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)
Square Enix held its latest fan fest in Tokyo just last week, wasting no time in revealing new dribble of information regarding Final Fantasy XIV’s first expansion Heavensward. The expansion will be paid, and introduces a wide variety of new content including a new race and new jobs (classes).
The new race is called the Au Ra, a dragonkin race with horns and scales from the eastern continent of Othard. Among the three classes is the Dark Knight, a magic-based tank who wields a greatsword and utilizes dark magic. The second class is the Astrologian, a healer class that uses a divining deck to cast spells.
Finally, the last class is the machinist, a dps class that uses firearms and machines to attack its foe.
Heavensward will also increase the level cap to 60 and introduce new dungeons and missions. Check out further coverage and screenshots at the link below. Heavensward launches Spring 2015.
(Source: MMO Culture)
Playstation 4 gamers interested in trying out Final Fantasy XIV will be able to do just that, as Square Enix today announced a 14 day trial will be available. The trial gives players the opportunity to level up to 20, with certain other limitations, as well as the ability to transfer trial characters over to the full game. As of this publishing, the trial does not appear to be available on the North America Playstation Network.
Those looking to save a few bucks should look into buying the Playstation 3 version (which is generally available at a cheaper cost) and taking advantage of the free upgrade program, currently available until March 31st.
(Source: Square Enix press release)
As the Ruble continues to plummet in value, tech giants are taking notice. In a notice released to the public by Steam Database, Valve has region locked all new purchases made by Steam accounts made by Russian players. While the games may be gifted or traded to players in the same region, they will not be able to transfer the games to those outside of Russia. The region locking is a common response by Valve to prevent people from taking advantage of economic turmoil to buy games at a lower price, and currently includes Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States, South America, Turkey, and Southeast Asia.
Apple recently announced that they will be halting online sales in Russia.
(Source: SteamDB)
MMO Fallout 