Category: Editorials

MMO Fallout Presents 2019 Predictions For 2020: 2019 Edition


With 2019 just about dead and behind us, it’s about time we start looking toward the far future of 2020. That in mind, I’d like to make some of my trademark predictions for the coming new year.

  • Daybreak Game Company DayBREAKS: I’ll file this one under ‘assuming it doesn’t happen next month.’ In case you weren’t paying attention for the past two years, Daybreak Game Company is a mess and I predict that 2020 will be the point where all of that comes to a head. More layoffs, lower quality workmanship with their live titles, and H1Z1 on PS4 will still be a simmering dumpster fire of garbage. This year we speculated that Daybreak is planning on facturing itself into several separate companies. If that is the plan, I believe that 2020 is the year that it happens. Assuming there’s anything left to break apart.
  • Alganon/Line Of Defense Will Still Be Vaporware: I don’t know how it’s possible for an MMO that was already released to become vaporware but Derek Smart managed to pull it off. Alganon has been offline for migration to a new server since November of 2017 and it doesn’t seem like it’s coming back any time soon. Smart is allegedly working with partners for an international release (Alganon technically only launched in North America), but if this relaunch doesn’t get MMO Fallout into legal trouble with David Allen…again, will it even be worth it? Oh and Line of Defense is still a pipe dream.
  • Neither Will Earthrise: The folks at SilentFuture want me to know that the Earthrise reboot is definitely happening and the game hasn’t been cancelled at all, but I’m going to to on a limb here and say that a 2020 reboot of a nine year dead MMO that nobody wanted the first time around, for whom the new developer hasn’t actually done anything with in years? If that happens and it’s good, I will eat an entire Little Caesars pizza. For charity.
  • And Neither Will Everquest 3: I don’t think this revelation will surprise anyone, but Everquest 3 isn’t going to be a thing, Daybreak missed that boat when they abandoned Everquest Next and Landmark and arguably pulled a con on their customers in the process.
  • The Rise Of Specialty Servers: Now that World of Warcraft has shown how popular classic servers can be, I expect that more developers will be working on specialty servers going into 2020. 2019 was rife with them, we had DDO release a permadeath server, as did Age of Conan, RuneScape has its twisted leagues, and there have been all sorts of progression servers. I expect 2020 will only increase in developers willing to take risks by which I mean copy what should be a safe and proven idea.
  • MMOs Releasing On Stadia: If they are smart they will. Right now Stadia requires a $10 monthly fee just to access the service. As of some point in 2020, that will change and the standard service at 1080p will be free. For MMOs that already have console versions, if the developers are smart they’ve already been working on porting those games to Stadia. Think of it this way; you’re effectively porting your game to mobile (phones/tablets) without actually having to put the legwork into trimming down the game to function on a mobile device.
  • More SpatialOS MMOs Will Shut Down: I know this one is about as obvious as predicting the sun will rise tomorrow, but I expect we will see more games running on SpatialOS to shut down due to the engine’s extortionate costs. All of these games will be before they even release, or shortly after.
  • More Mobile Ports: Mobile ports of MMOs are apparently doing very well, just ask NCSoft how Lineage II: Revolution and Lineage mobile have been operating. It stands to reason that more developers are going to tap into the mobile market and make cut down versions of their PC/console games.
  • Anthem’s Reboot Will Be Too Little, Too Late: File this one under ‘assuming it happens at all.’ At this juncture, I can’t see Anthem recovering from its first year to any standard that EA might find acceptable. Stores can’t give the game away and it has already hit single digit prices on the used market. For those who already own the game, at least they won’t be completely abandoned like EA has done with certain past MMOs.
  • More Lootbox Alternatives: Given the threat of looming government regulations has been slowly turning into actual government regulations, I anticipate 2020 will introduce more lootbox alternatives. 2019 saw the rise of the battle pass and it looks like that’s the direction many developers are going in since you can make extra money selling levels for casual players who really want all of the cosmetics included.

That’s it for MMO Fallout’s 2020 predictions for now. If I come up with another list, I’ll be sure to publish it.

Bought It On Stadia: Wolfenstein: Youngblood


Yea I bought the thing on the thing.

I wanted to talk about Stadia without having to dedicate an entire piece just to the hardware because you can’t really talk about the service unless you’re talking about a game. Those of you who keep track of my social media and other posts on this website know that I fell on the grenade and pre-ordered Stadia way back when it was first announced and made available. Yea, I’m willing to take that $129 hit because I love all of you (especially you).

Fast forward to yesterday and my Stadia came in the mail. Following a ridiculously convoluted setup process which involved downloading the Stadia app, using my invitation code, plugging in the Chromecast Ultra, downloading Google Home, setting up the Chromecast, tying my controller to the phone via bluetooth, updating the controller, registering the controller to my Chromecast, registering the controller to my wifi network, and speaking the seven words of the forbidden one, I was finally able to start. Thing about the Stadia is that you can’t buy stuff through the website, the Stadia service, or in-game. You have to use the Stadia app on your phone for all purchases, even in-game DLC.

