Category: News

[Column] How Nostalrius Killed Its Credibility, Image With One Dump


draenor

A few weeks ago, Blizzard revealed that they would not be discussing legacy servers at Blizzcon this year, however the idea was not off the table and that the company was still considering such servers. In response, the folks at Nostalrius decided to make a threat upon which they have no moral or legal standing: To discuss vanilla servers or the team would release the source code for the Nostalrius private server. Blizzard didn’t discuss vanilla servers, Nostalrius dumped its code.

Still, we should not forget that Blizzard is the owner of World of Warcraft and would be for sure the most able to restore it. Until they disclose a schedule (if they do), the Legacy community will have to assume there will not be an official Blizzard release of Legacy WoW – possibly for very long time. So, it’s time for us to release our source code and additional tools to the community in the hope that it will maintain the Legacy community as much as possible until Blizzard announces an official Legacy plan – should they decide to do that.

Like an entitled child denied a much desired toy, the Nostalrius team responded to demands that they had no leverage on with the equivalent of a flailing tantrum. Let’s get a few things straight: Nostalrius has already lost this battle, they acknowledged that they didn’t have any footing when they bowed to Blizzard’s cease & desist and shut down their servers. They have no ownership of the World of Warcraft game, the brand, nor do they have the rights to operate their own private server. It doesn’t matter if Blizzard ultimately says no to a vanilla server, it doesn’t matter if they take ten years to release it, and it doesn’t matter if they say yes and never follow up on it. Nostalrius has no ground to stand on, zero, none.

And while I won’t take the route of some internet commentators and claim that this could kill Blizzard’s enthusiasm in legacy servers, something which is about as low on the totem pole as you can get in terms of priority, I will say that it has killed any potential of Blizzard working with the Nostalrius people, a killing blow to a group that feels entitled enough to demand regular progress updates from Blizzard corporate and make threats if senpai doesn’t notice them. They threw a fit when Blizzard didn’t respond in a timely manner, let’s see how they take it when the company stops acknowledging their existence entirely.

And what they’ve done by releasing this code is effectively to poison the well with a tracer, with everyone who drinks it being tagged for eventual plucking. Now that the code is out there, everyone is talking about this Elysium server like it’s the next Nostalrius. What do you expect is going to happen when Elysium launches? I’ll clue you in: Blizzard’s lawyers are going to send a cease & desist and the Elysium team are going to buckle and shut down. And none of this is going to have any effect on whether or not Blizzard launches a legacy server.

Which, I will reiterate, they still want to do.

Via IGN:

“There’s no question it’s something we want to do,” said Hazzikostas. “I am a 2004 World of Warcraft player myself. Tons of us came to work at Blizzard because we fell in love with that version of World of Warcraft. And we met with the Nostalrius developers on our campus over the summer and were really impressed by the passion they had for the game and what they’re trying to do to recreate what they see as a lost experience.

So where do we stand now? Nostalrius has burned its bridge with Blizzard, likely taking Mark Kern along with them, any servers that use the Nostalrius code and attract any respectable level of traffic will be nuked from orbit by Blizzard, and the timeline for a legacy server very likely has not moved a millimeter. Not a productive day by any sane metric.

Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.

Lineage Eternal Still Coming: Latest Trailer Released


NCSoft has dropped the latest trailer video for Lineage Eternal, the long awaited sequel to the company’s largest (and after close to two decades still its biggest money maker) MMO Lineage. For those keeping track, Lineage Eternal has gone through several delays plus a development team that isn’t too keen on discussing release schedules. With the beta set to launch this month in Korea (keep your fingers crossed), it looks like the game is finally on track for launch early next year.

NCSoft’s next quarterly report comes out this month, and will no doubt offer some level of insight into Lineage Eternal’s upcoming launch in Korea and internationally.

WoW Vanilla Server Demands Resurface Ahead of Blizzcon


draenor

Blizzcon is right around the corner, and while eyes may be directed on upcoming content for Blizzard’s many titles, whether or not Diablo IV will be a thing, and if Blizzard realizes that everyone already knows about Sombra, others are looking to the past. More specifically, a new petition has surfaced asking Blizzard to give consideration to vanilla servers for World of Warcraft. The petition was started by Mark Kern, a controversial figure, ex-World of Warcraft developer, and founder of Red 5 Studios.

Kern’s petition has drawn some criticism over asking players to bring up Legacy at panels during the convention, despite Blizzard’s previous statement that vanilla servers would not be part of the convention schedule. Blizzard’s past statements have offered a glimmer of hope into the prospect of “pristine” servers (not legacy), however the company has been silent about any concrete plans. Whether or not the company will reveal anything more detailed will need to be seen.

(Source: Change.org)

“F*** Gamers” Developer Tale of Tales Returns To Game Development


sunset-glass-640x480

Following their high profile meltdown last year, in which Tale of Tales developers Michaël Samyn and Auriea Harvey quit the industry, blamed gamers for the failure of their game Sunset, and left with the message “FUCK GAMES! FUCK GAMERS! FUCK THE GAME INDUSTRY!” along with an expression of hope that gamers as a concept would die in agony, has returned to making video games. While the developer initially left in a huff, owing to the fact that Sunset barely sold any copies, the alleged failure of Leigh Alexander to properly market the title, and that the game was derided and quickly turned into a meme over situations including one where the player is told to remove “upsetting books” including Sun Tzu The Art of War, they have returned. According to posts on Twitter, everything they said about gamers was in jest.

They were joking, they swear, but they still hate you.

Their next title, The Endless Forest: Second Decade, has raised more than €5 thousand on Indiegogo since its launch from 144 people, with at least €1,800 of that coming from six backers. The game recreates The Endless Forest, a title that Tale of Tales refers to as a “social screensaver,” and one that will likely go over as well with gamers as Sunset did due to its lack of chat, quests, tasks, puzzles, story, or meaningful gameplay.

The Endless Forest is a relaxing multiplayer online game where everyone plays a deer. Instead of chatting, questing or killing, people play with each other creatively in a virtual forest filled with magical surprises. The current version of the game has been going strong for 10 years with 170,000 registered players but we haven’t been able to expand it because its technology is outdated. Now we want to continue the endless growth that we have always envisioned for this project .

Tale of Tales is hoping to raise €40,000 to bring The Endless Forest up to speed.

Civilization Online Goes Civilization Offline


s1

XL Games has announced that Civilization Online will be closing down, with servers shutting off on December 6th. Initially soft launched into beta, XL Games drew criticism and disappointment from western gamers with the announcement that the plan was to only launch the game in Korea, at least for the time being. With the news of the service shutting down before it even launches in its home country, the hopes of seeing the game come to the west have been effectively dashed.

(Source: Massively)

Funcom Q3 2016: Bad For Funcom, Good For The Secret World


jomali

It doesn’t take a financial expert to know that things aren’t so hot when the top story is the sale of 15 million shares for $954 thousand. Funcom has released their third quarter revenues and the results are not so great. Revenue in Q3 amounted to $1.7 million, down from the nearly $2.2 million over the same period last year and compounded by the presence of said share sale. The good news is that the company no longer appears to be fully underwater, with equity at $97 thousand compared to negative $365 thousand over the same period last year.

As announced well over a year ago now, Funcom has changed its development strategy to one that focuses on small, low budget experimental titles alongside less frequent, larger games. This new plan has brought us The Park, spooky jump-scare game Hide & Shriek, as well as the upcoming Conan Legends, slated for release into early access in January. According to the quarterly report, Funcom are constantly looking out for new and emerging platforms like virtual reality and eSports, and augmented reality to create new products.

The Secret World players will be happy to know that a massive update is coming in the first half of 2017, something that Funcom has described as a “major upgrade to both retention and acquisition mechanics and content of the game.” Age of Conan will be receiving a new dungeon while Anarchy Online hopes to revitalize itself by launching on Steam sometime in the fourth quarter. The Park is effectively a money machine at this point, as low as its sales are, due to the fact that development has finished.

