News – Page 453 – MMO Fallout

Final Fantasy XIV Launches 2.2 Teaser Site

Final Fantasy XIV’s 2.2 patch launches in just under two weeks, and it includes a ton of new content. Titled Through the Maelstrom, update 2.2 introduces new quests, new scenarios, dungeons, glamours, gardening, heavy fishing, and the second coil of Bahamut, and more. Update 2.2 launches on March 27th, but you can check out the full list of content at the promotional website, or by watching the trailer below.

Square Enix will also be hosting a live Letter from the Producer on March 21st at 2:30am Pacific, which might be early for many of our American viewers.

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ArcheAge Says Dosvidanya To Non-Russian Players

ArcheAge is a long time coming to the west, so long in fact that dedicated players decided to forego the wait and jump on board the Russian servers hosted by Mail.ru. Hopefully none of them have spent a lot of money on the game, as Mail.ru has announced that access to the servers will be restricted to gamers in Russia and former Soviet states. The IP block was requested by XL Games and provides no details on whether or not players who have already invested money only to be blocked will be able to receive any sort of refund or compensation.

If only Mikhail Gorbachev were here to tear down this wall.

(Source: Announcement)

"MMO For Girls" Teeters On Offensive

Today I received one of the most awkward press releases to grace my inbox, and if the title of this article left you a bit worried than we are both on the same page. AggroStudios, who apparently played a major role in support services for City of Steam, has announced that they are working on an MMO developed specifically with girls in mind. For the sake of argument, we assume that they do not mean the pre-teen My Little Pony demographic, but the older, teenage to adult, female audience.

Let’s look at the description sent to us, shall we?

AggroStudios’s innovative MMO for girls is being designed to encourage the type of game play girls enjoy. It features characters with strong personalities, girl-geared graphics, rich visual customization, cooperative play, and an addictive and dynamic storyline.

For the sake of clarity, I reached into MMO Fallout’s pool of girl gamers to gauge a reaction to this headline. With the exception of one, the response was almost unanimously negative. Our test pool found the ad offensive, condescending, and desired clarity on what constituted “girl-geared graphics” and “strong personalities.” Most responded that they would still be willing to give the game a try, but that the company’s description did not leave a positive first impression.

MMO Fallout will follow up when more details about the game are released.

(Source: AggroStudios press release)

FFXIV Enjoys 500,000 Daily Players

Naoki Yoshida has revealed in an interview to 4Gamer that Final Fantasy XIV currently carries 1.8 million player accounts, 6.75 million characters created, and 500,000 active daily users.

Well, the number for daily active user count can be misleading…. The peak time for Japan and oversea countries are different, for example. But if we simply look at the number of people logging in every day, I’d say we have about 500,000 people worldwide.

Yoshida also talks about Final Fantasy XI, Dragon Quest X, and an obsession with Everquest while Final Fantasy XI was in development. You can read the entire translated interview at the link below.

(Source: Square Enix interview)

Harry Potter MMO Already Dead

Well this is a bit awkward. Not even a week after the announcement that a Harry Potter MMO was in development, we learned that said MMO has been put on hold indefinitely. As it turns out, the folks at Bio-Hazard Entertainment may have exaggerated their claim that Warner Bros had allowed to them to create a Harry Potter MMO up to beta, which is to say that they didn’t. At all. Presumably one of WB’s lawyer’s got in touch because the Online World of Harry Potter’s website has disappeared following a notice that the team will work on creating an MMO not based on the IP.

The team is discussing using what they have made and making their own MMO based off of what you guys have suggested, except not HP related. But lets all unite together and show WB that this is needed! WIZARDS UNITE!

On the plus side, you were just saved a few years of waiting for nothing. On the other hand, many of us also got excited for nothing.

(Source: Massively)

Mail.ru Takes Control of Allods Online

Players of Allods Online will soon have more friends to play with, as Mail.ru has announced that the firm is taking control of global hosting services for the MMO. Beginning March 18th, Mail.ru will take over hosting from gPotato and merge the European and American servers into one service. On the plus side, this means that players will no longer have to worry about regions carrying different game versions, except for the Russian server which will remain ahead by a small margin. On the down side, the Polish language is being dropped.

Having all European and North American players on the same servers will require the client versions to be synchronized; this puts additional pressure on the version preparation – especially on the localization of the new content. Considering all possible risks which may emerge and cause a delay with the upcoming version updates for all players, we had to make a hard decision of not supporting Polish localization starting from v.5.0.00.

