Category: Editorials

Firefall Shut Down For 2 Weeks In December, Nobody Noticed


In my predictions for 2017, I said that Firefall would shut down and nobody would be surprised or really notice. What I didn’t realize was that Firefall had already shut down, for two weeks, back in December. And nobody outside of the community noticed. According to posts on the community forums, the servers first went down as early as December 7th and didn’t come back online until December 22nd.

Hello, we have found that our datacenter is having critical issues and all services including the website and game are impacted. We hope to have everything back online ASAP.

But don’t let that fool you, according to posts on official Facebook notice, the game is still essentially broken in many areas as features like Battle Lab do not work. The official website has not had a news update since May, it may still be impossible to level past 20 due to unfixed bugs in the main mission, and nobody seems to be present to answer emails.

So Firefall is still a bit broken, has less active Steam players than a full Battlefield 1 server, and seems to be riding the breeze on a prolonged descent while nobody is around to save the sinking ship. In the future, it will likely be known as one of the most incompetently run MMOs of all time, between the constant shift in direction and staff to the allegedly high sum spent to develop it.

(Source: MMO Bomb)

2017 Predictions for 2017: 2017 Edition, Part 2: Let’s Throw Everything at the Wall


Since I’ve managed to once again push the new year predictions until it’s actually the new year, it’s time to throw everything I have in the old portfolio onto the table and get it all out of the way at once.

