News – Page 406 – MMO Fallout

Old School RuneScape Goes Hardcore With Summer Tournament

RuneScape has never been a name in the competitive gaming scene, but Jagex is hoping to change this with a tournament pitting Old School’s top clans against one another. Set to take place over three days from the 24th to the 26th of July, eight teams of five players will fight in three separate competitions. The event is meant to highlight coming updates to Old School, including slayer bosses, pvp modes, and more.

“This summer, we can’t wait to adapt Old School RuneScape for the eSports community and watch teams battle their way to victory in this inaugural $10,000 competitive tournament,” said Mathew Kemp, product manager on the game. “We’re also looking forward to seeing how players tackle the unrelenting challenge of Deadman Mode later in the summer, as well as seeing how they shape up against the two new slayer boss monsters.”

Both Old School and RuneScape 3 are in the middle of a summer of updates, with players in the latter presently embroiled in a month-long world event. Stay tuned for more details.

(Source: Jagex press release)

TERA Sees Population Boost After Steam Launch

TERA is celebrating a boom in traffic, both from the recent launch on Steam and release of the new gunner class. While the team at En Masse Entertainment has increased server capacity over the past month, heavy population has resulted in queues during peak times. To move the population around, a new PvE server will launch on June 9th.

Highwatch opens Tuesday, June 9 following server maintenance and will be available to new characters and transfers from all servers. Server transfers will be free for a limited time, but transfers to Tempest Reach, Ascension Valley, and Celestial Hills are temporarily suspended.

Free server transfers will open on June 9th and run until maintenance on the 16th. Steam Charts puts TERA at a peak of more than 25 thousand concurrent players on Steam alone.

(Source: TERA)

Development Shifting Over To Everquest Next

Since Landmark and Everquest Next share the same engine and certain mechanics, it’s possible to develop both games simultaneously at some level. In the latest producer’s letter, Daybreak announced that development on Landmark-specific content is taking a back seat to Next.

So, as we shift our focus and development to EQN, it just doesn’t make sense to continue with the Blueprint, since the goal of that has always been to provide short term, concrete plans of what you could expect and when, and that isn’t something we can reliably estimate at this point. When we have a better idea of timing on the various pieces, we will make sure to let everyone know.

(Source: Landmark)

Jagex Details June RuneScape Updates

This month is a heavy one in RuneScape, as Jagex today outlined updates coming over the course of the next few weeks. Players are already well acquainted with Tuska, who began an assault on Gielinor earlier this week, tasking players with taking on daily events. Tuska won the first two days with the godless faction of players winning the next two.

Further updates this month include a slayer belt, allowing players to carry around monster hunting items without using valuable inventory spaces. Adamant and Rune Dragons are powerful monsters with even more powerful, elite versions, both of which are sure to drop good loot and present a challenge.

Later on this month, players will meet up with V in the next Freminik storyline with a replayable boss and some high level gear and monsters. The Lumbridge crater will get filled with water for a summer celebration, offering experience and cosmetics.

Also in the cards is an update to Artisan’s Workshop, with better rewards and more enjoyable gameplay.

(Source: RuneScape)

Eve Online Raises $100 Grand For Charity

Whenever disaster strikes in the world, we can always count on the charitable hand of the gaming community to help those in need. Last month saw Nepal and surrounding regions struck by two massive earthquakes. The devastation left thousands dead and even more injured and without shelter or basic resources. The Eve Online community, as they always do, called on CCP Games to start another charity drive.

And they did. Between May 1st and the 24th, players raised $103 thousand dollars, amounting to slightly less than seven thousand PLEX. The donation includes $500 from ISD volunteers as well as 365 PLEX from an auction. The check for the donation was presented, in large form, to the Icelandic Red Cross.

Once again, here at CCP we are finding it very difficult to choose words that express our gratitude to the EVE Community for the incredible generosity you have all shown over the course of this fundraiser. The Community Team does however have an amazing display on the windows of our office as a constant reminder of the fact that we serve what is, without a doubt, the finest gaming community on Earth.

CCP and the Red Cross would like to thank the EVE community for its generosity.

