News – Page 466 – MMO Fallout

Elder Scrolls Online Ask Me Anything

Zenimax has a fresh batch of questions and answers regarding the Elder Scrolls Online, and the topics range from skills and campaigns and everything in between. While campaigns between the factions last for three months at a time, nothing is reset at the end of a campaign except for the leaderboards and score. Keeps, scroll ownership, emperor status, and location do not. The most interesting answer from the Q&A was that Zenimax dodged the question on whether or not a player who is infected and becomes a werewolf or a vampire will be able to transform back. Our guess is yes, but Zenimax is being coy.

No word on how this affects player-operated gentleman clubs.

(Source: Elder Scrolls Online)

DC Universe Remastered Is Coming

Sony Online Entertainment has posted the latest Producer Letter detailing the upcoming Update 31 and gearing up for launch on the PlayStation 4. What does Update 31 entail?

On a high level, that means a sweeping, game-wide graphical upgrade, a massive design effort to polish and remaster the core leveling game, and a host of technical work that prepares DCUO’s underlying technology not only for launch on a next generation gaming console, but for a long future on it as well. This is without a doubt the biggest technical update we have ever done.

Aside from a massive amount of under the hood fixes, tweaks, and optimizations, DC Universe will also undergo a graphical upgrade (not pictured above), a redesign of several major areas including Centennial Park and Robinson Park in Metropolis and Gotham respectively. The letter also notes that the 1-30 leveling process will be made much more fluid, alongside updates to textures and geometry to make the world feel more seamless, and updates to the way that NPCs act to make them more consistent in combat.

These updates will go live on all platforms, including PlayStation 3, and can be previewed on the test server this week. The update is expected to go live in November.

(Source: DC Universe)

Rift Frees Inactive Character Names

Losing your character name due to a server merger sucks, especially if you can’t find a new name because all of the good ones are taken up by people who haven’t logged in since the game first launched. The good news is that players who do end up losing their names when the servers merge on October 23rd will have a bigger pool of alternatives to choose from. Trion has announced that characters who have been inactive for a long time will have their names reset when the servers merge.

Trion has not detailed exactly what counts as “inactive,” but characters that fall into this pool will be contacted via email to warn account holders to log in before it is too late. If you don’t log in, well that’s on you.

If one of your characters is going to be impacted by this change, you’ll be getting an email from us in the next day or two with instructions. If you are one of these inactive characters and want to keep your name, you’ll just need to log in with that character before October 23rd.

(Source: Rift Junkies)

Everquest Mac Shutting Down For Real This Time

Some of you may remember that Sony Online Entertainment originally slated Everquest Mac to shut down in 2012, but decided against it due to passionate feedback from the community. Well passion can only get you so far, and in a letter posted to the community, John Smedley has announced that Everquest’s Mac iteration will be shutting down effective November 18th.

We said this before and now we really have to do it – we’re sunsetting EQ Mac. As a passionate Mac player, I’m disappointed to have to share this news. We decided to keep the game running after receiving your feedback when we originally announced the sunset plans early last year, but with all of our development aligned towards our upcoming slate of games, we simply cannot justify the resources required to continue to support this version of the game.

Everquest on the PC will not be affected by any of these changes, and it is unlikely that players will be able to move their characters over due to the massive difference in versions. EQMac was never updated past Planes of Power, the fourth expansion released in 2002.

(Source: Announcement)

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)

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