MMO Fallout

Unfinished Early Access Game Divergence Online Spawns New Unfinished Early Access Game

Divergence Online is the Early Access game by Ethan Casner, a man whose abilities as a programmer and businessman I showed no faith in three years ago and who still hasn’t managed to disappoint me to this day. Since its launch, the unofficial Star Wars Galaxies 2.0, complete with interface clones, has completely floundered and died in Early Access. When I say that no one plays Divergence, I do so because there are literally zero people being tracked on Steam playing at this exact moment.

Since the prospect of a Star Wars Galaxies reboot has fallen into the forgotten graveyard of Steam Early Access indie titles, Casner has since turned his attention to the other wasteland of unfinished indie games, the open world hardcore zombie sandbox game. Divergence: Year Zero comes to us because Divergence: Online isn’t making enough money to survive and nobody is willing to work on it in exchange for no pay, as we are told:

“Nobody wants to work (for free) on “someone elses sci-fi game”. 100% truth. Oh, there are TONS of people out there willing ot line-up to “get involved with a survival game”, because they have a much better chance of earning those people money, but getting them to work on something that isn’t even made for profit (Divergence: Online) has been virtually impossible. If you can’t get people to help out on principle, then you need to pay them to do the work, and if you can’t pay them, well then you’re fucked aren’t you. Don’t approve? Tough shit, you aren’t the one putting your electric bill on a creditcard are you.”

So Casner found a way to convince a handful of hopeful interns to develop his survival game for free, in order to eventually pull funds to continue work on a game that, as of January this year, was making a whole $100 a week. And if you don’t approve of it, well that’s too bad for you. It’s also too bad for Ethan, whose game is admittedly bringing in less revenue than a part time job at McDonald’s, and whose financial woes are the primary cause for Year Zero being rushed into production.

Divergence: Year Zero (“Year Zero” for short) is a prequel to Divergence: Online and exists at a place in time I’d long planned to explore years from now but we simply do not have the time to wait.

Unluckily for Casner, his habit of meeting criticism with insults coupled with the fact that Divergence already siphoned nearly twenty grand from hopeful Kickstarter backers, has left gamers wary of this new venture.

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Why anyone would give money to this man after all this time after he has failed to deliver time and time again is beyond me. I’ve read some of the forum stuff from him and he seems to never really take responsibility for any of his own actions. I doubt the failing of Divergence Online had to do with it being to Niche, it had to do with his lack of ability to get anything done. What would make one believe this title would be any better than the one he had before? I would suggest just moving on, as he would just blame everyone but himself when it failed to deliver anything of value.

If you already bought into Divergence, you can get a key for Year Zero if you ask, but they’d like you to buy the damn thing please.

So where does this leave people who bought Divergence: Online?
Pretty fucking well off actually, because everyone who bought Divergence: Online is entitled to a free key for Year Zero. Obviously since we’re doing this to make money for the game, we’d like some people to buy the damn thing please, but if you ask for a key through the regular channels, you’ll get one no sales pitch and confidentially.

I will finish this piece with the same words I gave back in 2013:

That said, I don’t believe Divergence Online is a serious game. Not in the sense that I’m implying that the whole thing is on the level of a Stargate Worlds ponzi scheme, or that the guys working on it have any goal other than to make a great game and obviously some money in the process, but that the project is likely to follow in the same line as its predecessor: A series of unfulfilled promises held back by a lack of funding built by people who are better suited for smaller projects. In previous editorials, I’ve pointed out that an MMO is probably the worst genre to pick for your startup game, they take the kind of time, planning, personnel, and most importantly funding that indie studios just don’t have access to.

[NM] Blue Estate Is Everything I Want Out Of On-Rails Shooting

Blue Estate is everything I want out of an on-rails shooter. Thank you, good night.

I suppose I should elaborate. I’ve always been a huge fan of the House of the Dead games, so stumbling upon Blue Estate was like finding the trail to King Tut’s tomb, or Kim Jong Un’s lacy underwear drawer or something of the sort. You know a game is going to be good when reviews on certain mainstream websites are falling over themselves to tell you how offended the reviewer is by the game’s content and desperately trying to peg otherwise positive attributes as negative. I mean, you shoot a guy with your gun and then what? He dies? And it’s on rails? What kind of on-rails shooter is this?

It’s pretty obvious in the jokes and presentation that the folks at He Saw don’t care one iota about the hurt feelings of the internet’s legion of failed journalists turned video game critics, and the developers push that angle at every possible moment. The story is told as an oddly delightful mashup of House of the Dead’s b-movie attitude and Deadpool’s inner monologue as the player character, the narrator, and the subtitles constantly push each other out of the way for attention. It had me laughing pretty hard at quite a few moments.

