Naoki Yoshida gave a talk at the Game Developers Conference to talk about Final Fantasy XIV’s 1.0 launch, its failure, and how it was reborn. The talk lasts a little more than an hour and covers a wide range of topics including free to play vs subscription and how the landscape has changed in the past few years. Final Fantasy XIV’s relaunch, dubbed A Realm Reborn, has been met with great success.
(Source: Gamasutra)
Cris Velasco is likely best known for his work on the Mass Effect 3 and God of War soundtracks, not to mention a pretty impressive list of other titles. Velasco was brought in to work on the soundtrack for Archlord 2, and Webzen is so proud of his work that they want everyone to have a chance at hearing it. As of earlier this week, the Archlord 2 soundtrack is freely available to download from Soundcloud.
Today, it’s time to introduce you to Cris’ work. You might have heard some of those themes already in game, while exploring Green Hills peacefully or fighting for your life in Locan’s Lab… But the world of Chantra is limitless, and it would be a shame for your ears to miss out on some of this great work.
Furthermore, players have been asked to come up with names for each individual track. Submissions can be made on the Webzen forums at the link below.
(Source: Webzen)
You may have seen some news over the past few days that Guild Wars 2 has sold 3.8 million copies in China, which would be excellent were it true. As it so often turns out, the information was spread via a fansite and is inaccurate, according to an Arenanet Twitter post:
We’d like to clarify recent news of GW2 China sales: it’s inaccurate, from a Chinese fansite, and they could be estimating characters.
The moral of the story is: Always wait for an official source.
(Source: Twitter)
Richard Bartle is the creator of the first ever virtual world: MUD1. Bartle also believes that the free to play model has a half life, and will eventually fall out of favor with gamers. At a Develop conference in Brighton, Bartle stated that inherent qualities undermine the free to play model, despite it being a great revenue model right now.
“It will tail off because there is a fixed amount of people willing to spend enormous amounts of money, and there’s too much competition for those people.”
There is a heated debate on whether or not the bubble on free to play has burst. Check out more information at the link below.
(Source: Gamesindustry.biz)
Hunted Cow Studios has released the latest patch for Eldevin, bringing with it a multitude of updates including a downloadable desktop client. Dubbed Patch 1.16, Eldevin branches out of its browser-based roots and is now available in downloadable form. The client is compatible with Windows (32 and 64 bit), MacOSX, and Linux.
While the downloadable client does not currently support an announced hardware rendering engine, the goal is to have the feature implemented within the next few weeks. The hardware rendering engine will allow Eldevin to run with better graphics, at a higher framerate, and also more optimized. Check out Eldevin at the official website.
(Source: Eldevin press release)
Jagex has announced today that RuneScape’s Legacy Mode will go live on Monday, July 14th. Legacy mode, as voted on by players, reverts RuneScape back to the combat system that existed prior to the introduction of Evolution of Combat. Abilities are removed, the old interface has been reintroduced, several systems have been reverted back, and more.
Legacy mode is optional with Evolution of Combat still available for those who prefer it. There are several changes coming that will affect all players, including the recalculating of player combat levels back to the old maximum of 138 (currently 200), as well as the reintroduction of weapon-specific special attacks and a change to how strength stats affect combat.
(Source: RuneScape)
Webzen has announced that Archlord 2 is officially in open beta as of today. Any player with an active Webzen account is now free to log in without the need of a beta key. The open beta will have four servers available based on region and language, with players capped at level 41 with new content available to try out every day. More content will be made available as Archlord 2 inches closer to a full launch.
Check it out at the official website.
(Source: Webzen Press Release)
It’s been a long development road for Red 5 Studios and Firefall, one that is happily coming to its next milestone. Red 5 Studios has announced that Firefall will be officially launched as of July 29th, emerging from beta and ready to take its place in the world. To coincide with release, the team is putting together a boatload of new content. Firefall goes live with a patch that will add in new continent space, and exponentially increase the amount of content.
“The update we are releasing for launch will be the largest update we have ever had,” said James Macauley, CEO of Red 5 Studios. “It will quadruple the amount of world space in Firefall and add roughly 15-times the amount of content we have had previously in Beta.”
Firefall will be available on the web and on Steam at launch, with the beta still open for anyone who wishes to join in.
(Source: Red 5 Studios press release)
Final Fantasy’s 2.3 patch is so massive, it requires an equally beefy eight minute trailer. Those of you with active subscriptions are likely already downloading the patch as I write this, so just watch the trailer anyway.
Perfect World Entertainment is in talks to acquire Digital Extremes, developers of the popular Warframe shooter. Nothing concrete has been determined at this point, as Perfect World conducts a due diligence investigation into the affairs of Digital Extremes. Digital Extremes has not commented on the impending buyout due to legal reasons:
You may have read something about the business development side of Digital Extremes and it may have you concerned. For legal reasons, we can’t disclose specifics but if you know the history of Warframe you’d know that we are intent on having Warframe’s design remain in the hands of Digital Extremes. Yes, opportunities will arise for us but the game itself is and will remain a labor of love.
More information to come as this story develops.
(Source: Press Release)
MMO Fallout 