Editorials – Page 87

MMO Fallout’s Tips For Newbie Bloggers

The Newbie Blogger Initiative, of which I consider myself to be a loyal follower and mentor, is nearly halfway through the month of inspiration, and I have to apologize for the lack of usual tips for newbie bloggers. You see, I’ve been way too busy sailing the Mediterranean with Richard Garriot, waxing poetic while sipping wine and wondering how many secret tunnels he installed in his yacht, all while he detailed the free housing I’d be getting in Shroud of the Avatar for being so awesome at my job of writing about games.

Actually no, I’ve been busy dealing with my present day job going bankrupt and the inevitable unemployment from the job that funds this website. In fact that brings me to my first tip for newbie bloggers:

1. Write Because You Want To, And Not Because You Want Things

When I started MMO Fallout, I came off of a previous website that I ran where I talked about news and absolutely hated every aspect of it. I tried to convince myself that I was adding in snide comments to make it interesting for the reader when really I was just trying to keep myself engaged. The only thing that kept me coming back was the chance to talk about video games, and that’s when I decided to spin out and start talking about MMOs exclusively.

Treat your blog like it’s an extension of your hobby, in this case that hobby being video games. Talk about stuff that interests you and maybe have a point while you do it. Show your passion for the subject and people will take notice. Most importantly, find something that you can write about that won’t feel like a job, because when a hobby becomes work, it’s no longer a hobby. It’s just a job that you’re not getting paid for, and that’s infuriating.

But don’t write because you want free stuff, because if anyone can see through faux-passion in bloggers, it’s the marketing folks handing out beta keys and review copies. Trust me, setting up a fake Call of Duty blog because you want free copies of Call of Duty won’t get you free copies of Call of Duty, it’ll just get you ridiculed for online panhandling. I didn’t do this and there’s certainly no need for you to check Google.

2. Don’t Make It A Job, And It Won’t Be A Job

I made MMO Fallout a job, but that’s only because I went to college for this sort of thing and some of the stuff I’ve accomplished here (interviews, columns, etc) actually looks good on a resume. That being said, there are multiple times I’ve made it publicly known that I was on the verge of packing my stuff and leaving, whether it be that one guy from Japan a couple of years back who hit our servers for five days straight before ultimately corrupting my entire database (thank you backups), or perhaps the time I drew the verbal abuse and death threats from a certain game community who blamed my negativity for the death of a $100 million company.

Like I said in the previous tip, you should never come home and say to yourself “ugh, I have to update the blog again.” Don’t write because you feel obligated to, do it because you have something to say. Trying to force content to keep up with an arbitrary schedule that you set for yourself, again crosses the line from hobby to unpaid job, where the unfair boss is you.

3. Expect To Burn Bridges

Assuming your blog isn’t all about brown nosing executives, you’re going to burn a few bridges. I hesitate to use the term “blacklist” because that would probably give MMO Fallout more credit than it deserves, but I will say that a couple of developers will not talk to me and their silence conveniently came after I said something negative about their game/company.

With a few exceptions, most game companies are actually pretty good about receiving criticism providing it is fair and has a point. And I do stress the difference between fact, opinion, and hyperbole. You might get some jeering from the peanut gallery by calling Blizzard a bunch of scam artists who’ve ruined the industry and punch puppies in the face for fun, and at best that’s all you’ll get for an audience: Jerks. At worst, you’ll be on the receiving end of a libel lawsuit.

And I know this because I’ve been threatened with more lawsuits than I can count, all of which I’ve been protected from because I deal in the truth and the truth can never be libelous. Most developers are good with criticism, there are others that are just as bad as their biggest fans. You’ll find this out when, after ninety nine positive articles about a game, your negative piece spurs an email from a company account asking why you’re on a crusade of hate.

4. Feel Free To Advertise

The internet is a massive void of white noise, so you can expect that if you don’t do any proactive advertising, your views are going to remain a consistent 0-5 daily. You don’t even have to go all out. Add a link or image to your forum signatures, create a Twitter account and link there, comment and link to other blogs and they’ll do the same for you. You’re part of a community of other bloggers now, whether you like it or not.

Socialize with your readers, socialize with other bloggers, socialize with society. People will like you a whole lot more if you engage with them on a personal level, and you’ll have a lot more fun given the chance to talk even more about something you enjoy with other people who also enjoy it.