The Stadia controller is nice, it has some heft without being a big chungus. Design-wise it’s like someone asked Mr. Google “should this controller look like the Xbox One or the Switch Pro” and his answer was “yes.” The Stadia controller has easy sharing in the form of a snapshot button (that can be held down to record the last 30 seconds) as well as a vestigial button that will eventually be used for something or other as a Google help feature. The controller even has a built-in microphone which is creepy, and I’ll explain why later.

Gotta give Stadia an initial positive: It’s nice to be able to buy a current game and have it immediately ready to play and not have to worry about updates, downloading, clearing space, or day one multi-gig patches. Even the Switch can’t get away from installations for most of its titles.

So why Wolfenstein? Simple; I don’t play fighting games so a fast moving first person shooter is the best way to test just how well the Stadia holds up under high stress situations.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood is simultaneously a load of crap and a bit of a masterpiece, depending on what sides of the coin you’re looking at. At the end of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, BJ Blazkowicz and his very pregnant wife Anya have helped spark a resistance against the Nazis. Youngblood picks up from that story nearly two decades later and skips over all the fun stuff. The United States successfully pushing the Nazis back? BJ killing Hitler? We just hear about it in retrospect, without actually getting to play it. Youngblood puts the player in control of twin daughters Soph and Jess who plot a rescue mission to France upon learning that BJ has gone missing during a covert operation.

My big fear going into Wolfenstein on Stadia was that the game was going to play like garbage, being a run and gun shooter using a streaming infrastructure. What I found instead is that the game worked quite well. In the nine hours it took me to finish the campaign and most of the side missions, I had one instance where the stream started to break up but otherwise it was almost buttery smooth. It’s difficult to pinpoint what is a case of lag in Stadia on Wolfenstein. There are several moments where I’m fairly certain that I was on target but my shot missed regardless, but I can’t definitively say it was from lag.

I liked Youngblood a fair bit more than the general audience did. As a budget ($30) shooter it played a role as filler between Wolfenstein II and the inevitable Wolfenstein III, a side story that advances the plot without being completely necessary to the overall structure.

Youngblood’s first cardinal sin is that the game introduces a completely unnecessary RPG system to pad out gameplay. Different areas have level requirements and if you head in underleveled you’ll find that enemies can simply tank your damage. Previous Wolfenstein games have had armored enemies, sure, but it doesn’t make sense even in the context of the game why an unarmored Nazi soldier should be able to take six shotgun shells to the face and brush it off simply because they are higher “level” than the player. I also noticed that enemies level with you once you out-level a zone, meaning while Jess and Soph will regularly feel underpowered, there never comes a time when you feel like badass Nazi-killing machines.

Youngblood’s second cardinal sin is directly tied to the cooperative nature of the game. Jess and Soph have a shared life system where you can get up three additional lives. Get knocked down to 1hp and instead of dying outright you’ll enter a downed state and can be rescued in a short span of time without losing one of those lives. If you die without extra lives, you’ll get knocked back to the last checkpoint. In raids, this can be a long setback. Because you have the ability to pick each other up and because the game assumes there are two people playing, Wolfenstein ramps up the number of armored enemies packed into very tight corridors leading to deaths that aren’t quite…fair in the grand scheme of things.

And while I’m tearing this game apart, I’ll point to a third cardinal sin: Deescalating boss encounters. The bulk of Youngblood’s story centers around taking control of three towers. At the top of each tower, you end up fighting a big armored Nazi boss in a mech suit. The first encounter, strangely enough, is the hardest as not only does the level offer very little in the realm of proper cover but large parts of the floor are randomly engulfed in deadly lasers and you get easily overwhelmed by the couple waves of lower Nazi grunts that come in. The latter two fights against the same type of mech suit lose the laser floor and offer several places that the mech suit can’t get to. Couple that with the fact that by the second and third encounter you have more health, better armor, and more weapons at your disposal and the progression doesn’t quite make sense.

As with prior iterations, Wolfenstein Youngblood is a game that can theoretically be played as a stealth title. I didn’t find any reason to, as now any Nazi soldier can raise the alarm and bring in reinforcements. You end up wanting those reinforcements because more Nazis killed means faster leveling, whereas stealthily getting past soldiers gets you nothing except potentially underleveled and forced to replay levels as punishment.

So was there anything that I did like? Of course. Wolfenstein’s’ trademark gunplay is back. Guns pack a punch that make each of your kills feel impactful as you run down corridors shredding Nazis into confetti. The credit system used to buy upgrades stonewalls your progress in the beginning but by the end of the game you’ll have more coins than you know what to do with. My personal favorite weapon was the automatic shotgun.

Youngblood also excels in world-building. Each level is a combination of open world French streets, closed corridor buildings, and underground sewers. The implementation of double jumping adds a new element of height as you jump across balconies, fight enemies that can leap across buildings, and use cover to your advantage.

