Perfect World Entertainment has announced that Dungeons & Dragons MMO Neverwinter will be heading to the Windows Store for Windows 10 users. When the game does launch, you’ll be able to boot it as an app from the store, introducing the game to a new audience of gamers. For everyone else, nothing will change. Neverwinter will still be available via Arc.
For more information on Neverwinter, check out MMO Fallout’s coverage and on the official website.
(Source: Perfect World press release)
The Park is the first experimental title released under Funcom’s new development strategy and console players will be able to get in on the terror in the next couple of weeks. On their website, Funcom confirmed that the romp through the park of nightmares will be hitting Playstation 4 and Xbox One on May 3rd. The Park is the first console game released by Funcom in ten years, the last being Dreamfall on the original Xbox in 2006.
“We are thrilled to develop games for consoles again,” says Funcom CEO Rui Casais. “Not only because ‘The Park’ is a great fit for console gaming, but the process has also given us a lot of experience which we can use for some of our upcoming games, like ‘CONAN EXILES’.”
Originally released on PC last Halloween, The Park sold enough to meet all non-revenue related goals and kept in line with internal expectations, according to Funcom’s revenue reports which projected the title to not generate a significant source of revenue. Conan Exiles, an open world survival game set in Hyboria, is expected to launch on PC and consoles sometime later this year.
(Source: Funcom)
A new blog post up on Old School RuneScape’s forums offers new details into new changes coming to Deadman Mode in this season and next. The ideas change how players will lose experience, items, changes to the end-game tournament, and more.
Foremost, this season will bring changes to how much players lose upon death. The number of items lost on death will be reduced from 28 bank items down to 10, rewarding player killers while also not completely wiping out a player’s stash if they die a couple of times. Death to a much higher leveled player will incur less of an experience loss than someone closer to your own level, while new players will receive a six hour immunity and increased experience gain during that period. The teleport delay will be removed for unskulled players, while un-noting items at a bank will be made a bit more time consuming.
Next season will see the Grand Exchange being added to Deadman seasonal to reduce the time spent buying and selling items that could be better spent murdering your fellow players. The experience multiplier will also change to give a better boost at lower levels. Deadman Invitation #2 will make changes to the killer fog that ushers players into tighter spaces, while the winner will be declared based off of kills rather than total level in case of a tie.
As always, Jagex is soliciting feedback on the forums. You can read the entire developer blog at the link below.
(Source: Deadman)
The recent shuttering of Nostalrius, one of World of Warcraft’s biggest private servers, has been rippling throughout the gaming news and leaking into the regular press. Part of the discussion has turned to both the feasibility and potential that legacy servers can offer MMO developers.
Here at MMO Fallout, we’ve pretty heavily covered the ongoing successes of Old School RuneScape, a service that began as a snapshot of the game as it was in 2007 and has gradually expanded thanks to community feedback. The game has even incorporated Deadman Mode, a hardcore spinoff that itself spun off into a seasonal eSport event. We even had a chance to talk to Jagex about Deadman mode in its earlier stages.
You can read the entire piece at Kemp’s Linkedin here or below.
Building on the past: How RuneScape’s official legacy server avoided cannibalism and became an eSport
It’s more than three years since we had our first discussion about releasing legacy servers for RuneScape. However, we can now say that releasing Old School RuneScape was one of the best decisions we ever made. Since Old School RuneScape’s launch in February 2013 we have seen just short of seven million players log in with over two and a half million becoming members.
During that time Old School has of course faced a number of challenges, but here’s how we overcame them and how we took a version of RuneScape from 10 years ago and made it relevant for todays’ gamers.
The legacy risk
During the early discussions there were of course many concerns such as: Was it even possible? How long it would take? And, whether there was the potential for cannibalisation of the existing RuneScape player base? We knew our players wanted legacy servers, as with most MMORPG communities they were not shy in telling us what they wanted. Even though we were quite certain about the initial surge of interest these servers would get, we wanted to test this so we asked our players via a poll if they would play. When half a million of our customers said they want to play it… we kind of had to do it.
