Today, March 29, 2019, marks fifteen years to the day since the official launch of RuneScape 2. It’s incredible to think how much the game and Jagex as a company has changed and evolved over the last decade and a half, but if you want to take a walk down nostalgia road (or visit for the first time), I recommend checking out the following imgur galleries showcasing screenshots from the RuneScape 2 beta with comparisons between the two versions and snapshots from the early days.
Today marks the release of Mercedes, the legendary dual-wielding Bowgun archer elf as the latest class to be available in Maplestory M. Alongside Mercedes, Nexon is dropping the Evolution Dungeon allowing players to customize and play based on their character progression needs. In addition, class balancing for Bow Master and Dawn Warrior have been adjusted along with Guild Banquet EXP balancing.
Log in before April 4 and get your hands on an update box and TripleDillo Pets. Additional events beginning March 28 include:
Maplestory M is available on Android and iOS.
Source: Nexon Press Release
Electronic Arts today announced that 350 positions will be cut from the company as part of a reorganizational effort to “meet the needs of our players.” In addition, the publisher plans on ramping down its operations in Russia and Japan. The entirety of the announcement by CEO Andrew Wilson has been posted below.
Today we took some important steps as a company to address our challenges and prepare for the opportunities ahead. As we look across a changing world around us, it’s clear that we must change with it. We’re making deliberate moves to better deliver on our commitments, refine our organization and meet the needs of our players. As part of this, we have made changes to our marketing and publishing organization, our operations teams, and we are ramping down our current presence in Japan and Russia as we focus on different ways to serve our players in those markets. In addition to organizational changes, we are deeply focused on increasing quality in our games and services. Great games will continue to be at the core of everything we do, and we are thinking differently about how to amaze and inspire our players.
This is a difficult day. The changes we’re making today will impact about 350 roles in our 9,000-person company. These are important but very hard decisions, and we do not take them lightly. We are friends and colleagues at EA, we appreciate and value everyone’s contributions, and we are doing everything we can to ensure we are looking after our people to help them through this period to find their next opportunity. This is our top priority.
Source: EA
Apple today has announced Apple Arcade, a video game subscription service that will span multiple platforms and will launch later this year. Apple Arcade will give access to over 100 titles available on iPhone, iPad, Mac computers and Apple TV.
Every game will be available offline, will be fully featured at launch, and will carry no adverts or ad tracking to respect user privacy. Big name developers including Sega and Konami are already on board to release games. Apple Arcade launches in Fall 2019.
Source: Trusted Reviews
En Masse Entertainment has joined the growing ranks of developers partnering with Twitch Prime to hand out boatloads of goodies to subscribers. Over the next few months, players of all of EME’s games will be able to get their hands on useful in-game items including exclusive Closers costumes.
Each month starting March 22 and running through July 28, you will find new gift packs available. The first gift pack is for Closers and is available from March 22 to April 22. Players will find inside their gift box:
Further boxes will include more Closers costumes, more Elite status, and more in-game items.
Source: En Masse Entertainment
I want to talk about H1Z1 on the Playstation 4.
H1Z1 has become the Battle Royale of choice for me, partially because I have invested enough time and money ($20) into the game that I’d rather not start anew on another BR title and partially because I like the simplistic gameplay. I don’t have the reaction time to build and play Fortnite at a decent level and PUBG is a bit too much of a broken mess most of the time to keep my attention while Realm Royale’s player base was crashing hard. Plus my character looks like a total badass.
That said, I have to hand it to Daybreak for instituting the battle pass into H1Z1, because if it weren’t for the fact that I can log in a couple of times a week and churn out some decent ranks, I would have stopped playing out of frustration a long time ago.
It could be because the stamp missions in H1Z1 are broken beyond recognition. It only took five times entering and reentering the training grounds before the game recognized me picking up an AR weapon for the achievement, and after the third time I picked one up in solos for it to register that mission completed. While writing this article I spent the fifth match in which I used the “wave bye” emote three times during a match without it registering completion. What the game did register is me surviving to place in the top 15 in Fives which we didn’t (we placed in the top 20), me driving an ARV 1000 meters in any BR mode (I didn’t), placing in the top 15 without using bandages or first aid kits (I had used numerous), and one achievement I had actually accomplished in reviving a teammate and one for finishing three fives matches.
Free for all, to put it bluntly, sucks on ice. The Battle Royale engine that Daybreak has put together is clearly not built to house this many people in this close proximity on the Playstation 4. I play with the Playstation 4 Pro which is connected to an ethernet and sits within arm’s reach of my router, on a Verizon FiOS line running to the tune of 150mbps. I’m not humble bragging about my internet speed, I’m just pointing out the kind of connection I’m working with. At many times, H1Z1 Free for All gets such bad lag that the original Everquest has less character rubberbanding by comparison. There’s nothing that says engaging gameplay quite like pumping a full clip from an automatic weapon into someone at close range and having none of the shots register, only for the game to recognize that you actually died five seconds ago from a guy who was probably killed before he pulled the trigger.
And because the zone is so small and seemingly randomly placed, the spawn points are absolute trash. You’ll find yourself getting thrown into the wide open valley only to be immediately popped by the group of snipers that were already aiming in your direction. If not an open valley, you’ll be lucky to minimize the number of times that players will spawn in right in front of you, only to gun you down while still in an immune phase, or twenty feet behind you only to do the same. Get a good spot? Think again, because the random spawn system loaded you up with the worst weapons possible and screw you.
This of course assumes that the game properly loads itself while spawning you into the world, and doesn’t let you die while the loading screen is still up. This also assumes that the game grants you any immunity and doesn’t just let someone with a high powered sniper pop you in the head the second the loading screen does disappear. This assumes that the loading screen appears and doesn’t just leave you hanging as a spectator. This assumes that the game responds to your pressing X to respawn and doesn’t just ignore your controller. This assumes it doesn’t crash to the console dashboard. This assumes that it lets you bring your weapon out.
It’s incredible how the further H1Z1 gets away from launch, the more it seems to degrade in quality. Some stamp missions are broken, some weekly missions are broken, Free for All is broken, experience boosts seem to be broken, the master coins you get after completing the battle pass are (for some) broken.
Way back in the distant year of 2017 I reported on the case of Riot Games v. Shanghai Moonton Technology Co., and due to a case of poor diligence on my part, I never actually followed up on that case. The gist of the lawsuit is simple; Riot filed lawsuit in California court alleging copyright infringement by a mobile League of Legends ripoff Mobile Legends. What actually brought the lawsuit to my scope of coverage wasn’t so much that the lawsuit existed but the fact that Shanghai Moonton Tech Co. doesn’t seem to understand the concept of the free press and decided to threaten lawsuits against anyone even covering the case. To that I welcome their lawyers with open arms and an ethics complaint with the state bar association.
Well the lawsuit didn’t go far. As you might expect, Moonton answered Riot’s lawsuit with a motion for dismissal as well as a motion for forum non conveniens. For those who don’t want to hit the Google machine, this is a power that the courts in the States have to exercise their authority to simply not take a case if another court is more convenient. In this case, the court determined that Moonton is a very, very Chinese company that does its principle business in China which begs the question of what this case is doing in California.
“Moonton is a video game company based in China with approximately 215 employees (including the employees of its subsidiaries) located in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hefei. It conducts all of its engineering operations in China. All of Moonton’s employees communicate with one another in Mandarin, and documents and emails are drafted in Mandarin.”
As the court points out, having the case in the states would just be a gigantic pain when it could so much more easily be held in China. Moonton successfully convinced the court that while a trial in California would require witness testimony and mean that Moonton would need to bring employees from China to California at great expense, that courts in China do not operate the same way and that Riot would be unlikely to have to transport any employees as witnesses.
