Category: Editorials

Mortal Online: 14 Day Trial


Fight now, and let spill the dogs of war?

Wanted to try out Mortal Online without the need for purchasing the game? Those of you paying attention will be aware that a free trial has been on the list for a while now, but hampered due to Star Vault’s desire to continue patching the game before advertising it to the general public. The wait, however, is over! Announced via email and through the game’s forums, players may now create a trial account here, download the client here, and soon be experiencing the full frontal nudity that is Mortal Online.

Limitations, you say? There is a limit of 600 skill points and a cap of level 60 for all skills. Other than that, you have 14 days to wreak havoc on your fellow players in the nudist colony. You may want to check up on the servers before you go in, however, as Star Vault’s Henrik Nystrom posted a couple days ago:

Dear community,

Our entire host network in Europe have operation issues at the moment. This is affecting our server at the moment. We got reports that servers running a game called World Of Warcraft is effecting these network at the moment via Frankfurt……

This could affect our server connections and they are working to solve it as we speak.

A game called World of Warcraft…Nope, not ringing a bell. Whatever it is, surely it can’t be big enough to cause lasting server problems.

Classic Jobs Coming To Final Fantasy XIV


Cherry Blossoms.

“Possible introduction of traditional names such as paladin, monk, white mage, etc.”
-Final Fantasy XIV Lodestone

Final Fantasy XIV features nineteen classes, and for the most part the names are rather straightforward. We know what to expect out of a fisher, botanist, miner, armorer, blacksmith, goldsmith, culinarian, etc. However, from the perspective of someone who has never played Final Fantasy XIV, can you tell me what a Thaumaturge does? A Thaumaturge is a magic class that specializes in damage, incapacitation, and using your own HP to heal your party members. For a regular Final Fantasy player, the Thaumaturge are probably closer to black mages.

There are plans in place to change the job names back to their more classic versions (archer becomes ranger, etc), and the update is welcome, albeit a low priority task. Learning the jobs in Final Fantasy XIV is basically a measure of applying new terms to old concepts, and aside from a few extra minutes of confusion, is not that big of a deal.

As for me? Well I’ll keep spending a lot of my time in Final Fantasy XIV making screenshots to use as header images, like the one you see above.

Buy Star Vault Stock! Only 5 Cents A Share!


Let's not lose our heads over this.

Mortal Online has been creeping its way towards success since its launch last year, and not unlike the mass of polyps in my face, removing the problems is going to require a lot of work, time, and perhaps some major surgery. As it stands, however, Star Vault has taken the “no publicity is better than bad publicity” approach, one that I myself have encouraged and several other MMOs featured here are currently using, and Henrik Nystrom is holding off on advertising Mortal Online until the game reaches a marketable state.

Unfortunately, development doesn’t pay the bills, and likely not even Henrik can continue using the family coffers forever. Star Vault, on a Swedish trading website, announced that 9.9 million Class B shares will go up for sale for .36 SEK each, a figure which rounds to about 5 cents USD per share. I don’t think it takes an expert to know that those are extraordinarily low stock prices.

Hopefully this influx of cash will mean faster development toward that era of marketability that Star Vault so greatly desires and likely needs at this point. I mean, it has to get worse before it can get better, right?

More on Mortal Online as it appears.

Hulkageddon 4 Kicks Off In Eve Online


Hulkamania

Eve Online is a persistent world MMO where, short of exploiting bugs, a moral code is virtually nonexistent. Eve’s history has uncovered major ponzi schemes, illicit banks, corporate espionage on an enormous level, and more. The phrase to live by in Eve Online is “it may not be ethical, but it isn’t against the rules.” For some players, however, Eve Online is just a little too safe for AFK-miners and resource gatherers who sit in high security space. Thus, several years ago, Hulkageddon was born.

