Category: News

Tribes: Ascend Update Undoes All Purchases


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Hi-Rez Studios recently surprised its community with the announcement that Tribes Ascend would be once again receiving the love and, more importantly, updates that had been denied to it ever since support for the title was dropped back in 2013. The Out of the Blue update, or ‘It’s About F*cking Time,” as it has also been called, is a massive list of fixes, tweaks, and new content. Chief among the changes is that the prior nine classes are being melted down into three: light, medium, and heavy. As a result, all purchases have been reverted.

Due to the dramatic changes to the underlying game, all in-game purchases have been reverted and all Tribes Gold and XP refunded to your account. If you have previously purchased the Ultimate Weapon Pack or Game of the Year it will be re-added to your account. If there is any Tribes Gold on your account you will be automatically gifted the Ultimate Weapon Pack.

New maps, new weapons, and an encyclopedia worth of balances make up the majority of this massive update. The entirety of the patch notes are at the link below.

(Source: Tribes)

Get Your Lineage II Transfers In Before December 16th


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NCSoft has posted a notice on the Lineage II website that anyone wishing to transfer their character this month should do so before December 16th, otherwise they will have to wait until next year.

With the upcoming holiday, the last server transfers of 2015 will be processed during the December 16th maintenance. Purchasing and queuing for server transfers will not be available after this date and any server transfers that fail during the next maintenance will be processed next year.

Missing the deadline will mean having to wait until transfers begin again on January 6th.

(Source: Lineage II)

Jagex Announces Seasonal Deadman, $10,000 Tournaments


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With Deadman now six weeks out of launch, Jagex has revealed their plans for the game in the upcoming year. As previously discussed in our interview with Mat K, part of the idea for next year is to have seasonal deadman, a separate set of servers that run on independent rules and are wiped once the season is over. Seasons could, for instance, have higher experience rates, or equipment unavailable in the standard game.

Prior to each season we will allow players to decide if they want additional rules for that season. For example, you may want a season with Dragon Claws, PvP armour or other things. Please do let us know what ideas you have for the Deadman Mode Seasonal servers.

The top five thousand players from each season will be able to participate in a special tournament, with the last man standing receiving $10,000 as a prize.

(Source: Deadman)

Play Elder Scrolls Online For Free, Unless You Can’t


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Elder Scrolls Online is free this weekend for anyone who has yet to make the purchase. Well, not everyone. Xbox One players should have no problem just getting in and starting once the weekend goes live, but everyone else is going to have some issues. First, Playstation 4 players can’t get in on the weekend at all. PC players are going to have to procure a key that will be available from various partner websites.

The free weekend runs from the 10th until the 14th this month. The lack of Playstation 4 access has been blamed on “technical issues” and the company hopes to have a free weekend for the platform when those issues are resolved. For others, the game is currently 60% off with discounts on cash shop currency.

(Source: Zenimax Release)

Steam Leak Reveals New Games, DLC


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A recent leak from the Steam Helpdesk has resulted in the outing of games and DLC packages coming to Steam. The list is massive and includes numerous test apps not meant to be viewed by the public. It makes references to games that we know are coming out (Rise of the Tomb Raider, Dark Souls III, etc) with some surprises (Final Fantasy X/X2, Danganronpa), VR games, and movies (Sin City, Clerks, etc).

The leak supposedly originates from Steam’s recent move to allow games to be permanently removed from accounts. A hole in the process has allowed all previously unknown sub names becoming publicly available.

How reliable this list is in unknown, as it not only includes a new DLC pack for Alganon but also shows The Missing Ink, an MMO that went down nearly two years ago for “upgrades” and hasn’t been heard from since. We do know that the list was hit with a DMCA takedown notice shortly after appearing online, hence the mirror link to Pastebin. Also be aware that listings for games like Half Life 3 could very well be third party developers having a joke.

(Source: Pastebin)

341830 = Aika Online
350681 = Alganon – DLC2
344020 = Block N Load: Developer DLC
345450 = Star Sonata 2 – 1 Month Subscription
345451 = Star Sonata 2 – 3 Month Subscription
345452 = Star Sonata 2 – 6 Month Subscription
345453 = Star Sonata 2 – Annual Subscription
345454 = Star Sonata 2 – SPEX
345455 = Star Sonata 2 – 20 Space Points
345456 = Star Sonata 2 – 40 Space Points
345457 = Star Sonata 2 – 60 Space Points
345510 = Vindictus: Free Steam Package
353150 = The Missing Ink
353880 = Vendetta Online

 

 

You Can Now Disown Games On Steam


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Have you ever looked at your Steam library and thought “this game was so bad, I don’t even want it in my collection?” If you said yes, your day has come. In an unannounced update to their customer support section, Valve has made it possible to completely disown games on Steam. It sounds like a really bad phishing attempt, but it’s true. All you have to do is go to help.steampowered.com, log in, and find the game you want to get rid of. Click on “I want to permanently remove this game from my account,” and confirm, and blamo: It’s gone.

Finally something to help with those long-forgotten defunct MMOs. It is important to note that this is different than Steam’s refund policy. This will simply delete the game from your account, and you will not be able to reinstall it without purchasing it again.

AD2460 Going Free To Play December 7th


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Norwegian developer Fifth Season AS has announced that their browser MMO AD2460 will be heading free to play this month. Until the update goes into effect on December 7th, new players are encouraged to take advantage of the game’s 15 day free trial to get started. The business model change will go up alongside the deployment of Patch 7.

In place of a subscription, Fifth Season has promised that the game will not see the introduction of ‘pay to win’ features.

Fifth Season has always been very clear in their stance against “pay-to-win” so even though the game now goes “free-to-play” it will have no elements of “pay-to-win”. The elements one can spend money on will all be based around added fun and customization. Such features include facial and graphical commander elements, placing bounties on your opponents and “War-Games” where you can challenge opponents for practice or fun without risking losing your fleets. It is anticipated that all of these features will be expanded upon throughout future patches as well.

(Source: Fifth Season press release)

Get Games Cheap: Thanksgiving Digital Sales


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Thanksgiving is upon us and while this is traditionally an American holiday, there is no reason that everyone can’t get something out of it.

(Editor’s note: Prices shown in USD. Sales/Games may not be available in all regions.)

There is also a ton of DLC on sale for your games.

  • Trion Worlds is running a host of Black Friday sales, on ArcheAge, Defiance, and Trove.
  • Save 25% off on Daybreak cash purchases as well as in-game sales on several Daybreak games.
  • 20% off of mounts and companions in Neverwinter.
  • Turbine is offering 85% off of the price of expansions in Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online.

Deadman Updates To Curb Griefing


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Deadman Mode, the hardcore pvp version of Old School RuneScape, has been updated with a small but substantial change to curb griefing. Following criticism from the community over ‘suiciding,’ the act of high level players attacking and killing low level players before guards can react, Jagex has altered how death works in guarded areas. Beginning today, players who die in a guarded area with a skull will lose 10% of the experience in protected skills. Those without a skull will not, however they will still lose 25% experience in unprotected skills.

The update has received mixed reactions, with some stating that the punishment isn’t severe enough and others pointing to the ease with which players can drop items before they die to retrieve them upon respawning. DarkScape had gone around this issue by making all items appear automatically when dropped.

(Source: Old School)

Everquest Promises New Progression Server, Less Drama


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Daybreak Game Company has announced that the next progression server for Everquest, Phinigel, will not allow multi-boxing. Set to launch on December 9th, Phinigel will follow a strict schedule of one expansion release every ninety days, with no voting on the player side or manipulation from Daybreak. In addition, raids will have an instanced mode with an account-wide six and a half day lockout, alongside the open-world version of said bosses.

This is a server where each player will only be able to play on one EverQuest account from their computer. We want to encourage players to play with their friends on this server, and not just form groups of only their alts. If people are truly wanting to multi-box, they’ll have to do it the old fashioned way. Phinigel is a TRUE box server, which means in order to multi-box you’ll need a set-up that looks something like this:

While they’ve proven to be popular among players, Everquest’s two progression servers have not been without a good deal of controversy, not least of which were complaints of players using multiple accounts to make the game very easy and overcrowding in most areas of the game. Daybreak also made a large misstep in the decision to issue account suspensions (later overturned) to an entire guild of several hundred players because one single member was killing raid mobs out of guild rotation.

(Source: Everquest)