Jagex is very concerned with how new players take in their first few minutes in RuneScape, and they are kind of concerned regarding the impression players are getting from logging in and seeing the starting area full of players in high level armor fighting rats. Magic splashing is a widespread method of training the skill, as players figured out years ago that you could wear melee equipment with low enough magical accuracy that your attacks never actually hit. Since RuneScape gives a small amount of magic experience even when a spell fails to do damage, this has become a slow and expensive, but for many valid method of training their magic skill while doing something else.
Thankfully Jagex is not removing magic splashing, but the company announced with this today’s update that magic splashing will no longer reward experience within the area that players immediately spawn in following the tutorial, that being Lumbridge and the surrounding forest. The map area is very small, so there are plenty of other locations that players can set up in and AFK to their heart’s content.
Since Daybreak has fallen out of the public spotlight, nobody notices when they shut things down anymore.
Flashback to March 1 and you will find producer Nick Silva stating that the player studio is absolutely not dead, and will in fact return better than ever.
“In the meantime, we will be evaluating options for overhauling the Player Studio site with the intention of allowing broader categories of submissions and a more streamlined submission process.”
Unfortunately the player studio is yet another reminder that anything coming out of Daybreak should be taken with a grain of salt. In an announcement on June 22 that absolutely nobody noticed because not a single gaming website (including this one) reported on it, Daybreak quietly took the Everquest/Everquest 2 Player Studio out back and gave it the Old Yeller treatment. The announcement is as follows (their strikethroughs, not mine).
“Over the years, EverQuest II players have remained some of the most dedicated in any virtual world. Since Player Studio first launched, we have constantly found ourselves impressed and humbled by the boundless creative talents of our players. Over the years, members of our community have created countless new items that help bring even more color to the world of Norrath. After nearly 6 years, the Player Studio program has concluded for both EverQuest and EverQuest II. Player Studio items that have been previously approved will be released and remain in-game, but players will not have the ability to submit new items. We’d like to thank each of you for sharing your creations with us.”
This sunsetting makes Planetside 2 the only game remaining with Studio support, and the term “support” might be generous. The Planetside 2 sector of the Player Studio is performing fantastically, with the creator forums seeing an entire thirteen posts over the entirety of 2019. One of the posts is lamenting the fact that the user’s creation has been in limbo for over a year with nobody bothering to look at a simple decal submission. There has been roughly one developer post on the entire studio forums in the last two years, and that was to announce the initial suspension of new creators.
Maplestory M is celebrating its one year anniversary with style as Nexon has announced the latest class to be added in: The Phantom. Set for release on July 17, players can pre-register for the Phantom today to receive a pack of items including a Unique Weapon Whetstone, Unique Armor Whetstone, Auto-Battle Charge Ticket and more.
“Featuring a cane as his main weapon, the Phantom is a master thief who steals the abilities of characters in the Explorer class. Skills including Phantom Shroud, Return of Phantom and Steal help players plan more strategic strikes, while the Phantom’s most special skill – Judgment – comes into play when delivering critical damage to mobs, triggering randomly stacked cards that give players additional attack. Phantom characters between levels 3 to 100 will also be able to level up a total of 3 levels per each level up through the Mega Burning event.”
Also included in the update is an updated wedding system allowing players to team up with their dearly beloved for buffs and gifts, as well as a new emote wheel and more. The one year anniversary will have events of its own with special experience rewards, skins, accessories, and more. Starting July 25, players can take part in the Monster Park amusement park event for heavy experience gains.
Pearl Abyss today announced the release of the latest class for Black Desert on the Xbox One and unlike with the Shai class, you won’t need to go through the hullabaloo of pre-making your character for when it launches in a few weeks. It’s available now. The ninja is a close-quarters combat specialist and enters the game along with the two new guild bosses and the Marni Stones, an item to assist in end-game leveling.
“For Adventurers interested in a challenging fight, two new guild bosses have been added – the electrifying Ancient Puturum in Valencia and the ghastly Muskan of Madness in Serendia. The Ancient Puturum attacks by shooting out electric currents from its body and can regain HP by soaring into the sky to gather energy. For those seeking a more grounded fight, the Muskan of Madness will require substantial teamwork and clever strategies to be defeated. Players who successfully conquer either guild boss can receive powerful new items and equipment.”
Marni Stones can be purchased at level 57 and are available for each monster type and achieving specific bounties. Players can turn in these stones to gain more experience.
Playstation 4 users will be happy to know that the game is available for pre-order ahead of the planned August 22 launch. More information can be found on the official website with the trailer below for your viewing pleasure.
Editor’s note: The chair being reviewed was provided by Ewinracing Corp.
