News – Page 458 – MMO Fallout

Alganon Expansion Hits January 28th

After a long time waiting, Alganon’s expansion Rise of the Ourobani will be releasing next week on January 28th. Developed by 3000AD, Rise of the Ourobani introduces a third faction to Alganon with the interesting twist that, rather than opposing both factions, the Ourobani will aid whichever side happens to be losing at the time in the ongoing war. As the tides turn, allies become enemies as quick as the drop of a hat. The expansion also introduces flying mounts, hired mercenaries, and a new class: The warden. The warden is a ranged class capable of taming pets and transforming into one of a few different animals with respective abilities making the class something of a cross between the hunter and druid from World of Warcraft.

The expansion will have a price, which has not been revealed at this time.

Lineage II Top Reward Costs $200k Within A Year

As I always start these types of articles: If you are the type of person who is willing to spend five or six figures in a video game, why not take a little bit of that money and invest it in something more sensible, like MMO Fallout? Everyone wins. You get to keep spending insane amounts of cash on virtual goods, and we have more capability to tell you where you can spend a lot of money. Lineage II has revealed the hero coin program, allowing players to earn rewards for the simple act of spending their cash. The way the system works is simple: For every 80 NCoin you spend in Lineage II, you receive one Hero Coin that can be saved up and spent on items in the reward store.

Here’s where the deal gets controversial. First, Hero Coins only accumulate on the character that the item was redeemed on. Secondly, Hero Coins expire on the following January 1st of every year. There are items on the cash shop that translate into well over $30 thousand being spent on the game in a single year, with the most expensive item going over three hundred grand. You can laugh and, when you come to the realization that at least one person will hit that transaction mark, slowly dissolve into tears.

(Source: Lineage II)

Archlord: Shutdowns and Mergers

As Archlord continues its shuttering, the sequel doesn’t seem to be faring any better. Last month, we reported that Archlord would be shutting down its global servers on January 1st, and MMO Culture is reporting that the Korean server will also be closing. Citing an inability to “provide players with a stable environment,” Webzen announced that Archlord’s final territory will be shutting down on February 13th. According to MMO Culture, Archlord II hasn’t been seeing a great response. Currently in open beta, Archlord II has been heavily criticized for latency issues, poor game design, and heavy pay to win features.

The MMO reportedly merged down to two servers, with players still having trouble finding parties. Archlord II is set to head westward at some point in 2014.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Lord of the Rings Safe Until 2017

When it comes to licensed MMOs, there is always the risk that the game will shut down not because of a lack of population, but due to issues over renewing the license. For Lord of the Rings Online, players are understandably concerned over Turbine’s license expiring at the end of the year. Luckily for all of us, Turbine has announced that the license has been renewed through 2017.

We have said as far back as July of 2013, we plan to support LOTRO for many years to come. I really want to be as clear as possible on this subject to avoid any further confusion or misunderstanding. The license was renewed. I think it’s rather clear and direct. I can’t think of a more direct way to say the license was renewed than to say the license was renewed. We have an agreement that runs through 2017.

Barring some sudden drop in population, players have little to be concerned over.

(Source: Contains Moderate Peril)

Less Than Massive: Simcity Does The Impossible!

SimCity turns ten months old soon, and what better way to celebrate the occasion than with more backpedaling? In an announcement detailing the upcoming Update 10, Maxis has revealed that SimCity will receive the heavily demanded offline mode allowing users to play without requiring a constant internet connection. The revelation is even more incredible if you remember that Maxis had previously made every excuse in the book to explain why SimCity did not have offline mode, with claims ranging from how online regions were integral to the game’s vision, to how the servers simulated too much for the game to work offline. Last October, the developer finally caved in and agreed to look into offline mode.

General Manager Patrick Buechner wrote the announcement blog post.

Yes, Offline is coming as a free download with Update 10 to all SimCity players. When we launch it, all of your previously downloaded content will be available to you anytime, anywhere, without the need for an internet connection. We are in the late phases of wrapping up its development and while we want to get it into your hands as soon as possible, our priority is to make sure that it’s as polished as possible before we release it.

Whether or not this announcement will be enough to bring back EA’s disgruntled fans will have to be seen. On the other hand, EA can now focus on more pressing issues, including investigations and multiple lawsuits from customers and investors regarding the botched launch of Battlefield 4.

(Source: Maxis Blog)

Turbine Reveals DDO Player Council

It looks like Turbine is taking a note out of Eve Online’s book, with the announcement of a player council being set up for targeted feedback.

The DDO Player Council is a group of players selected to provide targeted feedback and valuable suggestions to the DDO Team. This will involve participating in surveys, focused discussions, as well as highly structured and targeted developer chats. Often the topics covered will be elements of game design at their earliest stages, well before they are committed to development or appear in our preview programs like Lamannia.

Applications are being taken through January 20th, with the council launching on the week of the 27th.

(Source: DDO Forums)

1.5 Million Concurrent On Blade & Soul

Tencent Games is ready to talk about Blade & Soul’s performance in China, and the results are expectedly enormous. According to Tencent, the peak total concurrent players came up over the 1.5 million mark, with over 450 million creatures killed on the first day. Thousand Soul Demon has been slayed over 7.7 billion times, and the average queue time is apparently around six hours. This is hardly surprising when you factor in that the game launched with two hundred servers, and still had major problems with queues. Blade & Soul has so far exponentially outperformed all of Tencent’s previous games.

As far as Blade & Soul launching in the west, nothing to report.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Guild Wars 2 VIP Membership Discovered

Dataminers on Reddit unearthed the above information regarding a VIP membership for Guild Wars 2. Although no price is detailed, membership includes a bundle of extras, including bank and inventory space, convenient banking/trading, and more. There are at least 20 tiers, going by the VIP badges found in the Mists beta client. Mark Kerstein, Head of Global Community, commented on the forums to point out that the VIP member is an internal experiment and is not intended for western gamers.

This is a testing branch. We conduct internal experiments for various territories on our testing branches. This particular experiment is not being tested for the West.

Whether or not VIP will make it into Guild Wars 2 in any territory will have to be seen.

(Source: Reddit)

Planetside 2 Will Feature Weekly Updates

Matt Higby from Sony Online Entertainment posted a thread on the Planetside 2 forums detailing that the company plans on expediting updates to better service the MMO shooter. Starting January 15th, Planetside 2 will enjoy weekly updates to address bugs, balancing, and more. There will still be large updates to the game, that will be included with the weekly updates as they become ready for release, but the overall goal is to allow SOE to work on bug fixing and balancing at a faster pace.

One final note, the first couple of these weekly updates are going to be a bit smaller than what you can expect to see later on, as we’re still shaking off the holiday cobwebs and getting used to the new development processes.

You can read the entire notice at the link below.

(Source: Planetside 2)

Square Enix Invites Former FFXIV Subscribers Back

Final Fantasy XIV has been out for quite a while now and, most assuredly, there are bound to be many of you among the crowd who have unsubscribed for one reason or another. With the launch of 2.1: A Realm Awoken, Square Enix would like to reintroduce you to the wonders of Eorzea, or more specifically the new content. Starting January 11th and going into the 13th, players with inactive accounts will be welcomed back for a free login weekend. After that, you’re on your own.

Check out the details at the lodestone link below.

(Source: Lodestone)

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