I also got used to the two main characters; Soph and Jess. As the daughters of the famous Terror Billy, the Blazkowicz daughters have big shoes to fill and are ready to go out and kill Nazis. As a couple of presumably-18 teenage girls, they are also one to goofing off which can be seen in the elevator sequences where the duo dance, make rude hand gestures at one another, and just generally screw around waiting for the killing to start up again. The game also acknowledges how ridiculous it is that a couple of young girls with no military experience but an arsenal of guns and some power armor are beating the crap out of a trained Nazi regiment. There are also “peps,” which are basically emotes that carry buffs. The Blazko sisters can give each other thumbs up, metal horns, or do a dance to give each other buffs.

What Youngblood sets itself in is the 80’s punk atmosphere. You’ll come across campy horror movies with a fascist twist, 80’s synth bands singing in German, and versions of comic books and other products that are reminiscent of real world things while also clearly being Nazi propaganda.

Youngblood ultimately tastes like half of a Wolfenstein game which fits that it was sold for half the price. On a 150/150 megabit internet connection with my Stadia hooked up by wifi and sitting about seven feet from the router, the picture quality never really dropped from a crisp image and outside of one big stumble I don’t think I would have fully recognized that the game was streaming if I hadn’t already been aware of it.

Now Destiny 2 on the other hand is trash, and I will dive into that more in my next piece.

As a note of humor, after several hours of playing I had forgotten that I left my session on public (anyone can drop in). A user came into my session without my noticing and left his microphone on, treating me to the creepy faint sound of an infant crying as I stealthily made my way through the Paris underground. I nearly jumped out of my seat at the loud “Papi, que estas jugando” coming over the speaker.

As another point of contention, the snapshot system in Stadia sucks. Sure it’s easy to take snapshots, but you can only view them from the app and there is no method to download your screenshots so I had to bring each one up on my phone, screenshot the photo, and then upload them to WordPress. The quality may have degraded.

Destiny 2: Vex Offensive Final Assault Closes Out Season


The Season of the Undying ends in just a couple of weeks and Bungie has dropped what should be the final bit of content progression as of today.

This season’s story focus has been mainly on the Vex, a skeevy group of time-traveling terminators hell bent on merging all realities into one singular timeline where the Vex rule all and there is no light or darkness. The Guardians (players) of Destiny’s story have repeatedly thwarted the plots of the Vex, culminating in the Curse of Osiris expansion where Guardians rescued Osiris from the Vex and virtually crippled their forces.

As of the start of the season Guardians had opened a portal to the Black Garden, birthplace to the Vex, and killed two very important pieces of the Vex hive mind. Kicking off the season in response, the Vex launched a mass invasion of the moon. Over the course of the season, Guardians have been working with Ikora Rey to handle the Vex invasion on two fronts; shutting down gate portals as they appear on the moon itself, and running raids on the Black Garden in order to put a stop to it once and for all. The raids on the Black Garden led players to the Undying Mind, and thus where the story is today.

Being creature that exist on multiple timelines and realities, the Undying Mind can’t just be destroyed once, it must be destroyed in all of the timelines that it exists. Therefore players must act as a community and kill the Undying Mind over, and over, and over again. The final offensive is virtually identical to the prior version except slightly more difficult. You go through the same motions of defeating two areas of Vex while simultaneously grinding Ikora’s daily missions, and instead of another giant Vex creature you have to bring the shields down on before you can kill him you get a different giant Vex you need to do the same on.

Regardless, it appears that the conclusion of this season will somehow lead into or become the catalyst for the next season that Bungie has planned. What could it be? Maybe the Drifter will become corrupted by the darkness he harnesses and end up going evil (as seems to be common with people who wield darkness in Destiny’s universe).

Only time will tell.

[Column] H1Z1 Season 6 and the Death Spiral Of Daybreak


H1Z1 is now in Season 6 and if you thought Daybreak couldn’t put any less effort into a season pass than the last time around, you are completely wrong.

I wanted to wait until Season 6 launched because I honestly didn’t believe Daybreak’s own website that listed out the rewards for this season. Season 6, for the 100% of my audience that no longer cares to personally keep up with the simmering dumpster fire that is H1Z1 and Daybreak overall, might just be the worst attempt at raising some extra cash that Daybreak has ever put forward in this game’s history. It is truly astonishing.

For $5, you get the premium reward track. For $12 you get the track plus 25 tiers. There are only 50 tiers of rewards for this season. For twenty bucks, you can just skip the season pass and get all fifty rewards. Twenty dollars and you don’t even have to suffer through extensive exposure to H1Z1’s increasingly broken systems and busted gameplay to get cosmetics for a game you probably got tired of supporting a year ago and whose QA and bug fixers probably got laid off about three rounds back. Don’t look for a list of patch notes or come into this update with expectations that Daybreak has fixed any of H1Z1’s problems. Rest assured they have not.

And let’s be clear, the rewards for season 6 are without a doubt not worth your $20. The free track offers 11 rewards;

  • 5 locked crate
  • 40 credits
  • 2 Unlocked crates

Wanna know what 40 credits will get you? Jack squat! The cheapest item I found available on the marketplace right now is 1200 freaking credits! You’ll need $2.50 worth of crowns (as crates are discounted to 50 crowns to unlock) just to unlock your free crates.

The PS+ track gives you;

  • 6 unlocked crates
  • 1000XP bonus
  • 100 credits

So a couple bucks worth of unlocked crates and a smidgen more worthless credits. And what do you get with the paid track?

  • 8 unlocked crates
  • 4 XP Boost
  • 1500XP bonus
  • 650 Credits

Are they seriously asking $20 to unlock all of this crap? It’s not even worth the initial five because you’d have to play the game more that Daybreak is unable to fix! I’d even like to tell you about the Thanksgiving event but it’s not up, the arcade mode doesn’t freaking work and H1Z1’s social media hasn’t even acknowledged the update going live over an hour later and I swear this game is going to give me a heart attack.

On the other hand, there is a horrible looking bacon ghillie suit that can be bought for $10! Hide yourself from H1Z1’s numerous bugs in an outdated meme!

I want to know Daybreak’s budget going into Season 6, because I’m willing to bet that my annual Disney+ subscription is more expensive. You could have just color-swapped some existing models and threw them on the reward list, it wouldn’t have been ideal but it would have at least been something outside of recycling your crates and calling it a day.

Icing on the cake, it doesn’t look like Daybreak even bothered to add in a challenge set this season. On the other hand, you’ll have over three months to slog through this at a snail’s pace to get what paltry rewards Daybreak could afford to cobble together.

I don’t think I have ever had less faith in Daybreak’s ability to exist as a company, and I say that knowing full well that I say this every time H1Z1 comes out with a new season.

2019 Developer Report Cards: Bethesda Softworks


There should be no surprises in this report card.

Bethesda’s performance in 2019 indicates a company that has become wholly incompetent and is either incapable of or unwilling to fix its flaws, but instead has chosen time and time again to double down on everything that it does wrong and throw consequence into the wind. Let’s look at Bethesda’s 2019 release record:

  1. Fallout 76 – I could spend hours writing about how Fallout 76 continued its uncontrolled blaze in 2019. Of the numerous screw ups in 2019, perhaps the most insulting comes in the form of Bethesda delaying the Wastelanders update, that big content dump that was supposed to add in the human NPCs and do…something. Instead Bethesda shat out a paid service for which the services people paid for straight up didn’t work. I have long since given up on the people still spending money on Fallout 76. If you get fleeced by Bethesda, you have no one to blame but yourself.
  2. The Elder Scrolls: Blades – It doesn’t surprise me at all that Elder Scrolls Blades is a commercial success considering in the mobile sphere you could feed people the video game equivalent of asbestos and they will happily throw tons of money at you and ask for more. At the end of the day it is still a low quality, low effort facsimile of an Elder Scrolls game that punishes you for playing it and always has its hands out for another tenner.
  3. Rage 2 – Does anyone even remember that Rage 2 released in 2019? Rage 2 peaked at 13 thousand players on Steam and in one month more than 85% of those people dropped off and went to play something else. Reviews point to Rage 2 being boring, repetitive, and short. Rage 2 also implements a ridiculously convoluted system to buy DLC expansion. You can’t buy the expansion outright, you have to buy bundles of Rage Coins and use those. The first expansion costs 1,500 Rage Coins ($15) but you can’t buy 1500 Rage Coins, you have to buy the 500 RC pack and 1,100 RC pack which is $15 anyway and leaves you with 100 RC left over.
  4. Wolfenstein Youngblood – On the subject of things nobody asked for, Wolfenstein Youngblood comes hot on the heels of The New Colossus dividing Wolfenstein fans. Youngblood released at half the cost of Rage 2, which doesn’t quite explain how the game managed to hit less than half the peak number of players. Youngblood was a smattering of bad ideas; Obnoxious protagonists? Check. Forced coop with awful AI? Check. Obtuse RPG mechanics in a shooter? Check. Microtransactions? Of course.
  5. Wolfenstein Cyberpilot – And speaking of things nobody asked for, how about a game that nobody purchased? Cyberpilot is a VR spinoff that peaked on Steam at 24 users. That’s not a mistake, twenty four user peak at launch for a game that costs $20 and so far could only convince 92 people to leave a review. And this was a collaboration between Machine Games and Arkane Studios! Not enough players at peak to fill up a Battlefield server and only 36% approval.
  6. Commander Keen – As of this writing (November 13), there has not been hide nor hair of the mobile Commander Keen game since it was unveiled at E3, but I am going to talk about it because it is germaine to the conversation. Nobody wants Commander Keen on mobile, and Bethesda’s embarrassing announcement trailer was unlisted because of the dislike ratio. None of the Keen social media accounts have been updated at all since the announcement. If Commander Keen the mobile game was silently killed off, it would do less damage to the franchise than releasing it.

Bethesda (and its subsidiaries) shoveled out more unwanted garbage in 2019 than any company with its size, franchises, and experience ever should. The Fallout 76 team has shown nothing but incompetence over the entire year, not to mention a complete lack of caring for systematic and repeated lies made to the public. Their releases in many cases not only floundered, but may have done long term damage to their associated brands. In the case of Rage 2, you have the most disappointing awaited sequel since Dambuster messed up Homefront. For Cyberpilot, a low-effort attempt at cashing in on a trend. In Commander Keen? The shameless skinning of a beloved old IP.

