News – Page 465 – MMO Fallout

Reminder: Age of Empires Online Shutting Down July 2014

Games For Windows Live may have been a hulking pile of poorly managed trash, but it was the pile of trash keeping Age of Empires Online…online. In case you missed it, earlier in August Microsoft accidentally updated the Age of Empires Online page to reveal that the service is shutting down on July 1st, 2014. The news wasn’t so surprising, after all the development on Age of Empires had ceased, the folks at Gas Powered Games no longer had anything to do with the game by this point, and the game could no longer sell currency or bring in new players due to the GFWL marketplace being shut down.

Games for Windows Live will be discontinued on July 1, 2014. Although it is available through Steam, Age of Empires Online requires features of the Games for Windows Live service. You can continue to enjoy all the features of Age of Empires Online as the service will remain 100% operational until July 1, 2014 when the server will shut down.

While a growing number of Games for Windows Live titles are already jumping ship and heading over to Steam, Age of Empires Online will be left behind to go down with the ship. This will leave Age of Empires Online with a server lifespan of nearly three years, and a development lifespan of sixteen months until development of new content ceased.

Blizzard Wins $7 Million Judgement Against Bots

Blizzard has fired another shot across the nose of the bot community with a successful judgement against Ceiling Fan Software. The developer was embroiled in a lawsuit against the creator of Shadow Bot and Pocket Gnome for the past two years, until a judge awarded a judgement of seven million. As a result of the judgement, Ceiling Fan Software is required to cease the sale or distribution of any bot, hack, or cheat software for any of Blizzard’s games. They are not allowed to develop, patch, modify, update, or test said software, nor are they allowed to possess it at all. They may not invest, associate, or assist in the creation or updating of software that violates Blizzard’s ToS either, and this applies to any company that the defendants operate at any point in the future.

Ceiling Fan Software posted a notice of shutdown on their website.

After more than 2 years of legal battles with Blizzard Entertainment to both pursue our right to operate and our customer’s right to play WoW as they choose, we did not prevail in the suit and have been ordered by the United States District Court in California to cease our operations.

The judge ruled in favor of Blizzard under a law which prohibits “unlawful, unfair, or fraudulent business practices.”

(Source: Court Ruling)

Raph Koster's MMORPG.com Q&A

Raph Koster performed a live forum Q&A on the MMORPG.com forums, answering questions about his views on the industry present and future, and boy were the questions interesting. When asked about an MMO mimicking pre-Trammel Ultima Online, Koster stated his disbelief that a modern Ultima Online could work, and that the “whole gankfest thing” is a relic of the past that simply doesn’t work anymore.

To me the essence of sandboxiness that was in UO and SWG is not about the PKing. It is about a simulated world, a functioning economy, a low power difference between high and low level players, and a system that doesn’t push you into combat as the only way to play the game (or even classes).

Koster also states his belief that MMOs haven’t moved much since the days of Metaplace, aside from the ever increasing budgets. He believes that while Grand Theft Auto hasn’t influenced the genre since GTA 3, Minecraft has proven far more influential. There is a lot more to read, and you can find the entire Q&A at the link below.

(Source: MMORPG.com)

Rift Server Merger Incoming

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Trion Worlds has announced an upcoming server merge to the MMO Rift. Previously Trion would sneak around the need to merge their shards by switching them into “trial” mode and forcing players to transfer off of them anyway. This time around the company is going for a good old fashioned merger, shutting down three North American and four European shards on October 23rd and 24th for each region respectively. According to the announcement, the company hopes that one day the server architecture will allow them to run multiple languages on the same servers.

Players with names already taken on the server they are merged into will have to change theirs, and guilds with conflicting names will be marked with a ! and will be able to change their name via customer support. This only affects the players on the shards that are shutting down, not the players on the destination shards.

(Source: Rift)

The Mummy Online Shutting Down Today

There are teenagers today who were not alive when The Mummy first released, yet have enough sense to tell you what a horrible idea licensing the franchise was for a video game, let alone an MMO. Even 2010 Omali, a pea-brained simpleton who believed anything was viable with enough heart, thought that this was a bad idea. No, The Mummy Online was most likely conceived in the same fashion as many dying properties. Someone decided to jump on board the train, figuring it had one good run left in it before the franchise was worthless, or the creators were willing to sell it out for pennies on the dollar in the hopes that maybe someone would pay attention and remember that they exist.

And much like its film counterpart, The Mummy Online went directly to the bottom of the bargain bin, never to be seen again. The beta servers went live on December 7th, 2011 and the last content update rolled out March 16th, 2012, giving the game a life cycle of three months from public access to maintenance mode. After a good year and a half of the game acting as a digital dust collector, Bigpoint will finally pull the plug today.

As you will have noticed during the past few months, there have been less and less players online to play with and no new features have been added to the game recently. This is why we’ve decided to put more effort into the games that already have a large active fan base, and make them even more awesome with the resources we have.

While we’re on topic, I’m looking for a beta invite to that Milli Vanilli MMO if anyone has a key to spare.

(Source: Bigpoint)

City of Titans Interview At Worlds Factory

City of Titans, formerly The Phoenix Project, has blown through its Kickstarter goal and currently sits well over four hundred thousand with twenty days left to go in the campaign. Our friends over at Worlds Factory managed to get a word in with Chris “Warcabbit” Hare from Missing Worlds Media to give a few more details about City of Titans.

The core of our game will be a “Themepark” ride, and it will be relatively easy for a new player to follow that all the way to the end. But as they learn to play, and as they explore, more and more gameplay will open up to them, all the way to writing their own stories, making their own enemies to fight, designing their own maps, and running other people through them.”

Check out the full interview at the link below.

(Source: Worlds Factory)

Lost GTA Online Characters Are Gone For Good

Last week saw a patch roll out for Grand Theft Auto Online to fix a rather nasty bug resulting in characters not being displayed. When the bug first popped up, Rockstar acted quickly and warned users not to create new characters in the missing slots. In a followup comment posted just a few days ago, Rockstar Games has revealed that the characters lost due to the bug can not be recovered.

For those asking about their lost characters or rank, those will not be able to be restored so we sincerely hope that this cash stimulus we’re giving out this month will help you get back on your feet or to make your new life in Los Santos & Blaine extra sweet.

To compensate players for launch issues, lost characters, and lost vehicles, Rockstar is giving half a million dollars to anyone who plays GTA Online in October. The money will be doled out in two halves, with the first dropping this week and the second by the end of the month.

(Source: Rockstar Blog)

Star Citizen Raises Lods of Emone

I don’t think anyone could have imagined just how successful Star Citizen’s funding drive would be. In the year since Cloud Imperium Games opened their doors and invited in a mass of crowdsourced investment, the fledgling space MMO has raised nearly twenty two million dollars, and stands to blow through every single one of the developer’s stretch goals. Thanks to the community, a whole host of new content has been made possible including a variety of new ships, new missions, extra detail in ships and hangers, new star systems, mod tools, simulations, HUD options, professional motion capture, a full orchestral score, territory control, first person combat on planets, salvaging, with facial capture and yet another ship on the way as additional rewards.

Rumor has it that the $25 million stretch goal is building MMO Fallout a new website. No? It was worth a shot.

(Source: Star Citizen)

Rockstar Giving Every Player $500,000 For Their Troubles

What? You didn’t think that was in real money, did you? Grand Theft Auto Online has no doubt had an MMO’s worth of launch issues: cars going missing, characters being deleted, progress not being recorded, etc. As Rockstar Games continues to smooth out bugs and issue patches, the company has revealed that they will be compensating users with half a million bucks to be distributed in two bundles over the course of the next few weeks. All you have to do is play GTA Online at some point in October to qualify for the money, as well as updating the game to patch 1.04 or above.

Grand Theft Auto Online is currently free for all people who buy GTAV, and Rockstar plans on gradually changing the game into its own world with its own gameplay mechanics, locations, and more.

(Source: Rockstar Blog)

3000AD Announces Line of Defense Digital Comics

Line of Defense is the upcoming MMOFPS by 3000AD, and while the game is still a long way from release, you can already get your hands on the first copy of the companion comic book. In a recent press release, DC Comics has confirmed that it will publish a twelve chapter series based on the world of Line of Defense, with the first three chapters releasing over the course of this month, and the rest coming scattered over the rest of the year and into July 2014. The series will be digital only, available on Comixology and DC Comics apps.

The full release schedule:

October 8 – “Payback” Chapter 1
October 15 – “Payback” Chapter 2
October 22 – “Payback” Chapter 3
January ‘14 – Chapters 4 to 6
April ‘14 – Chapters 7 to 9
July ‘14 – Chapters 10 to 12

Line of Defense is still on schedule for release before the coming apocalypse.

(Source: DC Comics Press Release)

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