  1. The World of Warcraft Nostalrius successor will become a huge item among its community, bringing in thousands upon thousands of concurrent players. Blizzard will send a cease and desist order which the operators will ignore until they receive notice that they are being sued. Around that time, Blizzard will announce the Pristine Servers for WoW.
  2. Laura K Dale will continue leaking Nintendo information leading up to and beyond the release of the Switch. Behind the scenes, Nintendo will conduct major internal investigations to figure out who is giving her this information. It will turn out to be a friend of the fired employee Allison Rapp.
  3. Steam will officially hit the level of a premium television package: Hundreds of channels but only a fraction of it worth watching.
  4. Firefall will first announce that the console version is cancelled before revealing that the PC version is shutting down either simultaneously or a week or two later. Nobody will be surprised, however the last few hours will draw in a lot of people to watch the world burn.
  5. Pathfinder Online will shut down, the press won’t notice for a month and by that point most won’t bother covering it.
  6. The SAG gaming strike will come to an end with both sides making concessions. Gamers who previously took a side will go back to not pretending that they are concerned about people in the industry.
  7. Trion Worlds will launch a new game, expansion, or major update to one of their games, resulting in the servers being unusable for close to a month. People will continue to be surprised that Trion Worlds can’t handle launching anything. This will happen multiple times.
  8. Phantasy Star Online 2 still won’t come to the west.
  9. For that matter, other MMOs that the west wants will launch in Korea/China, flop because the local audience isn’t interested, then never come anywhere.
  10. More games will be re-released as HD remakes, but a lot will include extras like concept art, arcade modes, and bonus content. People will be annoyed at the idea of buying the game again, but will admit that the $20 isn’t a high price and the concept art is pretty cool.
  11. Developers will take a cue from Call of Duty and release an HD remake only to add microtransactions weeks after launch. Unlike Call of Duty, they don’t have as many bridges to burn.
  12. Resident Evil 7 will release and become the first major VR title to really “pull it off.” A streamer will admit live on camera that he just literally crapped his pants, he might even show the camera only to be banned by Twitch. (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pZNC7wQekk)
  13. South Park will release and be pretty good, but some gaming journalists and TV media will use it as a club and beat gamers over the head over a prolonged poop joke scene.
  14. Activision will announce that they are considering pulling an Ubisoft and holding off on future Call of Duty releases until they can figure out what is going on. They will deny that it has to do with the series plummeting in sales.
  15. No Man’s Sky will continue to update and add in features that should have been available on launch. The game won’t see much of a bump in users.
  16. Bulletstorm will release and sell a negligible amount of copies thanks to its high price. It will go on clearance at Gamestop within a couple of months and Randy Pitchford will call gamers entitled and cite the Duke Nukem cameo as a reason that the game is worth $50. Gearbox may or may not reveal one of the few games anyone actually wants from them: Borderlands 3.
  17. More video game movies will come out, they will under-perform and most people probably won’t be aware that they ever hit theaters.
  18. Daybreak Game Company will become the new foster home for wayward developers, picking up publisher rights for independent companies. New tiers will hopefully be added to the all access pass allowing you to play their games for a higher, but still cheaper, price.
  19. Valve will continue to get sued, and lose, over its refund policy in countries that are not America. Expect the policy to get incrementally better worldwide.
  20. More governments will start to pay attention to gambling in games, forcing rules like revealing lockbox odds and restricting who can participate. Gamers will fully realize that lockboxes are worthless investments.
  21. Troll games will become even more prevalent. Steam Greenlight will be marred in yet another controversy as a Ukranian developer uses the platform as a method of laundering money.
  22. Yooka-Laylee will launch and while it won’t recreate the nostalgia of Banjo Kazooie perfectly, it’ll still be a great game. The most ardent of purists will find some reason to complain.
  23. Another game will launch following a blatantly misleading advertising campaign. The press will call gamers entitled after nobody buys it and the advertising standards will find the developer not guilty because old men working in a bureaucratic office don’t believe that dozens of interviews and demo reels constitute advertising.
  24. Another few survival games from ex-developers who claim to have worked on STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl will head into early access.
  25. Star Citizen will miss its release dates. All of them.
  26. Camelot Unchained will launch and rather quickly drop its mandatory subscription because that system only works for a small number of titles. They will initially deny that the new system is free to play.
  27. Conan Exiles will launch and be pretty cool. The general consensus at Funcom will be that wasting money on another giant MMO isn’t worth it.
  28. Darkfall: New Dawn and Darkfall: Rise of Agon will launch. One will cannibalize the other and possibly die itself because the original Darkfall was a commercial failure.
  29. Paladins will change its name to WatchOver, Hi-Rez will continue to deny any inspiration from Overwatch.
  30. H1Z1 will bring on new lead developers, multiple times, with Daybreak announcing each time how committed they are to developing both versions.
  31. I will write a negative article about an indie developer who will email me with a not very subtle threat of lawsuit. He will immediately back down when I CC my attorney.
  32. John Smedley will announce that he has joined a new startup. Their first game will be a sandbox MMO. (Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-02-15-amazon-hires-john-smedley-to-lead-new-san-diego-studio)
  33. An indie developer will release a game that he genuinely thought was good. It won’t be, he will have a mental breakdown and pretend to have been a troll all along.

As always, I will revisit this list at the end of the year to see what I managed to get right. Until then, may the force be with you…or something.

Crowdfunding Fraudsters: Save Asheron’s Call Gofundme


It’s been a while. Crowdfunding Fraudsters is a recurring column here at MMO Fallout where I look at campaigns on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and Gofundme that, in my opinion, need a good going over with a fine tooth comb. The use of the term fraudster does not imply malice, but rather the idea that the creator is not who he or she is represented to be, be that a skilled developer or businessperson.

Today’s subject is the Asheron’s Call Resurrection project, a Gofundme with a goal of $2 million looking to purchase/license the Asheron’s Call property off of Warner Bros as Turbine is ending support and the official servers are being shut down in January. As of this publishing, the campaign has managed to pull in $1,500 from 18 people (see above), an average of $83 per person, and several updates on the official Facebook page claim that the group has been in contact with Warner Bros. and that things are looking pretty good.