As for Conan Exiles, expect more marketing on that game to crop up in November with the additional news that the game is being developed for Xbox One, while Funcom hopes that the game will still be in the top 10 survival games being played a year after launch. Another Conan game is in the works, albeit very early in the concept phase, and not set to go into development until Conan Exiles exits early access.

(Source: Funcom)

Big Picture Games Boosts Progression For Darkfall: Rise of Agon


night_in_yssam

If Darkfall is known for one thing, it may be the arduous grind that players are required to slog through in order to hit high levels, but that may be a thing of the past with the latest game update. In a set of patch notes released yesterday, Big Picture Games has announced that players will now progress through Darkfall three times faster than they had previously, with an extra cherry on top in the form of a boost in meditation points. All characters, new and existing, will receive a handsome offering of 500,000 meditation points to invest in their skills.

The update comes alongside a number of other bug fixes and tweaks, including new racial abilities and changes surrounding Greatswords. You can find the entire list of changes at the link below, or watch the video. Rise of Agon is a reboot of the original Darkfall MMORPG in development by Big Picture Games.

(Source: Patch notes)

EA Is Working To Restore Access To Myanmar


Homefront®: The Revolution_20160522155530

Electronic Arts has responded to complaints that the Origin service is unavailable in Myanmar, with Community Manager EA_Tom announcing that the company is working on restoring access to affected customers.

The whole ordeal started with players in Myanmar finding out that their access to legitimately purchased Origin games had been blocked. According to ‘Champions,’ EA’s volunteer moderators, the block was due to complying with economic sanctions not allowing Electronic Arts to do business in specific countries. Players have no ability to access their games and, as it appears, EA had no intention of offering any sort of compensation for those who were locked out of their games or had bought newer titles (Battlefield 1, Titanfall 2, etc) only to find that their purchases are useless.

For those who pay attention to political games, the ban makes no sense. According to users on the forums, the bans only went into place last month despite Myanmar being under economic sanctions by the US for years now with EA doing nothing to prevent purchases from the country. Furthermore, the economic sanctions were lifted by President Obama on October 7th, meaning that Electronic Arts is continuing to enforce economic sanctions that haven’t existed in close to a month.

Many are also doubting EA’s handling of the situation as other digital services in Burma/Myanmar (Steam, Good Old Games, etc) have been functioning in the country just fine. MMO Fallout will update as soon as we have more information.

tom

Hacked Hello Games Tweet Affirmed By Hacked Sean Murray


ss_7eb0a939dceb274d072b62156028ffa337ac9abc.1920x1080

“No Man’s Sky was a mistake.” It’s the kind of misattributed quote you expect to see photoshopped onto a Hello Games tweet. But what happens when the message is verifiably from the official Hello Games Twitter account? Well it must have been hacked, you say, and Sean Murray will be right around to let us know that the whole ordeal is just a poorly protected account.

Alright, now what do you do when Sean Murray writes in to let you know that the tweet was indeed authentic? Well that exact story happened today, someone used the Hello Games Twitter account to write “No Man’s Sky was a mistake” and then followed it up by writing to Polygon under Sean Murray’s email address.

Murray has since pointed to an insecure LinkedIn account, however Mashable is reporting that the culprit is a disgruntled employee.

LinkedIn was hacked earlier this year, leading to speculation that Murray or another employee had committed the terrible no-no of sharing passwords between accounts.

(Source: Mashable)

Star Trek Online Tops 1 Million On Xbox/Playstation


screen_sto_0016_Snowy_IGN_Feb_09

Star Trek Online launched on Xbox One a month ago and Perfect World Entertainment has announced that the consoles have surpassed 1 million players. According to a press release revealed today, the 1.1 million players break down into 68% Starfleet, 20% Klingon, 12% Romulan, with 2.7 million bridge officers and over 1,600 fleets in service.

You can check out Star Trek Online free on Xbox, Playstation, and PC.

(Source: Perfect World Entertainment Press Release)