Mail.ru is committed to closing the gap between the Russian and global servers, noting in the announcement that the aim is to only have one month difference in updates.

(Source: Mail.ru)

City of Titans in Full Preproduction

City of Titans is one of the spiritual successors to City of Heroes currently in development. In a recent announcement, Missing Worlds Media revealed the new board elected to oversee operations and ensure that the project makes its way to completion on schedule.

To serve on Missing Worlds Media’s board, we have chosen five highly qualified and capable people: Sara “Firefairy” Quinn, Chris “Warcabbit” Hare, Cameron “Segev” Johnson, David “Terwyn” James and Jennifer “Petalstorm” Bolack. The board is the executive management of the company itself, overseeing all operations and making sure all is going according to plan.

Nate “Doctor Tyche” Downs will be taking the helm as President of Missing Worlds Media with Tim Ross as Vice President. City of Titans is in full pre-production which, as Doctor Tyche puts it, is not the most exciting time and doesn’t have much to show. The aim of focusing on pre-production is to avoid the pitfalls of development hell that seem to trap so many games, as well as to involve the fans in the creation process.

By focusing on pre-production, we can test and evaluate early on, when changes are easier to manage. We can also involve you, the fan, in the pre-production process. When we post ideas here, we listen to the feedback. Sometimes our ideas strike where we believe they will. Sometimes, they just don’t ring the way we had hoped. We listen to both, so we can refine and improve.

You can check out the City of Titans updates at their Kickstarter page linked below.

(Source: Kickstarter)

NCSoft Annual Revenue Chart

I’ve been meaning to create this for quite a while now, but I finally got around to compiling a chart for NCSoft’s yearly sales figures on a per-game basis. Looking at the chart on a yearly basis rather than quarterly makes the difference in income all the more obvious, especially when you see that Lineage alone makes more than Lineage II, Guild Wars 2, and Aion combined. Lineage is also NCSoft’s only game to provide a consistent and growing cash flow, with Blade & Soul’s progress too early to tell, especially since the game’s exceptional overseas performance is not reflected in the figures above.

Over the next few weeks, I will be working on expanding our charts from NCSoft, Perfect World Entertainment, Funcom, and more.

Funcom's 2013 Income Drops

Funcom has released their Q4 2013 finances and the results are a mixed bag, mostly leaning towards the negative. Revenues in the fourth quarter dipped below last quarter, $4.2 million compared to $5.3 million and far below the same period last year. Losses in revenue pointed toward weak sales due to increased competition in 2013. Funcom has continued to invest in LEGO Minifigures Online as well as the Dreamworld platform so that the former is compatible across multiple systems, including mobile devices.

The new strategy for 2014 is to increase communication with press and analysts on where the developer is headed in the future. As announced in 2012, the new strategy is to build mid-core focused games with smaller budgets and shorter development times using smaller teams. Also among the list of goals is to build games around known brands, hence the Lego Minifigures title. With the introduction of the Dreamworld technology, Funcom’s future games will be compatible with iOS and Android platforms.

Funcom’s large scale MMOs saw a decrease in activity level due to increased competition in the last quarter, which the developer has responded to with increased marketing campaigns that have resulted in higher activity and revenue in the early first quarter. Numbers and revenue in Age of Conan and Anarchy Online remained mostly stable, and all games are currently considered cash flow positive. The Lego Minifigures game is on track for an open beta this summer, with a tablet version available sometime this year. Lego Minifigures will be free to play with microtransactions, membership benefits, or some mixture of both.

As many of our readers know, Funcom is currently being investigated by Økokrim, Norway’s economic crimes unit, on suspicion of insider trading and negligence in information given to the market leading up to the launch of The Secret World. So far no employees have been charged and Funcom has not been informed as to how long the process will take.

(Source: Funcom Earnings Release)

Neverwinter Expansion Coming Later This Spring

Perfect World Entertainment has announced that another expansion is set to launch in Neverwinter later this Spring. Module 3, titled Curse of Icewind Dale, introduces players to the iconic region of the same name. Icewind Dale is being overtaken by a mysterious presence called the black ice, and it is up to players to utilize this handy resource for their own purposes. Players will be able to harvest, shape, and craft black ice into new gear offering extensive but temporary boosts to their abilities. Also new with the module is the addition of PvE and PvP campaigns, alongside achievements, bosses, encounters, and more.

You can check out the full list of planned features at the link below.

(Source: Neverwinter)

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