Frostkeep Studios this week announced the debut of two new game modes for Rend on the public test realm.
The two game modes are called Classic and Exploration while the original game mode will be renamed Faction War. In classic mode, players will battle for supremacy by sieging each others’ bases, waging war, capturing territory, and collecting bounties. Exploration, meanwhile, is an entirely PvE mode that does not allow for player vs player combat. Both modes allow for players to join up in clans, however progression is per-character and there is no reputation system.
In addition to these two new modes, ascension points are seeing a change from per-server to globally tied to player accounts. AP gained from any activity will count for all servers.
For more details on upcoming Rend updates, check out the roadmap.
Funcom yesterday posted its third quarter earnings for 2018, and the results are rather positive. Third quarter earnings amounted to $7.5 million, a 25% increase over last year, with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization amounted to $4.6 million. The developer happily notes that not only has cash flow beaten the full year’s numbers for last year, which was the highest in Funcom histroy, but that the company is now free of interest-bearing debt for the first time since 2009 and holds a cash balance of $20.9 million.
On the road ahead, Funcom has six titles in its lineup including Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, Petroglyph’s Conan game set for the second quarter 2019, Rock Pocket’s Funcom IP game set for Halloween 2019, a cooperative shooter from Funcom North Carolina, a single-player Conan game from Funcom Oslo, and an open-world multiplayer game also from Funcom Oslo. It appears that Petroglyph’s Conan game will release on PC while Rock Pocket’s title is set for PC, Xbox, and Playstation. Funcom NC’s title utilizes a premium business model while both of Funcom Oslo’s titles are in pre-production stages.
Conan Exiles continues to be a strong seller for Funcom.
The internet has had a few days to cool down from the announcement of Diablo Immortal, the mobile game announced and BlizzCon and rather negatively received by Blizzard’s community within and without the convention center. But while certain parties may be eager to paint the negative reaction as entitlement from spoiled gamers, Blizzard isn’t one of them.
In an interview with Kotaku, co-founder Allen Adham admitted that Blizzard expected a negative reaction to the mobile Diablo game, but perhaps not as vocal as the one following their announcement last week. Adham refused to call the reaction entitlement, instead noting the community’s passion.
“They love what they love and want what they want,” he said of the fans raging at BlizzCon and across the internet. “That passion, it’s actually what drives us, and we feel it too. It’s why we make games and why we’ve made games for almost three decades now—and why our community is so passionate about our franchises. I understand their feeling and wish we could share more about all the amazing things we’re doing, not just with the Diablo franchise but across the company as a whole.”
Diablo 3 recently launched on the Switch and while Diablo 4 is still on the horizon, the game is an inevitability.
The above infographic was sent over to us by Enlightened Digital, and contains some fun facts about Red Dead Redemption 2. Rockstar decided to integrate a more advanced artificial intelligence into RDR2, one that responds to the player based on a number of context clues, allowing every interaction to be unique from the next.
This post is not sponsored and is purely for infotainment purposes.
The next Diablo game has been announced and this is only the second time that Blizzard is playing damage control. Yesterday at BlizzCon, Blizzard announced Diablo Immortal, a mobile spinoff set in the franchise universe between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. The game will be coming to Android and iOS devices, with pre-registration already open as of this article’s publishing.
Needless to say, the crowd was not amused after Blizzard revealed the title, and it looks like the developer was caught heavily off guard by the overwhelmingly negative response. The BlizzCon announcement was met with heavy booing from the crowd, several sarcastic questions during the Q&A (“Is this an April Fool’s joke?”), with Blizzard’s reps eventually shouting at the crowd. The Youtube videos have been heavily downvoted with the cinematic trailer sitting at 227k downvotes to 7.6k upvotes, and Blizzard went as far as to reupload the trailer in an apparent effort to reset the like/dislike ratio.
But this wouldn’t be a Bad Press article without examining how certain members of the games media have used this as an excuse to show their contempt for gamers, like Gamespot’s Mike Mahardy who in response to the April Fool’s joke stated:
“Savagery” aka “entitled assholery” aka no one owes you anything bud https://t.co/NplnqeMfNu
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Don’t be too harsh on Mike, his company has bills to pay and the Blizzard advertising coffers are enormous. Madeleine Rose over at J!nx, where you can buy hundreds of Blizzard-branded products at a fantastic markup ($70 for a Diablo III hoodie), was astonished and grossed by the “entitlement” of the community.
