Category: News

Planetside Next, The Agency, Everquest Next Oh My!


Bringing the finest in Smedlertainment

Sony Online Entertainment remains the juggernaut in the MMO industry, with more than ten titles currently on the market, with more on the way this coming year. Already released is DC Universe Online, based on the popular comic books characters and worlds. Aside from DCU, SOE has three titles that are on their way, two of which should be released by the end of the year.

First in line is expected to come in March, the sequel to Planetside codenamed Planetside Next. The next incarnation is anticipated to take the large scale battles of Planetside, and make them even bigger. As John Smedley stated in an interview with Eurogamer:

“And we haven’t announced a release date for it but you can expect it… We’re looking at late first-quarter, early second-quarter [2011].”

Next up, The Agency, expected to launch late this year. The Agency may be smaller in scale than Planetside (expected to be mostly instanced with social lobbies), but Smedley has big hopes for the game post-release, and is allowing the team to take as long as they need to make sure the game is up to snuff.

“One thing that we’ve learned over our company’s history is that it takes time to make great games. And we’re not trying to make cookie-cutter MMOs. There’s some stuff coming out in the next two or three months, MMO-wise, and a lot of it is generic copycats of other games. That’s not what we want to do. We want to make new experiences for people. So The Agency is a new kind of MMO so we want to make sure it’s as good as it can be.”

Third in line is Everquest Next. Although not slated to release for a good while, Everquest Next is expected to take the world of Norrath and turn it on its head. The number of classes and races is confirmed to be reduced, less than Everquest II and likely more around the numbers in Everquest. With a new art style, new lands to travel, and no doubt tons of lore to become accustomed to, Everquest Next may also be heading onto the Playstation 3 to saddle up with Sony’s increasing number of MMOs slated for release on the console.

Planetside Next, The Agency, Everquest Next Oh My!


Bringing the finest in Smedlertainment

Sony Online Entertainment remains the juggernaut in the MMO industry, with more than ten titles currently on the market, with more on the way this coming year. Already released is DC Universe Online, based on the popular comic books characters and worlds. Aside from DCU, SOE has three titles that are on their way, two of which should be released by the end of the year.

First in line is expected to come in March, the sequel to Planetside codenamed Planetside Next. The next incarnation is anticipated to take the large scale battles of Planetside, and make them even bigger. As John Smedley stated in an interview with Eurogamer:

“And we haven’t announced a release date for it but you can expect it… We’re looking at late first-quarter, early second-quarter [2011].”

Next up, The Agency, expected to launch late this year. The Agency may be smaller in scale than Planetside (expected to be mostly instanced with social lobbies), but Smedley has big hopes for the game post-release, and is allowing the team to take as long as they need to make sure the game is up to snuff.

“One thing that we’ve learned over our company’s history is that it takes time to make great games. And we’re not trying to make cookie-cutter MMOs. There’s some stuff coming out in the next two or three months, MMO-wise, and a lot of it is generic copycats of other games. That’s not what we want to do. We want to make new experiences for people. So The Agency is a new kind of MMO so we want to make sure it’s as good as it can be.”

Third in line is Everquest Next. Although not slated to release for a good while, Everquest Next is expected to take the world of Norrath and turn it on its head. The number of classes and races is confirmed to be reduced, less than Everquest II and likely more around the numbers in Everquest. With a new art style, new lands to travel, and no doubt tons of lore to become accustomed to, Everquest Next may also be heading onto the Playstation 3 to saddle up with Sony’s increasing number of MMOs slated for release on the console.

APB Closed Beta Incoming, Still No Earth Eternal


 

Adorable.

All Points Bulletin and Earth Eternal shut down around the same time last year, give or take about a month, and since then only one of the two has been getting much of any news coverage, and that tile is not Earth Eternal.

Over on the APB front, K2 Networks has been putting out regular blog updates on how the company is planning on dealing with free players, cheaters, private servers, and more. The latest blog post details hopes for a late-February launch of the APB closed beta, although any difficulties may extend that date into March. Closed beta details will be listed next week, but those of you tech-inclined folk may find some interest in the rest of the blog, detailing what K2 is currently doing to get the game back up and running.