With all of that considered, I have to give Bethesda in 2019 the grade of:

2019 Developer Report Cards: Ubisoft Edition


Oh Ubisoft! What can I say about Ubisoft that hasn’t already been said about Flint’s water supply?

Ubisoft confuses me as a gamer and as a guy who writes about games. On one hand, they are constantly pulling maneuvers that make you wonder what chucklehead is driving the vehicle. On the other hand, they’re competent enough to put out some actually good games and fix what they screw up. Let’s look at Ubisoft’s 2019 releases.

  1. Trials Rising: It came out, it sold copies. Honestly don’t have much to say about this one.
  2. Far Cry: New Dawn – If you enjoyed Far Cry 5, New Dawn was basically an expansion pack’s worth of content at an expansion pack’s price of $40. If you enjoyed Far Cry 5 and wanted to see what happened following the rather crazy ending, well you pretty much got what you wanted. As far as Far Cry plots go, the story was fine. Just fine. It allegedly sold worse than Far Cry’s prior spinoffs including Primal so perhaps it would have been better off as a cheaper DLC release for Far Cry 5 instead of a standalone title.
  3. Anno 1800: Anno 1800 marks the first of Ubisoft’s titles this year to go to the Epic Store for exclusivity on PC. It sparked quite a controversy since the title had already been available for pre-order on Steam before Ubisoft summarily yanked it. Not willing to let that controversy hold it back, Anno 1800 evidently went on to become the fastest selling Anno game. It also seems to be very well received by those who bought it, looking at Steam reviews.
  4. The Division 2: And here is where Ubisoft first pooped the bed. By all means The Division 2 was exactly what a game sequel should be. It implemented a lot of lessons from its predecessor and actually fixed them instead of ignoring/exacerbating them. It wasn’t perfect, The Division 2 launched with some issues surrounding loot and the first raid was kinda crap because console players literally couldn’t handle it. And Ubisoft fixed most of those problems and has been supporting the game with some good content. Unfortunately for them the appetite of the general consumer base just wasn’t looking for another open world sequel and The Division 2 hasn’t quite lived up to expectations in terms of sales.
  5. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint – If there is one positive thing that can be said about Breakpoint, it’s that it beat the sense back into Ubisoft (hopefully). Breakpoint is a dumpster fire that should have never been acceptable within Ubisoft and its failure not only snapped their stock price over its knee, it led to a restructuring of how Ubisoft approves games. Riddled with major game-breaking bugs, obviously half-assed systems, and drowning in microtransactions, Breakpoint shouldn’t have been this broken given how close it is to Wildlands. It serves as a reminder that Ubisoft’s titles are quickly hitting the singularity, becoming so blandly similar that they are hard to tell apart.
  6. Just Dance 2020: I’m sure it will do just fine.

2019 also brought us changes in Ubisoft’s business plan, primarily the announcement and launch of Uplay+. This may come as a surprise, but I honestly don’t have much of a problem with Uplay+ from a consumer standpoint. As with any service, it’s a value proposition. If you want to keep buying your games and “own” them, whatever that means in a world where games as a service ties your playability to servers remaining online, you can still buy the game. If you want to spend $15 to binge some Ubisoft games for a month and then cancel, you can do that too. If you think that long term subscriptions in exchange for having the best versions of Ubisoft’s titles is worth it, go ahead. It’s as valuable as you think it is, and obviously Ubisoft knows this because it’s not mandatory in any sense.

I’d like to give Ubisoft a higher score for having their come to Jesus moment during the last gasp of 2019. Unfortunately their moment of lucidity was not due to personal reflection but due to the potential for financial ruin brought upon by the insane failure of Ghost Recon and the potential that their upcoming titles could perform worse, a game that they were all too happy to release in its state and with all of its microtransactions. At the same time, the company is not completely incompetent and has shown that it is somewhat capable of learning from mistakes. Ghost Recon has received a couple of patches since launch and they have promised more coming.

At the same time, this is a company that supports its products. Ultimately I have to give Ubisoft a B- for 2019. Let’s hope the failure of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint teaches them a lesson. Let’s also hope that I get around to making more of these report cards.

Community Concerns: The Importance of Reading Comprehension


Yea, we’re still talking about Blizzcon.

It’s been a while since I talked about the whole nontroversy surrounding Blizzard and the prize pool for World of Warcraft’s Blizzcon tournaments, so I will sum up for those who don’t feel like clicking the link in this paragraph. Blizzard sold digital toys with 25% proceeds going toward a prize pool with a guaranteed minimum of $500k, and some people interpreted this as Blizzard footing $500k and then the toy sale portion being on top of that. In fact, a lot of people with direct financial incentives to the prize pool being bigger happened to think that. Crazy.

