News – Page 385 – MMO Fallout

Perfect World Entertainment Celebrates Valentine’s Day With Giveaways

Valentine’s day is just a few days away, and that means plenty of MMO events to whet your item-collecting whistle. Starting Friday and going through Sunday, Perfect World Entertainment will be hosting a number of giveaways across their library of MMOs, with entrance ranging from simple Facebook shares, retweets, and posting in the forums. The giveaways begin at 10am Pacific Friday morning and run until the 14th.

In addition to the giveaways, gamers can also enjoy a 15% charge bonus on virtual currency purchased through the web store. Check out the official website for more details. Check below for a list of possible rewards.

Livelock: Limited Edition Hex T-Shirts
Neverwinter: Epic Purple Owlbear Mounts
Star Trek Online: T6 Valiants, Attack Wing U.S.S. Enterprise and Borg Cube
PWI: 1,000 ZEN, $30 Godiva Gift Card and Lotus Affection Fireworks
Forsaken World: Spirit Orbs
Swordsman: Lin Dzeh Umbrella

(Source: Perfect World Press Release)

Blade & Soul Surpasses Two Million Accounts

NCSoft has announced that Blade & Soul has surpassed two million accounts, a milestone that comes alongside the launch of the MMO’s latest update. First revealed last month, the Rising Waters update introduces max level PvE content in the form of the heroic dungeon Bloodshade Harbor and its 24-player version, Nightshade Harbor. Solo players can take on the first seven levels of Mushin’s Tower, while they continue to level past the cap with new Hongmoon levels.

Those more interested in PvP will be happy to see that the first pre-season has already begun, allowing fighters to collect Zen Beans, the game’s PvP currency.

(Source: NCSoft Press Release)

Check Out Conan Exiles New Video Teaser

Funcom is continuing its work on Conan Exiles, a hardcore survival game set in the Conan universe. It’s up to the player to rebuild the world in their vision, in single player or multi-player on private servers or in public servers. You’ll start with nothing and build up from there, taking on the elements, other players, and dangerous wildlife to form a new kingdom with you as the leader, or go on to bring down someone else’s kingdom.

The latest video promises immersive combat, with players chopping off limbs and armor that visibly breaks as it takes damage.

NCSoft Posts Q4 Report: Wildstar Revenues Climb

NCSoft has posted their fourth quarter reports for 2015, and the results are a general mixture of the good and the bad. As you can see from the chart above, while figures were pretty solid across the board over the third quarter, revenue and profit dropped notably over the same period last year. NCSoft pits the majority of the loss on overseas royalties, but that overall the company is growing in profit thanks to a balanced growth from overall IPs.

On the games front, every single title in NCSoft’s library saw growth in the last quarter, including Wildstar. Lineage and Lineage 2, as well as Blade & Soul, grew thanks to content updates and strong in-game item promotions. Guild Wars 2 drove in plenty of new revenue thanks to the sale of Heart of Thorns.

Thank you to NCSoft for plotting out each game on an individual basis, it saves me a lot of time. As you can see from the chart above, while Wildstar’s income grew in the first quarter of free to play, it didn’t grow all that much. Revenue is still far down from where it was when the game launched, and it brought in only $2.23 million USD in its initial free to play rush.

At this point in the timeline, it looks like the upcoming China launch may be Wildstars best, and only, bet at salvation. Assuming NCSoft is willing to shoulder the title to that milestone, we’ll likely be hearing in 2017 about whether or not this title goes on the chopping block. As for Guild Wars, it looks like the Heart of Thorns quarter brought in a bump of $14 million. According to the earnings call itself, while sales were good for Heart of Thorns, they did fall below expectations. This lines up with earlier predictions of Daewoo Securities that Heart of Thorns would sell less than expected.

The first quarter earnings for NCSoft won’t be out for another few months, but they will have some very important information going forward: How has Blade & Soul fared with its western launch? How will Wildstar hold up after its free to play transition?

Trion Making It Possible To Buy Artifacts In Rift

There are well over 8,100 artifacts to collect in Rift, a number that likely has hardcore collectors chomping at the bit to get started and others probably crying behind their keyboards. In an update coming next week, players will be able to buy artifacts with credits, the cash shop currency bought with real money. From the news post, it appears that the price of artifacts comes down the more you have collected in each set, rewarding players who go out and find them in the game world.

The goal, naturally, is to give an out to players who have spent a lot of time searching for the artifacts with no luck, as senior development director Simon Ffinch puts it:

“It’s really for people who have tried for months or even years to complete a set and just can’t do it – we don’t want them to be frustrated, we want to enable them to be able to complete it and move on,” says Simon. “It’s actually designed to encourage gathering or trading for artifacts,” he explains, “Because when you open a fresh collection with no items in it, the price per slot is ludicrously high. No one is going to want to buy them at that point.”

(Source: Trion Worlds)

Rumored Division Open Beta Is True, Coming February 18th

Last week’s rumors of an open beta coming for The Division have proven true, as Ubisoft has announced that gamers on Xbox, PC, and PS3 will be able to get in and play in just about a week and a half. Xbox One players will have a one day bonus, gaining access on February 18th with PC and Playstation receiving access the next day. The beta for all three systems runs until February 21st, barring the moderate possibility that technical issues delay the beta past a reasonable point, as seems to happen every now and then.

