When Dungeons and Dragons Online went free to play last year, it sparked quite a few questions as to the game itself. How was it doing, subscriber-wise? Was this a desperate attempt at new players, or just a smart business move? Of course, now we know that it was just a smart business move. Shortly after DDO went free to play, Turbine announced a 40% increase in paying subscribers, and a new server to hold all the incoming players.
Since Dungeons and Dragons Online went free play, they have amassed one million new players, as well as twice the number of paying subscribers. The cash shop on Dungeons and Dragons Online leads the industry with a 500% increase in sales.
Well, the success just keeps on coming. Jim Crowley: CEO of Turbine had this to say:
“The response from players to DDO Unlimited has been nothing short of phenomenal. We’ve known all along how great this game is and by implementing an innovative new model that put the players in charge of how they pay and play DDO Unlimited, we’ve successfully expanded our reach and injected new energy into the game. Without a doubt, DDO Unlimited is a hit!“
Xsyon may not be the best looking game, but where the title faults in the super hi-def bloom that burns cornea and frightens small nocturnal creatures, it makes up in offering freedom to players. Throughout the short history of the MMO genre, there have been quite a few attempts at allowing the player to build the world around them. Star Wars Galaxies, more notably, allows players to build cities to focus their guild. Those cities, likewise, are able to take part in the overall galactic civil war.
In Xsyon, the developers have decided to take a different approach to the idea of post-apocalyptic. Rather than being in a world that is destroyed, that you are merely trying to survive while the world around you builds up (or remains stagnant), you are taking part in the rebuilding of the new world. Most, if not all, of human innovation is gone, kaput, and the leaders have fallen back to the old days of God worship and scavenging.
The manner in which Xsyon hopes to keep its players is to allow them to shape the world as they see fit. Before the game launches, those who preorder will be given access to a very small section, from which point they will be roaming around, exploring new areas, and discovering new methods of crafting, building, fighting, and more. As the players progress, so does the game, with players deciding everything from the foundation of new cities, even to terraforming of the current terrain. The environment is in a state of constant flux, and it is up to the players to decide the future of the world. Everything down to the quests are player-given, where players can obtain quests ordered by the chief of the “tribe” (guild). New skills, new items, new objects, new creatures, most will be discovered in-game before they are announced.
Xsyon looks to be shaping up into a title similar to A Tale In The Desert, where early players will have a very different experience than those who join several months or years down the line. Of course, the fact that I can create my own cooking recipes is enough of a reason for me to dip into my pocket, but then again…I’m irresponsible with money.
There won’t be a trial for Xsyon until the game launches, and there won’t be an open beta (more on that tomorrow). Preorderers are given access to Prelude, a pre-game world that they have a great amount of freedom to shape and discover.
In January, Haiti was struck by a massive earthquake that resulted in countless damage, over two hundred thousand dead, and millions left without a home. In the following months, we witnessed an enormous surge of companies looking to get their players involved in donating to the cause: Participants including Blizzard, CCP Games, Frogster Entertainment, Sony Online Entertainment, and more. These events offered players an opportunity to purchase items with real money, with a portion (or all, or more) going to charity.
The folks over at Hello Kitty Online had a different idea on charity: Instead of requiring cash donations, why not allow people to donate just by playing the game? Food For Friends 2, the charity initiative, was set up to allow players to donate any type of in-game item, with the worth of that item being translated to real cash and donated to the Haiti relief efforts.
So far only one of the two servers has chimed in with its results: over eighteen thousand dollars from more than a million items donated. By my own calculations, and the current count of items on the other server, the total donation should be somewhere along the lines of twenty five thousand dollars, to be donated to Doctors Without Borders.
Obviously the titles on MMO Fallout have been a joke, but when it comes to the idea of companies fighting over who can donate the most to charity, trying to spark a little competition can go a long way.
The more this Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment fiasco continues, the more I get the feeling Gary Whiting is going to come back as a Freddy Kreuger-style character who attacks CME employees in their sleep.
This month, Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, developers of the comatose Stargate Worlds, joined the lawsuit against Gary Whiting, former chairman and big time investor at CME. Gary Whiting is being sued by investors of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment for alleged wrongdoings against the company. According to the complaints, Whiting failed to honor terms of the agreement, and also failed to make payments to investors based upon said agreements. As Whiting had named ties between MMOGULs, an alleged MMO portal ponzi scheme, and Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, it was only a matter of time before Cheyenne became involved in the lawsuit.
When Cheyenne ME joined the lawsuit, Gary Whiting was removed from the board, fired, and all ties with him were severed. Unfortunately for Cheyenne, and any unlucky employee who may have bad mouthed Whiting on his way out, the court has ruled against removing Whiting from the board of directors, from the court papers below:
As to Plaintiffs’ request for a TRO, the Court finds insufficient grounds to remove Mr. Whiting and Mr. Safiulla from the board of directors; the Court similarly finds insufficient grounds to appoint independent directors to the board of directors.
That being said, Cheyenne did manage to secure a “receiver” to protect the company’s assets while they continue their forage into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. For the time being, at least, Whiting isn’t going anywhere.
More on Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment as it appears.
When Darkfall launched last year, it was met with some heavy issues. Not only was the game virtually un-buy-able for months post-release, but there were many game-breaking bugs. That being said, following endless patches, and two expansion packs, the Darkfall of today is very different from the Darkfall that launched in 2009.
With the game’s first birthday on the horizon, Aventurine is continuing their effort to make the newbie experience more enjoyable: Namely removing the requirement to buy the game just to get a sampling of its flavors. Starting today, players with new accounts have the option to buy the Darkfall Trial, a seven day romp through Agon that costs a mere one dollar.
On the downside, you need a credit card to purchase this. On the other hand, this is in place so players do not abuse it to aid their main accounts, and players who do abuse it can be tracked down to their real accounts to receive swift judgement. Requiring a credit card will also prevent the gold farmers the game has done so well holding back this past year.
If you haven’t had a chance to try out Darkfall, and want some player vs player orientated gaming, check out the $1 demo. Head over to your local Darkfall website now! If you live in Greece, the magazine offer is still valid, I believe.
I say, the tone of MMO Fallout has been quite negative this past week. You know what we need? Free stuff. If you wanted to get into the early head start for Everquest II’s latest expansion, Sentinel’s Fate, you’re a little late: The expansion has already launched. If you have not purchased the expansion yet, and would like to get in on an exclusive item, then you’re just in time!
Continuing the natural bandwagon of offering exclusive items per retailer, Sony has an offer to make through Steam you won’t be able to refuse. Players who purchase through Steam will receive access to the Guarding of the Learned Armor. For $40 USD, current players will be able to enjoy all that Everquest II has to offer, while new players will receive the whole experience, plus thirty days free time.
One important thing to note: Unless Sony has changed anything, you will need a valid form of payment if you are a new customer, in order to get the thirty days.
I say, the tone of MMO Fallout has been quite negative this past week. You know what we need? Free stuff. If you wanted to get into the early head start for Everquest II’s latest expansion, Sentinel’s Fate, you’re a little late: The expansion has already launched. If you have not purchased the expansion yet, and would like to get in on an exclusive item, then you’re just in time!
Continuing the natural bandwagon of offering exclusive items per retailer, Sony has an offer to make through Steam you won’t be able to refuse. Players who purchase through Steam will receive access to the Guarding of the Learned Armor. For $40 USD, current players will be able to enjoy all that Everquest II has to offer, while new players will receive the whole experience, plus thirty days free time.
One important thing to note: Unless Sony has changed anything, you will need a valid form of payment if you are a new customer, in order to get the thirty days.
When Cryptic Studios announced that the upcoming expansion to Champions Online, Vibora Bay, would be a paid expansion, the reaction from the community was nothing short of explosive. Players saw an expansion adding in what should have been added in (a fill-in for the late game leveling gap), and overall were quite offended at having to pay for something they saw as vital to the game. Something worthy of note is that, even after Cryptic announced that the expansion would be free, the players were still angry about it, but now for other reasons.
The point with Cryptic is that the community felt that they were trying to get away with as much as they could, believing that the paid expansion announcement was a test to see if the community would buy into it. Thus, Cryptic had essentially sealed their fate from the first announcement. The same is going on with Allods Online and Gala-Net’s current predicament: The cash shop is ten times the price of the Russian version, and core game elements were removed or gutted in order to force people to fork out real money.
gPotato put out a release late last night in response to several criticisms of the game that surfaced over the past week. Among the two responses, the cash shop price:
“We are not sitting and waiting just to see how many dollars we’re going to make over the next four weeks.”