The story is told from two points of view, with Italian mobster Tony Luciano looking to rescue his girlfriend while ex-Navy Seal turned mercenary Clarence follows in his path and cleans up the messes he leaves behind. Their stories will take both characters to all sorts of goofy locations, from sewers to a wedding, a chicken factory that also serves as a battle arena, and a foggy graveyard to boot. Both characters have their personal flaws, Tony’s hair keeps getting in the way and Clarence stepped in Chihuahua pheromones and finds his leg the target for every horny Chihuahua in the tri-state area.

The whole game is narrated by the nasally voiced Roy Devine Jr., a man who is prone to go on nerdy tangents and regularly is cut off and muted by the apologetic FPS Authority text box. The actors all do a great job of sticking to their script, rarely breaking character and giving an authenticity that everyone in the game is right out of a Frank Miller drama. How seriously should you take this game? The first boss is a Kim Jong Un caricature with a not so secret fetish for wearing women’s underwear. He’s also a ninja because Korea or something and he happens to be friends with Dennis Rodman. Are you getting the satire now?

As an on-rails shooter, I enjoyed the fact that characters seem to have more versatility than your average game in the genre. You have your standard shoot, reload, etc. In House of the Dead, for instance, characters tend to stick to a rail of walking around on level ground and shooting. In Blue Estate, you’ll find yourself hanging upside down, sliding down rivers and mudslides, falling, hanging from rafters, and shooting bad (worse?) guys while your character does all sorts of slow motion acrobatics. The movement is all handled automatically, but it puts on a good show for the viewer and lets the developers do some stuff they wouldn’t normally be able to get away with in a standard shooter.

One area where Blue Estate hangs is in the gun department. Each level effectively provides the player’s pistol plus one limited-ammo weapon that is found along the way, usually an automatic machine gun or rifle. While a nice change, the pistol you are equipped with comes with unlimited ammunition and can already pop most enemies with one shot to the head, making the second gun more of a liability than a treat to be used wisely. There are a couple of guns that are actual detriments, a shotgun and a powerful hand cannon that hit more than their target and can kill a head shot streak and lower your score.

Blue Estate was a light gun game built with the Leap Motion in mind, a motion controller that you stick your hand in front of and use to control the game. From my understanding, Blue Estate works quite well with this controller, using your hand to swipe, aim, and shoot. I don’t own one of these, so I wound up substituting the control with my mouse and likely giving myself an unfair advantage. Enemies in the game operate as though you’re working on either a controller or motion controls, think first person shooters on mobile level of delay before they actually hit you, so if you’re going to play with a mouse I recommend cranking the difficulty up to give yourself a challenge.

Overall, Blue Estate is a nice return to the Grindhouse shooters that we haven’t really seen since House of the Dead: Overkill in 2009. It brings to the table ridiculous enemies, grossly over-the-top stereotypes, scantily clad women in varying degrees of undress, and a story that is very on the nose and throws all forms of subtlety out the window. Clocking in at about 3 or 4 hours for the main story, Blue Estate also includes an arcade mode to rack up points and get that much desired high score and achievements.

Fans of House of the Dead should lap this game right up. You can get it for $5 as part of the latest Bundle Stars package or for $12.99 on Steam. Alternately, console users can grab a copy on PS4 and Xbox One.

Final Score: A.

RuneScape: Embrace What You Know, Forget What You Don’t

There is more to the world, and Jagex is asking its players to embrace what they know and forget what they don’t with the unveiling of the Eastern Lands, a massive update coming to the long standing MMO. Players already have access to the islands at the western edge of the Eastern lands, and have been working for the past few weeks building a reputation in a land where no one knows their deeds. More zones will become available as players discover them.

The addition of the Eastern Lands was a key player-driven content decision; voted on by over 100,000 RuneScape players. Every year, RuneScape players are given the power to decide which content concepts are taken forward and realised in-game. The decisions made by the player collective can see characters die and geography reshaped as player-driven consequences alter RuneScape’s future.

RuneScape is currently at the tail end month of its Summer of Adventure.

(Source: Jagex press release)

Lineage II Releases Player Appreciate Pack

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NCSoft wants to show players how much it appreciates them, and probably apologize for the fact that character registration has been completely disabled while the team goes in and figures out how to deal with the overwhelming number of bots taking over the game. While registration is down until August 24th, players have been invited to redeem a player appreciation pack, containing a myriad of items and boosts.

The appreciation pack can be redeemed in game until September 16th and can be claimed once per account.

