Sony Online Entertainment has announced that inactive names will be reclaimed later this month. In a post on the official website, players have been warned that characters that have not been accessed since July 20, 2013 will have an underscore and Roman numeral attached to their names, although the account and character itself will remain unchanged otherwise. No characters will be deleted.
(Source: DC Universe)
Jagex has reigned in an update relating to a cash shop sale after customers complained that the promotion was obnoxious. In order to promote a month-long Solomon Store (cash shop) sale, Jagex placed a Solomon NPC within several cities to banter on about his deals. Players criticized the NPC text as spam, noting that in many locations he was appearing next to town heralds who were also promoting the same sale.
In response, Jagex quickly removed the Solomon NPCs from all locations except his permanent home in Varrok, while town heralds are still promoting the sale at a less intrusive rate. Jagex has since apologized over Twitter, declaring the NPC placement to be a mistake.
RuneScape’s cash shops continue to be a hot button issue over the perception that content is being withheld from the game in order to be monetized over limited time Treasure Hunter promotions.
(Source: Reddit)
Pathfinder Online recently entered Open Enrollment, meaning the price of admission has changed once again. Many seem to be under the impression that you still need to drop a good grand to gain entry, which was the case during the alpha stage.
Right now you can gain immediate access for $100 by buying the Early Enrollment pack. The package comes with three months of game time and other digital goodies. For those who can wait another month, there is a $50 pack that grants access beginning in February, and only contains one free month of game time.
Early enrollment should not be confused with open enrollment, which is not set to begin until January 2016. Also keep in mind that while the game is in early access, you are still required to pay a subscription.
Goblinworks does not consider this to be a beta period.
(Source: Pathfinder Online)
John Smedley went on Twitter today to defend SOE’s decision to reduce the drop rate and effectiveness on implants to push players toward newly introduced, more powerful variants. In response to complaints that the update was a cash grab, Smedley responded via Twitter:
Sorry but we are actually trying to make money. I don’t consider it a money grab.
Smedley later pointed out on Twitter that the changes were due to the original drop rates being too high.
(Source: Massively)
Jagex has released the 2015 manifesto for RuneScape, detailing some of the big updates coming this year.
The list of updates includes a new cooperative world event, skill updates, world bosses, quests, and more.
We’re planning for one update per month to be grabbed from RuneLabs, although you won’t start seeing the fruits of that labour until the Summer. That isn’t even counting the many polls we’ll be releasing on non-RuneLabs updates.
For Old School, 2015 is set to bring in plenty of content, pending approval via player polling. Content currently planned includes trading post updates, achievement diaries, resizable mode, the new continent Zeah, and other updates.
January will see the launch of boss pets, drop table reworks, the return of Hati and Skoll, ports, and RuneLabs, as well as new cash shop items.
(Source: RuneScape)
(Source: Old School)
Electronic Arts has denied that the Origin service was the victim of a security breach, in a statement to PC Gamer. The statement comes in response to an article published earlier from a surge in users reporting unauthorized games being purchased on their accounts.
“We found no indication at this point of a breach of our Origin account database.”
Account thieves appear to be mostly using compromised accounts to purchase Fifa 2015 and using the accounts to farm coins. Users have reported little trouble in getting EA to reverse the charges, and are encouraged to not have credit card details stored on the account, and to implement the client’s two factor authentication.
Derp Trolling, a hacker group, claimed to have 1.7 million Origin accounts. Whether or not this apparent surge in compromised accounts is related is unknown.
(Source: PC Gamer)
Following its unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign, Project Gorgon has been successfully greenlit for release on Steam.
There’s a lot of work to get the game Steam-ready, and I don’t know the exact timeline yet, but the hard part was getting Greenlit.
You can currently play an early build of Project Gorgon at the official website.
(Source: Steam)
Eve-kill.net this week recorded a player killed while transporting 84 PLEX items. The player, Ozuwara Ozuwara of the State War Academy corporation was killed by player Diorden at about 3:30pm in the high security sector of The Forge, while piloting a rookie ship Ibis outfitted with virtually nothing.
Unfortunately for the attacker, all of the PLEX was vaporized in the explosion, leaving nothing behind to loot. The total in-game value amounted to 70 billion ISK. PLEX costs $19.95 at its highest price per unit, making the real money value somewhere between $1,469.58 and $1,675.80.
PLEX, which stands for Pilot License EXtension, is an item in Eve Online that can only be purchased in the game’s cash shop, and is redeemable for 30 days of game time. The item exists within the Eve Online world and can be looted from ships.
Even more incredible is the fact that this isn’t the most valuable kill in the past seven days. The most valuable goes to a Leviathan owned by Goonswarm that saw 106 billion ISK (valued at $2,100 USD).
(Source: PCGamesN)
The latest issue of Unveiled, the Camelot Unchained newsletter, has been released. You can read the entire newsletter at the link below, but the gist of it is that funding has neared $3 million, at which point CSE will hire a sound engineer. Secondly, while some of the structures in Camelot Unchained will be pre-built, CSE is leaving it up to the players to build the rest of the architecture. Players will have incentives to create cities that are properly fortified, since they are easier to defend and offer more opportunities for crafting.
As for player housing, they want it to be an activity that can be enjoyed or ignored at the player’s whim.
If you want to spend hours building, upgrading, expanding, decorating, and making it awesome so you can invite your friends over to be impressed, go for it. We don’t feel that many of you will need a whole lot more reason than that to build, and we don’t want to push you into having to pick out a plot of land and take up the role of part-time interior decorator if all you want to do is go out and kill your enemies.
There are also some bits about art, the latest build of the game, and more. Check it out at the link below, but be warned that it’s quite a read.
(Source: City State Entertainment)
As an early Christmas present to their players, Jagex has reopened the Old School RuneScape servers to all, regardless of their membership status. Free players can access the nonmember worlds until the event ends on December 31st.
Obviously, this will raise the question of the long term plans for F2P – the next few weeks of open access will help us see what happens when everyone can access the game in a free mode, and allow us to decide whether a permanent and full F2P option is viable for the future. We are still very much dedicated to ensuring that any F2P options can work for both Jagex, the game and the community. We’ll let you know how it went in the new year.
To fight against bots, free players will be unable to fish lobsters.
(Source: Old School)
MMO Fallout 