News – Page 389 – MMO Fallout

Elder Scrolls Online Introduces You To The Thieves Guild

The third DLC pack for The Elder Scrolls Online introduces players to the Thieve’s Guild, an organization that the player finds in shambles. Players travel to Abah’s Landing in southern Hammerfell to join the guild, and must work to rebuild it back to its former glory. Membership in the guild has many benefits, including a new passive skill line, access to repeatable heist quests, re-acquisition quests, and guild jobs.

Purchasing the DLC, free for subscribers and 2000 crowns for everyone else, will also grant access to other new features, from new zones, new world bosses, gear, a new crafting style, and non-combat servants that can perform certain tasks. Everyone regardless of their purchase status will have access to the new 64-bit client on Windows and Mac, combat and gameplay balances, Cyrodil updates, new crafting styles, and more.

You can read the entire list of details at the following link, and check out the trailer below.

(Source: Zenimax press release)

Jagex Devotes February To Old School QoL Updates

Old School RuneScape operates on player majority for content, requiring that 75% of the voting community agree to an update before the team is allowed to put it in. In a recent blog post, the Old School team has announced that February is being devoted to quality of life updates, with a new poll running each week to determine player interest in small tweaks that have been popularly suggested through the forums and various other avenues.

The current poll runs until February 1st and covers issues like skipping questions, increasing click areas to make certain objects easier to select, and boosting experience rates on two agility mini-games. Jagex evidently hit the mark on how popular these questions are, as every single option is currently beating the 75% margin by a mile except for the poll to add a spell allowing players to convert wine to wine of Zamorak.

(Source: Old School)

Rift Forces Cash Shop, Trion Worlds “It’s Just Business”

Is Rift having financial difficulties? It sounds like a loaded question, but it’s one that many are asking in regards to a recent update and Trion Worlds’ response to player criticism. Today’s update removed the ability to purchase earring slots and Planewalker: Water via runestones, a grindable currency, making them available only through purchases in the cash shop. While players are perfectly capable of grinding in-game currency to buy REX, many players have pointed out that the platinum limit on free accounts is lower than the cost of REX, making it impossible to obtain the items without first throwing some money down on your account.

Trion’s reason for the change has similarly been met with controversy, responding that “this is a business decision,” according to community manager Eric Cleaver.

Ultimately this is a business decision, to best support RIFT moving forward into the future. We’re on the cusp right now of RIFT’s 5th Anniversary, and we’ve got great stuff planned for 2016. But that stuff takes Engineers and Designers and CS and QA and a whole lot of other folks.

Having a large team producing amazing things is a benefit to everyone who loves RIFT, both those making it and those who play it. But making games like RIFT is expensive. and so we need to sell things in game to pay those folks. We try to offer a variety of services that appeal to a broad selection of folks. Sometimes we try one thing, sometimes we try another. But it’s always a learning experience.

Both Earring Slots and Planewalker: Water went through a number of iterations during development before release, and when Nightmare Tide did release we decided at that time to allow them to be acquired via either a substantial investment of time via Voidstones or with purchase of a Nightmare Tide Collectors Edition. It’s been over a year now since that release, and the team has decided to move in a slightly different direction with these unlocks.

Incidentally, the update comes alongside a change to Rift’s referral program, and no longer allows for players to use their referral points to purchase REX.

(Source: Rift)

Blade & Soul First Update Coming February 10th

Blade & Soul’s first major patch is hitting shores on February 10th. The update introduces new end-game dungeons like Bloodshade, available as a six or four man dungeon, and Nightshade, a 24-player version. Players are tasked with taking on the Blackram pirates, all the way up to Admiral Hae Mujin himself. Also included are the first seven floors of Mushin’s Tower, a single player heroic dungeon that will be expanded in future updates. Each floor introduces newer difficulties to overcome.

Hongmoon levels allow for players to continue progressing past the current level cap of 45. There are five Hongmoon levels.

(Source: Blade & Soul)

Hero’s Song Campaign Cancelled, Funded By Investors

Backers of Hero’s Song, all three thousand of you, were surprised this morning by the sudden news that the campaign was being cancelled. Backers were all sent an email explaining that the campaign would be closed due to predictions showing that the funding would not reach its necessary levels. The campaign had lasted for six days and had raised approximately $136 thousand of the intended $800 grand.

After looking at our funding levels and the reality that we aren’t going to reach our funding goals, we’ve decided that the best thing to do is to end the Kickstarter. We sincerely appreciate all of the support we got from the backers and the Kickstarter community.

The good news is that the game isn’t gone, in fact just the opposite. Pixelmage Games has been able to get the game fully funded by investors, without bringing publishers into the deal and hopefully allowing the developers the freedom to make their vision a reality. The Kickstarter campaign expected a delivery around October 2016, so we’ll have to see if the game continues on track.

Pixelmage Games is the new home of John Smedley, formerly of Daybreak Game Company, formerly Sony Online Entertainment.

(Source: Kickstarter)

Daewoo Securities Predicts Doom For Wildstar

Wildstar’s transition to free to play came on the heels of the game dipping down into virtually negligible revenues, $1.5 million as of the third quarter, and everyone wants to know how well free to play has treated the title. We won’t know the real figures until next month, but Daewoo Securities has issued a new forecast predicting that even a shift to free to play won’t be enough to save the sinking ship.