IGN’s Sean Finnegan went on the offensive, calling gamers the “most cynical, toxic, and entitled fandom in all of entertainment.” Sean fights for the users, just not the ones who don’t like the products made by the guys who advertise for the website he gets a paycheck from.
If you’ve ever questioned that gamers are the most cynical, toxic, and entitled fandom in all of entertainment, just look at the #Diablo Immortal announcement at #BlizzCon. So called “fans” going on mic to shit on devs hard work just because it isn’t what they wanted is atrocious
Over at Mashable, the website for superfans and not for the casually curious, Adam Rosenberg penned the Op-Ed “Diablo Immortal controversy is really just entitled gamers shouting,” where he proceeds to call gamers assholes for not responding positively to the announcement. (Archived link to article)
“A segment of the Blizzard fan community is mad because of some stupid bullshit they’ve manufactured entirely out of their own ignorance. That “April Fool’s joke” guy was an asshole for asking that question. And if you’re holding that guy up as some kind of a hero, or even just attacking Blizzard for making something you’re not into, you’re an asshole too.”
Mashable’s Kellen Beck responded to a self-described tantrum by throwing a tantrum with an op-ed titled “Diablo Immortal is actually fun, you entitled babies.”
“From what I saw and played, Diablo Immortal is a fun, quality Diablo game that retains that special something that makes the franchise so special. You don’t have to play it, but whining online makes you sound like a literal infant.”
Professional public relations account director Will Powers (formerly DeepSilver and Playstation)
Exactly. Seriously, fuck this dude. I would have kicked him out of the show.
Thankfully there are plenty of members of the press taking a level headed approach and actually discussing the game itself. Polygon’s Ryan Gilliam wrote “Diablo: Immortal feels like a Diablo game, just not one that’s for me.” Owen S. Good of the same Polygon wrote a piece noting concern that the game is being developed by NetEase and looks a lot like a reskin of another one of NetEase’s mobile titles. James over at IGN posted a hands-on noting that the controls are intuitive, the dungeons are impressive with more complicated bosses, however characters do not show armor changes in this development build and there is no resource pool.
A number of photos have circulated of the Diablo: Immortal booth at BlizzCon being virtually disregarded with hardly anyone in line or using the demo units.
Be sure to get into the line for Diablo: Immortal on mobile early tomorrow at Blizzcon the lines have been crazy! pic.twitter.com/OZUFeRLlKb
Of course, this is just a small snippet of what can be found on the web. It’s always good to have a reminder of how quickly some people in the press get angry when customers don’t just shut up and get excited about products.
Destiny 2 launched on October 24, 2017, and Activision is celebrating its one year anniversary by making the game free. Log in to Battle.net and grab yourself a free copy of the game before November 18 and the game is yours to keep forever*.
The copy includes the base game and nothing else, you’ll still need to drop some simoleons in order to pick up the expansions and DLC. On the plus side, the Forsaken expansion now includes the two expansions that came before it, so for $40 USD you can grab Forsaken, Curse of Osiris, and Warmind. Forsaken also includes a character boost to get you into the new content right away.
The world mourns its loss of collective productivity today as Jagex has officially launched Old School RuneScape out of beta in its mobile form. The classic MMORPG hits Android and iOS devices following months of beta testing, with over one million users having pre-registered. Users are able to log in with their existing PC accounts and continue on either platform continuing to level up their characters.
Jagex CEO Phil Mansell stated:
“Today’s launch of Old School RuneScape on mobile leads the charge as we bring two of the world’s most popular MMORPGs to the world’s most popular gaming devices. We believe in taking our living games to wherever our players want them and, with the mobile editions offering full and seamless cross-platform play with PC, players can now continue their adventures on either platform and on the move. The arrival of Old School RuneScape on mobile, and our ongoing work to also bring RuneScape to mobile, is testament to our investment in the continued growth for both titles and building our vision for living games.”
The latest free update for No Man’s Sky is now available. Dubbed The Abyss, players are introduced to a new aquatic environment rich with additional flora and fauna, new vehicles, updated graphics, and more.
Aquatic Missions and Narrative: A new story, The Dreams of the Deep, brings a new context to the depths and a dark narrative to No Man’s Sky. Players are invited to discover the fate of a troubled crew stranded from a freighter crash by the rising tides or explore underwater ruins to uncover the tale of a lost soul trapped deep beneath the waves.