Those of you who read MMO Fallout know that I am the prime authority on activities involving sitting on your duff. By day I am just a mild mannered MMO reporter, so I spend a lot of time typing on my laptop. Also by day I am a student attorney which means doing a lot of legal research, sitting in court, writing up stuff, and you guessed it…sitting down while I do those things. As a six-figured debted student, my history of chairs has generally fallen into the “what’s on clearance at Office Max” stack, chairs that are not exactly ergonomic, don’t provide lumbar support, and cost less than a new video game for a very good reason (low quality). Unsurprisingly, I’ve had some back problems arise from this.
So you can imagine my excitement when Ewinracing Corp reached out and wanted to talk business. If you don’t know who Ewinracing is, they sell those gaming chairs you might have seen your favorite Youtubers being sponsored by. They also sell gaming desks, tablet holders, and mini-PC sticks. I accepted the offer, and because I am a champion they shipped me out an Ewin Champion Series chair in my favorite color; Neon Green, and the rest as they say is about to be written in this review.
This is, without a doubt, the best chair I have ever sat in and Ewin was kind enough to not make me review this chair in the form of a Youtube video which is to everyone’s benefit. The chair itself is made of high-density separated foam over top a metal endoskeleton with a 120mm gas lift that claims to support up to 330 pounds. I am not close to two thirds of that weight, and it seemed rather unprofessional to purposely try to break the chair by hauling several people onto it in a way that it was not designed for, but given the metal skeleton I am willing to give EWin the benefit of the doubt and say that you should be good to go in terms of body support.
As far as office chairs go, this is a sturdy, sturdy bird. I did give the chair a heavy wiggle and bounce test to see how it held up as in my experience I’ve found that these self-assembled chairs tend to not feel completely secure, but the Ewinracing Champion Series chair is sturdy as a rock. If you have ever assembled an office chair, you already know what you’re doing here with the exception that there are covers for where the back screws into the base that you don’t normally find on other chairs. Even the bolts that come with the chair are thicker than I’m used to seeing, and add to the feeling of sturdiness that the Ewinracing chair provides.
The first thing you’ll notice about the chair if you are like me are the pillows. It is incredible how much of a difference some simple lumbar support can make on your sitting experience, and for the past few days I have sat in this chair and did not have to adjust myself or have any issues with back pain after prolonged sessions. The pillow is very comfortable and it can be adjusted higher on the chair if you’d prefer that kind of back support. As someone who is six feet tall with much of that height being in my legs, it’s refreshing to see a chair that rises high enough that my feet don’t touch the ground. In addition, the EWin chairs feature what they call “4D” adjustable armrests, which is really just a fancy way of saying that the armrests go up and down, rotate left and right, and even go forward and back. As someone who is rather finicky about my armrests, this is a big positive.
But when I received my chair, I wanted to know just one thing: Does the chair actually recline as much as it does in the videos, and is it as comfortable as they say it is? Short answer: Yes. I’ll be honest with you folks, this chair scared me the first three or four times I sat in it. I just had to check out one of the major advertised features of the EWin racing chair, that being that it reclines back to a point that on a regular office chair would just lead to the whole thing toppling backwards. Unlike a regular office chair, the Ewin gaming chairs have their center of gravity closer to the back of the chair.
This allows you to recline to a point where someone might just be able to check your teeth given proper lighting. It’s terrifying the first few times you do it, because anyone who has taken a spill backwards over their office chair knows that they are not generally designed to recline like this and stay upright with a person leaning all the way back. This isn’t anything to do with the chair itself, which I will reiterate is completely sturdy and gives no indication or reason to believe that it isn’t stable. After a few times reclining the headrest back, I can comfortably lay back on my Ewin chair without the fear of the thing toppling over and me injuring myself on the hardwood floor. It’s perfect for veg out sessions watching Netflix on the TV that is way too large for my tiny room. I recommend getting used to the idea by lowering the chair to a point where your feet are still planted on the floor while the chair is all the way back.
The shape of the chair itself forces your back into a healthy posture, and while it does feel weird at first, you pretty quickly get used to it.
Now let’s talk about negatives of which I can think of very few. The Ewinracing chair is as heavy as you would expect a thick metal framed chair to be, and this could be an issue during assembly if you are buying it because you have a really bad back and assembling a standard chair is already an issue. The chair itself is also very firm, which people who like a soft chair might find disagreeable although the pillows should take care of any of those complaints. There’s also the matter of cost of which this chair is roughly $350. Three hundred fifty smackers is going to sound like a lot for a “gaming chair,” especially when you don’t have the luxury of sitting in the chair beforehand like you do at most office stores.
After having the opportunity to try out what in my opinion are the best gaming chairs in the business, if Ewinracing contacted me and said they needed the chair back, I would happily pay for the chair to just be able to keep it. Don’t tell anyone that I said that. Yes, it’s easy to say that a product is a great value when it is provided for free, but I can say with complete confidence that the Ewinracing Gaming Chair is worth every penny.
Photographed: The clearance office chair
Thankfully you don’t have to spend every penny to get one of your own. If you head over to the official website, you can get 25% off of your purchase of an Ewin gaming chair with the coupon code “mmofallout” (without the quotation marks).
I want to thank the folks at Ewingaing Corp for offering up this great opportunity.
I wanted to post this PSA for those of you who, like me, waited until this week’s update to finish the RuneScape quest Desperate Times. At one point in the quest you’ll get to the area from the quest Missing, Presumed Death, and get stuck. Why? Well you’ll get to the area above and not know where to go. The door is closed and won’t even respond to your interactions, there aren’t any other paths forward, and you’re basically screwed.
Or are you?
Long story short, the door shouldn’t be there. The door isn’t there, but for some reason the latest update has brought back entities that should be invisible to the player. The good news is that Jagex is aware of the bug and working on a fix. The better news is that you don’t have to wait until they are removed. Grit your teeth folks, because the method to get around this bug until Jagex actually fixes it is to…click past the door.
Yep, just click past it as if it wasn’t there, because it isn’t really. Your player character will just walk right through. There are a few doors on the way and a couple elements to just ignore. This only seems to be affecting people on the NXT client, so alternately you can boot up the Java client and they shouldn’t even be present.
Today’s video comes to us from Neowiz and shows off some of the features coming with the upcoming console spinoff Bless Unleashed.
There is an upcoming beta test for Bless Unleashed coming on Thursday July 11 at 10 a.m. pst running until Monday July 15. The beta will be available for preload on July 10.
Jagex has thrown out a poll after only two days after Old School RuneScape players overwhelmingly rejected the company’s proposal for partnership-integrated items.
The poll went up on July 3 and contained over 20 questions asking players if they would approve of various items from emotes to skin colors and teleport animations being added in as partnership perks (such as RuneScape’s Twitch Prime items) with the items being released afterward to the general public, and the community answered with an overwhelming no. Old School RuneScape polls the vast majority of its content updates to the community. Each poll runs for one week and requires at least 75% approval in order to be added into the game.
For this poll, Jagex decided to cancel it after two days as virtually all of the questions had at least 70% disapproval.
G2A; it’s a website whose very mention here at MMO Fallout will cause some developers to stop communicating with me.
You may be familiar with G2A thanks to its reputation as the place that sells video games dirt cheap, but also as a place that developers/publishers hate because the whole key reselling world is kind of unregulated and open to problems related to fraud. There have been a lot of accusations leveled against G2A in the past for facilitating and profiting off of credit fraud, people buying game keys from devs using stolen credit cards and then selling those keys for pure profit. As you’d expect for any company looking to protect its reputation, G2A has repeatedly denied all claims of malfeasance.
According to G2A, the overwhelming majority of their keys are sold by wholesalers, businesses who get their keys in large quantities from the publisher and sell at a good deal. In a blog post put up this week, the company announced that they are putting up an offer for developers: If you think your stolen keys are being sold on our store, get in touch. G2A will pay for independent auditing and if any stolen keys were sold on G2A, they will pay ten times the money they lost on chargebacks.
Let’s lay all cards on the table. We will pay developers 10 times the money they lost on chargebacks after their illegally obtained keys were sold on G2A. The idea is simple: developers just need to prove such a thing actually happened on their stores.
To assure honesty and transparency, we will ask a reputable and independent auditing company to make an unbiased examination of both sides – the developer’s store and G2A Marketplace. The cost of the first three audits is on us, every next one will be split 50/50.
The auditing company will check if any game keys sold on G2A were obtained using stolen credit cards on a developer’s store compliant with card scheme rules from Visa and Master Card/payment provider rules. If so, G2A guarantees it’ll pay all the money the developer lost on chargebacks… multiplied by 10.
I won’t go any further into the piece since I’ve no doubt been blocked on Twitter by about a dozen more indie game devs just by acknowledging that the blog post exists. You can read it at the link below and make up your own mind.
For the sake of preempting a few comments, I am reporting on this on my own volition and this piece was not sent to me by anyone.
The next big update to RuneScape is on its way, in fact it is being released this coming Monday! In preparation for the update, Jagex has launched a dedicated website for Land Out Of Time where players can find more information on the coming update. Land Out Of Time is the latest expansion of RuneScape’s ongoing storyline. Players will sail to Anachronia, an island out of time. Build a base camp, hunt dangerous creatures including dinosaurs, and take part in an island-wide agility course.
Embark on a voyage of discovery to a long-forgotten land. Hunt down hulking beasts, traverse a treacherous landscape, slay dangerous new creatures and unearth ancient secrets previously lost to time.
Players are currently hard at work in-game building the ship that will take them to the island when the update goes live next week. Formerly referred to in-game as Kudos Island, Anachronia was first teased in RuneScape way back in 2007 with NPCs at the Varrok digsite beginning construction on a ship to take them to the island. It only took twelve years.