In addition to the beta news, Ubisoft notes that most of the cheating issues that plagued the PC closed beta have been fixed and will be ready to roll out for launch. Anyone who plays the open beta will also receive a unique item that will carry over to launch on March 8th.

(Source: The Division)

Chronicle Servers Going Offline For Open Beta

Jagex has revealed that Chronicles, the card game based on the RuneScape game series, has shut down as of February 8th. In an announcement posted on the official website, the servers are shutting down for approximately six weeks in order to prepare the game for open beta. During that time, the dev team is adding in more features, balancing, and infrastructure to provide a better experience for customers.

When the beta returns in March, players can expect Venescula, the fifth legend character, arriving alongside more than forty new cards. Alongside Venescula is Dungeoneering, a skill that tasks players with PvP challenges in return for coins, gem shards, and platinum. The legends you have will have the ability to be outfitted with cosmetic customizations and improving skills with experience gained after each fight. Finally, two new locations (one previewed above) and improved client performance will be coming alongside open beta launch.

Players who participated in the closed beta will receive an exclusive card back, title, emblem, and coin chest. The open beta is the last time that Chronicles will wipe player progress.

(Source: Chronicles)

Chad “Pappy” Moore Takes Lead Of Wildstar

Carbine Studios’ own Chad “Pappy” Moore has announced that he is taking the reigns as the new game director, filling in the spot previously held by Mike Donatelli. Moore has been with Carbine Studios for quite a while, previously holding the position of lore expert. In the most recent blog post, Moore gives a summary of the past year of updates to Wildstar, including its transition to free to play, and gives an idea on what’s on the road ahead.

The next update, Destination Arcterra, introduces a new zone, new game mechanics, and a bunch of new quests and rewards. But that’s not all Wildstar has to offer this year:

Later this year players will find themselves in the Halon Ring, an asteroid belt around planet Nexus that is home to outlaws, marauders, and other unsavory individuals. Anything can happen in the Halon Ring, and it probably will. And speaking of marauders, we just announced that the next major raid in WildStar will be the Redmoon Terror. This is an incredible new raid, and although it won’t be going live with Destination Arcterra, we want to get some early testing of it done during the Arcterra PTR so we can get lots of feedback from our dedicated raiding community before its release.

Carbine Studios continues to work with Giant Interactive on the Chinese launch of Wildstar, which may be just the market that the game needs in order to truly thrive. MMO Fallout is expecting that the latest quarterly report, covering both Wildstar’s business transition and Heart of Thorns, to drop within the next few days.

(Source: Wildstar)

Shanda Games In Severe Damage Control After Losing Two Years Of Data

Shanda Games is performing serious PR damage control after a “severe technical failure” resulted in two years worth of data being lost in their MMO Dragon Nest. While characters, gold, DNP, and AC are still intact, virtually everything else has been lost. The good news is, according to the news post, Shanda is capable of reconstructing lost data outside of the game, and will be providing players with a reimbursement package and a compensation package.

All titles, missions, quests, achievements, NPC points, guild points, cooking details, fishing details, trading house items, as well as inventory and storage items are gone for now. Cash Items have also been wiped.

When the servers go live, all characters will be jumped up to level 80. In addition, all characters will have their mandatory and relevant missions completed, along with 100 gold, legendary level 70 equipment, and epic level 80 equipment upgraded to +10. Cash shop reimbursement will be based on how much you spent between November and January, with all purchases prior to November being sent out over the course of the next week.

There is a ton of information regarding player compensation, which you can read at the link below. It’s hard to imagine that there are publishers that still operate their games without redundancies in cases of issues like this.

(Source: Dragon Nest)

Rift: More Perks For Patrons, Less For Everyone Else

Trion Worlds is improving Rift, provided you’re a paying member. If not, you might log in to find your game experience is actually worse off than when you left it. Trion Worlds has been making a few controversial decisions regarding how they monetize their games over the past week, each time noting the need to enhance revenues and support their titles with the conclusion that “it’s just business.” Today, the company announced new enhancements to Rift’s patron subscription. Subscribers will enjoy immunity to soul vitality loss, a 50% discount on auction house fees and commissions, stacking charges, rest experience, and queues for specific warfronts and dungeons.

In addition to enhancing Patron status, these changes are designed to enhance the development revenues of the game as a whole, supporting the game we all love. We are fully committed to the long-term health of RIFT, and exploring options such as these that will keep Telara evolving over time

If many of the things listed above sound like features that Rift already has, that’s because they are. In enhancing Patron, Trion Worlds is actively revoking features from free players that have been present since the game went free to play. Trion Worlds waved away criticism over removing access by free players by describing the features as “not necessary in order to play.” The changes to queues, for the unaware, means free players will only be able to queue for random dungeons.

These are of course beneficial and convenient, but not necessary in order to play RIFT. Therefore, they are the sort of thing we believe should be reserved for Patrons. When we reviewed RIFT as a whole this year, we identified this as an area we had overlooked previously. On a side note, any non-patron can group with a Patron friend, who can then select specific queues for the group. In this way, a Patron provides benefits to those around them.

(Source: Rift)

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It: