The Black Death is a 14th century survival game set in western Europe ravaged by plague and sickness. Currently in early access, The Black Death promises realistic professions, a huge open world with hundreds of NPCs, hundreds of items, and a large scale multiplayer.
Below, check out the latest trailer showing off the beggar class and other recent additions to the game. For more information, visit The Black Death on Steam.
Who hasn’t thought to themselves “I’d like to own a vial of Richard Garriot’s Blood?” The good news is, your lifetime dream can be realized through the power of Ebay and Richard Garriot’s presumed consent for the extraction and sale of his blood.
Six vials of Garriot and Starr Long’s blood are being sold on Ebay for a price north of five grand. What you do with it is up to you.
(Source: Ebay)
(Disclosure: Nexon provided a review key so we could get into the head start)
My initial reaction to Riders of Icarus fell into the disturbingly common pit of “oh look, another Korean MMO with a gimmick.” Several closed beta tests later, not to mention giving away literally thousands of keys, and I can safely say that this game definitely blew away my expectations.
Riders of Icarus allows for one of two keyboard setups, with the first geared toward TERA players and the second for fans of the more traditional MMO. Even if you’re sick of the World of Warcraft number roll, I suggest choosing that over the action-oriented system. Suffice to say, it is effective broken at the moment.
As you level up, combat in Riders of Icarus becomes more geared toward putting together combos anyway. Combo moves allow you to string together attacks in a way that is devastating while not forcing you to memorize your hotbar or move items around the screen. In addition, they are forgiving enough that if lag or a slipped finger hits the wrong button, you can generally pick up with another key stroke. Moves in Icarus pack a punch, and I never get tired of the crunch effect that plays when I kick a mob two feet into the air.
Given that this is a free to play game, inevitably the question comes to the cash shop. In 2016, can we finally have a newly released free to play game that doesn’t have a ridiculous cash shop? Absolutely. The cash shop consists of lucky boxes (skins for familiars), convenience items, boosters, and outfits. Cash shop items are bought with Ellum, which can also be obtained in game. The shop isn’t perfect, I’m sure many players will take umbrage with the 100% HP/Mana flasks that are sold.
Icarus also offers premium service, a subscription that can be bought in 30, 90, and 180 day packages. Premium offers daily potion stipends, 20% experience boosts, free use of transit shrines, bonus Ellum, and more.
Riders of Icarus is a blessing, or a curse depending on how you look at it, for collectors. Taming familiars is a major feature of the game, and there are a lot of creatures to collect. Running through each zone, effectively any non-bipedal creature can be tamed and collected. Right now my collection consists of two reindeer, two horses, two birds, a couple wolves, and a kangaroo-esque creature called a “Woodland Joey.”
Taming itself is where the game errs at Pokemon. You’re better off weaking your foe before you attempt to tame them, at which point the game turns into a rodeo mini-game that relies partially on pressing the right buttons when they show up and half on pure dumb luck. Higher level familiars will require more intricate measures of taming, such as collecting certain items or jumping off of a cliff onto them, but there’s nothing quite like seeing players zooming around above on their tamed dragons.
Familiars are a project in themselves, as they gain experience, level up, and geared up for combat. Familiar leveling adds a nice side-progression to the game since your familiar is constantly gaining experience through the simple act of traveling or just sitting around. They can be turned into pets, assisting players in combat, or sacrificed and used to gear up your equipment in the name of higher stats.
One of the largest issues facing Riders of Icarus right now is the fact that this is a Nexon game, and as such you can guarantee that gold farmers are numerous and not just operating unabated, but with help from the developer themselves. It took a guild member explaining why the ignore feature wasn’t blocking gold spam. Ignoring users doesn’t block global or regional chat, just whispers and party invites. In other words, it is completely useless and chat right now has been deserted sans the same five bots spamming their respective websites.
The other big issue is the fact that mobs have very small movement ranges, you’ll recognize this in other games where an NPC will pull back to its accepted area of movement and go back to full health. It doesn’t crop up as much on standard enemies, but fighting bigger boss monsters gets very annoying when you use a range attack and they rush up, hit you, then immediately run back.
Otherwise, Riders of Icarus is shaping up to be an excellent themepark MMO. If you’re the kind of person who hates questing being the main form of leveling, this game isn’t going to appeal much. For everyone else, Icarus is well deserving of its current “mostly positive” rating on Steam.
Right now my focus is on hitting the current level cap, 25 at least until the game goes into full open beta on the 6th.
Wildstar has been on Steam for nearly a month, and it looks like the population has remained pretty stable since the initial launch day. While the game doesn’t look like it’ll be topping any sales records, it looks like Steam has introduced new life to the previously waning MMO.
In its first month on Steam, Wildstar peaked at five thousand players. As the chart shows, it’s been pretty stable since then with an average of 1.5 thousand concurrent users and a daily peak of about three thousand. Concurrent users predictably rise and drop over the course of each day, with the low points in activity during overnight periods in the west.
The community seems mostly pleased, with 77% positive reviews on Steam.
Fraudster:
2a: a person who is not what he or she pretends to be :impostor;
Support game developers who support their fans, otherwise why even bother showing up? Orion is the latest and a special episode in our Crowdfunding Fraudster series, covering the game Orion and its developer Trek Industries. Trek Industries is a special case because they have the gall to tell it like it is. In a way, they’re a bit like Donald Trump.
Just because Trek Industries is facing potential litigation from Activision won’t stop them from publicly referring to the company as “ass-wiping turds.”
I can’t believe that there are gamers who are defending the money-abusing,???-wiping turds that is Activision who walks all over gamers with annual $60 releases, season passes, $15 map packs, doesn’t involve or listen to them in any way.
Without retelling the story all over again, Trek Industries’ game Orion was pulled from Steam following a DMCA complaint from Activision that the game steals assets from Call of Duty. You can read our coverage of that here, but no matter your opinion of Activision, it’s quite clear that they have the legal upper hand.
This is normally the part where I’d comment on the description in the Indiegogo campaign, however Trek Industries has conveniently made no mention of their recent troubles. You have to look into the ‘updates’ tab if you want to see the responses copied and pasted from various social media pages. If you look at the Indiegogo page, you’d think that this was just another in-development game seeking funding.
But why does the campaign truly exist? I’ll let Trek Industries explain:
We will be starting a crowdfunding event later today. This is to cover:
1. what we are missing out on the largest event.
2. the damages we’ve taken on from Activision.As of yesterday, Activision cut out 70% of our profit. My calculations put it at 90% today. What they did is devastating.
So since Activision shut down Orion’s Steam store page, and thus their ability to reap in that sweet Steam Summer Sale money, Trek Industries is going to have their own summer sale. With blackjack, and hookers. A successful crowdfunding campaign at that because, if you look at our header image, all $500 has already been recouped, and by one donor even!
Who is this generous fellow?
Oh. In preparation for the future In Plain English column, Trek Industries was kind enough to present us with the documentation that they’ve been contacted by an outside litigation counsel representing Activision. The firm is Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP.
For his part, Tek Industries’ own David James is claiming that Activision has not sent him any details on what they want removed from Orion, making it impossible to know what the DMCA is targeting.
“The problem is that they’ve never stated, both originally and to this moment as I type this, what content offended them. Not a text description, not even an image. This was not only able to take the game down but it sets a precedent that is illegal for DMCA takedown usage.”
Given recent threats by Trek Industries against the press, and numerous attempts to dodge questions regarding weapons, MMO Fallout has opted to not contact Trek Industries regarding this story. MMO Fallout is attempting to contact Activision’s retainer and will update with any further information. We have also contacted Indiegogo in regards to certain aspects of the campaign.
Totalbiscuit covered a previous scandal from Trek Industries, including allegations of impromptu firings, astroturfing, and re-releasing their game under new names to dodge poor reviews.
It’s been three years since MMO Fallout last published the NCSoft Timeline, and it’s about time for an update. As it was back in 2013, the graph shows NCSoft’s timeline of support for their major MMOs, from their date of launch to their current state. Some figures may seem innaccurate as they start at the earliest launch, that being in Korea.