(Source: Eve Online)

Steam Introduces 14-Day Refunds

Valve has surprised us again with the reveal of a new refund policy, allowing customers to get a full refund on their purchase, for any reason, withing two weeks of the purchase. Bought a game and can’t play it? System not powerful? Game broken beyond playable? Didn’t like it? Not a problem. Valve will be honoring refunds for any game, so long as the game hasn’t been played for more than two hours and the request is made within fourteen days.

Refunds will not be given for 3rd party purchases (steam keys, wallet cards, etc), movies (for obvious reasons), games that have been VAC banned, and gifts that have been redeemed by the recipient. The good news is that you should also be able to get a refund should a game you just purchased go on sale.

Refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam—not as a way to get free games. If it appears to us that you are abusing refunds, we may stop offering them to you. We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price.

(Source: Steam)

Turbine Shutting Down Infinite Crisis

Turbine Entertainment has announced the impending sunset of Inifinite Crisis this August. Infinite Crisis exited beta on March 26 of this year, giving the game a shelf life of about 141 days from launch to shut down.

After much deliberation, we regret to announce the official shutdown of Infinite Crisis. We will end development efforts today and will close the service on August 14, 2015.

As the MOBA market continues to expand and saturate itself, it has become much more difficult to find an audience. Infinite Crisis is the second high profile MOBA to shut down this year, after Jagex’s Transformers in January and EA’s Dawngate in February.

(Source: Infinite Crisis)

ArcheAge Releases Ongoing Server FAQ

With ArcheAge’s server merger coming later this year and Trion Worlds vague on details, players naturally have a lot of questions to ask. In order to keep players updated as the plans move along, Trion Worlds has set up an evolving FAQ on the ArcheAge forums answering questions as they pop up.

As we saw in Trion’s latest stream, it looks like ArcheAge’s ‘non-traditional’ merger will emerge in the form of opening up a new server and then shuffling players from their server to these new “evolved” servers. This is how mergers were handled in the Russian version of ArcheAge.

We are still looking at a number of options before solidifying the process. The basic plan is as follows: new servers will be created, and players from current low population servers will be moved to these shiny new servers. Yes, that means… LAND RUSH! All other details are under evaluation.

I mentioned in my column yesterday that any merge should naturally see the legacy servers eventually being closed down, and while that hasn’t been confirmed, the FAQ does say that inactive characters will most likely be moved automatically to the new servers:

Most likely, players who are on a low population server and inactive at the time of the Evolution will be relocated automatically.

It’s important to remember that nothing in the FAQ should be considered finalized at this point, that more questions will be answered in the coming weeks/months, as more details are set in stone. You can follow the link below to read the current FAQ.

(Source: ArcheAge)

Lego Universe Was Hindered By Dong Detection Software

Lego Universe was an MMO that allowed players a free space to build anything their heart desired, and since the internet is well known as a mature and well behaved medium, it may surprise you to learn that some players were using the creator to build brick representations of male genitals. Former Lego Universe developer Megan Fox took to Twitter to discuss how Lego wanted a free build game with absolutely no dongs.

The moderation costs of Lego Universe were a big issue in general. They wanted a creative building MMO with a promise of zero penises seen. They actually had a huge moderation team that got a bunch of screenshots of every model, every property. Entirely whitelist-based building.

Obviously Lego Universe’s problems extend far beyond simple dong filtering, but a moderation team can get expensive very quickly, and most assuredly was a large factor.

(Source: Eurogamer)

APB Reloaded Server Merge And New Engine

APB Reloaded is on track and ready for the North American server merge this Tuesday, June 2nd. The recent merger of APB’s European server into Citadel saw increased activity from new and returning players, and Reloaded Productions is hoping that the same will hold true for the North American server.

In other news, work continues on the upgraded Unreal engine for APB, as seen in the screenshot above. When the new engine launches, APB will require a 64-bit operating system in order to continue playing, leaving a small portion of the community in the dust.

Making the game 64-bit only solves several long-standing memory management and performance issues that we are happy to finally put behind us. But it does mean that a small percentage of machines currently used to play APB will need a new OS in order to continue playing.

You can find out more at the official website.

(Source: APB Reloaded)

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