News – Page 392 – MMO Fallout

RuneScape Deadman Mode Now Offers Health Insurance

The only guarantee in Deadman life is death and taxes, and I’m not so sure about the taxes. Today’s update to the hardcore PvP mode makes it possible to buy health insurance, the option to pay to keep your health from going below a certain level upon death. HP insurance is a one time, nonrefundable payment to keep your health at 25, 50, and 75 respectively with the cost going up for each level.

A strange woman named Gelin has appeared in Lumbridge graveyard selling life insurance. For a reasonable price you can insure your hitpoint stat to guarantee that it will not fall below a certain level when you die in Deadman mode.

Health insurance was voted in by 83% of players in a poll earlier this month. Also included in today’s update is a major change to experience loss on death. Dying to a player while unskulled will now result in a 25% experience loss in unprotected skills rather than 50%.

(Source: RuneScape)

Dragon’s Prophet Shutters In America

Dragon’s Prophet is no longer available for North American players, as Daybreak Game Company (formerly Sony Online Entertainment) has parted ways with developer Runewaker Entertainment. The shutdown was first announced last month with the notice that the game would continue operating as is in Europe and Asia as those regions are handled by different publishers. Players initially suspected that the game was set to shut down when it did not make its way into the All Access pass.

You can try to find the announcement on Daybreak’s website, but it looks like they took no time in obliterating the Dragon’s Prophet website, which is no longer present.

(Source: Dragon’s Prophet)

Neverwinter Continues Astral Diamond Changes

Perfect World’s continuing efforts to make Astral Diamonds more readily available to players, while heading off bots and zen farmers, has been ongoing for the past few months dating back to the initial changes to the Gateway tool in July. Still, the game is in need of improvement. As Perfect World agrees, Astral Diamonds take far too long to obtain in-game and prices for goods like companion upgrades are ridiculously steep.

In the latest dev blog post, executive producer Rob Overmeyer discusses how Neverwinter’s Astral Diamond problem will be addressed, primarily through boosting how much players can acquire and refine each day. Leadership changes to reduce botting resulted in the per player average of Astral Diamonds plummeting from 171,000 all the way down to 34,000, before further updates increased that amount to 60,000.

It turns out that managing economies is hard and complex. Dealing with two economies is even harder, but we are up for the challenge. There are several things that need to happen in the short term. We know players need ways to earn enough AD, and that AD vendor prices need to be in a place that makes sense. We want to make sure those things are true. Right now, we think it’s sometimes too hard to earn AD, and some of the prices are too high, so we’re making some changes. We’ll keep watching, and we’ll make more changes if needed.

The plan to introduce more legitimate Astral Diamonds to the economy involves a 50% bonus to AD earned through dungeons, skirmishes, PvP, and weekly quests. In addition, the cost of companions will be greatly reduced, as well as the price of upgrading them. You can read more about the update at the link below.

(Source: Neverwinter)

DarkScape Drops Multiple Banks, Multiple Grand Exchanges

The whole point of experimenting is to test new ideas, and that means a high likelihood that those ideas will be scrapped as unusable for one reason or another. In DarkScape, today’s update marks the removal of the three separate bank and Grand Exchanges. In order to add danger to DarkScape, Jagex had separated the world into three separate ‘risk’ areas with three separate banks and three Grand Exchanges, requiring players to smuggle items between them in order to move resources around the world.

Beginning today, players will be able to access all three banks from anywhere, although they will remain as three separate tabs. In addition, the medium and high threat exchanges have been shut down, returning any items/gold from unfinished sales. It is also possible to teleport from lower risk to higher risk areas while carrying items, but not vice versa.

(Source: DarkScape)

Gamers Gather In Mourning of Paris Attacks

As the events in Paris continue to unfold, a number of gamers in Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft have taken to setting up vigils in their respective games to honor the victims of the attack. Players in Final Fantasy have gathered in the amphitheater on the Balmung server to hold vigil, with several GM’s in attendance, while scores of World of Warcraft players gathered in Dalaran to do the same.

MMO Fallout hopes that you and your own stay safe, and send our thoughts and prayers out to those who are in, or have family/friends in and around Paris.

Deadman Adds Attack Priority, Separate Your Victims

Yesterday’s update to Old School brought in some much needed, and popularly requested, changes to Deadman Mode, the recently released hardcore game mode for RuneScape. Players can now opt to separate how the game prioritizes targets, making it possible to navigate crowded areas without accidentally attacking another player. The update will come in handy in banks and guarded towns where a simple misclick can result in heavy losses.

The update also changes how looting on death works, with killers receiving the most valuable bank key from their victim rather than the oldest. Bank keys are dropped on death and allow the killer to steal twenty eight of the player’s most valuable item stacks from their bank. You can read the entire changelog at the link below.

(Source: Old School RuneScape)

Elder Scrolls Online: Orsinium Game Pack Now Available

The latest game pack for Elder Scrolls Online is now available for purchase, billed as the largest DLC game pack to date. Orsinium clocks in with over twenty hours of story content, not to mention new dungeons, new powerful equipment, a new solo challenge, and more. The update brings in content to all players with a new grouping tool that allows for cross-alliance dungeons, gamepad support, shield dyeing, and a new crafting style.

Orsinium costs 3000 crowns to purchase and is available for free to subscribers.

(Source: Zenimax press release)

Get Trove/Devilian Goodies In This Week’s Humble Bundle

Trion Worlds is taking part in the latest Humble Weekly Bundle with a few goodies for two of their games. For this week and this week only, you can get your hands on the Humble Extra Life bundle for Trion’s upcoming ARPG Devilian. The package includes access to all Devilian beta events as well as a cosmetic halo override for all of your characters. Over on the Trove side, pledging more than the average (currently about $3.16) to receive an exclusive helmet.

The fiery battle helm that once graced the head of the mighty Phoenix King can now be yours! Show off your unmatched style and light up every room (literally) with a hat made of flames – all for a great cause.

The bundle also comes with Jazzpunk, How to Survive, one month of X-Split Premium, Overlord, with How to Survive, It Came From Space and Ate Our Brains, Overlord II, and Shadowgate if you pledge above the minimum. With $9, you can also grab Secret Ponchos. The bundle runs out November 12th.

(Source: Humble Bundle)

Borderlands Online Future In Question As 2K Shanghai Shuts Down

If you were waiting out on that Borderlands MMO, you may want to hold on to your sick days for now. 2K Games reported this week that it will be shutting down not just its Singapore offices but also those in Shanghai, laying off around 150 employees and leaving behind little more than a simple QA office. While there has been no official confirmation that the Borderlands MMO is cancelled, it is unlikely that 2K would move development over to a studio in another country.

(Source: MMO Culture)

NCSoft Q3 2015 Drops Across The Board

NCSoft has released their third quarter financial reports and the results are pretty much negative across the board. Sales were down 8% under the same time last year, while profits fell nearly forty percent and net income dropped sixty percent across the same period. NCSoft has pointed to a drop in in-game promotional items for Lineage 1 and Aion as the culprit behind a majority of the drop in sales in Korea, although every game in their library saw a loss in sales over the second quarter.

The only game that seemed to be doing better in the third quarter is Blade & Soul, whose continued success in China brought in increased royalties. Blade & Soul’s sales in China are not reflected in the game’s bar on the chart above. The news also does not take into account the shift of Wildstar to free to play and the launch of Guild Wars 2’s expansion Heart of Thorns. Wildstar’s earnings for the third quarter dropped to $1.5 million, while Lineage 1 still makes up just under half of the total game sales.

(Source: NCSoft)

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