News – Page 448 – MMO Fallout

The Old Republic No Longer Considered Canon

The Old Republic officially never happened. According to a surprise announcement by Lucasfilm, only the six films and Clone Wars show are considered canon going forward. All of the comic books, video games, and stories are now considered “legends” in the Star Wars lore, and will still be available for purchase despite no longer being part of the official canon.

“Lucas always made it clear that he was not beholden to the EU. He set the films he created as the canon. This includes the six Star Wars episodes, and the many hours of content he developed and produced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars”

You can find the entire blog post here. The upcoming Rebels is the first new piece of official canon to come out.

(Source: Eurogamer)

Guild Wars 2 Megaserver Is Complete

Arenanet has announced that the Megaserver technology has been fully implemented in all PvE maps and Heart of the Mists.

Although we’re excited that you have more players than ever to explore the open world of Guild Wars 2 with, our work is not yet complete. Our megaserver team will continue to monitor the performance of the technology on live and evaluate your feedback. We will continue to tweak and update the way the system works until it is providing even better megaservice!

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

Star Vault Lays Down Road to Steam

With its big show on Steam just over the horizon, Star Vault has laid out how the hardcore sandbox MMO will make its way to gamers worldwide. Before Mortal Online is allowed to release, however, Star Vault is implementing a number of updates and fixes. In the latest press release, Star Vault has laid down just how the Steam rollout will happen.

Each block, according to the release, has a lead time of about one month, noting that multiple blocks may run in parallel.

? Block 0 – Unreal Engine update
? Block 1 – Territory Control
? Block 2 – Territory Control Testing and release
? Block 3 – Continent Support
? Block 4 – Continent support testing and release
? Block 5 – STEAM API release on STEAM

Henrik Nystrom, Star Vault’s CEO, made the following comment (translated):

We continue our focus on working towards STEAM, it looks we all look forward to the team, but I also believe that our current players see the value in this. We will increase communication about the development work currently involves about 40 resources in our global development team. For transparency to our shareholders, we have teamed up with Axier, specialists in communication to the stock market. They have produced an analysis of Star Vault. I hope you find it interesting

(Source: Star Vault Press Release)

H1Z1 CS Items Lootable, In A Sense

With all of the hubbub about H1Z1 and the prospects of free to play and pay to win, John Smedley took to the game’s official subreddit to explain just how the game’s cash shop will work. Players will be able to buy wearables which can be looted by others upon death, in a manner of speaking.

We’ve also come up with a pretty awesome idea to let players who kill other players loot stuff. So if a player has a black ski mask and gets killed by another player, that player can wear the ski mask for a few deaths (we have durability in the game. Station Cash wearables won’t degrade at all but when you loot something.. it will degrade. Please note the original player always keeps their SC purchased wearables.

Smedley also confirmed that the shop will not sell guns, ammo, food, water, “etc,” nor will they sell boosts. Emote packs will be available for sale as well as character slots and crates ala Valve’s monetization system.

(Source: Reddit)

Carbine Studios Donates To Child's Play

This year at PAX East, Carbine Studios has announced a special donation to Child’s Play. In addition to a comically sized check for ten thousand dollars, Carbine Studios has partnered with LEGO artist Mariann Asanuma to recreate the Wildstar rocket house in all of its blocky glory. The structure stands three feet high and four feet long and is the result of fifty thousand LEGO blocks.

The rocket ship will be auctioned off later this year at the annual Child’s Play Dinner and Auction. Mona Hamilton, Vice President of Brands at Carbine Studios, weighed in on the contribution.

Child’s Play is a wonderful charity doing really great things with the gaming industry and we’re looking forward to seeing the result of the auction later this year. It was also important for us to say thanks by giving back to the Boston community; they’ve been great to us over the years at PAX East.

Child’s Play’s goal is to improve the lives of children in hospitals and welfare facilities through the positive impact of video games.

(Source: Carbine Studios Press Release)

Zenimax Realtime Bans

It looks like Zenimax is ramping up their efforts against gold farmers in The Elder Scrolls Online. Intrepid explorer Necropsie over at the MMORPG.com forums snapped a screenshot in-game of a game master announcing to the area to step away from the boss or be slain. Presumably those slain by the GM would have their accounts flagged for review, if not banned outright.

This isn’t the first time an MMO has employed lethal force against bot. Back in the day, Aion GM’s could be seen executing accounts used to spam gold selling websites.

Awards and Success Are Not Interchangeable

There is some discussion going around the internet about how ArcheAge has performed and whether or not the game has “failed,” which is most assuredly has by one person’s standards or another. While I don’t know for sure how Archeage is performing following the game’s launch in Japan and Russia, I can tell you that last September we learned that XLGames was laying off staff. We also know that the layoffs and transition to free to play was due to the game’s poor performance as a subscription title and subsequent quickly declining revenue.

A few people are under the impression, and I am paraphrasing here, that ArcheAge can’t possibly be doing poorly. After all, according to their logic, a game that has won so many awards has to be raking in the money. The fact that ArcheAge won a number of awards at last year’s Korea Game Awards means nothing in terms of how many people are playing and, furthermore, investing money. Warhammer Online won nearly twenty awards in 2008, including several “best of 2008,” none of which mattered much when both the servers and staff were gutted shortly thereafter.

The best way to gauge an MMO’s success is to follow its ability to retain players.

Zenimax Admits False Positives In Mass Bans

Zenimax Studios has announced that an investigation following a recent mass ban resulted in a number of false positives discovered and reversed. While the forum post in question did not mention just how many accounts were caught by accident, it did report that players identified should have had their bans lifted as of last night.

As part of our continuing effort to combat gold spammers, botters and exploiters, we recently banned a number of accounts. After several players appealed, we were able to investigate the matter further and discovered some legitimate accounts got caught up in the sweep. We unbanned accounts last night, and have email responses going out for those affected from our support group. It is never our intention for legitimate players to be harmed as we work to keep your game free of cheaters, and we sincerely apologize for the mistake.

This week has not been kind to Elder Scrolls Online, with Zenimax shutting down the game’s guild bank temporarily following the discovery of an item duplication exploit, as well as reports that players were being banned after their characters fell through the game world. The world of Tamriel is still being slowly taken over by a massive army of bots and gold farmers, and the company is still working on a fix for players missing banked items, deposited gold, skill points, etc.

(Source: Elder Scrolls Online)

Elder Scrolls Online: Fall Through World And Get Banned?

Be careful when traveling through the lands of Tamriel. According to a growing number of reports on the official Elder Scrolls forums as well as third party websites, players are experiencing situations where their character is either falling through geometry or being catapulted off of the world and into the abyss below. I personally experienced the bug on the fourth when I jumped into the queen and was thrown completely off of the map (pictured below). It looks as though Zenimax has implemented some sort of anti-cheat measures since then to prevent exploitation, because players are reporting that falling through the world will now result in a disconnection from the server and automatic suspension of one’s account.

If you are caught by this system, the only thing you can do is to contact support and appeal the ban.

Broadsword Aims For Steam

Broadsword Online is continuing its work to revitalize Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot, with the announcement that it is seeking to have both titles released on Steam. Players can put their vote in at the links below. There will be no cost to buy a base game for either title, however both still carry a monthly subscription fee.

Check out either title at their respective links.

(Source: Ultima, Dark Age of Camelot)

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