We have to assume that there is someone still left that is waiting for Phantasy Star Online 2 to come westward, that hasn’t already set up an account and started playing with an English patch on the Japanese servers, but that person may find their hopes dashed. Phantasy Star Online 2, now a five year old title, has seen its first sunset announcement. Revealed on the official website, the Southeast Asia servers will be coming down on May 26.
The announcement is below:
The Phantasy Star Online 2 team would like to express our thanks for the steadfast support of the whole ARKS Fleet. In the past two years, together, we formed a PSO2 community built on friendships that can withstand the test of time. That is why it saddens us greatly our contract in servicing SEA countries for Phantasy Star Online 2 will not be continued. As our friends and partners, we would like you to have only the finest experience with us.
Keeping your best interest in mind, the Phantasy Star Online 2 team and SEGA would like to announce that Phantasy Star Online 2 will end its service on 26 May2017 11:00 PM (GMT+8).
As compensation, all accounts will be given 60 days of premium time and free AC/gold scratch every week until the servers shut down. Also worth noting is that players will no longer be able to submit customer support tickets after the server shutdown, so get your bug reports in now.
Things are looking up for Jagex, as the UK developer announced that revenues hit double digit growth for the second year. In a press release sent out today, Jagex unveiled their 2016 annual revenues, announcing a 28% increase to £74.4 million. Growth was driven due to the release of NXT, a new game client for RuneScape 3, while Old School RuneScape similarly saw major growth partially due to the eSports aspect of the annual Deadman tournament.
Acting CEO Phil Mansell had the following to say:
“2016 saw RuneScape celebrate its 15th anniversary and we placed a razor focus on evolving and growing both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape. Through investment in big ticket content, technology, marketing and strengthening the relationship we enjoy with millions of players that form our deeply-engaged community, the team delivered landmark performance by growing active users, conversion rates and subscribers.”
Blizzard has emerged victorious in its lawsuit against Bossland, a cheat maker based in Germany. The court ruled that Bossland is to pay $8.6 million in damages, with the potential for more to cover Blizzard’s legal costs, and set forward an injunction preventing the company from selling their products in the United States. Bossland has already been prevented from selling their cheats in the UK.
“The Bossland hacks destroy the integrity of the Blizzard games, thereby alienating and frustrating legitimate players and diverting revenue from Blizzard to defendants,”
During the court case, Blizzard successfully argued that Bossland bypassed Blizzard’s anti-cheat tech, thus violating DMCA rules against circumvention and reverse engineering. Blizzard’s case, while requesting a large sum, was likely an easy win as while Bossland did attempt to have the case dismissed, they didn’t actually show up in court to defend themselves.
Duke Nukem 20th Anniversary Edition is the latest re-release of the popular 1996 first person shooter, released by Gearbox Software with a new episode, audio commentary, and a new weapon. If you consider that the game peaked at a whole 320 users on Steam (estimated 15,000 owners total) and immediately plummeted down to just a few dozen in the following month, plus the estimated 140,000 copies sold between the Xbox and Playstation, it’s hard to imagine that Gearbox saw much of a return on their work.
But in considering that the 20th Anniversary Edition replaced the Megaton Edition, making it impossible to buy, and how just about every Duke Nukem related product since Gearbox took over the license (Forever, removing Megaton, pre-order DLC on Bulletstorm) seems to be met with disappointment, I had to have an answer to the question that has plagued me since the game’s launch: Would Gearbox put in the most basic of support and fix the game’s end boss?
The answer is no: They haven’t.
The 20th Anniversary edition of Duke Nukem 3D has numerous issues, but the one that stood out from the rest during my play time was the boss encounter in the new episode. The final boss of the game is the Cycloid Incinerator, who makes use of flamethrowers, spawns firefly troopers, and can shoot napalm that remains on the floor and causes environmental hazards. He’s also completely broken, as the boss is not just only capable of very close to low-distance combat, but he stands still and fires his weapon every time the player shoots him with something.
For all but the least competent or most daring of gamers, you are guaranteed to win the fight without ever taking a single hit. The game also doesn’t play to the boss’ strengths by placing you in a small confined space, but rather gives an open field to fight on, a reminder that this fight is equally poor game design as it is substandard programming. You can run a whole lot faster than the Cycloid boss can, and since he’ll willingly stand still from a hundred feet away and uselessly fire his flamethrower at you, there isn’t any danger at all in the fight. In fact, he’s more of a danger to the flying pig cops who fly into his line of fire and are, in turn, more of an actual threat to the player.
But don’t take my word for it, check out the clip below.
Gearbox has had the Duke Nukem license for seven years, during which they’ve managed to release Duke Nukem Forever, the work on which was mostly completed by 3D Realms, and Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary Edition, a re-release of a game with most of the work done by 3D Realms. The company confirmed in 2015 that a new Duke Nukem title was in development, noting that it was in early concept and may not ever see release.
The Cycloid Incinerator is a direct model rip of the Cycloid Emperor, a color-swapped, lazily programmed, barely functioning recreation of an entity that was mostly the work of 3D Realms, that appears to have been rushed to market with no intent on fixing down the line. In a way, he nearly perfectly represents Gearbox’s handling of the Duke Nukem IP. Perhaps Gearbox should hire this guy, who evidently managed to code a better functioning boss than Duke’s own veteran programmers.