I plan on running more charts like this in the future.
(Source: MMO Fallout)
MMO Fallout would like to issue a public service announcement to remind our viewers that the Steam Summer Sale begins June 23rd and runs through July 4th. In preparation for the sale, we’ve listed some tips to help you spend wisely.
If you have any tips of your own for Steam shopping, leave a comment in the box below and let us know.
Fraudster:
2a: a person who is not what he or she pretends to be :impostor;
Gather around, students, for it is time for another Crowdfunding Fraudsters courtesy of MMO Fallout and a never ending legion of people whose motivations are, shall we say for the sake of legal liability, questionable? The reason we call this segment Crowdfunding Fraudsters, rather than say ‘Kickstarter Scam Artists,’ and put the definition right at the beginning is to forward the idea that this isn’t a witch hunt. Most of the projects covered under this segment are merely the ill-informed dreams of ignorant fans. They either lack the business knowledge, the legal understanding, or the programming experience to see their projects to completion. In short, they are impersonating someone who can run a competent crowdfunding campaign.
Today’s project is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time ported to the Unreal Engine 4 so PC gamers can play it. It sounds like an invitation for a cease & desist from Nintendo, but the campaign has been up and running for a while now so let’s give it the benefit of the doubt.
Let’s find out about the creator.
My name is Joseph I am the current lead developer and coming from Germany / Italy and i think im Well known for the Nintendo character creation in Unreal Engine 4 🙂
As a game developer, being well known as the guy who steals Nintendo assets and ports them to other engines probably isn’t something to be especially proud of, although that resume would have gotten you a job at Silicon Knights years back.
This game will never be allowed to be sold so for the project to ever be completed it must be crowd funded. You are the only ones who can help with the competition I hope to make this a three person team as you can see from the demos we have posted so far this game is coming along, and most of the main maps are complete.
Here’s the thing that people don’t seem to understand about copyright, and I won’t go into the whole idea of profit motive as a concept just yet. It is illegal to just 1:1 recreate a game on a different engine and sell it for money, I think we can all agree on that basic point. With that in mind, creators like Joseph tend to think that if they don’t charge up front for something that they can’t legally sell, but ask for donations or contributions that it’s suddenly alright in the eyes of the law.
Spoiler: It isn’t. It also doesn’t help that the campaign is going to directly sell the game, as it admits right afterward:
IT WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR ALL TO DOWNLOAD AFTER A SMALL CONTRIBUTION $1 MINIMUM
Joseph needs $2,500 to make Legend of Zelda on Unreal Engine 4 a reality, but the goal is flexible because why demand the whole pot when you can hope to lure in some hapless chap for $50? With about 20 hours left to go as of this publishing, not a single person has fallen into this campaign.
The good news is that you can be listed as a producer with nothing more than a mere $15 contribution. For $500, you can be listed as the sole executive producer.
My advice to the creator: You do more benefit to your image and portfolio by creating original works. Nintendo is not well known for its patience when it comes to unlicensed works, and asking for money is just adding gasoline to the inevitable fire.
Funcom has posted a new video showing off the Museum of the Occult, a cross between a place to display your achievements and The Secret World’s answer to player housing. The museum serves as a space to show off your progress and purchase rewards.
Waiting for players who complete the entire museum is a unique item that will “really turn the tides of battle,” according to the developer post.
The Museum of the Occult is a brand-new feature that allows you to collect, display, and customize exhibits of monsters in your own personal Museum. The Museum allows you to customize displays based on your collected achievements and lore on The Secret World’s bestiary. It is a personalized space where you are able to place full-size exhibits of monsters you’ve encountered and learned about. Once you’ve set up your Museum, you can even invite your friends to visit and bask in your glory.
In addition to offering visual trophies, players also are able to purchase new rewards, including T-Shirts designed by members of our community, pets, Grim Glamours, and consumables that grant a chance to call upon monstrous guardians to assist you in combat!
MMO Fallout 