(Source: NCSoft)

Wild Terra Now Playable In Browsers

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Developer Juvty Worlds has announced that their open world sandbox game Wild Terra is now playable in your browser. Anyone who owns the game can log in to one of the game’s two servers (international and Russian), and start playing without having to download the full client. For those who haven’t purchased the game, they can do so at a reduced price as the game is presently on sale.

(Source: Juvty Worlds Press Release)

DigiHom Update: Some Clarification

To our readers,

Last week, MMO Fallout published a piece titled “DigiHom Update: Tons of Games Disappear From Greenlight.” Since its publishing, we have received word from Digital Homicide over several inaccurate statements in the article. According to these statements, the games we noted that were removed from Greenlight were voluntarily removed and not by Valve as we originally surmised. The issue of Digital Homicide’s games being tagged incompatible was revealed to be due to a bug in the Steam API. The games themselves were indeed listed as incompatible on June 3rd, a decision that was reversed on June 6th.

Finally, we’d like to clarify that the lawsuit against James Stanton (Jim Sterling) was filed by James Romine himself, and does not involve Digital Homicide as an organization.

As a publication that strives for accuracy in our coverage, MMO Fallout strongly apologizes for the errors. This is meant to cover all instances where the above statements were made.

Thank you for your patience, and now back to your regularly scheduled programming,
Connor
MMO Fallout

[Video] Storm King’s Thunder Launch Trailer

Today, Perfect World Entertainment Inc., a leading publisher of free-to-play MMORPGs, and Cryptic Studios announced Neverwinter: Storm King’s Thunder is now available on PC and will launch on Xbox One and PlayStation®4 at a later date. This update marks the tenth official expansion for the free-to-play Dungeons & Dragons MMORPG. Based on a new adventure from Wizards of the Coast, Storm King’s Thundersees adventurers face off against invading giants, while braving their way through three new adventure zones and a challenging new dungeon.

Frost giants have forced their way into Icewind Dale, creating a call-to-arms forNeverwinter’s strongest to defend the land from these gargantuan invaders. Adventurers will travel to Bryn Shander, the largest settlement within the Ten Towns, to save the townsfolk from attack. To defeat the frost giants, players will need to enlist the help of classic Dungeons & Dragons characters as they explore different regions. This includes heroes like Catti-brie, Wulfgar and Harshnag. Once the battle has been won, they will continue on to Lonelywood and Cold Run, until they eventually reach Fangbreaker Island, a remote isle in the treacherous Sea of Moving Ice.

A full list of gameplay updates available with the release of Storm King’s Thunderincludes:

New Campaign – The new end-game campaign for Storm King’s Thunder is broken down into three parts, each unlocking a new adventure zone. When all three zones are cleared, players will have access to the dungeon on Fangbreaker Island.
Three New Adventure Zones
- Bryn Shander – Adventurers must visit this remote settlement in Icewind Dale to save its inhabitants from attackers.
- Lonelywood – After clearing Bryn Shander, players will move on to the town of Lonelywood, where they will fight off trolls and other beasts.
- Cold Run – The last adventure zone is the frigid coastline of Cold Run, where adventurers will come face to face with the mighty frost giants.
New Tier 3 Dungeon – Adventurers will need to complete the new Storm King’s Thunder campaign and equip their characters with high-level gear in order to access Fangbreaker Island, the most difficult five-player dungeon in the game.
Class Balance Adjustments – In an ongoing effort to maintain balance for Neverwinter, we’ve made major adjustment to three classes, the Hunter Ranger, Scourge Warlock and Guardian Fighter.
New Bosses and Enemies – Besides defending the land from Frost Giants, players will fight off swarms of arctic beasts, as well as three new bosses who rule over Fangbreaker Island.

NCSoft: All Key IPs Showed Stable Sales Last Quarter

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NCSoft has released their second quarter results and the news is good, even for those of you who play Wildstar. The Korean developer published a 28% boost in operating profit over last year with a 27% bump in pre-tax income and a 56% increase in net income. US and EU shares of NCSofts revenues plummeted, shedding a third of its value while Japan grew slightly as did Taiwan. According to NCSoft’s reports, while Blade & Soul grew heavily year over year thanks to its launch in the west, recent performance has seen a drop in royalties coming from the Chinese division.