One of those people is Shanna Roberts, general manager of the esports team Method. Roberts released a statement yesterday (November 10) to talk about a breakdown in trust between Blizzard and the community because a number of people didn’t correctly read the plain English of the promotion. Roberts claims that Blizzard announced that the $500k minimum would be supplemented by 25% sales from the toys (they didn’t). I’ll put up the plain language of the promotion for your perusal:

“For a limited time, every purchase of the Transmorpher Beacon or Lion’s Pride and Horde’s Might Fireworks, 25% of the proceeds will contribute toward the year’s finals LAN event prize pool for the Arena World Championship (AWC) and the Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) with a guaranteed minimum prize pool of $500,000 USD ($250,000 USD for each event.) Your support will help take the WoW esports prize pool to the next level.”

25% of proceeds contributed toward the year’s finals with a guaranteed minimum of $500k. The misinterpretation is then followed up by conspiracy-level speculation that Blizzard deliberately backtracked on something they never said they would do to ensure that Warcraft’s prize pool wasn’t bigger than any of the other big tournaments which has no logical conclusion and would have absolutely no benefit for Blizzard.

“It is my personal hypothesis that this is exactly what caused the backtracking: Blizzard couldn’t allow AWC or MDI to have bigger individual prize pools than Hearthstone Grandmasters, OW World Cup, or SC2.”

Roberts goes on to complain about how the practice facility was only open for one day and didn’t provide adequate snacks or comfortable chairs, and how the opening rounds were held offline thus preventing players from using the streams to make money because it turns out being a WoW pro player doesn’t pay like a full time job. Who would have thought?

I’m not going to fault Shanna Roberts for doing her job which is to get her team more money.

If she had hired MMO Fallout’s Master Gaming Consultancy since I read the announcement when it came out and could have fully explained it to her and any other esports folks who were confused, this matter might have been resolved pretty quickly and we wouldn’t be here today. I have eleven years experience writing about video games and my flat fee is two grand per month which is frankly a deal since I’m not going to torpedo your business like what happened with that Sunset game.

Otherwise I think I’m done talking about Blizzcon 2019.

Nontroversial: Blizzard and the Disappearing Half Million


Now I’m mad at Blizzard just as much as the next guy, which is why this article is going to hurt me more than it does the people who I am about to point out.

Today is October 31, 2019 of the year of Arnold, and that can only mean one thing; it’s time for the internet to do what the internet does best and that’s to deliberately misconstrue a statement in order to justify being outraged at something that the collective net already does not like and has no interest in viewing criticism of with any sort of rationality or objectivity.

Blizzard! They’ve done some crappy stuff lately. Today marks the start of Blizzcon with Overwatch World Cup preliminaries today and the festival really kicking off tomorrow and running through Sunday. One of the highlights of the event are two World of Warcraft tournaments called the MDI and AWC, the Mything Dungeon International and Arena World Championship respectively. Today’s nontroversy surrounds outrage about the wording of the prize pool, specifically that people are coming out and claiming that Blizzard used deceptive tactics to withdraw $500 grand in promised prize money.

In the run up to Blizzcon, Blizzard sold items for World of Warcraft with the following language:

“For a limited time, every purchase of the Transmorpher Beacon or Lion’s Pride and Horde’s Might Fireworks, 25% of the proceeds will contribute toward the year’s finals LAN event prize pool for the Arena World Championship (AWC) and the Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) with a guaranteed minimum prize pool of $500,000 USD ($250,000 USD for each event.) Your support will help take the WoW esports prize pool to the next level.”

The wording is pretty clear; 25% will go toward the prize pool with Blizzard guaranteeing a minimum prize pool of $500k if the collective sales don’t meet that amount. But this is the internet, where outrage is king. Cue Cloud9’s Adam Chan claiming that Blizzard pulled their “base contribution” of $500k.

“Blizzard did not contribute a single cent to the AWC & MDI prize pools this year. They pulled their own ‘base’ contribution of 500k when they realised how well the crowd funding did ($2.64m USD).”

Youtuber and outrage merchant Bellular News, speaking on behalf of the WoW community, claimed that audience expectations looking at practices of companies not-Blizzard would interpret the wording as Blizzard contributing a base $500k and then the amount from the toy sales being added on top of that. He refers to the wording as “ambiguous,” which it isn’t, and he says that it is technically the case, but morally isn’t, which doesn’t make any sense.

He goes on to state that the practice is not industry standard, which it may not be. That doesn’t change the fact that the wording is very clear; The minimum prize pool will be $500k, it does not even imply that Blizzard is putting forward a base of $500k. But when you’re an outrage merchant, you gotta ramp up that hyperbole. He goes on to make numerous nonsense statements like “it goes against the spirit of such a system” which doesn’t mean anything, and how flabbergasted he is and how disrespectful the whole ordeal is to the community! Rabble rabble rabble!

I’ll be frank: There’s no fancy wording at play here, if anything Blizzard is speaking at probably a fourth grade level. Even MMO Fallout’s muse Massively has joined in to take Blizzard to task over “false pretenses.”

Right; here’s two things. Blizzard didn’t withdraw anything, let alone in a stealthy way, and there were no false pretenses. Nothing was ever stated or implied that Blizzard would put forward $500k and the money from those toy sales would be icing on the cake. It simply didn’t happen. It’s also being trumped up by players who have a financial incentive to gin up a faux outrage campaign to shame Blizzard into increasing the prize pool as well as Youtubers whose channels traffic in outrage.