I’m running out of words, so I’ll leave it on this: This is a hobby. If you’re not having fun or realize that it isn’t for you, there isn’t anything requiring you to keep going. Think of your blog as a forum where you’re the one posting lengthy OP’s, if you prefer you can always engage in conversation by chatting in someone else’s threads.

[Community] Do You Take Part In Month-Long Events?

RuneScape is eleven days into its May roadtrip, and the hardcore among you are no doubt already finished and reaping the benefits. As has become a tradition, the month of May means the RuneScape Road Trip. Players are given a booklet with a set of 20 tasks that can be completed once per day, with the option to gather chits from employee events to skip an extra task once per day. Since today is the eleventh, it is possible that people are already done with the event.

Long term events have always been a point of contention among MMO players, between those on the casual side that may be unable to log in more than a couple days a week, and the content locusts who will quickly gobble up a month’s worth of content in a couple of days, including their four alt accounts. Jagex generally makes attempts on longer-term content by including methods to accommodate both groups.

How do you feel about long-term events in gaming? Let us know in the comments below.

[Not Massive] Review: Wolfenstein The Old Blood

Wolfenstein: The New Order completely blew me away when it launched last May, quickly become my game of the year and one of the few times I had no regrets in purchasing a full priced $60 title. It rebooted a series close to my heart with a story that presented an alternate future full of strong characters led by an even stronger lead (BJ Blazkowicz). When the game ended, I wanted more. I hoped that this wasn’t going to be just a one-off event, left alone to not see a edition for another five years.

The Old Blood is a prequel to The New Order that isn’t so much a piece of DLC as it is a standalone expansion pack. For fans of the original game, it is a welcome return to the adventures of BJ Blazkowicz. For those who haven’t dived into the game yet, it provides a solid $20 experience that is heavy on content and light on price.

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood takes place in 1946, directly before the events of The New Order and after the events of Wolfenstein 2009 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Fresh from his victory over Deathshead and destruction of the Nazi Black Sun project, Blazkowicz is back on a new mission: Find the key intelligence needed for the assault on Deathshead’s compound (in New Order).

Compared to The New Order, Old Blood is an expansion and wears that fact on its sleeve. It was developed in the span of a year and that’s painfully obvious by how certain scenes are dragged out past their welcome. The first level is a patience grinding stealth section that has you sneaking by bots on a physical track to open a door and…do it again, five or six times.

The shortened development cycle is also apparent in the level design, much of which is either completely linear or makes it impossible to complete with 100% stealth.

Where The Old Blood excels is in its Wolfenstein-y nature. Getting a headshot with a silenced pistol and hearing the soft pop as another Nazi dies is just as satisfying as ever, as is the option to run around with shotguns akimbo, blowing off limbs and causing as much mayhem as possible. Guns feel like they have real weight behind each shot.

Also back are the collection and progression systems that made us want to use all of the weapons in The New Order. Gone are the enigma codes, but the letters, gold, and other collectibles still remain. Instead of forcing the player to collect enigma codes in order to unlock new mini-games, each level unlocks its own challenge mode, reliving one of that chapter’s battles with an emphasis on stacking kill combos.

Characters also suffer from the shortened experience, never getting enough airtime to build a relationship with the player before they are unceremoniously killed off. There are some interesting, if hamfisted, callbacks like the primary antagonist being the daughter of Doctor Schabbs from Wolfenstein 3D, but I didn’t have the same love/hatred of my allies and enemies as I did in The New Order.

If Machine Games had tried to peddle this off for a full $60, I’d probably tell you to stay far away. For a $20 expansion that bridges the gap with Wolfenstein 2009, I can’t say I regret the purchase. If it helps ensure that Machine Games can justify the budget to make a full sequel to The New Order, I’m willing to oblige.

League of Angels Using Assets Lifted From Final Fantasy XIV

League of Angels developer Youzu Interactive Co. Ltd (or whoever is responsible for their advertising) is directly stealing video and audio assets from Final Fantasy XIV for use in promotional materials. This revelation isn’t particularly new, it’s in a footnote on the game’s Wikipedia article. Follow the link in League of Angel’s advertising and it takes you to a Start Game page that will show either a direct rip of Final Fantasy XIV’s Heavensward trailer or the End of an Era trailer alongside the Answers song.

I reached out to both GT Arcade, whose website hosts the videos, and Square Enix, and haven’t received a response from either. I’m going to assume, given Square’s protective nature of its assets, that the usage has not been approved.

Youzu Interactive and GT Arcade are both headquartered in China.

Weekend Wrapup: Iron Man MK3 Edition

Another week has come to an end, and that means it’s time to look at the news you may have missed or forgotten. Weekend Wrapup goes over the highlights of the previous week, not all of which were covered by MMO Fallout.

For Marvel Heroes players, today (Saturday the 2nd) is the only day to grab Iron Man’s MK3 armor.

Perfect World Entertainment is going privately owned. No more investors, no more shareholder meetings, no more quarterly earnings for me to dive through.
Daybreak Game Company shows its support for Project 99. The developers can rest easy without the worry of overzealous lawyers.
Goblinworks CEO Ryan Dacey isn’t happy with player recruitment, perhaps showing unrealistic expectations for an MMO that is already charging a subscription fee for early access.
Alganon is still receiving support and will launch on Steam in May.
The Secret World’s cinematic director is going on to different projects.

Alganon Patches In Steamworks Support

Quest Online has revealed that Alganon will be coming to Steam next month. Alongside a number of other fixes and tweaks, support for Steamworks was added in the latest Alganon patch. According to Quest Online, Alganon will officially be on Steam next month.

Implemented support for SteamWorks backend services. Yes, Alganon is coming to Steam next month! This is the store landing page.

The link does not work as of this publishing.

(Source: Alganon)

MMOments: Big Farm

(Disclosure: This is a collaboration between MMO Fallout and Poki.com.)

When I look at games like Big Farm, I see a genre soured by the greedy actions of a monolithic developer that tried and miraculously failed to build an empire out of monetizing its own property at the cost of public relations and long term success. I am, of course, referring to Zynga, the least threatening cash vampire since Uwe Boll started his directorial career, and the only company capable of collapsing the public relations of an entire genre.

There really is nothing inherently wrong with time management games. They know what they are and they don’t claim to be what they aren’t, and they don’t spend much time reaching outside the demographic. On the spectrum of gaming, you can’t get much more casual without going into the territory of games that play themselves, or perhaps a pedometer, but they certainly have a wide audience who enjoy them daily.

Big Farm, as its name implies, is a game that starts the player off with a small farm that inevitably grows into a big farm. This is accomplished by building fields out to grow plants and raise animals which are then sold to the market for money or used as resources to grow further goods.

The process does get pretty involved later on. Eventually you’ll be doing things like growing corn to turn into chicken feed in order to raise chickens to collect their dung to turn into fertilizer to grow apples in your orchard and compost the fallen leaves from the trees into humus which can be used on your corn seeds. That’s a mouthful.

The number of buildings, what you can grow, and how much you can store is all governed by an overall level which raises as you complete simple quests (gather x, build y) and gain experience. Higher levels allow for more buildings, expanding the farm, upgrades, and new plants. Along the way you’ll have to worry about factors like population, happiness, and space. You need more houses to hire workers, but more houses decreases happiness which increases production costs. To make your workers happy, you need to build decorations which take up precious farm space. It’s a balance of cost vs efficiency that is completely up to the player.

As far as the cash shop goes, Big Farm primarily sells convenience goods. What few non-decorative buildings you can buy are pretty cheap and offer little bonus as an alternative. Luckily you can amass a small fortune in gold through the game’s level up rewards, by completing quests, and through email promotions by Good Game Studios that are constantly being sent out.

Players can compete against each other in blue ribbon missions that usually involve harvesting more of a certain plant than everyone else, with rewards going out regardless of what place you end up in. Big Farm’s version of a guild is called a cooperative, where players can collaborate on missions with big payoffs, and contribute towards bonuses that reward the entire cooperative.

Big Farm’s ultra-casual nature is sure to drive many gamers away, but for those who enjoy time management games, it’s a decent looking game without the overbearing cash shop butting in. If you take it as a race to the finish, you’re going to see a lot more popups asking you to fork over for some gold, but for those of you who recognize that it is something to be cultivated over months instead of days, you’ll have a much more enjoyable time.

If you do decide to check out Big Farm, you can find it and other MMOs (as well as other games) on poki.com.

Eve Online Kill Of The Week: March 15th Edition

I recently proposed the idea of an Eve Online Kill of the Week column as an idea to drive traffic, since the article about the PLEX kill got a fair amount of interest, and people really seem to enjoy these kind of pieces. As I expected and hoped, the interest has a lot less to do with who is getting killed and more with just the sheer amount of money lost. Since Eve’s ISK can be translated into real world dollars, the losses can be understood even by people who don’t play the game.

Last week’s Kill of the Week was Officer Fargo of Common Sense Ltd. As you can see from the data above, the pilot was killed on March 16th in nullsec (lowest security space) while piloting a Titan class Avatar ship worth over 118 billion ISK, or over $2,500 USD when converted into real money. Of the 118 billion ISK, over 8 billion was dropped as salvageable and the rest was destroyed. The Avatar ship itself amounted to 100 billion of the overall total.

According to the Eve Online wiki, the Avatar is the most common Titan class ship in terms of production, usage, and death. The Avatar can be “easily tanked” by a Triage Carrier.

In Plain English: Bassett V. Electronic Arts

Here at MMO Fallout we take strides to keep you up to date on ongoing litigation, because generally the news only covers the start and the end, but not the years in between or the actual arguments being made. The case of Bassett V. Electronic Arts involves the termination of online services and accusations of misleading advertising. While it wouldn’t normally make it to MMO Fallout, I see the case being poorly referenced enough in MMO discussions to warrant some clarification.

All of the information is directly sourced from the court docket, which I have access to.

The basics of the case are as such: The plaintiff, Justin T. Bassett (on behalf of himself and others) is suing Electronic Arts claiming that the company misled customers about its online services, particularly that they eventually shut down in contradiction with online play still being advertised on the box. Electronic Arts attempted to bring the case into arbitration by citing its EULA, which the plaintiff is challenging as unenforceable because the arbitration clause was not present when he bought the game and was instead added later on as part of a newly modified agreement.

The case has been going for nearly two years, during which the two parties have done a lot of orders, objections, responses to objections, and responses to responses. The plaintiff wants his case to carry out in court, while EA is attempting to bring it to arbitration.

That’s it. I see this case brought up quite a bit in conversation about services shutting down, eventually someone will say “well EA got sued for it” and cite this case. Since very few websites cover lawsuits past their initiation, and since you need access to the court records and some knowledge of legalese, not to mention money, to look it up yourself, it can be very difficult to find coverage later than 2013 when it all started. Because of this lack of coverage, people have no problem citing the lawsuit as though EA has already lost.

So here is where the lawsuit stands presently: The court needs to decide whether to push the case towards arbitration or allow it to go to trial. As far as the original complaints about misleading advertising and services rendered, those aren’t even being addressed yet. If the case goes to arbitration, odds are that’s the last we’ll hear about it. If it goes to trial, it could be a long time before it comes to a conclusion.

There you have it.

(Source: Bassett V. Electronic Arts Inc Court Dockets)

Return to ROBLOX: A Highlight in Creativity

I’ve been meaning to dive back into ROBLOX and see what the community is up to these days. Luckily for me, I had some free time in the couple of days leading up to my septum surgery to look about and come up with a few more creative highlights to show you all. The creation pictured above is Hunting Simulator 2015 Beta, which I haven’t listed because it currently costs 25 Robux to get in.

I’ll be doing more of these in the future. If you’d like to submit a creation for future pieces, throw me a message on my ROBLOX account.

1. Call of Robloxia 5

Whenever I return to Roblox, I have to stop and see how Call of Robloxia is progressing. This is easily the most impressive game I’ve seen on ROBLOX, not just on the technical side of the vast number of weapons/attachments, but the dedication of its creator(s) to keep the project going after six years. The end result, so far, is a game that handles as fluidly as something you’d expect to pay for, tied to a progression system that’s bound to keep you addicted.

I usually try to get what I can in a timely manner with these spotlights, but I have to admit this one wound up taking a fair bit of my time. Also I have no idea what this is, but it gave me a good chuckle.

Check out Call of Robloxia here.

2. Fall Down The Longest Hole

Mini-game collections are like the bread and butter of ROBLOX, and I have to say hold a special place in my heart. It’s the simplicity of their design that makes these collections so much fun, and I love looking through each version to see how the creator has added his own touch. You can also see how Roblox happens to be trending at the time based on the theme of the levels.

Check out Fall Down The Longest Hole here.

3. Speed Run 4

I spent a lot more time than expected while checking out this creation, before resigning myself to defeat at the last five feet of the last level. Speed Run 4 is a speed run game (go figure) where you run quickly and jump across obstacles while collecting cards. This one was pretty challenging, and I will admit ultimately beat me out in the end, on the last level.

Check out Speed Run 4 here.

[Special Mention] Apocalypse Rising

I discovered this one thanks to its creator in the comments section of another creation. The comment said “don’t visit my creation,” so I didn’t.

It’s closed to the public now.

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