This raises several questions. If you weren’t looking to see how much money you could get, then why did Gala-net raise the prices ten times over the Russian version? Why was end-game raiding severely gimped in order to make perfume use mandatory? There are more questions to be asked, and even more to be answered.
What is done is done, at this point all Gala-Net can hope to do is move forward, make some adjustments before the game goes live, and hope all goes well. As I’ve pointed out before, and I still stand strong by this, the quality of Allods Online as a game allows it a rare benefit in that if this mistake is fixed quickly enough, the game can move ahead and leave this incident in the past. One aspect I have been paying heavy focus on is that the community wants this to work, and the thread that has been set up for feedback is already populated by great ideas, and progressive thoughts.
At this point, Allods Online isn’t nearly as close to a trainwreck as people may think, but closer to a failed sump pump. If Gala-Net can quickly get the motor started, and perhaps move the upholstery to the first floor, then the most damage you’ll see is a waterlogged carpet that needs to be replaced.
In my current line of customer service work, saying the wrong thing to the wrong customer can be devastating. Odds are, if you tell a customer exactly where they can stick their refund, you’re going to get fired on the spot. Now, business can do all they can to stop employees from saying stupid things, as that just leaves one or two customers annoyed and potentially lost for good. Meanwhile, when an employee reveals something maybe they shouldn’t have, or reveals something that, despite false, damns the company, then you’re going to have a real problem on your hands.
Enter Square Enix! I don’t get to talk about Square Enix, nor their unconventional conventions of MMOs, so I always jump on the opportunity… So essentially once since MMO Fallout started. MMOsite is reporting on a Square Enix Human Resources employee who revealed the following on his blog:
“I think some amongst you will know, but FF11 started in 2002 … Well, this year it’ll end and the stage will shift to FF14.”
-Square Enix Employee
Now being Mr. I-Hate-Rumors, I immediately assumed one thing: This means Square Enix will shift much of its attention towards Final Fantasy 14, which makes sense. As for Final Fantasy XI being shut down; considering the number of players who still enjoy XI, and the message shutting down such a profitable game would send that player base, Square Enix would have to be more insane than normal to think that the players would just jump right over to XIV. Sure, some will, but overall Square will wind up with a predicament similar to that of Asheron’s Call 2.
Final Fantasy XI is eight years old this year, and still remains one of the (if not the) most popular MMOs in Japan. The game is showing its age, but by no means is the title ready to go on the cart. No, I think Final Fantasy XI has a good few years left in it, assuming Square isn’t using Final Fantasy XIV as the club to beat XI to death. There are still plenty of events planned for Final Fantasy XI, yet to come.
Luckily, Square got right on the case: The post has been removed and there has been an announcement that the post is a lie. That being said, thanks to your average sensationalist blogs, the topic will be on whether or not Square Enix is lying.
It’s always a good idea to tell your employees, especially your Human Resource people, not to reveal information that might be damning to a game, especially if the information isn’t really damning, but you’re going to word it in a specially cryptic fashion that makes it look so.
Make a wish, kids, because Blizzard just donated one million dollars to make your wish come true. Last year, Blizzard ran a two month long charity drive with a simple premise: Purchase a Pandaren Monk pet for $10 USD, and 50% of that purchase will go towards the Make-a-Wish foundation. Despite the usual complaints on the forums, over two hundred thousand of Blizzard’s subscribers pulled their wallets out and made a purchase during that time period.
Although 50% isn’t nearly as much of a percentage as I’d like to see companies (especially Blizzard) give from a non-tangible item that costs barely a couple hours to code into the game, given that the Pandaren wasn’t made for the charity, I think I can give it a pass. The sheer girth of the donation, combined with Blizzard being up front about how much they were donating, makes it an alright move in my books.
Meanwhile the PLEX for Haiti event ended last week on Eve Online, with more than forty thousand dollars being donated. In Eve Online, if players donated PLEX, it was converted directly into cash and sent to charity.
MMO Fallout 