Hulkageddon is an event where players are encouraged to suicide-gank as many miners and gatherers in high-security space as possible, with points assigned to the best individual players and corporations that take part. Points are alloted based on several variables, including what type of ship was killed. This year, however, the victims are not just miners. As posted on the “about” page:

Since merely blowing up mining vessels is fun, this time around we are broadening the target spread to generate more tears of dismay! In Hulkageddon 4 all mining vessels, orcas, freighters, haulers, noctis and primae count towards your score! Yes, you read that right, all the vessels mentioned there count for the main prize. In addition to that some vessels have their own achievements linked to them, check the prizes page for all the details!

There are a ton of prizes in categories from most kills, to first kill, kills in certain regions, most expensive kills, and best hatemail generated. Yep, if you can manage to devolve your victim into the virtual equivalent of a child screaming in the WalMart parking lot, you can win wonderful prizes (Eve Online prizes).

I’m expecting to take some of the flak for supporting Hulkageddon from miners and “carebears” who attribute the enjoyment of this event to both the lack of a female partner of the opposite sex, as well as inadequacy in the groinal region. That being said, Hulkageddon is a reminder that Eve Online is first and foremost a PvP game where players team up or work solo to make their way up to the top, with success built on the dead bodies and ships of other players who stood in their way, or just were present at the wrong time. Crude? Yes, but Eve Online fills its spot, and a big spot at that with over three hundred thousand subscribers.

You can find the killboard here, and Hulkageddon’s website here. The event runs from February 19th to the 28th.

Xsyon Last Minute Delays


Word to your delays...

You may recall that Xsyon, the sandbox MMO from Notorious Games, was pushed back from its original May 2010 release date to August 2010, and then to a nonspecific date in early 2011. Earlier this year, a confirmed date of March 1st was announced, with the prelude going live two weeks before. As Notorious Games was gearing up for its final character wipe before prelude, however, last minute hardware and database issues arose, causing the servers to lag so badly that the game was nonfunctional for the night. After deliberation, it was decided that the launch would be pushed back, with the “official launch” pushed back to March 15th. The final wipe and prelude launch is, as of yet, undetermined, but according to NG’s Virtus, should occur before March 1st.

The server issues can be attributed to a sudden and unforeseen explosion in Xsyon preorders in the two days leading up to the original prelude launch, those server issues in turn contributing to the database errors. Players are, understandably, perturbed by the announcement of yet another wipe, as the initial launch had tribes competing against each other, not to mention unplayable conditions, fifteen minute delays in action, consistent server rollbacks, and other glitches, in order to lay down claim of territory in the game’s map. Although Notorious Games has promised that they will do everything in their power to restore Tribe territory, they may be unable to leading to another rush for land when the game launches a second time.

More on Xsyon as it appears.

GamersFirst Show: Episode 1


There is something to be said about this video from GamersFirst. If I had a nickel for every time I didn’t laugh during this show, I’d put those nickels in a sock, give that sock to Hal Sparks, and sit idly as he uses it to beat Jonenee Merriex for yet another spin-off of Talk Soup, minus the funny.

Xsyon Prelude Is Coming Today


Word to your delays...

Those of you who follow indie-MMOs may remember that Xsyon was supposed to launch back in 2010, around March in fact, but the title was delayed by around a year because of the need for more content. Since then, the game has received a lot more publicity, a substantially (albeit understandably still small) increased following, and a whole host of new features, tweaks, and content.

While the full game is set to go live on March 1st, players who preordered will have access beginning today when the servers go back up at around 6pm Eastern. The Prelude event, as it is called, is the beginning of players starting new civilization, following an apocalypse that wipes out most life on earth. Players are tasked with forming tribes (and homesteads for solo players) to rebuild, using their skills in everything from basket weaving to tool crafting in order to make life even a little easier. Tribal territory is where players will converge, and offer quests and solace from the harsh world.

Xsyon is an open world sandbox game with a heavy focus on crafting and evolution. Although the game has free for all PvP, that mechanic is less featured than in titles like Mortal Online and Darkfall, with heavier disincentives for gankers and griefers. As the game progresses, the poisonous “green mist” that surrounds the starting lands will open up, allowing access to new areas and new technologies. So players starting out with guns now may find down the game’s development road that guns are available.