Another big question mark was whether the legacy servers would have any longevity. To manage this risk a small team of three people was put together to manage the servers and community until the initial interest had died down, at which time resources could be reallocated.
The risk seemed low, allocated resources could all be temporary, and with half a million players saying they would like to try it, the risk of cannibalisation was outweighed by the potential for new customers. At the very least, Old School RuneScape would be a quick nostalgia hit for disenfranchised players.
With legacy servers comes legacy technical debtOnce Old School RuneScape had launched it quickly became apparent that the community wanted game updates. However, initially we were very limited in what we could deliver. Since RuneScape as a game had progressed during the intervening years, so had all the tools we used to develop it. We were in the unenviable position of having to recreate all the tools we used to develop the game back in 2007 so we could update it. At no point had anyone thought, “We ought to keep all these old versions of the development tools just in case.” I mean why would they?
The lack of development tools was not our only technical debt, we had to rework anti-cheating software, optimise areas of the code, and fix some pretty major bugs for a second time.
Community tribalism
Something which should not really surprise anyone is that there was a rivalry between the communities of the Old School RuneScape and RuneScape. Over time this rivalry increased with the Old School community taking the stance of being purist, and the RuneScape community positioning themselves as progressive.
Although the Old School community saw themselves as purists they still wanted change, so to ensure the rate of change was acceptable to those players we allowed them to vote on every update that happens to the game. If 75% of those voting did not agree, the update didn’t happen. This gave a very strong sense of ownership of the game to the community; they were in control.
What was a surprise was that the tribalism shown by the community started to manifest itself among the development teams. As the small team was left to get on with things they developed their own ways of making things happen without relying on other teams. Although this self-sufficiency might be much sought over by many people, it has a hampering effect when it has to fit into companywide objectives and strategic planning across products.
It came to a point where the Old School RuneScape team needed more integration into the wider RuneScape studio. This was achieved by creating stronger relationships between staff and line managers that traversed different teams, as well as including the Old School team in more of the studio level decisions.
Game positioning
After about six months we started to see player numbers settle and we could see that very few players migrated between Old School RuneScape and RuneScape. What we were not seeing was one game cannibalising the other, so we wanted to understand why a player would play one game and not the other.
Through a series of surveys and data gathering from the game servers we saw there were some distinct reasons why people played Old School RuneScape. The three key reasons were the old combat system (which was changed in the main game in 2012) the grinding of levels, and the straightforward membership monetisation model. This made it very easy to position Old School RuneScape as complementarily to RuneScape and give us a very clear direction of where the game could go. More importantly, it identified areas we could branch into much more effectively than we could have done with
RuneScape on its own.For example, the old combat system leant itself well to PvP combat, which in turn allowed us to take our first steps into the eSports market last month with considerable success.
When legacy becomes THE legacy
Although the initial impact of legacy servers on RuneScape was expected to be short and sweet, it has grown into a major part of Jagex’s business. The Old School team is now five times the size it was when it started and has more members than the launch period, showing it can reach out to a wider market than the initial audience.
The modernisation of RuneScape meant tensions increased between the traditionalist and progressive RuneScape player base. However, Old School RuneScape gave the traditionalists a safe home and allowed for the continued modernisation of RuneScape without alienating a key part of our player base.
There have been challenges in overcoming the technical debt that suddenly appeared, as well as, ensuring that the product sits well within a wider business. However, it offered something our existing games did not offer and has allowed us to start expanding the RuneScape franchise into new areas such as eSports and streaming.By keeping the risk of legacy servers low and being focused on how they can grow the franchise, this adventure has just started.
Mathew Kemp is product manager for Old School RuneScape at Jagex Games Studio.
Gloria Victis is tweaking combat once again, this week shortening the distance between new and experienced players. Players will find upon logging in that weapon damage has been adjusted as well as health scaling and passive abilities to ensure that higher level players won’t just roll over fresh accounts.
Other aspects of the game have been simplified, including the woodworking process, allowing for a more user-friendly interface to teach players how to craft their first weapons. Cost of resources has also been reduced for basic swords.
You can find the entirety of the patch notes at the link below.
