News – Page 394 – MMO Fallout

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)

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)

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It: