Maplestory 2 Introduces Dungeon Helper


If you could name one improvement for MapleStory 2, what would it be? That’s right, a dungeon helper system.

Starting with the latest update, players level 50 and above will be considered a dungeon helper when queuing for dungeons below level 50. By completing lower level dungeons and thus helping out the newer players, it is possible to receive up to 10 dungeon coins per day (1 per dungeon). Coins can be used in the shop to buy furnishings, outfits, mounts, and more.

In order to better ease new players into higher level dungeons, Nexon has also instituted an across the map nerf of dungeon enemies. Finally, the benefits of house assistants are no longer locked behind merets and can now be bought with mesos.

Source: MapleStory2

P.S.: Keep an eye out for Lucky August events.

IPE Update: Amro Elansari Files Appeal In RuneScape Lawsuit


Posted with no comment. PDF version available here.

In Plain English: Epic and the Generic, Substance-Free Patent Troll


Epic Games is once again back in court, except this time they are taking on a more defensive tone.

As of July 18, Epic Games has filed a lawsuit against Acceleration Bay LLC regarding some bad blood between the two companies that has boiled over in the past few years. According to court dockets filed in the Northern District of California, Epic Games is asking for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement regarding seven patents owned by the defendant.

According to Epic’s filing, defendant Acceleration Bay LLC in early 2015 acquired a number of patents from The Boeing Company. These patents cover a computer network and/or broadcast channel with an m-regular, incomplete topology. I’ll let the docket try to explain some of it, but it has to do with how computers interact on a network.

  • The claims of these patents all require that (1) each participant/computer in the network must have connections to at least three other neighboring participants.
  • The claims of these patents all require that (2) the network must be “m-regular” where each participant is connected to the exact same number, m, of neighbor participants.
  • The claims of these patents all require that (3) the network must be incomplete – m must be at least two less than the total number of participants.
  • 31. In other words, each participant must be connected to at least three neighbor participants, and no participant can be connected to all of the other participants in the network.

Fast forward to 2018 and Acceleration Bay’s lawyers sent a letter to Epic with allegedly no explanation or information, and claimed that Epic was infringing on their patents and would require a license. The letter was apparently so poorly vetted by AB’s legal team that they didn’t notice that the threat still contained the name of an unrelated company that AB had presumably also threatened over its patents.

As they say, bad form.

Additionally, Epic asserted that Acceleration Bay couldn’t get through its letter without completely lying about its own existence, claiming that it was founded in 2012 (it was founded in August 2014), and calling itself a “technology incubator” (it isn’t) that “partners with inventors, corporations and entrepreneurs to accelerate growth in creating innovative companies.” AB doesn’t accelerate growth in anything. Acceleration Bay, according to Epic’s attorneys, does not provide any product or service whatsoever, and exists only to monetize patents acquired from third parties. According to Epic’s attorney’s, AB is exclusively in the market of monetizing patents.

On July 10, representatives of both companies sat down to a teleconference and evidently nothing was accomplished. AB’s attorneys don’t appear to understand what their own patent covers, or how Epic operates their games, as Epic states in the court dockets that many online multiplayer games, especially those being asserted in this lawsuit, do not function the way that the patent would cover, as player networks are communicating with Epic’s servers and not each other.

Epic has assembled its Avengers team of lawyers from the offices of Winston & Strawn to convince the court for a preemptive declaration that Epic is not infringing on any patents alleged in this case. Acceleration had not filed a lawsuit against Epic, however the threatening letters are enough for Epic to go to the court and demand an answer to force the letters to stop. Acceleration Bay has 21 days to respond to the lawsuit.

As always, MMO Fallout has acquired at our own cost the dockets for this case and they can be found on our Google Drive. The docket itself is linked here, as Acceleration.pdf, or it will be in a folder titled “Acceleration” once more dockets are uploaded.

I paid way too much for this article. If you really like patents, I recommend checking out the docket because it’s about 25 pages of the actual lawsuit and then 350+ of the patents at dispute presented at evidence. Our condolences go out to the court clerk who had to print this out and file it.

