News – Page 393 – MMO Fallout

Activision Blizzard Releases Quarterly Report, Hearthstone Up, WoW Down

Activision Blizzard released their third quarter revenue statements this week, and the news is all around great for the developer. Chief among the announcement is the news that the publisher is set to acquire Candy Crush developer King for $5.9 billion in equity value. Net revenues for the quarter amounted to $990 million up from $753 million for the same quarter last year.

Call of Duty has increased sales by double digits, fueled both by game sales and supply packs, while Destiny broke sales records on Playstation with player engagement now three hours a day. Skylanders has also increased sales, despite heavier competition with more products on the market, while World of Warcraft fell to 5.5 million subscribers.

Bobby Kotick’s statement:

“We continue to benefit from our focus on creating the world’s best interactive entertainment. Our incredibly talented employees around the world once again delivered great content and strong financial results. Mobile gaming is the largest and fastest-growing opportunity for interactive entertainment and we will have one of the world’s most successful mobile game companies and its talented teams providing great content to new customers, in new geographies throughout the world. King has a truly fantastic management team and over 1,600 incredibly talented employees and we are excited to welcome them into the Activision Blizzard family.”

(Source: Activision Blizzard)

Arkham Knight Refundable Through End Of Year

After four months of absence, Batman: Arkham Knight is finally available for sale on PC again. Despite numerous patches, however, many customers are still finding the game in an unacceptable state, with bugs and performance issues still causing problems.

Luckily for affected customers, Warner Bros has made it possible to refund the game for any reason up until the end of the year, regardless of how much time you’ve invested.

Until the end of 2015, we will be offering a full refund on Batman: Arkham Knight PC, regardless of how long you have played the product. You can also return the Season Pass along with the main game (but not separately). For those of you that hold onto the game, we are going to continue to address the issues that we can fix and talk to you about the issues that we cannot fix.

Standard Steam refund policy allows for refunds within two weeks and with less than two hours of gameplay.

(Source: Steam)

RuneScape Launches Deadman, Hardcore Mode

Following the launch of DarkScape, a hardcore mode for RuneScape, Old School is getting its own version with an even tougher twist. Deadman Mode offers open world player vs player combat with very rough penalties for those without the prerequisite survival skills.

Dying to another player in Deadman mode means losing half of your experience in unprotected skills, everything in your inventory, and twenty eight of the most valuable stacks of goods in your bank. In order to make the leveling process less excruciating, players gain experience at a rate of five times the normal amount.

(Source: RuneScape)

Quake Live Dumps Free To Play, Now $10

Quake Live launched in 2010 and has run as a free to play title with optional subscription, at least until this week. With apparently no warning, iD Software released an update integrating the game with Steam functionality, including friends, chat, lobbies, achievements, anti-cheat, workshop, and more. Additionally, both the free to play model and optional subscription have been retired, locking the game out to anyone who hadn’t previously owned it.

Today marks a new beginning for Quake Live. Last year we expanded our platform to Steam, and today we have retired our old launcher and services in favor of integrating a robust array of Steamworks alternatives. We are now fully utilizing Steam for Friends, Chat, Lobbies, Voice Chat, Server Browser, Statistics, Achievements, Anti-cheat, Trading Cards, and Workshop.

The game is available on Steam for $10, or free if you had previously played the game via Steam. Those who paid for pro and did not use the Steam client can contact Quake Live customer support to be given a key.

(Source: Quake Live)

Heart of Thorns Is Officially Here

Guild Wars 2 players have reason to rejoice today, as Arenanet has launched the latest and first paid expansion to the MMO. The expansion adds a number of firsts to the game, from raids to the new mastery system, guild halls, and more. The Heart of Thorns expansion is available on the Guild Wars 2 website, while the base game is available for free for anyone interested in giving it a go.

Arenanet co-founder Mike O’Brien had the following to say about the launch:

“We energized our fans in January with the announcement of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns as the first expansion to Guild Wars 2, and we’ve seen steady growth in our player base ever since. Our community is widely recognized as one of the best and friendliest in MMOs—many of our veteran players organized in starter zones to welcome new players the weekend we made the core Guild Wars 2 game free. We’re eager to see how our fast growing community continues to flourish, and we hope they’re eager to embrace where their Guild Wars 2 journey takes them next in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.”

Since launch, over seven million accounts have been created in Guild Wars 2.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

Funcom Fined For 2011-2012 Irregularities

It’s been a while since we last reported on the allegations that Funcom breached disclosure requirements and misled investors in the months leading up to the launch of The Secret World, and the results of said investigation are finally in. Following a raid on the offices in January of last year, Funcom yesterday announced that it has accepted a fine of 1.5 million NOK from the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime. The fine relates to market manipulation and lists of persons who have access to insider information.

