Category: News

RuneScape Credit Card Fraud Warning: Squeal of Fortune


Having your account stolen in RuneScape just became a lot more dangerous. A very serious concern has arisen with regard to Squeal of Fortune, and Jagex’s method of keeping storage of user payment details. Jagex stores credit card information for recurring subscriptions, and uses that same card to purchase Squeal of Fortune spins. While the card number cannot be accessed, Jagex requires no extra information to process the purchase.

Squeal of Fortune is a grab-bag style mini-game where players can purchase spins (and receive them in-game) to have a chance at receiving rare equipment. If an account is stolen, there is nothing preventing the thief from doing very real damage by running up a massive bill through Squeal of Fortune. Why would someone do that with no real benefit to themselves, you might ask? Never question what a person might do to cause grief to another, especially over the anonymity of the internet.

The only way to remedy this for the time being is to head over to Runescape.com and remove your credit card from the account. Go to the main website, click on account settings, membership, and extend membership. You will see a list of payment sources on file, click “manage saved cards,” and there you will be able to delete the card off of the record.

Future membership purchases can be made with the option to not remember the card details. For players with the lower membership rate, there is a leeway when resubscribing where you will still receive your current rate. If the account is compromised and money is transferred, Jagex will not be refunding any money spent, legitimately or not.

With the on-screen PIN to prevent theft in the case that an account is stolen, RuneScape has more security around a player’s virtual bank than it does around the player’s actual bank.

(Source: Tip.It Warning)

Jagex Introduces Microtransactions In RuneScape


When Jagex introduced the Squeal of Fortune, they did so with the premise that the mini-game was balanced. Powerful and expensive rewards were relegated to untradeable and extraordinarily rare chances, and each player was only offered one spin per day (two for members). Today, however, Jagex has reversed years of outspoken anti-real money trading policies by introducing an update allowing players to purchase extra spins.

Spins can be bought in packages of 10, 20 (with 5 bonus spins), and 40 (with 35 bonus spins) for $5, $10, and $20 respectively. Jagex has denied that this constitutes paying for an advantage as players are not buying a specific item. The company has also denied that this constitutes gambling as there is no chance of “loss,” as players will always win something, even if it is a cheap 50 coin payout.

The gambling issue, however, stands to be a very important one. This update puts Squeal of Fortune in a similar bracket with lotto bags that many free to play games offer, and depending on if anyone decides to bring question, may constitute gambling and be subject to varying restrictions, laws, and even bans depending on the country.

Regardless of any potential and currently unknown legal implications, this move is sure to draw fire from the community, thanks in part to Jagex’s extreme stance over the past decade against any form of extra payment in return for advantages, and the justifications from developers (see above) as to how this does not violate the core principles is not being received well.

Hopefully more to come as this story develops.

 

Warhammer 40k MMO Officially Cancelled


If this announcement sounds familiar, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. This time the announcement is official, Warhammer: Dark Millennium Online has been cancelled. Well, somewhat. In a press release today, THQ announced that the Dark Millennium will no longer be an MMO, but will instead become a single player game. So the title is dropping the “Online” and will henceforth be known as Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium, and thus is no longer a topic of conversation here at MMO Fallout.

 THQ Inc. (NASDAQ:THQI) today announced that it has refocused Warhammer® 40,000®: Dark Millennium™ from a Massively Multiplayer Online game to an immersive single player and online multiplayer experience with robust digital content, and engaging community features. Further product details, platforms and release timing will be announced at a later date.

In addition, over 100 employees have been laid off from the struggling developer. We already know that Dark Millennium was being developed with help from the Space Marine title, so the new iteration is likely to become a spiritual sequel. Dark Millennium Online was already looking at trouble with THQ acknowledging a lack of funds to publish the game.

As a side note, in a past poll 23% of MMO Fallout viewers believed either Activision or Trion should publish Dark Millennium.

(Source: THQ press release)

World of Darkness: Elected Prince Deals Perma-Death


Seeing as the game will employ EVE Online’s single-server system, being elected to the leader of a city is fairly important, and besides being a great accolade to put on a resume, the Prince of a City has the power to permanently kill players. Yes, that’s right: World of Darkness is going to have permadeath in one form or another, though it won’t be as widespread as it is in the tabletop game. Hardcore.

World of Darkness is looking to be the MMO of choice for people who enjoy the concept of Eve Online’s hardcore sandbox world controlled and dominated by player interaction, but aren’t exactly a fan of flying in space ships. Following in suit of Eve Online, World of Darkness is set to only feature one server, making control of territory and the walking blood containers that inhabit it all the more important.

At the recent Fanfest, CCP talked about how each city will have a prince elected to it by players, who will be able to have players permanently killed. Compared to the pen and paper World of Darkness, however, permadeath will be much less common and something of an extraordinary event. Still, if World of Darkness keeps on the path that it appears to be going down, CCP might just make exactly the hardcore MMO many of us have been looking for.

The Secret World is set to release between now and doomsday.

(Source: GamesRadar)

Guild Wars 2: Genius Method of Catching NDA Violators.


Click to enlarge

How do you stop someone from stealing your art and claiming it as their own? You watermark it, just enough so that it doesn’t get in the way of the actual image. How does a developer stop people from violating the non-disclosure agreement and posting screenshots of, say, Guild Wars 2 anonymously? Equal levels of watermarking.

Now, the above is not a screenshot from Guild Wars 2, as posting a screenshot of such feature from Guild Wars 2 even for proof of concept is what my lawyers refer to as “digging myself into a hole” that they will later “shoot and bury me in,” so instead I’m using an old April Fool’s teaser of the Guild Wars commando class. Click on the picture to enlarge it, and you can see my email address watermarked frequently enough that you couldn’t possibly crop a usable picture.

Obviously this doesn’t prevent people from posting their thoughts of the beta test without repercussion, but it does make it impossible to post screenshots without Arenanet taking action against the account.

Reminder to all closed beta players: you’re under NDA. Don’t risk breaking the NDA, you could permanently lose access to all ArenaNet games. ~RB2

The Old Republic Responsible For WoW Subscriber Losses


Talking to Eurogamer, Producer John Lagrave admitted that the launch of The Old Republic has had an effect on World of Warcraft’s subscription numbers. Lagrave goes on to talk about possibly extending the current World of Warcraft unlimited trial (up to level 20) to level 40, or even level 60, but with a firm reminder that Blizzard has no plans to take the MMO to a free to play model, as Blizzard still feels that the game runs best as a subscription.

“Of course people are trying Star Wars – our development team are trying Star Wars! I’m one of the few people who’s still playing it actually, but yeah we’ve seen a dip in subs. It certainly has to at least be attributable to The Old Republic, but it’s also attributable to people who want to wait and get Mists of Pandaria, so it’s not surprising.”

Blizzard is one of several developers to be very open about their loss of subscribers, and one of the few companies to actually post a base figure of how many are still playing. Up until recently, a major portion of Blizzard’s dropped subscribers have been attributed to losses over in China where the rate of income per user is lower than in the West, in territories including China where users pay for World of Warcraft like a prepaid phone (adding hours). Blizzard also attributes some of the loss to players to a need to release more content at a faster pace, as players complete it. Meanwhile, the expansion of the cash shop has more than made up for the loss of subscribers, leading to higher revenue each quarter.

In the face of 1.7 million subscribers for The Old Republic, Blizzard is looking to entice its previous customers to return and current customers to remain so. Back in October, Blizzard launched the expanded Annual Pass offering a free copy of Diablo 3, a spectral mount, and guaranteed access to the Mists of Pandaria beta (The Diablo 3 promotion ends May 1st, if you were thinking about signing up). Just recently, Blizzard launched the Scroll of Resurrection campaign, offering an upgrade to Cataclysm, a free level 80 character, and free faction/server changes for the recipient.

All of this on the heels of Blizzcon 2012 being cancelled so Blizzard can focus on its development, and laying off 600 non-developmental workers.

You can read the rest of the discussion at the link below.

(Source: Eurogamer)

Warhammer Loses Another Server: Drakenwald Closing


As part of our ongoing efforts to maintain an active, competitive, and engaging experience in WAR we have decided to open free transfers for players to specific servers. WAR, more than many games, only gets better with more people. These transfers will enable players to experience more action during all hours whether fighting in scenarios or Open RvR.

Absolutely true, and if there is one thing that Warhammer Online could use, it is more people. By now, Warhammer players should be well tuned with the process. Starting tomorrow, Drakenwald will be marked as a “legacy server,” disabling the creation of new characters. Existing characters are free to transfer to Badlands or Karak Norn for three weeks until the server is deactivated and you will be forced to transfer anyway.

On the other hand, Warhammer has almost run out of servers to close down.

(Source: Warhammer Herald)

Kingdoms of Amalur Online Perhaps Later This Year


“From the mediocre game that nobody bought and doesn’t really like that much, comes a big giant version of that game!”
-Todd McFarlane

Todd has a point. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning released one month ago and sales figures place the title at over one third of a million sales. Now that gamers are well versed in the realm of Amalur and the inner working concepts of fate, the team at 38 Studios is instituting phase two of Operation Franchise: Release an MMO. Labeled Project Copernicus, the Kingdom of Amalur MMO is set for release later this year, 2012.