Daewoo predicts zero turnaround for Wildstar, with Q4 revenues remaining flat and continuing to decline over the following months. For the fourth quarter of 2016, the company either predicts a statistically negligible amount or that the game will no longer be in operation. In addition, they predict that Heart of Thorns, the Guild Wars 2 expansion, has sold less than expected.

We expect NCSOFT to report slightly disappointing earnings for 4Q15, due to 1) weaker-than-projected sales of the Guild Wars 2 expansion pack, 2) a lower-thanexpected increase in revenue from Lineage I microtransaction events, and 3) higher expenses related to marketing (G-Star trade show) and the company’s pro baseball team. We forecast 4Q15 revenue of W236.1bn (+0.4% YoY) and operating profit of W70.8bn (-19% YoY).

We’ll know how accurate this prediction is once NCSoft files their full report next month. Daewoo Securities correctly predicted that a Guild Wars 2 expansion would be released in Q3 2015 for $50 when neither a price nor even the existence of an expansion had been announced by Arenanet. Considering the accuracy of their predictions, I lean toward believing their sources.

(Source: Daewoo Securities)

City of Steam Is Shutting Down This Month

City of Steam developer Mechanist Games has announced that services for the MMO will shut down later this month. The game launched in 2013 and was named MMO Fallout’s ‘Most Disappointing MMO of the Year,” due to a partnership with R2 Games that saw many of the game’s mechanics simplified or outright removed and the overall meta-game transformed into a mobile grinder with energy and an overwhelming cash shop.

The announcement focuses on the declining support of UNITY in browsers.

But we’re sorry to say that this chapter of The New Epoch is coming to an end. A number of factors went into this decision, the decline of Unity support in the browser is one of them – Google Chrome no longer supports NPAPI plugins like the Unity Webplayer, and Microsoft’s next browser, Edge, won’t either.

While City of Steam was relaunched as Arkadia, the changes made to the game between closed and open beta unfortunately kept many players from coming back. The game has been in maintenance mode since November 2014 and no one has bothered to moderate the forums since at least August of last year, leaving nearly dozens of pages of spam.

(Source: City of Steam)

Shroud of the Avatar Community Wants Free Offline Access To Perks

What do you do when your game sells items for real money but also includes a separate offline mode that can’t reasonably be regulated by the developer? For Shroud of the Avatar, the folks at Portalarium figures that no matter what their stance on the issue, there is little doubt that hackers will figure out a way to nab those cash shop items for free. So why not do everyone a favor, since the only impact the player can have is on their own world, and give everyone access to exclusive items in offline mode?

The idea was polled, and so far the response has been in overwhelming agreement. 96.5% of the voting community, approximately 860 votes as of this publishing, agree that it is OK for all add on and pledge rewards to be available in offline mode. This obviously comes with a caveat that items will need to be crafted, with the biggest and best stuff becoming end-game content, and that numerous items will have no real effect in offline mode like Fyndoro’s Tablet, an item that is used to find other players.

Community response to the idea has been overwhelmingly positive, especially from those who had invested serious money into the game:

I have 5k in and my greatest concern is someone will feel I bought a advantage over them. That’s not what I want. I like the nick nacks, their cool, but I don’t want anyone to feel its pay to play outside of the basic costs for the game.

And not all of the ‘no’ votes were against the idea entirely, with many citing the extra development time required to turn the items into craftables and figure out balancing.

I don’t really care either way, but voted NO because I do not want the developers wasting any time on making the items craftable. Just put them all on a special vendor and be done with it please.

If you add up all the hats, cloaks, costumes, weapons, armor, prosperity items etc. you would probably have at least 100 new items, each one requiring a unique recipe. How many unique recipes for hats alone are needed? Can it even be done without adding new ingredients?

How do you feel about pledge items, considering they can run a pretty penny, being available to players for free in offline mode? Let us know in the comments below.

(Source: Shroud of the Avatar)

John Smedley Returns, Crowd Funding New Game

John Smedley, former of the Daybreak Game Company Smedleys, has returned to gaming in the form of Pixelmage Games. The startup has a few names you might recognize, including Patrick Rothfuss, Jon Handy, and Bill Trost, and their first game is Hero’s Song. Hero’s Song is a 2D rogue-like RPG where each world is shaped by its own history. You might find yourself in a world where the dwarves never existed, and neither has their technology, or one where necromancy reigns supreme.

Each server is hosted by players with the capacity for thousands to join in. You can check out more details at the link below.

(Source: Kickstarter)

Eternal Crusade Can Always Use More Cashmoneys

Warhammer 40k: Eternal Crusade is on its way to Steam early access, and Nathan Richardson wants you to know that the game is doing just fine so far as cashmoneys are concerned. The game is launching on Steam early access, yes, but not for the money. Simply put, the game is funded to launch this year, Steam early access offers luxuries like a decent pay system, news delivery, oh and a lot of customers.

As Richardson puts it:

No, our philosophy of being agile, is that we strongly believe that the inclusion of more people, as early in the development process as possible will ultimately make a better game. We are simply continuing this program (previously called Founders) in the Steam Early Access framework.

You can read the rest of the Q&A at the link below.

(Source: Eternal Crusade)

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