That hat is ridiculous, and I must have it. Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Red 5 Studios and their open world shooter Firefall. There isn’t anything particularly spooky or scary about Firefall’s Halloween event, but there are skeletons. Kind of. Did you know that Firefall is valued at $100 million? Check out the open beta at http://www.firefallthegame.com/
Hello everyone,
First of all, we’d like to thank all players for supporting this game since the very beginning; it couldn’t have come this far without you.
Circumstances have contributed to a significant loss of players and we’ve decided to cease the current game operations for the Global English version and take City of Steam back. This is a decision we have taken months to reach, and are confident that it’s best for the health of the players, the community and the game itself.
City of Steam is not shutting it down. We at Mechanist Games will improve and self-publish the game, and endeavor to make it available to as many of the original fans as possible by cooperating with popular English language browser-gaming platforms (to be announced).
City of Steam will be upgraded during the time it is offline to better suit the player demographics of the new browser-gaming platforms publishing the game; new content, new features, new systems, massive change to the economy and statistics, new equipment and cosmetics, new quests and an overhaul of most of the level art and main quests. Some features will be removed. There will also be a massive flying fortress for characters of any level to congregate in.
Because of these numerous and sizeable changes, the game will be re-launched in November under the title City of Steam: Arkadia.
Thanks to all the game’s players, and the support of the City of Steam community.
Mechanist Games
(Source: City of Steam)
If you hadn’t heard, today is the day that Path of Exile finally graduates from Open Beta University and makes its way into the open world. In celebration of this achievement, I figured I would dig up the oldest piece of concept art sent to us by the folks at Grinding Gear Games and show it to you all. As you can see from the picture, this is concept art for the game’s Shadow, a class that relies on hitting fast, setting traps, and evading attacks.
Path of Exile’s launch introduces the seventh class, the Scion, as well as new zones and a number of other enhancements. Check it out at http://www.pathofexile.com/.
You may remember The9 as the developer in charge of World of Warcraft’s operations in China up until 2009 when operations moved over to NetEase. The9 is also the parent company of Red 5 Studios, the creators of the oft-delayed and ever changing MMO shooter Firefall. As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, The9 plans on issuing $24 million in stocks to Shanghai Oriental Pearl Culture Development Ltd. That name may be a mouthful, but if the deal goes ahead as planned, Oriental Pearl will have a twenty percent stake in the company.
Firefall is valued at $100 million and is currently in open beta/soft launch.
(Source: Gamesindustry.biz)
Sony Online Entertainment has posted the latest Producer Letter detailing the upcoming Update 31 and gearing up for launch on the PlayStation 4. What does Update 31 entail?
On a high level, that means a sweeping, game-wide graphical upgrade, a massive design effort to polish and remaster the core leveling game, and a host of technical work that prepares DCUO’s underlying technology not only for launch on a next generation gaming console, but for a long future on it as well. This is without a doubt the biggest technical update we have ever done.
Aside from a massive amount of under the hood fixes, tweaks, and optimizations, DC Universe will also undergo a graphical upgrade (not pictured above), a redesign of several major areas including Centennial Park and Robinson Park in Metropolis and Gotham respectively. The letter also notes that the 1-30 leveling process will be made much more fluid, alongside updates to textures and geometry to make the world feel more seamless, and updates to the way that NPCs act to make them more consistent in combat.
These updates will go live on all platforms, including PlayStation 3, and can be previewed on the test server this week. The update is expected to go live in November.
(Source: DC Universe)
The good news is that Phantasy Star Online 2 is fully localized in English and ready to go for a launch in the west. The bad news? It will likely never launch here. According to an undisclosed source in an article by Tristan Oliver over at TSSZ, Phantasy Star Online 2’s localization will only be rolling out to English speaking Asian countries. Sega hasn’t officially shot down any prospects of the title coming to the Americas and Europe, however the source speculates that there may be enough doubt that the game would be profitable in the west to prevent the game from ever making its way overseas.
Sega has been silent about a western launch since their appearance at the Penny Arcade Expo last year. Some gamers are already playing PSO2 on the Japanese servers with English patches, and you can too with this handy guide from Kotaku.
(Source: TSSZ)
Games For Windows Live may have been a hulking pile of poorly managed trash, but it was the pile of trash keeping Age of Empires Online…online. In case you missed it, earlier in August Microsoft accidentally updated the Age of Empires Online page to reveal that the service is shutting down on July 1st, 2014. The news wasn’t so surprising, after all the development on Age of Empires had ceased, the folks at Gas Powered Games no longer had anything to do with the game by this point, and the game could no longer sell currency or bring in new players due to the GFWL marketplace being shut down.
Games for Windows Live will be discontinued on July 1, 2014. Although it is available through Steam, Age of Empires Online requires features of the Games for Windows Live service. You can continue to enjoy all the features of Age of Empires Online as the service will remain 100% operational until July 1, 2014 when the server will shut down.
While a growing number of Games for Windows Live titles are already jumping ship and heading over to Steam, Age of Empires Online will be left behind to go down with the ship. This will leave Age of Empires Online with a server lifespan of nearly three years, and a development lifespan of sixteen months until development of new content ceased.
Blizzard has fired another shot across the nose of the bot community with a successful judgement against Ceiling Fan Software. The developer was embroiled in a lawsuit against the creator of Shadow Bot and Pocket Gnome for the past two years, until a judge awarded a judgement of seven million. As a result of the judgement, Ceiling Fan Software is required to cease the sale or distribution of any bot, hack, or cheat software for any of Blizzard’s games. They are not allowed to develop, patch, modify, update, or test said software, nor are they allowed to possess it at all. They may not invest, associate, or assist in the creation or updating of software that violates Blizzard’s ToS either, and this applies to any company that the defendants operate at any point in the future.
Ceiling Fan Software posted a notice of shutdown on their website.
After more than 2 years of legal battles with Blizzard Entertainment to both pursue our right to operate and our customer’s right to play WoW as they choose, we did not prevail in the suit and have been ordered by the United States District Court in California to cease our operations.
The judge ruled in favor of Blizzard under a law which prohibits “unlawful, unfair, or fraudulent business practices.”
(Source: Court Ruling)
I am not an adventurer, but I do play one in video games, and I’ve spent enough time in Cyrodil and Morrowind to know that not every hero is a buff, handsome man or Vogue model with large boobs. In fact, many of them have faces only a mother could love, and that’s pushing it. Luckily, as the character creator trailer for Elder Scrolls Online shows, I can once again reign terror on evil as my pot-bellied archer.
Raph Koster performed a live forum Q&A on the MMORPG.com forums, answering questions about his views on the industry present and future, and boy were the questions interesting. When asked about an MMO mimicking pre-Trammel Ultima Online, Koster stated his disbelief that a modern Ultima Online could work, and that the “whole gankfest thing” is a relic of the past that simply doesn’t work anymore.
To me the essence of sandboxiness that was in UO and SWG is not about the PKing. It is about a simulated world, a functioning economy, a low power difference between high and low level players, and a system that doesn’t push you into combat as the only way to play the game (or even classes).
Koster also states his belief that MMOs haven’t moved much since the days of Metaplace, aside from the ever increasing budgets. He believes that while Grand Theft Auto hasn’t influenced the genre since GTA 3, Minecraft has proven far more influential. There is a lot more to read, and you can find the entire Q&A at the link below.
(Source: MMORPG.com)
MMO Fallout 