Maplestory Adds New Party Quest With Squadron of Heroes Update


MapleStory’s latest update goes live this week as Squadron of Heroes continues on from the major Pathfinder update earlier this summer.

In the Squadron of Heroes update, players level 61 and up can take part in a new Ancient Ruins Party Quest for rewards, as well as partying up in cross world party quests that reward currency that can be used to purchase items from the party point merchant shop. In addition to working with other players, one can also create a party of characters across their account to take on the Immortal Gorgons for daily and weekly rewards.

A new theme dungeon called Partem Ruins will be available for players level 135+ with new mini-games and adventure tiers being added to the Adventure Islands.

And finally this wouldn’t be a MapleStory event without another burning event. If one burning character just isn’t enough, this time around Nexon is offering two burning characters who from level 10 to 150 will gain two additional levels.

More information available at the official website.

Legends of Aria Hits Steam August 6


If you need Legends of Aria to release on Steam and preferably before August 7, then you have hit a stroke of very specific luck.

Citadel Studios announced today that the global launch of the hit MMO Legends of Aria is coming sooner than you think: August 6. Legends of Aria bills itself as a modern take on classic MMORPGs such as Ultima Online and Eve Online, and is a living breathing world shaped by its players. While much of the game world is safe from the harsh life of open world PvP, lawless regions still exist inhabited by those looking to make your day that much worse.

“Not only have we added a new playable skillset in the Bard and a whole new armor and weapon enchanting system to make the crafters in our community even more important, but we’re making the world of Aria a much friendlier place to live,” said Derek Brinkmann, CEO. “We’re ecstatic to finally be launching Legends of Aria on Steam after so much hard work and love were poured into the game. We cannot wait for MMO players of all sorts to join us on our journey.”

Legends of Aria will launch into Early Access on Steam on August 6. New features include the bard class as well as equipment enhancement, rulesets, a fresh start server, an optional premium subscription, quality of life improvements, and much more. Check out the official website for more information.

Whatever Happened To: RedBedlam Ltd.


As I delve deep into the “whatever happened to those people” part of our ten year anniversary, one game caught my memory like a flash of lightning in a bowl of chocolate pudding. Whatever happened to that game The Missing Ink?

Actually that answer is obvious: It was shut down. The Missing Ink shut down its servers way back in January 2014 without much of a blurb from the press at the time. The closure was not meant to be permanent as developer Redbedlam announced that they would be retooling the game and keeping the two dimensional paper cutout characters while expanding on the three dimensional world and the things that it offered. That never happened, The Missing Ink never relaunched and for that matter it doesn’t look like Redbedlam ever acknowledged the game’s existence after January 2014.

So what the hell happened to RedBedlam? Thankfully for us, the company is a UK business and as such its records are on public display over at Companies House. A few months after this announcement, RedBedlam posted its fiscal results for the year ending May 31 showing net assets of £136,838. In October 2015, RedBedlam would release the game Bedlam, a first person shooter with a rather odd art style. The game would peak at 315 concurrent users on Steam but not until 2018.

By 2016 these total assets would plummet to £21,385, which appears to be where the company starts circling the drain. Bedlam receives its last patch on November 4, 2015. Fast forward another year and the assets drop to £3,072. By this point the company is running as a shell corporation, as the fiscal reports show that there is only one employee hired, down from five in 2016.

Companies House later filed to strike RedBedlam off of the official record. Apparently someone was around to contest this, as the proposal was removed with cause shortly thereafter. By the end of the 2018 fiscal year, RedBedlam was a dry husk; its fiscal earnings showing a net negative in assets and zero employees still on record.

Of RedBedlam’s eight officers, only one remains: Kerry John Fraser-Robinson, who is presumably keeping the company up and running in name only to pull in what few sales Bedlam is offering and to make phone calls in hopes of getting some investors on board. Otherwise it looks like this is the end for RedBedlam.