On the game’s front, Lineage continues to sell more than virtually every other game in NCSoft’s library combined, with Aion and Guild Wars 2 taking a hit. Guild Wars 2, you can see, is suffering heavily from a content drought and subsequently saw its revenues fall flat over the past quarter. Based on the success of Heart of Thorns, it makes sense for Arenanet to adopt a strategy similar to World of Warcraft, living off of gem and microtransaction sales with small updates filling the gap between large, probably as-close-to-annual-as-they-can-get big expansion releases. The goal, according to NCSoft, is to decrease the amount of time between expansion releases to keep momentum up, however no further details have been discussed.

Aion, meanwhile, is performing fine. It may seem like a bad hit from the outside, but NCSoft has stated its expectations put the game within the 17 to 20 billion Won range, the game merely performed on the lower end of expectations. No one in the NCSoft offices is running around with their hair on fire over this news, however the game does have a major update coming that they expect will bring in increased revenue in the fourth quarter.

Wildstar, meanwhile, grew thanks to a launch on Steam introducing the free to play MMO to thousands of new eyes. Peak players fell off after the first month with a peak of 2,700 in July compared to 5,200 in June. Wildstar’s long term performance following its free to play revival and Steam launch will have to be observed, but it would be bad business for anyone at NCSoft to anticipate sales higher than 3 billion Won ($2.7 million USD) per quarter. Now that the team has a more realistic idea on where the game’s cash ceiling is, they can budget appropriately and NCSoft can figure out where they want to go with the IP.

Nexon’s upcoming list of releases includes Lineage Eternal as well as numerous mobile games including several based off of the Lineage franchise, increasing marketing costs and naturally boosting revenues. When asked about the release of Lineage Eternal, NCSoft’s response was…some information. According to the investor call, development is on schedule however there isn’t any concrete information on the closed beta. The team believes that the most effective timing would be around the holiday break period, so Korean gamers should mark their calendars for late November. The game is presently in the polishing stage.

Blade & Soul Mobile did not perform as well as anticipated.

Incidentally, NCSoft completely glossed over Wildstar in discussing each game’s performance in the investor call, lumping it in with the “other” category. Make of that what you will. Lineage Revolution is expected to have a November launch.

(Source: NCSoft, NCSoft investor call)

DigiHom Update: Tons of Games Disappear From Greenlight

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[Update: Several errors have been fixed or clarified in bold below. MMO Fallout apologizes for the inconvenience]

Digital Homicide’s James Romine may be throwing a temper tantrum right now, and for good reason: Close to two dozen of his games have been removed from Steam.

We’ve been covering Digital Homicide filling its Greenlight queue up with spam filler ever since the developer uploaded dozens of titles back in June, a majority of them simple Space Invaders games and clones of one another. Last month I noted that Valve’s Greenlight team seems to be unsure as to whether or not DigiHom’s games qualify for Steam, with the titles being tagged incompatible on and off on a nearly daily basis. James Romine has commented that this is actually due to modifications made to Steam’s API resulting in numerous games being falsely tagged and untagged.

It appears we have our answer. Digital Homicide’s list of Greenlight items now stands at 27 from its high at 50. Of the 27 that remain, four have been greenlit and already released. All of Digital Homicide’s games (19 at the time of this publishing) carry a negative, “mostly negative,” or “very negative,” approval rating.

For continuing updates on the lawsuit against James Stanton (Jim Sterling), stay tuned.

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Nexon Q2 Quarterly Revenues Hit “Strong,”

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Nexon, developer of everything and publisher of everything else, has finally announced their second quarter results for the 2016 fiscal year, referencing their performance as “strong” despite lower than expected revenue.

Second quarter revenues reached 38 billion yen, down 11% over last year with net income amounting to 7.6 billion yen over the same period. Nexon blamed the majority of the loss on foreign exchange losses from money deposited overseas. Despite these losses, Nexon grew slightly in revenue over the first half of 2016 compared to the first half of 2015, however income has taken a huge hit due to impairment loss taken in the first quarter.

For the unaware, impairment loss refers to a product whose future earnings are lower than the cost of acquisition. In this case, Nexon purchased mobile developer Gloop a few years back and the developer isn’t making money.

“Our solid second quarter results reflect strong execution and good performance from our China business,” said Owen Mahoney, President and Chief Executive Officer of Nexon. “I am also pleased with the important strategic progress we made during the quarter, including our partnership with renowned Japanese developer Sansho Studios and our acquisition of wellgames, the Korean developer of SPECIAL SOLDIER, a high-quality first person shooter for mobile devices. Our best-in-class roster of partnerships remains a cornerstone of our strategy to deliver high-quality, tailored content to players around the world.”

Nexon has a number of games in its publishing pipeline for this year and next, including Riders of Icarus, Lawbreakers, Titanfall, Final Fantasy XI Mobile, Lego Mobile, and more.

(Source: Nexon)

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