Akaneiro is alive, and appears to have someone back at the helm. Way back in September, I wrote about how Spicy Horse Games had shut down, that its customer support had closed, and that American McGee had left his game to rot. The servers had slowly become unstable to the point where they were no longer functioning, with no response from the person/people allegedly in charge of keeping the service running.
Well it looks like the server is not just back up and running, there is still someone left at Spicy Horse. Literally the last employee left at Spicy Horse has begun posting on the forums, noting that the servers were reverted back to their previous state and that more bug fixes are coming.
I’ve been able to restore server to it’s original state (before migration to new hosting). Everything related to steam is up and running. I also have full sources for game client so eventually I’ll release update to fix some annoying client bugs.
The employee is inviting players to report bugs and any questions at the link below.
Neverwinter has declared that it’s about time to take 20% off there, Squirrly Dan. Beginning today and running through Monday, April 3, Neverwinter players will be able to get their hands on a number of items for 20% off. The sale, already in motion, ends at 7:30am PST or after maintenance on PC and at 10am on consoles. For the list of items on sale, read below:
Bungie has released the worldwide reveal trailer for Destiny 2, laying down the plot and setting the stage for the sequel to one of the most played games on consoles. Set to launch on consoles and PC this September 8, players will get a glimpse of gameplay at that world premiere on May 18. For plot synopsis, check out the paragraph below.
“In Destiny 2, the last safe city on Earth has fallen and lay in ruins, occupied by a powerful new enemy and his elite army, the Red Legion. Every player creates their own character called a Guardian, humanity’s chosen protectors. As a Guardian in Destiny 2, players must master new abilities and weapons to reunite the city’s forces, stand together and fight back to reclaim their home. The official Destiny 2 reveal trailer, Rally the Troops, shows two of the Vanguard, leaders of the Guardians, inspiring the people of the last city in an impassioned (and occasionally sarcastic) call to arms. In Destiny 2, players will answer this call, embarking on a fresh story filled with new destinations around our solar system to explore, and an expansive amount of activities to discover. There is something for almost every type of gamer in Destiny 2, including gameplay for solo, cooperative and competitive players set within a vast, evolving and exciting universe.”
Grinding Gear Games may have been the latest victim of internet shenanigans, as Grinding Gear Games has announced that it is investigating a potential breach of the servers from March 13 to 23. The developer is unaware of any potential information theft, however has assured users that not only is payment information not stored on site, that passwords are salted and hashed, and therefore would take a long time for any hacker to crack. GGG still recommends changing your password if you’re one of the many people who use the same password to get into Path of Exile as you do for your luggage, “12345.”
We do not store any payment information like credit card numbers. It is stored at the external payment processors we use. There is no way that credit card information could have been accessed.
The information that may have been taken includes email addresses, salted and hashed passwords, recent IP addresses used to access the game and website, as well as a physical address if the person had physical goods mailed to them. As of right now, users are not being forced to change their passwords.
Last month during an investor call, Funcom announced a relaunch of The Secret World, to take place in the first half of the year, with the goal of revamping combat, enhancing the new user experience, and overall making the game more appealing to a wider audience. While The Secret World is fortunate enough to carry a very loyal fanbase, the game never exactly performed to Funcom’s standards and has been criticized for floaty combat, among other issues.
Secret World Legends appears to have dropped the “MMO” part of the equation and is instead billing itself as a shared world RPG. What this means for players and how they interact in the world is yet to be seen, however The Secret World as an MMO has always been on the smaller side. You generally don’t see more than a few people walking around at any given time and perhaps a dozen or so at most in hub areas, so we’ll have to see exactly how this change in branding affects the gameplay.
Funcom is excited to announce that their acclaimed story-driven game The Secret World will be relaunched this spring as Secret World Legends, a shared-world action RPG with completely revamped combat, a newly designed progression system, and updated visuals. The game’s full collection of missions and mysteries will be free to play, with over 100 hours of mature storytelling and surprises.
To the dismay of veteran players who have put hundreds, if not thousands of hours into their characters, this is what we know: This is not an update of The Secret World with a new name and brand, but a completely new spinoff (a relaunch of the content with new mechanics, if you will). While the old version of The Secret World will still be available to play and you can link your account to gain benefits in Legends, your characters will not transfer over.
They’ll continue to live on the old TSW servers, so you’ll still be able to log in and play them. You will not be able to play them on the new Secret World Legends server though. It’s a new experience and fresh start for everyone.
At launch, Secret World Legends will contain the original eight zones, with expansions from Tokyo, Nightmare Dungeons, Raids, etc coming at a later date. While all content will be available for free, you’ll be able to buy Aurum as a premium currency to give yourself extra bonuses:
Aurum is used to purchase a variety of in-game items and services in Secret World Legends. This includes but is not limited to: additional weapon pages, extra inventory space, additional characters, exclusive vanity items, and much more!
While Funcom has promised that your characters on The Secret World are safe, early concerns about plans to quietly sunset the title are quickly popping up. The Secret World is no longer available for purchase on Steam, coinciding with the Steam forums being completely wiped.
