News – Page 429 – MMO Fallout

Raptr's Top October List

Raptr has released their top played list for October 2014, and the list is hardly surprising. ArcheAge remains popular, rising to the fifth place with World of Warcraft taking its natural spot below League of Legends in preparation for this month’s launch of Warlords of Draenor. The Old Republic rose three ranks, outdoing Final Fantasy XIV, while Warframe dropped slightly and Guild Wars 2 dropped rather more dramatically into 17th place.

November will no doubt secure World of Warcraft’s #2 spot among Raptr players.

(Source: Raptr)

Wildstar Cheaters Given 24 Hours To Confess

A recently discovered gold exploit is in the process of being patched out of Wildstar, and in the meantime players are being put on notice. Carbine Studios knows who you are and what you’ve done, but you may not be completely out of luck.

We are aware of the gold exploit feedback that has been circulating social media and the forums. At this point, we are working to get a hotfix put together as soon as possible. A rollback will not be necessary at this time; the current scope of abuse is not outside our ability to manually correct where necessary. Please understand, if you have abused this exploit, we will be taking action against your account. As you all know, we take exploits seriously and will not hesitate to lifetime ban accounts that have been caught abusing any exploits.

Players willing to atone should contact customer service within 24 hours, in exchange for the loss of your ill-gotten gains and a reduction in your punishment.

(Source: Wildstar)

NCSoft Third Quarter Finances

NCSoft has released their third quarter finances, and the news is good. While sales decreased 1% since last quarter, they amounted to approximately $195 million. Operating profit increased 25% quarter over quarter to $74.15 million, with pre-tax income up 33% and net income up 43% to $79 million and $69 million respectively.

Increased revenue was attributed to sales in Aion, Lineage, Lineage II, and Blade & Soul in Korea. Wildstar’s income dropped substantially, down to $14 million from $27 million during its launch quarter. Guild Wars 2, meanwhile, had its third straight quarter of falling revenue, down to $17.95 million from $21 million last quarter and $31 million of its previous peak in the fourth quarter of 2013. Korea once again made up the bulk of NCSoft’s sales, an increase over last quarter to 65%. The US and EU, which were combined into the same category, amounted to 18% of sales, with Japan at 5%, Taiwan at 1% and an addition 10% from royalties.

(Source: NCSoft)

Transformers Universe Layoffs Coming

Jagex has confirmed that layoffs and employee shuffling are expected to hit the Transformers Universe team. In a statement to Games Industry, a Jagex spokesperson noted that the game has reached a stage in development where redundancies in staff can be shuffled over to other projects and in some unfortunate cases be laid off. While no layoffs have occurred yet, they will likely be happening at some point in the near future.

Jagex human resources have already begun the consultation process with the team, and are looking into repositioning individuals to other existing or emerging roles.

The UK developer is looking at shuffling its employees toward RuneScape, the recently announced card game Chronicle, and an unannounced title that may or may not be the unnamed fantasy MMO dubbed “Thirdscape” by fans that CEO Mark Gerhard very briefly spoke about four years ago.

(Source: Gamesindustry.biz)

Darkfall Opens Free Week

Starting now and running through November 18th, prospective players can download and play Darkfall Unholy Wars completely free of charge. If you have Steam installed, simply click on this link to begin downloading the client. You have until midnight Pacific on November 18th to play, after which the game will require a subscription to continue. Players interested in purchasing a subscription will find that the first month has been discounted 75%. The discounted subscription price ends November 19th.

(Source: Steam)

RuneScape Expands The City of Elves

This week sees the second half of RuneScape’s Lost City of the Elves expansion. The update introduces the latter half of the Elven city, bringing with it new high level skilling locations, new monsters to fight, and new rewards.

Prifddinas first opened its doors in September and has seen the high level community flock to make the city their home. With a population surpassing exclusive havens such as the Cayman Islands and Monaco, Prifddinas has become the home to the RuneScape elite who have draped the city with over 650 thousand flags in celebration of their maxed skills.

Also now open this month is the Well of Goodwill, where players can donate in-game items and gold to be converted to real money and donated to charity.

(Source: RuneScape Press Release)

Old School RuneScape Polls New Continent, Achievements

It’s hard not to see Old School RuneScape as something of a gamer’s pipe dream. Every single update, barring bug fixes, has to be vetted through the player base and cannot be added unless 75% of the voters say yes. Over the past year, the polls have managed to shift Old School on a content path that is wholly independent of the main RuneScape game, to a level where quite a bit of content now exists in Old School that RuneScape 3 players do not have access to.

In the latest poll, Jagex has placed a hefty bit of content up for vote. Today through November 12th, players will be able to vote on a brand new continent full of activities, each activity which will be individually polled should the continent itself pass muster. Players are also able to vote on the introduction of new achievement diaries, elite achievements, repeatable tasks, and more.

Also up for vote is a change in the voting mechanic. Players can vote on lowering the approval level to 70% from 75%, the option to abstain, the option to change your vote, and changing the minimum requirement to vote.

With twelve thousand votes so far, the new continent has 90% approval, and the achievement diaries and elite tasks have 88% and 81% respectively. The minimum requirement to vote is just toeing the line. Everything else is falling quite short of reaching the 75% requirement.

(Source: RuneScape)

EA Filing Blames The Old Republic For Revenue Losses

While Bioware has wasted no time discussing how popular The Old Republic is, revealing at Gamescom that over one million players log in monthly, with Super Data Research placing the MMO as among the top ten revenue generators in 2014. In fact it looks like the only people that The Old Republic is currently letting down are the executives at Electronic Arts. In its latest quarterly report, EA Games noted $454 million in revenue over the past three months, primarily driven by FIFA, Titanfall, and Battlefield 4 Premium Edition.

Not all of EA’s properties were up to projections, however, as the company blamed several of its products for a $400 million decrease in revenue.

This increase was partially offset by a $413 million decrease in revenue primarily from the SimCity, Crysis, Dead Space, and The Sims franchises, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.

SimCity and The Old Republic are both responsible for a combined $63 million decrease in revenue, according to another section of the report. It is important to note that both monetary figures are decreases based on internal projections for the quarter, and do not conclude that any of the related studios are running at a loss.

(Source: EA Games Filing)

Final Fantasy XIV Steam Trial And Free Weekend

Square Enix has announced that hopeful gamers can now try out Final Fantasy XIV through Steam. Head on over to the Steam website, or through your Steam client, go to the Final Fantasy XIV store page, and click on the “try demo” button located on the side-bar. The trial is good for 14 days and includes certain restrictions on player activity. Further, the game has been discounted 50% on Steam down to $12 until November 12th.

Secondly, Square Enix has invited previous players back into the world of Eorzea to check out update 2.4. Users who have previously purchased the game client, or who were grandfathered in from FFXIV 1.0, will be able to log in starting November 7th and running through November 10th. Download the client and patch up today.

(Source: Final Fantasy XIV)

RuneScape Double Exp Weekend Statistics

RuneScape just recently went through a double experience weekend, and if you are anything like me you took really poor advantage of the boosted leveling. To show just how much productivity increased over the weekend, Jagex has released a comparable chart showing this weekend’s gains versus earlier in October. Summoning was the most popular skill across the board with prayer the least popular in experience gained and 99’s achieved.

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