News – Page 396 – MMO Fallout

RuneScape: Double Exp Weekend Coming September 25th

Jagex has announced the next double experience weekend for RuneScape will take place next month, September 25th to be exact. Paying members will be able to enjoy the full rate while free players will still be able to get in at a 20% boost to experience.

From the moment the in-game clock hits 12:00 UTC on 25th September, all RuneScape members will enjoy double XP from their training until 12:00 UTC on 28th September. Free players won’t miss out, with +20% XP on their training over the same period.

The update promises to be just one part of a September of community updates.

(Source: RuneScape)

Neverwinter: Leadership Suspension Hasn’t Led To In-Game Botting

I’ve talked about Neverwinter’s Gateway app, a handy tool where players can level up their crafting professions even while not in-game. Unfortunately the ease of access means that the professions tab can be used by bots to mass-produce astral diamonds via the leadership profession, which is exactly what bots have been doing in Neverwinter: Using the Gateway to mass produce astral diamonds, inflating the economy, and raising prices of goods in the process.

Last month, Cryptic decided to fight back by removing the leadership profession from the Gateway app, leading to further concerns that this would simply drive bots into the game, filling up the servers. After studying the servers, it has been concluded that there hasn’t been any significant increase in the amount of botting in-game.

We also understand your concerns regarding the cost of goods versus the amount of Astral Diamonds coming into the economy. In the short term, we are keeping an eye on the supply of Astral Diamonds to make sure it performs as expected. We will also be running multiple “2x AD” events to make sure adventurers are able to get the Astral Diamonds they need. In the long term, we are re-examining the various non-profession methods of earning Astral Diamonds. It’s important to us that playing the game rewards AD sufficiently.

(Source: Neverwinter)

World of Warcraft Drops To 5.6 Million Subscribers

Activision Blizzard has officially posted their second quarter results for 2015, and the results are in the title of this article. While revenues grew year over year, to $1.04 billion from $970 million in the second quarter 2014, World of Warcraft once again saw a drop in subscriber figures: Down to 5.6 million from the 7.1 million reported last quarter and 10 million the quarter before. Once again Blizzard pointed to the “eastern market” for the brunt of the losses, noting that subscribers stabilized with the launch of Fury of Hellfire.

“Our strategic focus on expanding our franchise portfolio with captivating and original new intellectual property, innovating on new platforms, and expanding into new geographies is reflected in our results. We outperformed our Q2 targets and last year’s results on revenues, digital growth, and earnings per share. These strong results and the excitement for our future games have driven us to raise our full-year outlook.”
-Bobby Kotick, CEO

The report also market the “most active” second quarter in company history in regards to engagement and digital monetization.

Activision’s big earner Destiny launches its next expansion, Taken King, which will remove the leveling system that uses light and replace it with standard experience. Bungie also announced through Game Informer that Peter Dinklage will no longer be voicing Ghost, with Nolan North re-recording all of his previous dialogue.

(Source: Activision report)

Neverwinter Getting Four Expansions on Xbox Next Month

When Neverwinter launched on the Xbox One, it did so with the promise that while most expansion content would not be available at launch, that it would be pretty soon after. In a press release sent out today, Perfect World Entertainment has announced the impending release of the four missing expansions: Curse of Icewind Dale, Elemental Evil, Fury of the Feywild, and Shadowmantle.

The expansions will bring extra content including an increased level cap (60 to 70), the four end-game campaigns, new dungeons, zones, and more.

Rob Overmeyer, executive producer, said “as our community continues to grow on consoles, we have continued our support with content including six expansions worth of dungeons and heroic encounters with dragons within six months. Our team is ecstatic with the continued support and can’t wait to give our Xbox One players control of their own strongholds with our next content update coming later this year.”

All four expansions come out in September.

(Source: Perfect World Press Release)

Daybreak Game Company Discussing EQ2 Server Consolidation

Daybreak Game Company has expanded upon an earlier announcement that Everquest II servers will be merged. The term that executive producer Holly Longdale is going for is “consolidation,” meaning that the servers will be closed completely with players shuffled over to new servers, rather than simply merging a lower population server into another.

Those players moving will get a title naming their original server that can be worn with pride! And we will run a vote for the servers being consolidated to choose a new name for the new server based on the recent submissions we’ve had. We don’t know which servers yet, but that’s our next task.

The technology to implement server consolidation isn’t quite done, however the team plans on testing to begin later this month. Server consolidation for other regions will take place after, and more information overall should be coming within the next few weeks.

