News – Page 454 – MMO Fallout

Uninstall Pando Media Booster.

Hindsight is twenty twenty, and no doubt gamers of days to come will one day look back at Pando Media Booster and remember it for what it was: One of the worst program to plague PC users since the Bonzai Buddy. As advertised, Pando Media Booster became rather widely used by a number of MMOs as a peer to peer sharing system to mitigate bandwidth and hopefully provide faster download times.

It also had the side effect of slowing the internet speeds of many down to a crawl, and was generally seen as bloatware carefully toeing the line between legitimate software and malicious malware. Last August, to the relief of gamers everywhere, Pando closed its business down and shut down the Pando Media Booster servers.

So Pando may be dead, but as decades of Friday the 13th movies have shown us, the dead often do not rest in peace. Pando Media Booster has been hijacked and users are receiving notices that the program requires an update despite the service having shut down last year. The supposed update is actually the Sweet Page browser hijacker virus, which redirects browsers to the Sweet Page search engine.

A number of MMO clients are still being distributed with Pando Media Booster.

(Source: CSTM)

Jagex Raises Money Through SpecialEffect Charity

Jagex has revealed the results of their 24 hour gaming marathon for SpecialEffect’s Gameblast weekend. The event, which saw staff and members of the community playing RuneScape and Ace of Spades for a full day, resulted in a total of nearly eighty thousand dollars raised for charity. In addition, RuneScape once again opened its Well of Goodwill, where players can donate in-game bonds and goods that are converted into real money to be donated. To top off the event, Jagex also donated 50% of the profits from Ace of Spades sales to SpecialEffect.

Jane Ryan, Head of RuneScape Community Management, expressed the company’s delight in the good will of its community.

“It’s been a crazy 24 hours; we’ve seen staff rise to the occasion and take on all kinds of challenges in the name of charity. The generosity of our players is both touching and gratifying and we can’t wait to do it all again next year!”

SpecialEffect is a charity dedicated to helping people with disabilities. Find out more about the charity at http://www.specialeffect.org.uk/

(Source: Jagex Press Release)

Mighty Quest For Epic Loot In Open Beta

The drawbridge has been lowered and the hoards are rolling in. Ubisoft has opened up the Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, dropping the NDA and bringing the game into open beta. The game of building up your own base while raiding those of your neighbors is now freely available to anyone without the need for an invitation. Choose from three available heroes (with a fourth available through a cash pack) and hire minions to defend your loot. Raid your friend’s castles and bring their defenses down and steal from their coffers.

Check it out at the link below. Keep in mind that, given this is open beta, a wipe is always possible if called for, although none are planned at this time.

(Source: Mighty Quest)

Asheron's Call Free To Play, Maintenance Mode

Turbine Entertainment has announced that Asheron’s Call will be heading free to play as of March 4th, although the game will be heading into maintenance mode at the same time. While there are no plans to shut down Asheron’s Call at any point in the near future, there will also no longer be any updates apart from maintenance, bug fixes, and a few tweaks here and there. There are also plans to allow players to run their own servers, as mentioned in the announcement:

In addition, we have been working within the company to start an initiative sometime near the end of the year to allow players to run their own Asheron’s Call servers. We intend to put the call out to tech savvy enthusiasts that love Asheron’s Call to create a community for players who want to run their own Asheron’s Call servers.

Both Asheron’s Call and Asheron’s Call 2 will be made available to play for free. Given the emphasis on player-operated servers and that the move will shut off what cash flow Asheron’s Call has left, all signs seem to point toward the sunsetting of b0th games in the next year or so, the official servers at the very least. At the very least, Turbine clearly recognizes the passion of their community and is one of an extremely small number of developers willing to hand their game over to the community when it is no longer financially viable for them to keep going.

We will have more details as they approach. Turbine has not commented on whether or not private servers will be possible for Asheron’s Call 2.

(Source: Asheron’s Call)

Archlord II Global Server Coming This Summer

Webzen has revealed that Archlord II will launch its global service this summer. The service will launch under gPotato and while there is no date set, a teaser website is already up. Archlord II has struggled in its native home of Korea where the servers have already undergone mergers following a lack of population. Players have criticized the game for launching with a heavy cash shop and pay to win aspects.

