achieve profitability, even with the new cost management.
With the new cost structure, the Board expects that an additional approximately 1500 players to achieve break-even, a goal that we hope to achieve in the second quarter of 2011.
Hopefully the mass sale of stocks, as well as new players being introduced via the 14 day trial, will bring Star Vault some much needed income to sustain the company until they reach the point of profiting.
More on Mortal Online as it appears. You can read the whole financial report here.
Asian MMOs live and die like rats. They appear quickly, populate an area with many of their clone offspring, and several years down the line it becomes difficult, nay impossible, to get one of the major gaming publications to even take a passing glance at that carcass in the streets, other than to pinch their nose and complain about the smell. Mmosite.com may be a sensationalist, almost tabloid-esque, news source whose community will gather like a lynch mob whenever a new game carries the title “subscription based,” but I do use regularly browse their news and forums to get a glimpse at the current happenings in Korea/Japan/China. They also give a lot of space for Asian MMO developers, offering them blogs and server space to get their game out. In a way, they are the nega-MMO Fallout.
Did I mention MMOSite was sensationalist? Now, of course I won’t knock on the site for desiring a controversial topic to write about, but it feels like every few months MMOSITE runs an article about the latest big-name MMO from China/Korea being overrun by cheaters. In this case, the game is TERA, and they point out that bots are getting by quite easily in this action-based MMO due to the presence of areas filled with mobs that have low health, low attack, and spawn frequently. Due to the number of bots clogging training areas, allegedly “many” legitimate players are quitting the game out of frustration.
MMOSite has a point, however. I’ve yet to see a substantial number of free to play games in Asia die solely because of the level of botters, but TERA is not a free to play MMO. TERA launched with a subscription, meaning players are far less likely to just ignore the large number of cheaters, and the game’s life expectancy will take a hit if cheaters are not addressed.
TERA launched last month in South Korea, and is set for a North America/European launch sometime later this year.
Lego Universe will no longer be maintained by NetDevil, as the game and development team have been bought up by Lego Team.
Jumpgate Evolution's future in question.
I love Lego, so I am perpetually looking for a reason to talk about NetDevil’s Lego Universe. It isn’t often that an IP holder takes direct stake in an MMO based off of their property, so the news comes as a surprise that the Lego Team has bought up the development team for Lego Universe, the MMO that launched last year. Lego Universe, for those of you who don’t remember, is a kids MMO that features many of the features of a standard game, but with the added ability to customize the aesthetic look of your creations.
We can speculate for hours as to why Lego Team bought the developers, and whether or not they felt the game’s future was in uncertain hands with NetDevil, but Gazillion’s (owns NetDevil) President David Brevik had this to say:
“The transition of members of our team to the LEGO Group allows us to conclude the work-for-hire segment of NetDevil’s business and lets us expand our internally-published, free-to-play game businesses based on our own properties and licensed properties. Gazillion is wholly focused on developing, operating, and publishing the next generation of browser-delivered games We’re proud of the LEGO Universe game that our team built, and we are certain that it has a bright future.”
My ideas? I think this has to do with the ongoing lawsuit headed by Codemasters against NetDevil over the developer not releasing Jumpgate Evolution in a timely manner. Either NetDevil is having money issues and sold the game and team, or Lego Team is concerned about the long term viability of the company and bought up the game. On the positive side, this means that customers of Lego Universe will keep their beloved game, and with the development team staying on board, this means no sudden major changes in development focus.
NetDevil is a subsidiary of Gazillion Entertainment, and known for the defunct MMO Auto Assault. The company has several MMOs currently in development, including the aforementioned Jumpgate Evolution, Marvel Universe, and Marvel Super Hero Squad Online.
MMO Fallout 