(Source: Gloria Victis)
Funcom today announced that they have received a $500,000 short term loan from KGJ Investments to support the company as it develops its latest title, Conan Exiles. Conan Exiles is an open world survival game set in the lands of Hyboria.
As previously communicated, Funcom N.V. (the “Company”) is planning a share issue with the purpose of raising capital for the development and marketing of Conan Exiles, as well as the execution of the overall Company strategy. As part of this process the Company is compiling the required prospectus documentation for the contemplated equity issue.
Conan Exiles is the latest title to come out of Funcom’s new development strategy, along with the developer’s recently acquired status of preferred partner with the Conan property. Its other title, The Park, released last year on PC with console release recently delayed to Q2 2016.
(Source: Funcom)
Heroes & Generals deploys update 4.5 this week, introducing multiple new guns and skins. The US faction receives the US M1941 machine gun while the Germans have the P38 Parabellum pistol. The machine gun unlocks at level 12 infantry and the pistol unlocks at level 12 handgun.
The German faction now has the P38 Parabellum, which is widely regarded as the first modern handgun and pistols today are still being built on its design principles. This outstanding handgun is known from Inglorious Basterds as Oberst Hans Landa’s personal pistol. The top tier pistol has a high damage output, which makes it even better than its iconic little brother, the P08.
The full changelog can be found here, or watch the videolog below.
3000AD has announced that Line of Defense is leaving Steam, citing trolling and harassment from the community. In a post on the Steam forums, Derek Smart points to the lack of developer control when it comes to review bombing, the lack of proper moderators employed by Valve, and a lack of control over ratings and comments.
“You can flag a comment that blatantly breaks the guidelines. Then you get to hope that any action is taken. As I type this, there are a few of those on the LOD store page which not only have personal attacks, external attack links, entire essays attacking me – and NOTHING about the game.”
As a result, Line of Defense will no longer be sold on Steam in the coming future. Players who already bought the game will receive a second copy to be used since the Steam version will stop being updated. Instead, customers will access the game via Playfab.
According to Smart, this is not a guarantee that Line of Defense will never return to the platform.
“We won’t be the first developer or publisher to pull a game from Steam. And others have pulled a game, then brought it back later.”
Line of Defense is currently in Steam Early Access. It carries a “mostly negative” rating and is played by an average of .4 players in the last month [Source: Steam Charts].
(Source: Steam)
It must be Monday, because Trion Worlds is once again gating controversy over allegations of pay to win in ArcheAge. Last week, the company introduced a perk for the $100 cash shop pack that comes with a free hot tub (pictured above, courtesy of Reddit). So what’s the problem? Companies give these incentives all the time.
Well, the issue is twofold: First, the hot tub is more than just a cosmetic addition to your property. The pool allows you to remove the “clear mind” debuff given by beds, allowing the player to regain labor from sleeping for a second time in one day. You also receive plant decorations, but people don’t seem too angry about those.
Second, this appears to be the only way that players can obtain the hot tub, putting players who are unwilling to pony up the $100 within the next week at a disadvantage. The buff only applies to the owner, it is account-bound upon purchase, and cannot be obtained any other way.
I’ve contacted Trion Worlds for a response on whether the pool will be available in some other fashion.
(Source: ArcheAge)
April is set to be a busy month for Old School RuneScape, and players should probably take a look at what is in store for them in the month ahead. For avid clue hunters, April will introduce a new tier of clue scroll introducing new puzzles, challenges, and rewards.
Player ID is a topic generally only discussed by the more long-time fans. It is an unseen number that determines where your actions sit on the server’s priority list when it comes to dealing damage, picking up items, pretty much anything. A player with a low PID has their actions processed first, and can give some players an unfair advantage.
In the update later this month, the game will begin to prioritize player clicks much less frequently, allowing for more consistent fights.
April will also see more content from poll #41 added into the game. Players voted in said content poll to introduce bank placeholders, permanent daily spellbook swap, unlimited teleports with the quest cape, and more. Another poll will be released later this month asking players how Jagex should prioritize development going forward.
(Source: RuneScape)
MMO Fallout 