Archlord II has received several updates since then to lighten the cash shop.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Star Vault Posts Lower Fourth Quarter

Star Vault has posted their fourth quarter results for 2013, and the results are not looking so great. Net sales during the fourth quarter amounted to over eighty five thousand, a very small loss from the previous quarter. Net profit, on the other hand, dropped further into the red to one hundred fifty three thousand.

Despite this loss, Star Vault reported an increase in monthly payments during the fourth quarter compared to the third with CEO Henrik Nystrom claiming a positive increase in player activity over the year. In September, Mortal Online was approved for release on Steam through the Greenlight program, which will open the game to a wider audience.

Henrik Nystrom commented on the upcoming Steam launch:

Thanks to hard work and a faithful, active player community became Mortal Online, in competition with 15,000 other games around the world, approved to be listed on STEAM. STEAM is the world’s largest online distributor of PC games and we were voted by over 70,000 players. Mortal Online will then be posted on a global playlist daily visited by between 4-6 million players worldwide.

Through private placements and player donations, we have added the capital required for achieving progress and deliver new features, but especially to hone in on the launch so that it is just as good as global players require today. We are also working to expand the so-called “physical game faces” in Mortal Online, which means that we can handle more players.

We have seen a cautious positive trend of increased player activity during the year and now look forward to the upcoming launch of exciting opportunities.

The upcoming Annual General Meeting will decide on a replacement for the position of deputy director following the passing of Ulfric Nystrom.

(Source: AktieTorget)

Eve Online Graphic Novel Released

CCP Games has announced that the first issue of Eve: True Stories is now available for download. The graphic novel series follows the real events of players in the game Eve Online, with the first issue in the series devoted to the fall of the Band of Brothers alliance. The novel is published by Dark Horse Digital, written by Daniel Way (Deadpool) and features the artwork of Tomm Coker (Daredevil Noir) and David Palumbo (Aliens).

Interested readers can nab the issue for free using the Dark Horse app. Three more issues are set to release over the course of March and into early April, with a hardcover edition coming in June. More information can be found at the link below.

(More Info: Eve Online)

Salem Resetting Characters and Merging Servers

Hang on to your britches, pilgrims. We haven’t heard from Salem in quite a while, so today’s news probably isn’t all that surprising. In order to consolidate players and implement a new map generation system, the folks at Seatribe have announced the game will be wiped and restarted under a new server.

The current server architecture is overestablished compared to our actual needs. Long term it is not feasible for us to keep running multiple servers dropping to as low as single digit populations during off-hours. A reset allows us to concentrate population to one, cardinal server, which appears more in line with the game’s actual needs.

Several players have welcomed the upcoming wipe, noting that a power disparity has allowed a select few to essentially take over servers and kill anyone who might present a threat or progress in any meaningful way. Earlier last year, Paradox Interactive cut involvement with Salem, returning full development back to Seatribe.

(Source: Salem)

Webzen Posts 67% Drop In Annual Profits

Webzen has released their 2013 earnings release, and the results are a mixture of bad and probably salvageable. Despite a 26% rise in revenue over last year, operating profits dropped by 67%. To put the loss into better perspective, Webzen’s 2012 revenue amounted to $53.6 million USD (approximately), with $45.6 million of that going toward operating expenses, leaving around $8 million left as operating profit and that doesn’t even factor in taxes. In 2013, while revenue gained 26% to $67.47 million, operating costs surged even higher by 42% to $64.87 million. So while revenues grew during the year, operating costs resulted in the final operating profit plummeting.

With a number of titles still in development, Webzen’s portfolio is looking rather slim at the moment. The last year saw the shuttering of Archlord, SUN, and Arctic Combat, with only two of the four games currently listed on Webzen’s global website actually being playable. Games like R2 and Mu Rebirth are still “upcoming,” with development continuing on other titles including Archlord 2. Also worth noting is that revenue from domestic sales fell slightly while overseas grew by a wide margin to 73% of Webzen’s total revenue.

Another factor of operating cost could be related to Webzen’s 100% acquisition of gPotato.com back in February.

(Source: Webzen Earnings)

Less Than Massive: Irrational Games Closure

Ken Levine announced today that he plans to shut down the Irrational Games studio following the release of Bioshock Infinite’s next DLC, Burial at Sea Part 2. Levine and a select group of other developers from the studio will form anew under Take-Two Interactive in order to work on smaller games that provide a closer relationship with the customer.

The Bioshock franchise will remain with Take-Two Interactive.

(Source: Gamasutra)

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