“For the reasons set forth below, the FNC Motion is GRANTED. The courts of China provide an adequate alternative forum for this litigation. Though Riot’s choice to sue here would ordinarily be entitled to substantial deference, the unique circumstances of this case and relevant private interest factors – most notably the risk of inconsistent judgments and overlapping damages awards, and Moonton’s inability to depose Tencent and likely difficulty obtaining documents from Tencent if the case proceeds here – outweigh that deference and militate in favor of dismissal on forum non conveniens grounds.”
The court also took issue with an apparent coordination between Riot Games and its parent company Tencent, with Riot suing Moonton in the US while Tencent sues them in China as being unfair as Riot/Tencent would have access to each others documents while Moonton would likely have more issues.
“Simply put, if Riot is going to sue Moonton here for Bang Bang’s infringement of LoL’s allegedly original game map while Tencent, its Chinese parent company with which it coordinates enforcement efforts, simultaneously sues Moonton in China for Bang Bang’s infringement of King’s Glory’s allegedly original game map, it would be unfair in the extreme if Moonton could not depose any Tencent representatives or compel them to testify at trial. But that is precisely what will happen if the case proceeds here.”
Riot naturally is not happy with this decision, and responded by noting that the odds of U.S. Copyright being adequately provided protection in a Chinese court is slim. Unfortunately the court did not see it their way and granted the motion for forum non conveniens. In January 2018, Riot Games filed an appeal with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The case was assigned a docket number, both parties named their council, and…nothing happened.
After seven months of silence, Riot quietly dropped the appeal.
Unfortunately for Moonton and their League of Legends ripoff, the Shanghai Courts were not so lenient on the company. The lawsuit by Tencent continued and in July of last year the court handed over a $2.9 million verdict in Tencent’s favor. Incidentally the lawsuit targeted not Moonton as a company, but its CEO Xu Zhenhua.
Moral of the story: Don’t steal from Tencent, they will destroy you. As always, the files sourced in the above article have been uploaded to the MMO Fallout Google Drive for your reading pleasure.
Age of Conan is back on track with content updates. Today, Funcom has added in Unconquered mode. In Unconquered mode, you’ll create a new character and go through the game as normal. The goal here is to get as far as you can without dying, with your character receiving rewards the further they get in the form of vanity armor sets, weapons, and badges.
This isn’t hardcore mode, however, but closer to an achievement system found in Lord of the Rings Online. If your character dies, you’ll just stop receive the Unconquered rewards. Nothing else changes.
Create a new character, mark them as Unconquered, level up, and earn new rewards! The only catch: If your Unconquered character dies, the run’s over. You won’t be able to continue earning rewards with that character.
How long will you survive?
Source: Age of Conan
Project Gorgon is bringing home the news today with the grand opening of its real money shop. At the top of the shop is a $500 USD “Horse Lord Package” that includes a free horse mount with basic riding skill, saddlebags for storage, a second free horse for breeding through the game’s husbandry skill, five years VIP, a player house, the ability to create 20 snack cakes per week, a custom in-game title, and a staff of leadership.
Now $500 may seem worth it just for the 20 snack cakes, but the intrepid players might be thinking; “but Omali, there isn’t a riding skill or husbandry in the game! You’re insane!” I am, but you haven’t misread anything. Neither riding or animal husbandry are currently in the game.
Notice: Some features, including Riding and Animal Husbandry, are not yet implemented at this time. Your account will receive these benefits when the features become available. In addition, your VIP membership will not start until VIP benefits are available. Stay tuned to ProjectGorgon.com for specific announcements.
If you’re too cheap to go for the $500 package, there are cheaper $50 and $75 packages that include the horse mount and VIP membership.
Source: Project Gorgon Shop
Guardians of Ember is now in the open beta phase. Fans of MMOs featuring high-adrenaline carnage can download the game now and get straight into the action!
Guardians of Ember, the hack and slash title from Runewaker, has entered open beta for the second time. You may remember Guardians of Ember as the game that was pulled from Steam after publisher Insel Games was caught trying to publish fake reviews for Guardians of Ember and Wild Buster. Now published by Gameforge, the title is looking to make a strong return to Steam and other store fronts.
Source: Steam
MMO Fallout 