(Source: EQ2)

LOTRO Will Merge Down To Ten Servers

We learned back in May of Turbine’s plans to merge the Lord of the Rings Online servers, but the company has finally come forward with more specific details on the hows, the whens, and the wheres. All but ten servers will close as part of the merger, five in the US and five in Europe, with players from affected servers being given free transfers to any one of the ten remaining.

We will begin the transfer process by opening the test world, Bullroarer, for character copy. We will then open transfers between the 10 remaining worlds. Then the worlds that are closing will be opened for transfer, a few at a time, in the order they are listed below. Please watch the website, forums, and launcher for announcements regarding timing. *Note: Brandywine will be unavailable for incoming transfers for a time until population and load can be re-evaluated on new hardware.*

While ten servers remain, the announcement notes that Brandywine will not be available as a transfer destination until the server can be moved to upgraded hardware.

(Source: Official Website)

Log Into Trove For A Free Class This Weekend

To compensate players for recent downtime, Trion Worlds is handing out another free class coin to anyone who logs in between now and midnight Pacific Sunday night. The downtime stemmed from a seemingly simple database upgrade that went awry, forcing the game offline for several hours and requiring that Trion rollback the servers to earlier in the morning.

Thankfully, credits and cubits were returned to players who had purchased and subsequently lost them during that period.

We’ve returned the Credits and Cubits to everyone who made purchases. We also made sure all real money purchases got their goods. Some people might even get double since we wanted to be extra careful. The only exception is the Credit deals (i.e., if you got Credits plus lures or pinatas) in those cases we couldn’t give you the bonus items, so we gave you +50% Credits instead.

This is the second free class coin handed out since Trove went free to play.

(Source: Trion Worlds)

Triad Wars Update Boosting Level Cap

The August update for Triad Wars is coming and will boost the current level cap for all players from 30 to 50. As players level up, their gangs will now level with them, creating new challenges for raids and new defenses for players raiding your turf. In addition, weapons will now be level-based with higher level weapons carrying more damage potential.

The enforcer level cap has been increased from 30 to 50. You will keep your current level, but what that level means has changed. We have removed the old upgrade screen and in its place we have a whole new leveling and upgrades system for you:

Leveling up now also unlocks slots that can be used to customize your character, unlock new moves, etc. Overall, the update will apparently make it easier to earn face and level up, especially by taking on higher level enemies.

A release date on the update has not been set.

(Source: Triad Wars)

League of Angels Only Wants 18+ Males

I don’t normally report on Facebook ads since most of you likely block them anyway and I could devote an entire book to how Chinese browser games engage in blatant fraud in Facebook ads either by outright lying about their games or going as far as using screenshots/video from other titles. And since League of Angels and GTArcade aren’t above stealing in order to peddle their self-playing browser “game,” it doesn’t surprise me at all that I would see the ad above on my Facebook feed.

Yes, they actually bought the domain “amazingmmogame.com” for the purpose of this promotion. Notice that there isn’t actually any indication of what the game is. The 3d model in the image above is from a Deviant Art account and may or may not have been stolen, but since the ad edits out where the watermark is, I’m willing to guess probably not. But for now, let’s dive into this ad. Clicking the link brings you to amazingmmogame.com, and a series of questions to determine if you are right for the game.

Finally a game that gates its community. Ask away.

No. I won’t allow it.

Your players probably “feel difficult to beat lvl 3” because technically the game plays itself.

I’ve seen enough of these games to know that addicts are exactly the demographic that League of Angels targets, so yes.

Yes, but I’m willing to bet that most of the other players are not 18. For what it’s worth, I answered no to all of these questions and the game let me in anyway. So much for League of Angels being a gated community.

League of Legends Just Killed A Character

If you listen closely, you can hear the sounds of pitchforks being sharpened. League of Legends broke new ground today by killing off one of its characters in the lore, not to mention the game itself. Players logging in today will find that Gangplank is no longer available to play, due to an untimely death from another League character Miss Fortune. Players logging in today will find that Gangplank has been disabled from play, with Riot Games asking for a few days of patience before further information is released.

Champion death is unprecedented in League of Legends, and we do not take it lightly. We encourage all Gangplank fans to remain calm for a few days until we can fully assess the situation. At this time, we are not addressing refund requests for him or his skins but please know that over the next several days we’ll do our best to make things right for everyone.

The good news is that it appears Gangplank’s removal is only temporary. Buzz on the forums points to the likelihood of Gangplank returning in an undead form, allowing the lore of League to progress while still allowing players access to the character and costumes that they spent real money for.

(Source: League of Legends)

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