Submarine Vehicle: Master the depths of planets using a new Exocraft, the Nautilon. This submersible vehicle gives new meaning to underwater navigation, combat and mining – and can be summoned to any ocean on the planet, as well as docked at underwater buildings. Players can upgrade the submersible with installable Submarine Technology and customise the Nautilon to stand out from their fellow explorers.
Submersible Building Modules: More than a dozen new base parts have been added to unlock more creative possibilities underwater. Players can construct the new Marine Shelter for brief respite from the oceanic pressure, and use its protection to reach new depths. New glass corridors, viewing bays and multi-storey submersible view domes provide travellers the perfect view of the surrounding ocean. Players can now bring their aquatic life into a habitat with a decorative indoor aquarium.
Flora and Fauna: The variety and visual quality of underwater biomes has been greatly improved. Players can now experience rare exotic aquatic biomes as they explore new depths. Underwater creatures have become more frequent, and more interesting. Aquatic life inhabits the full depth of the ocean, and unique terrifying creatures can be encountered on the ocean floor.
Sunken Wrecks and Ancient Treasures: Investigate sunken ruins and find ancient treasures or dive to submerged buildings to find remnants of their lost occupants. Discover and scavenge lost cargo from gigantic freighter wrecks. Use the terrain manipulator to excavate treasures buried in the nearby ocean floor. Find and repair rare crashed star ships to restore them from the seabed to the skies.
The Abyss update is the first major content update since No Man’s Sky NEXT dropped earlier this year, and is available on all platforms.
(Update10/31/18): Files from a case management conference held on 10/26 have been published. It looks like the council will continue discussing a plan of action moving forward. A CMC has been scheduled for November 19, and we will post an updated piece should anything important be confirmed.
The new document has been uploaded to the Google Drive folder linked at the end of the article.
“The situation was discussed in general among counsel and the Court, and it was agreed that counsel would continue to discuss the situation to keep up to date and formulate plan of action for this case under the circumstances. Defense counsel agreed to seek approval of the Defendant client to provide information about the subject transactions to Plaintiffs’ counsel under confidentiality order. It was agreed to defer setting of class certification, and discovery plan until the next CMC.”
Original Story: One week ago, we learned that Trion Worlds had been acquired by Gamigo with at least 75% of the staff laid off. MMO Fallout has come across a document filed with the San Mateo County Court on October 26 describing that Trion Worlds has disbanded, all of its employees have been terminated, and its directors are gone.
Defendant’s counsel reporter that Trion Worlds has suddenly disbanded this week. All assets and
property were assigned to Trion Worlds (ABC) LLC, and they proceeded to sell the assets and intellectual
property to others, particularly Gamigo, a Germany-based game publisher. All of the employees of Trion
have been terminated effective October 22, 2018, i.e. immediately upon the announcement, and its
directors and officers are gone and the company will be dissolved.
In another case management conference statement filed October 25, Trion’s lawyers noted that they themselves were not aware of the transfer or dissolution until October 18.
Defense counsel first became aware on October 18, 2018 of the transfer of assets of TWI to take place on October 22, 2018 and the corporate dissolution of TWI to follow shortly thereafter. Defense counsel has been actively investigating and assessing since that time the status of TWI-ABC with respect to the claims presented in this action.
Lawyers for the former Trion Worlds have requested a 14 day continuance in order to allow the defense to advise the court and plaintiffs on the impact of the dissolution.
As always, MMO Fallout has made the dockets available via Google Drive at the link below.
Back in May 2017, we reported that Alan Wake would be permanently leaving Steam following a license dispute with Remedy Entertainment. As it turns out, the game had a few pieces of music that were expiring and Remedy was either unable or unwilling to pay up to have said license renewed. The game was put on sale at 90% off and has remained off the store ever since.
Until today, when the title unexpectedly returned. There hasn’t been an official news statement posted, however Remedy Entertainment commented on Twitter to thank Microsoft for renegotiating the rights to the licensed music, allowing the game to return to store shelves.
Big thanks to our partner and Alan Wake’s publishers @Microsoft who were able to renegotiate the rights to the licensed music in Alan Wake, so that the game can be sold again.
If you for some reason did not pick up Alan Wake during its initial 90% off farewell sale, you can get it now for 80% off, or $3 USD (Your local prices may vary). You can also find it on Good Old Games at an 80% discount. Spinoff Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is also 80% off if you’re into that sort of thing. Peter Calloway is directing an Alan Wake TV show.
MMO Fallout 