Meanwhile, we’ve heard nothing new out of Earth Eternal. Neither the game’s Facebook or Twitter have been updated since around September, although off-site reports indicate that the game has been sold to Time Warner and will be rebooted sometime early this year. I am somewhat disappointed to see the lack of news out of Earth Eternal, especially since the buyer has never officially come out and announced themselves.

With All Points Bulletin, Earth Eternal, and hopefully Hellgate: London being brought back this year, who knows? Perhaps 2011 will be the year of MMO necromancy!

The Agency: I’m Just As Confused…Late 2011 Release?


Sony Online Entertainment

Given that it is December 7th, you’re probably wondering why the trumpets of fanfare haven’t been going off at the headquarters of Sony Online Entertainment. Unless many of us were in a hallucinogenic daze earlier this year, I do believe that The Agency, Sony’s instanced espionage MMO, was slated for release this month. Granted, we haven’t heard anything about the game since E3, so fill in the gaps as you will: It’s not coming out this month.

So what happened? Simple answer: Sony looked at The Agency and said “we’re not happy with it.” In an interview with Kotaku, John Smedley of Sony Online Entertainment said:

“There was a moment in time in our company where we looked at our own stuff with a clear eye and saw we have to do better,”

You can read the whole article here, but The Agency will not be making it to a retailer near you before the second half of 2011, possibly putting the title in direct competition with The Old Republic, DC Universe, and others.

The Agency: I'm Just As Confused…Late 2011 Release?


Sony Online Entertainment

Given that it is December 7th, you’re probably wondering why the trumpets of fanfare haven’t been going off at the headquarters of Sony Online Entertainment. Unless many of us were in a hallucinogenic daze earlier this year, I do believe that The Agency, Sony’s instanced espionage MMO, was slated for release this month. Granted, we haven’t heard anything about the game since E3, so fill in the gaps as you will: It’s not coming out this month.

So what happened? Simple answer: Sony looked at The Agency and said “we’re not happy with it.” In an interview with Kotaku, John Smedley of Sony Online Entertainment said:

“There was a moment in time in our company where we looked at our own stuff with a clear eye and saw we have to do better,”

You can read the whole article here, but The Agency will not be making it to a retailer near you before the second half of 2011, possibly putting the title in direct competition with The Old Republic, DC Universe, and others.

Stargate Resistance To Shut Down This January


Just like a Swedish Fish and my mouth.

When Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment was still filing bankruptcy while claiming that they never had the resources to complete Stargate Worlds, we were treated to Stargate Resistance, a lobby based shooter more akin to a four-classed Team Fortress than the MMO we were all anticipating. Stargate Resistance was supposed to be the cash cow to bring in some moolah for SGW. When Cheyenne routed the game over to Fresh Start Studios, I think many of us anticipated that the game would be shielded Cheyenne’s imminent full collapse. It wasn’t.

Earlier today, Stargate Resistance was fully pulled from all digital distribution websites, and is no longer for sale. A note on the Stargate website reads:

On November 16, 2010, the License Agreement between Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, Inc. and MGM Interactive, Inc. expired.  As a result, Cheyenne will no longer be able to offer Stargate Resistance for sale to new customers.   However, in the best interests of our customers, game play will be provided for a period of 60 days (until January 15, 2011) to customers who purchased Stargate Resistance prior to November 16, 2010.  Look for more information as it becomes available.

The January shut down will mark 11 months as Stargate Resistance’s lifespan which, as user Night_Chrono puts it:

We beat APB so thats what matters at the end of the day.

More on the continuing Stargate saga as it appears.

And The APB Winner Is: K2 Networks!