And here we come to problem number one: The goal of $2 million is a placeholder. I’ve spoken about this on pretty much every CF article attempting to crowdfund purchasing an IP, it is a horrible idea to set a goal without having an idea on how much you’ll be paying or confirmation that the company even has any intention of accepting such a deal. Let’s say for example that, by some grace of god, this group manages to just barely miss the $2 million mark by fifty grand, only for negotiations with Warner Bros. to hit a low end of $4 million and refuse to go lower. Guess who isn’t getting the IP? Guess who isn’t getting their money back? This also assumes that the claims are true that Warner Bros. is even interested in starting negotiations.

As far as the fundraising goes, sure, you can sit on that cash and wait for it to hopefully, one day, maybe perhaps hit the goal, but who is to say that Warner Bros. will be on board by that point? Corporations hate when you waste their time with pointless acquisition deals that go nowhere, especially when you wasted the time and money of their lawyers and officials the first time around. Negotiations like this die at the drop of a hat from very simple missteps, or say publicity that sheds a bad light on your ability to follow through, especially when one side is talking about it as much as this group is. Loose lips sink ships.

But Connor, you say, why would they be so unaccommodating on an IP that they probably have no intent on using? Why would it be so pricey? Well, the thing about companies is that they don’t operate on the same level of thinking as you or I, their unused properties aren’t treated like that couch taking up room in the garage that’s starting to smell, to be left in the street corner with a “free” sign and hope that somebody takes it. Unless the company is in dire need of money, they don’t look at their property on the grounds of “better something than nothing.” They also look at potential buyers and size them up based on their perceived competency and generally won’t just license/sell away properties to a ragtag, loosely connected group of developers, even if the money is good.

Barring the question of funding, I can’t imagine that Warner Bros. will want to do business once they see the level of stark immaturity on display from these groups. I’ve spoken before about how these resurrection projects tend to be led by individuals with massive and fragile egos, explaining why Crowdfunding Fraudsters has already racked up a couple of baseless lawsuit threats, and already the “save Asheron’s Call” community has split in half with both sides having Facebook tantrums and block wars. The focal point of the argument is, naturally, that the crowdfunding effort is incompetent at best, maybe a little shady, and possibly just an attempt to piggyback off of nostalgia to grind some cash out of desperate fans.

But don’t just take my word for it, take a look at these gems out of the horse’s mouth itself.

Dustin removed my post and posting ability on the Resurrection page within minutes. If you want your money wasted, make sure to donate to the unofficial Gofundme with no official resources, backers or direction. AKA, get your money stolen. (Source)

Our communications with Dustin and Justin were met with a lot of double talk and misleading information. Additionally, I felt that the GoFundMe efforts are extremely premature, and there is no solid evidence that what is being said, and the amount needed is accurately portrayed. (Source)

So here you have a nobody asking for $2 million in the hopes that he might actually divert what may or may not be sufficient funding for an acquisition that the property owner hasn’t given any real indication of being willing to sell. $2 million that, barring a philanthropic millionaire, will never be raised because Asheron’s Call doesn’t have anywhere near the following required to support random money being thrown at a person to pitch a buyout. The Gofundme has been up for 8 days and brought in 18 pledges. If you were waiting for an Earth-shattering kaboom, it would have happened by now.

Put it this way: The City of Heroes spiritual sequel by Missing Worlds Media raked in $678,000 and that community was massive compared to what remains of the Asheron’s Call base. Whatever hope the game has of surviving at this point, barring the sudden entrance of a wealthy backer, lies in community-run private servers, not throwing money to two crews of pedantic, arguing children who couldn’t get past phase one without immediately falling apart and being reduced to complaining on Facebook about who was deleting whose posts. If you want somewhere safer to put your money, I hear Digital Homicide is still floating around on the net.

2016 Predictions For The Year 2017 Part 1


2016 is coming to a close and that means starting predictions for 2017. This is the part where you make notes of everything I say and then come around at the end of February to let me know that my predictions were wrong.