I have my own concerns over Amalur’s prospects for a 2012 release. Assuming the game can hit its 2012 release, the folks at 38 Studios will be competing against The Secret World, TERA, Guild Wars 2, the new World of Warcraft expansion, Neverwinter, and more. Never mind the recent and future free to play transitions of existing MMOs, of course the existing market as it is.

I have high hopes for Amalur Online (my name), but I also recognize the kind of risks that are taken when a developer puts out an MMO for the first time. Crafting an MMO is very different from creating a single player game, and 38 Studios did the smart move by creating a fan base and setting out a base expectation for quality.

More on Amalur Online (not the actual name) as it appears.

Would You Sacrifice Immersion For An Elder Scrolls MMO?


Here at MMO Fallout, I like to take rumors and expand on them in theory rather than posting a simple “this might come out,” so at least if the game does turn out to be fake, we had a decent discussion. With the rumored upcoming announcement of the Elder Scrolls MMO, an announcement that will be about as surprising as Earthrise shutting down, I got to thinking: What would I be willing to sacrifice for an Elder Scrolls MMO? The answer? I’ll have to get back to you.

I have a certain disconnect with MMOs. Games like World of Warcraft and Everquest are enjoyable, and I take particular joy in building a character and giving him far more of a back story than is really necessary, but I have no emotional investment in anything that goes on in my quest grind to end-game or boredom, whichever comes first. Unlike most single player games, I am constantly reminded that I am indeed knee deep in slow moving pepper grinder, making my way up to the fate of endless raiding. The quest logs lining the side of my screen, hotbars down below, enemies that are impossible to defeat until I turn in a quest, level up, and can suddenly knock them upside the head without missing a beat.

But more so, it is the community that ruins my sense of immersion. I may not be a real general in the fight against hell, nor have I traversed the real land of the elves, and you won’t find my blaster in a sand dune on Tatooine, but any immersion I would have had in the game goes right out the door when I enter the first area and see names that amount to the creativity that might bleed out of a preteen AOL Instant Messenger chat room. And I’m not even going to include the thousands of Legolas and Gordon Freeman I’ve seen. As a writer, I understand that sometimes people just want to play as their favorite characters.

I’m talking about seeing xXxPwnNoObzxXx, or FkdUrMum95, or screen names that look like the person rolled their hands on the keyboard. The names serve an important purpose, no doubt: They are a free beacon to let me know who to avoid, because odds are engaging in discussion with players like FkdUrMum95 is just going to lead to the filling of my ignore list.

Is my stand elitist? Probably, I’d like to say that it isn’t. I log into World of Warcraft knowing that I will likely have my sexuality, weight, and social life questioned, someone will attempt to scam me, Chuck Norris jokes, Chuck Testa jokes, the cake is a lie, my mother is a ho, and at least one high level player will be complaining that his meme-based name was in style back when he created the character, and now he is stuck with it. But after ten straight years of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, I’ve come to expect something of a serious atmosphere. One without people bunny-hopping all over the map and playing dance emotes while saying “stripping 4 gold, plz tip,” one without the ridiculous holiday events that break immersion, where I am the sole hope for the survival of the world, and more importantly: One where the game isn’t compromised for the sake of building a world where thousands of people can interact online.

So I will play Elder Scrolls Online, but for me it will be a cheap imitation. Sure it may look like Elder Scrolls, taste like Elder Scrolls, and may fill me up, but it won’t grant the satisfaction of a true offline Elder Scrolls title.

Mass Effect 3: The Right Way To Protest


Here at MMO Fallout, I’ve devised a sport known as “competitive charity,” a corporate sport where the rules are simple: Donate more than anyone else to a respectable charity and you win the prize. What is the prize? We haven’t figured that out yet, but it is in progress. So far, competitive charity has been extremely successful, with a majority of the companies listed here at MMO Fallout participating on an occasional basis.

Over at Bioware, the Mass Effect community decided to express its outrage at the ending of Mass Effect 3 in the only way it knows how: Throwing the rules of competitive charity right out the window and starting up a charity fund. So far, over two thousand contributors have donated more than fifty three thousand dollars to Child’s Play. Sure, it’s an odd marriage: The joy of charity and the general useless endeavor that is an internet protest.

This is my kind of protest, and I’m sure Child’s Play is just as happy as I am to see the money rolling. The charity drive runs until April 11th. If you want to chip in, or just want to donate to Child’s Play, click below. I will also have a counter running on the side of MMO Fallout until the charity ends.

(Source: Child’s Play)

%d bloggers like this: