Category: News

Arc Client Now Live, Expanding Scope


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Perfect World Entertainment has announced that the Arc client is now officially live. Arc is a central platform for all of Perfect World Entertainment’s MMOs designed to consolidate everything into a single system with a universal login, read game news, update clients, meet up with friends, and more. In addition to Perfect World Entertainment titles, players will soon be able to enjoy games from other publishers. PWE hopes to turn Arc into a central hub for the best that free to play has to offer, and has already confirmed that Path of Exile and APB: Reloaded will be making their way to the platform shortly.

Check out Arc at the official website.

(Source: Perfect World Entertainment press release)

Age of Conan Turns Six


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Age of Conan turns six years old, and Funcom is celebrating by launching the Shadows of the Past event and Festival of Bloodshed. Shadows of the Past tasks players with uncovering a plot to bring down King Conan and will take them on a trip down memory lane to where it all began: Tortage island. Festival of Bloodshed introduces a new PvP system where players participate in week-long events each month. The system includes new PvP quests, new events, rewards, and a companion who taunts nearby players based on their number of PvP deaths.

I hope I don’t come across this companion.

(Source: Funcom press release)

NCSoft Q1 Profits Down 22%


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NCSoft has released their finances for the first quarter of 2014, and the results are certainly worth taking a look at. Revenues and profits fell by approximately 20% in the first quarter due to a drop in sales in Lineage 1. The report states that in-game item sales were “scaled back,” and were responsible for much of the loss in profit. Lineage’s sales dropped by nearly half, from $70 million last quarter to $40 million this quarter. Lineage II and Guild Wars 2 saw a drop in revenue, while Aion and Blade & Soul increased by a modest amount.

Blade & Soul continues to perform strongly in China, adding to NCSoft’s royalty revenues. NCSoft did not market as heavily in the first quarter, seeing marketing expenses drop nearly 40%. As for demographics, royalties now make up 25% of the overall income distribution. European revenue dropped heavily, down to just under 3% of NCSoft’s total income. Korea dropped off heavily but still remains at the top with 52% of revenue, and North America increased slightly to 13%.

(Source: NCSoft Financial Documents)

Xsyon Rounds Up Raccoons This Weekend


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Xsyon is kicking off a summer of events with a weekend Raccoon Roundup. Set for Saturday and Sunday, players are tasked with taking care of Xsyon’s growing raccoon population. Throughout the summer, Notorious Games will be running events including races, hunts, skill contests, arenas, competitions, and more. Events run on both war (pvp) and peace (pve) servers.

Check out Xsyon for free at the official website.

(Source: Xsyon press release)

Face of Mankind Successfully Greenlit


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Following a successful Kickstarter and launch of the open beta, Face of Mankind developer Nexeon Technologies has announced that the sandbox MMO will be coming to Steam. Launch date has not been set and details are sparse at the moment as Nexeon fills out the proper paperwork and navigates all of the legal mumbojumbo. More details will no doubt be coming in the following weeks, but until then you can check out Face of Mankind’s open beta at the official website.

(Source: Steam)

Dungeon Fighter Online Returning In English


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It looks like Dungeon Fighter Online may be returning in English. Neople, the developer behind Dungeon Fighter Online, has opened up an alpha test for a global English server. The only way to play at the moment is to sign in with a Facebook account, noting that the server may be down intermittently for maintenance and that the service is in no way affiliated with Nexon America or Nexon Europe. Dungeon Fighter Online was shut down by Nexon last April in North America.

You can dive into the open alpha starting today.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Jagex Details Possible Free To Play For OldSchool RuneScape


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Old School RuneScape launched last year and continues its own track of development with a specialized team of developers. In the latest developer blog, Jagex discusses bot busting and free to play.Currently, Old School RuneScape is limited to players who have an active subscription to the main RuneScape game. Last year saw a limited free trial which Jagex acknowledges did not meet its mark as it did not see a significant increase in membership.

As part of an ongoing experiment in implementing free to play, new accounts starting May 27th will have trial access to Old School RuneScape for two weeks with a reminder that it may result in nothing changed.

The F2P journey that we are now all embarking upon will end two ways. If we find the right way to introduce F2P we will poll that method to you as a permanent addition to the game. However, you must also be prepared to accept that if we cannot find the right method, we can’t offer F2P as a permanent addition to Old School.

You can check out the entire dev blog at the link below.

(Source: RuneScape)

Not Massive: Microsoft Offering Live Refunds


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Microsoft recently announced that the company would be changing its policy to remove a longstanding requirement for Xbox Live gold in order to access streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu. In order to appeal to those who subscribe to Gold solely for these services, Microsoft has announced a partial refund system for those with active subscriptions after the transition takes place. Following the update this June, customers with time remaining on their accounts will be eligible for a pro-rated refund.

The amount of the refund has not been detailed, but is based on how much time is remaining on the account. Now all Microsoft needs to do is lift the subscription requirement to access MMOs and the company will be more on par with Sony’s services.

(Source: Game Informer)

TERA Launches Reaper Class


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TERA has launched patch 26.04 today, introducing players to the brand new Reaper class. The Reaper is a mid-range DPS class that is unique to the Elin race and uses leather armor and a new scythe weapon. In addition to the new class, reapers also begin their journey on the new special starting area, Ashen Hope. Ashen Hope sees the destruction of Pora Elinu and will have reaper characters start at level 50 in this tutorial area. After completing Ashen Hope, players will return to the main world to play with their friends.

In order to unlock the reaper class, players must have one character on that server that is at least level 40. You can find more details at the link below.

(Source: TERA)