1. Hero’s Song Will Shut Down

(Editor’s Note: About 20 minutes before this article published, John Smedley announced that Pixelmage is shutting down and Hero’s Song is cancelled.)

As much as I’d like to see the game succeed, I have a strong feeling that at some point in early 2017 we will learn that negotiations to fund Hero’s Song have failed and that the game will be shutting down. John Smedley will apologize for something that many of us saw coming when the game failed to achieve even half of its $200 thousand Indiegogo campaign, which it was glad to take anyway, and the sunsetting will be followed either by the announcement of Pixelmage closing down or of its next crowdfunding campaign.

Until that happens, however, we will sit back and watch as the numbers on Steam continue to dwindle and talent continues to jump ship to other developers.

2. Star Citizen Will Continue To Disappoint

And MMO Fallout will cover none of it. Star Citizen’s development cycle feels like the end product of sitcom writers sitting around a table and creating a fake documentary about a video game’s development. The kind where the protagonist starts out with a big promise and over the course of the episode just keeps digging himself in deeper because he started off with a promise he couldn’t keep and just keeps lumping on more and more stuff to cover the initial lie. It would probably star Kevin James as Chris Roberts.

The more Star Citizen tugs along, the bigger it gets and the more incapable it seems to be of following up on its promises. The fans and backers have sat through delay after delay, the game is now years behind schedule and slowly becoming something quite different than what was promised, Chris Roberts & Co. are making pretty regular changes to the terms of service to make refunds harder, if not impossible to obtain.

For the record, I think it’s pretty stupid to think that Star Citizen will never launch, and pointlessly malicious to hope that it fails. That being said, I know how hard gamers are to please when they’ve invested $60 into a game. Star Citizen has a lot of people pledging into the three and four digits for JPEG concepts of ships. Imagine your clientele base is hundreds and hundreds of clones of your mother. “Honey why couldn’t you be more successful? I know you raked in hundreds of millions in pledges but the Miller boy down the street became an oral surgeon and gave his mother grandchildren, why do you hate me and want me to die alone with no grandchildren?”

Star Citizen in 2017 will create more frustrated backers, will continue to be the light of the universe for the optimists and those desperately trying to justify their thousand dollar purchase, and Derek Smart will be there somewhere.

3. Corgis Will Continue to Appear in Games

This is just a given. The internet loves to fixate on certain things and presently one of those things are corgis. Why not? They’re adorable! They invoke that same reaction we have to babies, with their big heads, stumpy legs, and let’s not forget the fluffy rumps. Dogs love you unconditionally, but they’ll love you even more unconditionally if you provide them with meat, bacon, or just any old food and give them a scratchin on their heads and bellies.

Corgis are already being used as holiday pets, anniversary pets, pre-order bonuses, cash shop bonuses, and more. If you’re sick of the furry little devils, and shame on you if you are, expect to see a whole lot more of them in 2017.

4. More MMOs Will Hit Consoles

And it’ll be amazing. Perfect World Entertainment has been making huge strides this year on launching their library of games on Xbox and Playstation, to great effect with both consoles. Hopefully 2017 will be the point where Daybreak’s games start launching on Xbox, along with H1Z1 and whatever shooter they were working on a few months ago. Personally I’d like to see console users get their hands on Marvel Heroes, a great alternative to a very small list of similar titles on both systems.

More over, I feel like console games will continue the shift into pseudo-MMOs, like Destiny, now that developers are no longer considering the 360 and PS3, and their multitude of technical limitations, part of the equation. I think that Destiny 2 is going to be what Destiny was always advertised to be, and while the fans will be angry that they had to wait through a full game launch and a hell of a lot more money in expansions to get the product as originally intended, that it will be worth the wait.

5. I Will Continue To be Usurped While Writing Prediction Articles

This year I noticed a trend that whenever I wait until the next morning to publish predictions, the entity in question ends up fulfilling those predictions and making me look like an idiot. I predict that in 2017, my knack for procrastination won’t get any better, and as such I will continue to lose out on the very valuable currency called “I told you so.” Don’t believe me? See #1 on this list.