It’s very plain language.

Review: The Outer Worlds


(Editor’s Note: I received a review copy of The Outer Worlds on Playstation 4. Given I have an Xbox Game Pass subscription and would have had access less than 24 hours later anyway, this has not changed my opinion on the game)

Why are you reading my review of The Outer Worlds? You can literally get access to this game right now on PC/Xbox One for $1 as part of the Xbox Game Pass trial subscription. Get the game, download it, play it, maybe read my review while it downloads? Buy an ewin racing chair using the MMO Fallout discount code (that’s promotional humor, please don’t kill me).

Those of you who read MMO Fallout may be aware that my passion for video game stories has, shall we say, waned a bit in recent years. I’m currently loving The Division 2 even though its plot is rather thin, but I play a lot of massively multiplayer games and that means that the story is pretty threadbare. It also doesn’t help that a lot of AAA games have gone toward the open world sandbox where you’re basically spending dozens of hours taking out bad guys you didn’t know before the mission and don’t care about after. Not all games, obviously, but enough that I have found it difficult to get engaged in stuff.

I have really been missing a good Obsidian-built world.

If you haven’t left this page and started downloading The Outer Worlds, let me just sum it up in one line: The Outer Worlds manifested itself when you were taking a bath and said “gee, I wish they would make a modern Fallout: New Vegas that wasn’t jank as hell.” I’d also like to sum up the humor of the game as taking the absurdity of Borderlands and stripping the memes away. Yea, it’s like that.

The Outer Worlds takes place in a futuristic science fiction world where the universe has been colonized and mega corporations run everything because William Mckinley was never assassinated and the United States did not legislate antitrust laws at that time. The game beats you over the head and neck with this narrative from the beginning where you create your character in a way that looks like you’re literally buying them from a store. You are part of a colony that was cryogenically frozen and for purely bureaucratic reasons your ship was never thawed out, left to become a myth as your people float around in the deepest recesses of space. You are rescued by an anti-corporate activist of sorts and land on a planet to start your journey pissing off the big corporation.

I made the comparison to Borderlands because The Outer Worlds is clearly an absurd story about intergalactic corporations and it knows how silly that concept is. The first person you come upon is a slogan-spouting corporate shill who gets angry if you try to heal him because he’s not allowed to use a competitor’s product. Your first experience with one of the megacorps is my personal favorite; Spacer’s Choice whose slogan is “it’s not the best choice, it’s Spacer’s Choice.” Spacer’s Choice sells products that are cheaply produced, low quality and prone to breaking, but very cheap to repair. There’s some dark humor, like how employee suicide is considered a crime of destroying company property.

One aspect of Obisdian storytelling that I love in The Outer Worlds is that choices are not specifically good or evil. Without spoiling any details, I had to think long and hard about the first major choice in the game. Your starting zone is a town based around a Saltuna factory (try the white chocolate saltuna!). You have numerous side quests that you’ll take on while helping out in the main story, but the gist of the conflict you find yourself in is that you need a power regulator to get off of the planet. The town has one and so do the deserters who left because they were getting screwed by Halcyon’s (the big umbrella megacorp) policies. The power generator cannot properly fuel both groups, so you need to act as arbitrator and figure out the best outcome.

Gameplay in The Outer Worlds is handled as a first person shooter. You can explore the multitude of indoor and outdoor areas, utilizing your various skills to hack computers, loot all the goods, and chat up the locals. As you would expect from an RPG made by Obsidian, there are many situations that you can either fight your way out of or, if your character has high enough speech skills, talk your way out of. Want to be a rootin-tootin bandit shootin desperado? You can do that. Want to go in with your sword and beat your enemies to a pulp? You can do that too. Want to be a smooth talking friendly type or intimidate your opposition into giving you what you want? Check and double check.

One aspect of The Outer Worlds that I can appreciate in theory but didn’t find much attachment to are flaws. Flaws are sort of a unique new feature that pop up once you have done a certain thing enough times. For example, getting hit with enough plasma damage will offer a “plasma weakness” flaw that has the effect of increasing plasma damage by 25% while also offering you one perk point. It’s an interesting idea, but your payout is always one perk point and frankly those just aren’t valuable enough to outweigh the detriments you receive. The game also doesn’t do a great job of explaining some of the more nuanced flaws, like a fear of heights decreasing your perception score while high up.

Loot in The Outer Worlds drops like someone’s making a profit off of it. It isn’t as excessive as it is in Fallout where you’ll find every piece of armor on a person’s body, but you do get plenty of resources and equipment from each person that you kill. Equipment can be tinkered with, modified, and broken down into its components to use on other items.

New Vegas players will love the breadth of freedom that you get for roleplaying in The Outer Worlds. There are dialogue choices out the wazzoo, and you’ll see indications for perception, science, medicine, persuasion, intimidation, and all sorts of options to talk your way through a situation. Want to be a corporate foot licker and do everything for the greater good of intergalactic capitalism? You go for it. Want to stick it to the man and eat the rich? You can do that too. The game gives you the opportunity (although I didn’t take it) to just rat out the guy who saved your life, since he’s a wanted criminal on the run from the greedy Board that controls the universe. You can do that, the game lets you, and apparently it takes the plot in quite a different direction.