K2 Networks

Rev up the Wikipedia, because All Points Bulletin has a buyer…well, it always had a buyer, but now we know who that buyer is: K2 Networks. To save some of you the work, K2 Networks is the gaming company behind the Western localizations of Knight Online, WarRock, 9Dragons, among others. Given that K2 operates solely on Asian f2p grinders, the likelihood that All Points Bulletin will follow the free to play cash shop model are very high.

An official statement is coming next week. You can read the full story on Eurogamer, and I guess it’s time to stick All Points Bulletin in the Upcoming category. Bet you never thought you’d see that. But today the Realtime Worlds APB saga comes to an end.

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment Wins: Still Loses


Just like a Semi and my Mini-Cooper

What does baffle me about this is the tolerance or low expectations of MGM, owners of the Stargate license. Either MGM is not paying attention, at all, or they firmly believe that Cheyenne, in all of their continuing downward spiral, is somehow the only choice for a Stargate MMO. Or they don’t care anymore.

Back in March, I announced that Stargate Worlds was officially unofficially defunct, officially because Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment was so far into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and beating up Gary Whiting that the chances of release was somewhere between no chance and not a snowball’s chance in hell. In that article, however, I turned my guns to MGM, asking as simple question: Why have you allowed this to continue?

The legal battle over Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, over which likely none of you remember, is over, and CME has retained full rights to the game assets in a lawsuit between them and the makers of Stargate: Resistance. Essentially, although people like myself assumed that Fresh Start Studios would be the new enterprise for Cheyenne, the company sued Fresh Start to stop the fraudulent transfer of assets.

So Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment gets to keep their assets…but they have no Stargate License. Answering my question from back in March, the license with MGM expired this month, and MGM decided to terminate the license. Getting the license back will no doubt prove difficult for CME, and Gary Whiting (who has been back in charge for a while now, from court order).

Oh and, dear March 2010 me:

More on Stargate Worlds if it ever appears, but it seems as if this saga is finally coming to an end.

No, it isn’t. Not even close.

Codemasters: APB Could Work…Just Not By Us.


It could by Hi-Rez?

Codemasters General Manager David Solari has been on MMO Fallout’s news bulletins before, with regards to Lord of the Rings Online Europe, but now I get to talk about him weighing his opinion on something not Turbine related. In an interview with Eurogamer on the topic of All Points Bulletin, Solari wanted to express his optimism that the defunct MMO could absolutely work, given the right time.

“[Realtime Worlds] made some key mistakes there, with some key stuff changed that game could be successful. I do think the game could be turned around but it would need nine months of hard work,” he added. “That game could have been successful but the cost of development and everything else was a huge thing. The money it had to make to support that was very high risk. If you could take a smaller team and make all the fixes and operate at a lower cost then it’s fairly unique: there’s not really anything else in the market out there.”

Solari makes a great point. During APB’s short life, I harped on a few points that the game could be fixed and turned around easily, but that Realtime Worlds would be fighting against the clock to fix the shooting and driving mechanics being lackluster in a driving and shooting game. But who exactly is going to pick up APB, Mr. Solari. You?

“We have not picked up APB,” he said, definitively. “I can answer you definitively,” he echoed, “we haven’t picked that up.”

Damn. Well there is still the possibility of Epic Games taking over. More on APB as it absolutely refuses to die.

Buyer Found For APB: I Hope It Is Epic


adoración para bulletin

If you’re like me, you still have All Points Bulletin installed on your computer, and occasionally start up the client. For those of you who don’t, you can still read the news ticker here: The ticker is occasionally updated with news on APB and Realtime Worlds, the latter still going through the negotiation process to find a buyer for the former.

A couple days ago, the following appeared on the blog:

=== 22/10/2010 ===
It’s looking like there might be light at the end of the tunnel for APB. The end of the administration process is apparently close and there appears to be a buyer for the game.

You can find more information at the above website, or by launching your APB client. We may see APB come back by the end of the year (or early next year). Perhaps Webzen will take it on, they have something of a history picking up dead MMOs. I think this is the longest an MMO has gone postmortem still being covered here on MMO Fallout.

More on APB as it appears.