Whatever Happened To: Insel Games?


It’s been nearly a year and a half since we talked about Insel Games here at MMO Fallout, so I thought why not check in and see if they even still exist?

The last time we talked about Insel Games was in February 2018 when the company did something very, very stupid. Insel Games popped up a few years back to crowdfund the western releases of Wild Buster and Guardians of Ember, two top-down ARPG titles that performed fine enough on Indiegogo. Wild Buster raked in roughly $13k and Guardians of Ember a slightly more impressive $80k. Wild Buster even boasted Serious Sam and Duke Nukem among their character roster.

I’ll let Insel Games describe themselves:

“InselGames is a small independent publisher of online games based in Malta. Members of our team have worked on games such as Last Chaos, Fiesta Online, S4 League, Florensia, Everquest 2 and Planetside 2. Our goal is to bring you the best independent MMOs with a fair business model (TLDR: no pay-to-win)!”

I know what you’re thinking: What was this big stupid thing that Insel Games did? Well, the CEO got caught attempting to manipulate Steam reviews for Wild Buster after the title didn’t meet initial expectations and Valve gave the company the big boot. All of Insel Games titles were removed and the developer was banned from the store front. However it happened, Insel Games lost or gave up the publishing rights to both Guardians of Ember and Wild Buster. Guardians of Ember transferred to GameForge while Wild Buster renamed itself Champion of Titans and moved over to IDC Games.

You might be thinking that Insel Games just dissolved and died off, what with their getting banned from the largest PC game store and losing what few titles they had publishing rights to, and you would kinda be right. Right now the Insel Games website has two titles listed under “Our Games” with no mention of their prior published titles. The first game is World of Fishing which some of you may vaguely remember. World of Fishing shut down two years ago with players receiving free keys to Guardians of Ember as compensation. Whoops.

The other game appears to be titled MAD: Revenge of Narc. The website notes that this is a working title, but I’m assuming that it too is dead. I can’t find any mention online of an MMO with this name, and reverse searching the three screenshots on their website also doesn’t turn up any results. The Malta business registry similarly doesn’t have any status listed for the company.

So it looks like Insel Games is basically dead, assuming their domain isn’t simply waiting for whatever funds have already been invested in it to dry out.

MMO Fallout Turns Ten, And I Remembered Its Birthday


MMO Fallout is ten years old this week, and unlike the last three years I actually remembered its birthday this time around. Honestly I wish I had more prepared for this momentous occasion that is basically to my own enjoyment and everyone else’s annoyance, but in the meantime enjoy some snapshots of MMO Fallout’s early years.

I will remember you…

Will you remember me…

Don’t let your life pass you by

And then everything went downhill from there until we get to the modern day design of MMO Fallout as shown below:

Kickstarted MMO Edengrad Is Returning Thanks To Share Sales


Edengrad

Everyone’s favorite crowdfunded MMO Edengrad is coming back! Or at least that’s the plan.

For those of you not familiar with the game Edengrad, this game was Kickstarted to the tune of £41k by developer Huckleberry Games who released the title into Early Access on Steam in April 2017 and promptly stopped actively supporting it in December of the same year due to an apparent lack of funding. The servers have continued running for that time period but no active updates have been deployed in over a year and a half now.

The folks at Huckleberry Games posted a very cryptic message back in December 2018 that they were coming back, but nothing emerged until this June when Wyborcza posted some news about the company. It looks like Huckleberry has sold 1.5 million Zloty in shares, approximately $395,000 US Dollars. That money, according to the article, will go toward continuing development on Edengard as well as new titles.

“The F series issue was a very important step in the company’s history, thanks to which the company will be able to continue working on our flagship product, Edengrad, and support the development of new promising projects. companies, they believed in it and together with us they want to develop it, and in return we will provide them with new, better quality, “said president Patryk Borowski, quoted in the communiqué.

Developer Huckleberry Games has been promising updates via the Steam forums for several months now, only time will tell if they can actually come through on those statements.