Specializing in various skills unlocks a ton of information about the world. The barber? He just kinda prepares the dead for burial. The Saltuna factory whose workers are dealing with the plague? It’s not quite a plague and their remedy isn’t exactly medicine. In many games that I play, I tend to skip through a lot of the side characters commentary because it’s usually very unimportant to the overall plot. Whenever I get into a new area in The Outer Worlds, I am like a Presidential candidate going around and making sure I talk to everyone and see all of their dialogue choices.

Your character has access to a few tricks to survive, including time dilation which is a natural sequel to Fallout’s VATS. Activate time dilation and you’ll have a small period where time slows to a near crawl. Level up and that time increases. The shooting is not great; it is a marked improvement over the jankness of New Vegas but The Outer Worlds won’t be winning any awards for its combat system. Still, it’s more than serviceable despite it being occasionally difficult to keep track of your health in the middle of a fight.

Speaking of which, you may have noticed from the screenshots that The Outer Worlds has some very deep contrasting colors. For the most part they are beautiful. There are some points including one I have shown above where these colors make the game quite painful to look at. Literally. My eyes hurt after some segments where the screen blows out with bright neon colors.

The Outer Worlds is a beautiful game. I played it on a Playstation 4 Pro system and it worked fantastically. I plan on having a piece up once I find some time to start playing on PC.

Community Concerns: Sorry Fallout 76 Players, You’re On Your Own


I hit the breaking point with Bethesda and Fallout 76 so long ago that I couldn’t honestly tell you when I got sick and tired of hearing about this game. In fact, it’s hard to believe that Fallout 76 just hit its one year anniversary. It feels like this game has been a living parasite for roughly a third of my life. I don’t know how many times the public can say “Bethesda can’t get any more incompetent,” only for Bethesda to turn around and indignantly reply:

History should look upon this past week, that of October 20, 2019, the year of our Lord, as when Bethesda threw off the veil and admitted to the world that it just doesn’t care about its reputation, its integrity, or about the quality of its games. Bethesda is going to Bethesda, and Bethesda knows that when Bethesda launches a game, that its legion of sycophant fanboys are going to give them lods of emone. They don’t need to care about quality because their customers don’t expect quality.

Rewind the clock a bit and you have Bethesda admitting to what everyone already knew: That Pete Hines is a Peter Molyneux-tier liar and Bethesda had no intention of keeping to its promise that the atom shop would be cosmetic only. That much was obvious once they started adding in repair kits, but admitting that it has a problem is the first step in Bethesda’s ultimate corporate suicide.

But before I get into the latest heaping pile of trash that Bethesda has served as chicken kiev, I have to ask a simple question: Did anyone expect Fallout 1st to not be a bug-riddled dumpster fire? Anyone? Really? After all this time?

Fallout 1st is a subscription program for Fallout 76, a premium-priced substandard service to complement a substandard game. It’s like paying $13 for a cup of Nescafe instant coffee to complement your entree of a steel-toed boot to the crotch. Fallout 1st had already raised criticism over its blatant pay to win elements; an unlimited scrap stash, placeable fast travel camp, and being forced to pay monthly for non-permanent private servers. Oh and in case you missed the implication, modding is going to be tied behind a paywall if that ever comes to Fallout 76.

But not to worry, because if you thought Bethesda was going to let players pay a premium and reward them you are sorely mistaken. This is Fallout 76, a game that punishes you for showing faith in its improvement.

Keeping in line with Bethesda’s quality standards, Fallout 1st has launched as an absolute wreck. Those private servers you’re paying a premium for? They aren’t private. Players are logging into the worlds only to find themselves in recycled servers that other players have already gone through, complete with dead NPCs and looted zones. Unlimited scrap stash sound too much like pay to win? Bethesda is on it, since a major bug is causing scrap stashes to be completely and irreversibly wiped. Second portable fast travel point sound too powerful? Well you’ll be glad to hear that people are experiencing crashes to desktop when placing them. Evidently Bethesda is utilizing the Rian Johnson approach to subverting expectations.

And all for the low, low price of $99 annually.

I don’t know what to say anymore, folks. There are people who are still playing Fallout 76 and for some reason enjoying it (and more power to them if they are), but the players outraged over the quality of this launch have nothing to complain about. Bethesda threw your asses overboard before this game even launched, and for some reason you keep paying for another ticket to get back on the boat. You keep going back to Big Louie’s House of Turds and then complaining when the poopoo platter you ordered is covered in crap. You know, the same as it was the last time you came to this obviously named restaurant and pre-paid for the same damn order. Someone is smoking meth in this transaction and I’m pretty sure it’s not me.

Fallout 1st is a con, Pete Hines is a compulsive liar, and Bethesda is a racket squeezing whatever it can out of Fallout 76 players. MMO Fallout’s thoughts and prayers go out to those who bought the annual pass for Fallout 1st which will undoubtedly see some major price reduction as another gigantic middle finger to the community. I also have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, you gullible peons.

Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.