The announcement does not mention anything specifically about ex-CEO Tron Aas, who is under investigation for offloading stocks just before the launch of The Secret World, leading many to speculate that he knew that the game would not be initially well received.

(Source: Funcom)

Trion Worlds Reverses Course, Now Threatens Bans For ArcheAge Blockades

ArcheAge faces the kind of balance that comes with games that promise absolute freedom: Allowing griefing versus keeping customers. Since its launch, Trion Worlds has used the term “emergent gameplay” as a tool to pass off any complaints about players utilizing the game’s collision mechanics to block trade routes in non-pvp zones, parking their vehicles over player owned land to prevent someone from farming, and circling around buildings to prevent access to certain areas.

In an announcement posted two days ago, Trion Worlds announced that blockades will no longer be allowed in ArcheAge.

Starting on October 23rd, users may no longer set up roadblocks/blockades anywhere in the game via any means (vehicle, ships, avocados, or otherwise.) In addition, we’d like to reinforce that users may not use their vehicles, ships, bodies, or another means to block someone from planting on their private land, interactable items, or from blocking NPCs in such a way that they cannot be interacted with.

While a large portion of players posting against the changes point to the game’s player vs player systems, Trion’s own Seraphina Brennan notes that very little blockading is done in conflict zones.

(Source: ArcheAge)

CCP Proposes Tradeable Skills, Community Not Enthused

CCP’s latest dev blog talks about coming improvements to the character bazaar, where players can buy and sell fully formed avatars in order to discourage less safe sales that would happen anyway on websites like Ebay. A majority of the updates concern the fact that the bazaar, while handy, is still too complicated for many players to confidently use, CCP has stirred the hornet’s nest with the announcement that players will be able to break their characters up into chunks and sell them piece by piece.

Effectively, you’ll be able to buy and sell individual skills without taking on the associated, and highly sought after, username xXx_420sm0k3W3eD_xXx.

By putting more control of your characters in your hands we hope to improve the game for everyone. Whether you’re an older player who would rather have ISK than those mining skills you don’t use any more, a clever new player looking to invest your fortune into your character, a Corp leader trying to move everyone into a new doctrine or someone like me who just realized that they would rather fly Armageddon’s than Stilettos, this feature has you covered. This all fits nicely to our overall game design philosophy of giving you control over your experience through cooperation and competition with each other.

The associated forum thread has broken two hundred pages, with CCP’s supporters pointing out that the function has essentially existed for years, albeit in the form of a full character rather than its individual stats.

(Source: Eve Online)

DarkScape Drops Experimental Update

This week’s DarkScape update is being dubbed “experimental,” in that it introduces a few new features to combat griefing through combat and in summoning shops. First of all, dying in RuneScape with the protect item prayer now results in a cooldown period where the prayer cannot be used. For skulled players (those who have recently attacked someone), the cooldown is five minutes. For non-skulled players, the cooldown is one minute.

Secondly, summoning shops have been reverted back to personal stock. A previous update had made shop inventories shared across all players, resulting in the stock of summoning shards (required for the summoning skill and virtually unobtainable elsewhere) being at or near zero across the game’s servers. The personal stock has also returned for waterskins.

There are more update details in the patch notes at the link below.

(Source: DarkScape)

Grab The Park For $9.99

The Park is Funcom’s first return to single player gaming since Dreamfall: The Longest Journey in 2006. Launching October 26th, The Park is a self-contained story in the universe that players have been exploring in The Secret World. Players take on the role of Lorraine, a mother looking for her lost child, as her story unravels over the course of the game.

Amusement parks are happy places, filled with the joys of childhood and the exhilarating rush of fantastic rides to be dared. That was the vision of eccentric business man Nathaniel Winter when he opened the doors to Atlantic Island Park in 1977. Unfortunately, the park’s history turned out to be one plagued by tragedy and drama. Its freak accidents, grotesque killings and ghostly hauntings have inspired many a sensational headline, and locals worry the park is far from done claiming innocent lives.
For Lorraine, it’s where her worst nightmare began.

The entire experience promises to be short, just an hour or two. Those who pre-order will be able to get their hands on exclusive items for The Secret World, including the Chipmunk Killer costume and a set of talismans.

For those unwilling to throw the money down, MMO Fallout will be covering the game post-launch.

(Source: Steam)

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