Final Fantasy Starlight Festival


Final Fantasy XIV’s Starlight Festival is currently underway. It will run until 31st December and has introduced plenty of fun things for players to do over the holiday period. Players are going to be tasked with bringing holiday cheer and gifts to the kids of Eorzea. By doing so they will gain access to event specific items and equipment. By participating in the Starlight Festival, players have the chance to acquire a Santa Claus inspired robe called the Starlight Robe. While it doesn’t have any combat effectiveness it is very fitting for the time of year and looks really cool. Players can also receive some other fun items to furnish their guild hall or house such as Snow Drift that puts a pile of different coloured snow on the floor, a new painting or some festive pillars. Players also have the chance to unlock a season specific musical score to add to their collection as well.

When you’ve had your fill of playing Santa you might want to spend some time in the Gold Saucer and gamble some of your hard fought money on the chocobo races or some of the other mini games. If you win big, then you might be able to afford that expensive weapon on the market or invest some more money into your guild. Once you’ve had your fill of gambling with pretend money at the Gold Saucer, then why not try out Red Flush Online Casino and try and win some real world money. They have a range of sign up offers, so you’ll be able to get started quickly. You’ll get to see if all that practice with Triple Triad in Final Fantasy XIV has taught you anything about the card games available on Red Flush Casino. Play your cards right and you might be able to win enough to cover your Final Fantasy XIV subscription or get yourself something special this Christmas.

In between participating in the Starlight Festival and gambling at the Gold Saucer don’t forget to complete your usual daily quests and participate in dungeons and raids. Whether you are a Dragoon, Monk or White Mage there is always plenty to do in Final Fantasy XIV. Don’t neglect your other classes this holiday either as there will be plenty of equipment to craft, food to cook and fish to catch. All of which can be sold on the market and the proceeds put towards further equipping your character or decorating your guild hall/house.

[Community] The Right To Deny You As A Customer


While I agree with the numerous studies that have found ‘friendly fraud,’ casual abuse of the charge back system, to be far higher than it should be, I have always erred on the side of the consumer when it comes to forcing a refund through your credit card company, and historically so have the credit card companies so my opinion is mostly irrelevant. That being said, we need to discuss a few things.

First: In order to fully understand charge backs, you have to recognize that they are the nuclear option for customers, the bomb you drop to get the message across that negotiations have failed. It is what you do after all other alternatives have been exhausted, by which I mean the company was unable or unwilling to render the services advertised and were also unable or unwilling to provide you compensation for your money spent, and you went through the proper channels to request a refund and got nowhere. That is important: You did everything possible. You are saying that the two parties have irreconcilable issues and the merchant is in the wrong, and refusing to hold up his side of the bargain.

Second: If you file a charge back against a company, you’d better be damn ready to cut all ties with them, because you’ve just put a black mark on their name and they will be understandably pissed. I’ve had numerous emails and tips sent over the years, people wanting to call out developers because they filed a charge back and their account got closed because of it, and my stance has always been the same: I side with both, the customer who gets their money back and the company who decides they don’t want said person as a customer going forward. The question of who is right and who is wrong becomes irrelevant at the point where the store has the right to bar you as a customer from coming back. Doing business with you isn’t compulsory, despite what some may think.

And performing a charge back doesn’t just mean that the credit card company yanks the $50 you spent and puts it back into your account. According to LexisNexis, you are costing the company $2.40 in every $1 you spent due to various fees and penalties. Now your $50 refund suddenly becomes about $120 in losses, and the company receives a mark that can cost them even more down the line, do you understand now why companies would rather ban customers who perform charge backs than keep their accounts open and risk them doing it again in the future?

Looking at the customer, I have to ask a simple question: Why are you still doing business with a company after filing a charge back? At best, you’re accusing them of being incompetent on all levels from the service itself to their customer service. You are the person who we see in McDonald’s complaining about how they get your order wrong every time you go in there. Stop buying from them. At worst, you’re accusing the company of fraudulent activity. Again, stop buying from them. Now you’re the guy who goes back to Denny’s even though you got food poisoning the last six times, and you’re ordering the same thing.

I am all for charge backs in cases of services not rendered, and believe me when I say that I am fully aware of how PC gaming has been exploited to death to put out shoddy products and claim “sorry no refunds” all on the grounds that what you’re buying is digital, by companies who just made up the policy that your product has been delivered once you start downloading it. I write about MMOs, a genre where incompetence is rampant and a product working perfectly on day 1, let alone week 1, is virtually unheard of. As someone who pays a lot of attention to events, it’s easy for me to not be surprised when, say, Trion Worlds bungles yet another launch because their servers are built mostly out of chocolate pudding and mint dental floss. As someone who has been around for most MMO launches, I have the patience of a saint. It’s easy for me to say “suck it up, they’ll fix it eventually and compensate you.” Not everyone has that patience, and they probably shouldn’t.

So Trion Worlds is wrong, and I’m not going to assume the intention of the speaker, when they say that charge backs are only used for fraud cases, that is patently false. That being said, the company seems willing to attempt refunds upon request, a noble intent that is apparently dogged by incompetent, outsourced customer service which again leads to charge backs.

When I escalate a sale to the point of charge back, I no longer want anything to do with that company, and consumers need to realize that whether or not they want to acknowledge that fact, that is where they are as well. I say this as someone who has both escalated a dispute with Best Buy up to the New York State Attorney General office, and someone whose purchase was sent to a collections agency by Target because their system screwed up my Target debit card and didn’t properly process a $4 purchase of a pepperoni personal pan pizza.

Final lesson: If you’re going to process a charge back, stick with it. Don’t reverse the charge back like some guy did on Wakfu recently, because you’ve already fired the shot. You’re not going to get unbanned because you’ve already cost the company a bunch of time and money that they aren’t going to get back, and now you’re basically admitting that you made a false accusation by asking for the reversal. I’m not going to make a judgement on whether or not the guy was within his rights, the whole ordeal surrounding the marketing of this promotion was shaky at best, and other incidents that I’ve found recently have shown that Wakfu’s outsourced customer support also doesn’t understand the terms of their promotions and will evidently lie only to be overturned by community managers when the player complains on the forums.

Other than that I have no opinion on the matter.

Beta Perspective: Gigantic


I’m having a lot of fun on Gigantic. I guess I should elaborate.

I very rarely talk about MOBA titles here on MMO Fallout because I personally don’t care for them and, based on a poll I did a couple of years ago, my audience doesn’t either. So the few titles that I do talk about, I do so under the guise that if it is good enough to bring me into the genre, someone whose interest generally falls into the realm of having the Dota 2 world championship finals on as background noise, my audience might have the same reaction.

The premise of Gigantic is a relatively unique one: Two teams of five players fight alongside their gigantic (get it?) creature. Both teams have to engage around the map to boost their score, from creating creatures in their capture points and taking out the enemy team and their creations. Both teams are racing to fill up their score, which causes their creature to attack the other team’s creature and expose its power crystal.

At this point, a timer begins counting down and the game now puts the teams on attack/defend as the downed creature is vulnerable for a short period of time. The attacking team has a small window to do enough damage to take away the creature’s health, and this must be accomplished three times in order to win the game. You often see the defending team use themselves as meat shields to try and protect their giant.

There is an interesting balance that comes out of this, because the team that loses its point tends to wipe out the attacking team during this strike, giving them a head start in the new round. If you successfully defend your giant, the next round starts and you get another chance, however that health isn’t regenerated so the next time you lose, your creature is more vulnerable. Once a giant is hit twice, the field of play becomes smaller and much more hectic.

Over at the various capture nodes, the creatures you spawn serve one of three distinct functions: heal nearby allies, build walls, and reveal enemies. Two of those are self-explanatory, the wall building creates obstructions that give your enemies less avenues to attack from. This is important in a MOBA, especially one where you find yourself defending your giant from getting stabbed in the face.

The art style of Gigantic is fantastic, it isn’t cell-shaded, but it has the style of a higher quality Pixar knockoff. The giants on each team are massive (see the above screenshot) and utterly terrifying when you see them go on a rampage and start whipping around the map. I’ve yet to get tired of watching the moment when my giant rolls up and just choke slams the enemy team’s beast into the ground, holding him there while you and your team start taking shots.

One thing I really love about Gigantic is that this is one of the few fantasy-themed MOBAs that has genuinely creative characters, and all I really need to say to push this point over the ledge is that there is a character who can build turrets. Stay with me, you might want to sit down for this, it is not a dwarf engineer. Crazy, right? The characters are so wacky, that I’m honestly having a hard time coming up with words to describe them. I’d rather just show you their pictures. Then you have the potion master, who is apparently just an old guy with a big fat belly and two giant potions.

The turret character is an old lady with purple glasses and a giant horn thing on her head, wielding a staff with a giant clawed hand and an eye in the palm. The two-handed melee character is a minotaur-esque creature, there is a girl with a massive head of hair and what looks like WW1 pilot clothes dual wielding machine pistols, and a frog assassin who specializes in martial arts and also has an antenna on his head that is also modeled like a mohawk. No, I’m not sure if I’m talking about a real game anymore. This could all be a hallucination, but I have photographic evidence.

Even the characters that are somewhat reminiscent of generic MOBA characters aren’t really, they’re the kind of creatures that you can’t even start to put your finger on what they are, but they look cool and you can probably assume that they come from some mythological story from thousands of years ago. I suppose the closest character to a running cliche in gaming is the sniper lady with her eye patch, and that’s a stretch. In the grand scheme of things, the heroes don’t make any sense, but it’s nice to see a turret builder that isn’t a freaking dwarven engineer, coupled with a MOBA that isn’t centered around lines of towers.

Given a properly equipped team, Gigantic is a game that has plenty of opportunities to turn things around. I’ve had several games that looked like they were going south, only for our team to make a few strategic choices and swing the pendulum in our favor. We actually won one game by driving off what might have been the winning attack and pushing that momentum to our advantage.

Now Gigantic is technically free to play, there will be a hero roster that is personalized and rotated every week, with players getting different characters to make sure matches don’t become boring. You can get your hands on a founder’s pack for a one time fee that unlocks all of the heroes, and as with other games the primary form of income is in the form of cosmetic changes to your characters that can be bought or unlocked with currency won while playing games. I managed to gain enough in one night to unlock the higher tier outfit for one hero, so it’s not a huge time investment.

The fact that I’m enjoying Gigantic as much as I am makes me hate it, because I know that soon enough I’m going to be moving on to other coverage and the time I can allot to playing this is going to diminish. I want to keep playing this as much as possible and providing more coverage as the game gets closer to launch.

(Disclosure: MMO Fallout was sent an early access code for this game for the purposes of previewing. As always, MMO Fallout values our readers and integrity over all else and, as always, encourages you to give the game a try before you start shoving your wallet into the disk tray.)

[Column] Six Months Later, Mighty No. 9 Is Still An Unmitigated Disaster


Mighty No. 9 has been out since June 21st, long enough for the internet to blow up in anger and then mostly forget about the title at least until the ‘most disappointing games of 2016’ lists start coming out, to the tune of $4 million in wasted crowdfunding cash via Kickstarter, and while the fire has been mostly put out, the embers are still burning somewhere underground. It may seem hard to believe but after $3.9 million in funding, three delays, and six months post launch, Mighty No. 9 still hasn’t fully delivered.

And I am not talking about the game being disappointing. Individuals who pledged at higher levels in the original Kickstarter campaign were promised all sorts of goodies and many of them have still not been delivered. Take this post from Reddit:

Mighty No. 9 was finally released on June 21st, and almost 6 months later Comcept has not sent out any physical rewards other than t-shirts early in the year. Those who backed the game for the handheld versions have just been told by Engine Software (the company porting the game) that it is in development with no scheduled release date. Mighty No 9 twitter and kickstarter page has been silent since September 15th as well.

According to one poster, the list of items includes books, USB keys, sketches, physical copies, instruction books, art books, and possibly PAX rewards and 3D printed figures. At this point, the game still hasn’t come out on handhelds, meaning those who backed the game to get it on their 3DS and Vita have had six months of knowing just how disappointing the game is, coupled with no idea when it will actually be released.

Fans (or backers) have no idea when they are receiving the rewards they pledged for, and Comcept isn’t talking.

(Source: Reddit)

Scott Hartsman Releases Statement On ArcheAge Downtime


Yesterday was supposed to be the day that ArcheAge rolled out the Revelation update, however as so often happens in this industry, things didn’t go according to plan. While the European launch went off rather quietly, the North American servers hit a snag that the European version did not, resulting in issues that brought the servers down for the rest of the day and into Sunday. While servers are still being brought back up, the fresh start server has yet to come online.

Scott Hartsman has given the following statement:

Hi there –

I understand the frustration, believe me. After six months of prep work and testing in every place we could, no one including our Archeage teams had expected to need to pull a 30 hour shift to try to get ArcheAge North America Live up and running.

I can promise you that it’s not a matter of competence, if anything, quite the opposite. While it might be hard to believe, it’s their competence that’ll get it up and running.

ArcheAge North America is the largest ArcheAge install globally in the amount of data it needs to deal with. Larger than any of the non-Trion installs by a massive amount, larger than Archeage EU by quite a lot. The software as delivered to us was able to handle the volume of data the other regions, it handled the test data on PTS, and handled EU with a last minute scalability assist from our engineers.

Since then, our engineers have spent the last day and a half working tirelessly with XLGAME’s to improve it even further such that it can properly deal with the amount of data in the NA live service in a way that gets you your game up and stable the way it needs to be.

As a regional publisher, this is way outside of what we should typically be doing. But as a developer of other games ourselves, it’s always all hands on deck, whatever we can do to make things work and get people in and playing, for our partners’ games too.

Our teams are as frustrated as you are here – especially those that worked so hard, fixing all of the learnings from the last releases, to make things go smoothly – And they’re not stopping until it’s up and running. Really appreciate the patience.

-Scott

(Source: Trion Worlds)

Game Arizona Sunshine Had Processor Exclusive Content


Sure, why not? Arizona Sunshine is a VR game for Oculus and Vive, developed by Vertigo Games. It is currently available on Steam and, judging from user reviews, is a well liked title (79% ‘mostly positive’ rating). It also, strangely enough, may be the first game to lock a game mode as timed exclusive content for a processor. When a user questioned on the forums why his i5 processor could not play the game’s single player horde mode, the developer responded with this:

Working with Intel allowed us to create even more content than we originally planned, including these modes and the physics systems in the game, making Arizona Sunshine one of the richest VR experiences possible. We want to give 5th, 6th and 7th gen Intel® Core™ i7 owners first glimpse into these additional modes, but they’ll be available March 6, 2017 to everyone who owns the game.

The post was met with heavy criticism from customers, with customers complaining that the exclusivity was not advertised with the game. Vertigo has since apologized and announced that the game mode will be opened immediately.

It’s clear from your feedback many of you are not happy with the previously undisclosed modes being available only on certain higher end PCs. You are most important to us, and we hear your comments. We are unlocking these modes immediately to all players, and we hope you enjoy them.

(Source: Steam)