More on Xsyon as it appears. You can read up more at http://xsyon.com/

Final Fantasy XIV: Physical Levels Being Removed?


Final Fantasy XIV bots.

Final Fantasy XIV is an odd bucket. For starters, I love the game, but I often find myself wishing Square would stop phoning me up at 3am, drunk, weeping and apologizing for issues I already know it is fixing. Since Final Fantasy XIV launched, cradled, and promptly slaughtered a flock of geese in its turbine engines, Square has been on the job to fix and tune the game to the liking of its community. The community, despite what one might have expected, has been quite helpful, if anything for the joy of having a free MMO to play that isn’t a Korean grinder (but a Japanese grinder!)

Taking a peek at the lodestone on Final Fantasy’s website reveals a massive list of updates that are currently in the works, from small tweaks to major adjustments. Recently new objectives have been added to the list, from new loot in battle, to balancing the synthesis system. Here are just a few new additions:

  • Instanced PvE content.
  • Auto-MP regeneration.
  • An auto-attack system.
  • Making certain NPCs more visible.

There are a lot of other features in the planning and production stages that are simply aesthetic, including the addition of more graphical “rewards” for ranking up. One question on the poll that caught my attention was whether or not players would prefer to remove the physical level altogether, with a focus being placed on each individual rank. An implication of this, as noted in the poll, is that players would craft and receive gear that relied on skill rank to wear. Another feature receiving a heavy-handed look in the poll was the attribute system, meaning a major overhaul could be in the future for that system as well.

You can check out the rest of the lodestone here. More on Final Fantasy XIV as it appears.

Champions Online: 1,000% More Money


Atari, and by extension Cryptic

By now this type of news shouldn’t be too surprising, and I doubt anyone expected to see a headline: “Cryptic announces major loss in revenue after move to free to play.” As Turbine, Sony, and more have proven before us, the seeming majority who bash everything with a free option and a cash shop ultimately turn up as a very vocal, very tiny minority. There are, of course, those who will claim that Champions Online will have died without making the switch, and they are probably correct in that assessment.

However, if Cryptic Studios is going anywhere now, they’re going to the bank. According to Cryptic, the number of unique logins, concurrent players, and revenue have spiked over 1,000% since the game went free last month. To celebrate, Cryptic is placing a one-hour xp boost in the Cryptic Store for free, limited one per account. If you’re jonesing for some quick cash, the item is apparently tradeable, so save it and see if someone will buy it for a good amount of in-game money.

Having Champions Online free to play will be an interesting move in the months/year to come, as this means more competition for City of Heroes and DC Universe. Will the competition have to adapt to survive? Will Iron Man have to face his one true fear in order to defeat his nemesis? Find out all this and more! On the next issue of Amazing Issues of Amazing Amazements!

Since it had to be asked: Does Bill Roper regret leaving Cryptic now? Someone just missed a fat bonus check.

Everquest: Second Progression Server Tomorrow


Flippy Longstockings

A few days ago, I wrote about how Sony was reactivating inactive Everquest accounts until the 21st of the month in lieu of the time locked progression server, the aptly named Fippy Darkpaw, renowned for his ability to run headlong into guards far higher than his own level, assuredly the first Leroy Jenkins before Leroy was Leroy. As it also stands, I also happen to be a moron, as not only did I manage to misspell “Fippy Darkpaw” in the past two articles, I did it about twenty times, especially given the 490×392 screenshot that sat at the head of the article each time. I am, at this present time, writing this article from inside of The Chokey, where I have to admit my iPad is receiving terrible wifi reception.

Those of you who have experienced Sony’s progression servers in the past will no doubt be sarcastically aghast to learn that the server has attracted so much attention that it has been at maximum capacity since launch. Due to the overwhelming demand for the new server, Fippy Darkpaw (got it!), Sony announced today that a second server is being created, to launch tomorrow (the 16th), if sooner. The server will be named Vulak’Aerr, after the Draconic Lord.

Players wishing to get on Fippy Darkpaw are better off waiting for Vulak’Aerr. The server is at maximum capacity at all hours.

Update: The Vulak’Aerr server is live.