MMO Fallout

[Community] Blocked & Kicked: Payday Community Targets Customers

Editor’s note: Community is an editorial column where we discuss pressing issues in the gaming community, including outside of the MMO genre. The acknowledgement of events or actions by individuals or developers should not be misinterpreted as our approval of said actions, unless explicitly stated.

If you haven’t been paying attention recently, the Payday community is in a bit of an upheaval following the unveiling of Crimefest, Overkill’s celebration of the Payday series’ fourth anniversary. The celebration is being accompanied by ten days of updates and ten days of free game time for those who have yet to pick the crime shooter up. Overkill launched Crimefest with the Black Market, a system similar to Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike where players receive lock boxes and must pay real money to open them. Inside said lock boxes are weapon skins of varying type and rarity, some offering bonuses that alter gameplay.

Microtransactions are a highly divisive topic in the gaming community, one that has only become more openly hostile as developers continue to include them in genres where they had previously been absent, with games like Tomb Raider, Halo 5, and now Payday 2 going down the route of blind box rewards. Especially egregious in the eyes of the Payday community is the fact that Overkill has not only denied multiple times that microtransactions would ever come to Payday, but shamed those who dared to think otherwise.

You would expect that an exodus of players would follow such an update, and there is certainly no lack of “I quit” threads being posted to the forums, but certain members of the community are taking another approach to showing their contempt for microtransactions: They’re targeting Overkill’s customers. One of the topics you’ll see being discussed on the Payday 2 Steam forums is the topic of how to curb item purchasing among those who will happily buy drills at $2.49 apiece, and the answer is simple: remove them.

Among those dissatisfied with Overkill’s new microtransactions, a number of players have pledged to kick and ignore any players that join their lobbies with skins gained from microtransactions. Evidently if you can’t physically prevent someone from buying items that are available to them, there is always the option to make their ensuing gameplay experience as miserable as possible, thus either forcing them to quit or diminishing their ability to play.

How widespread this sentiment reaches isn’t clear, while you can find a fair number of people in the forums pledging to block anyone with cash shop skins, I did not personally witness anyone removed from public lobbies while playing over the past few days. This is likely to be a very small minority of the active community, and one that most players will never encounter. Regardless, it will be hard for Overkill to ignore the growing discontent in their own community over the update, and the developer has promised to respond to complaints once the ten day event is over.

DarkScape Drops Experimental Update

This week’s DarkScape update is being dubbed “experimental,” in that it introduces a few new features to combat griefing through combat and in summoning shops. First of all, dying in RuneScape with the protect item prayer now results in a cooldown period where the prayer cannot be used. For skulled players (those who have recently attacked someone), the cooldown is five minutes. For non-skulled players, the cooldown is one minute.

Secondly, summoning shops have been reverted back to personal stock. A previous update had made shop inventories shared across all players, resulting in the stock of summoning shards (required for the summoning skill and virtually unobtainable elsewhere) being at or near zero across the game’s servers. The personal stock has also returned for waterskins.

There are more update details in the patch notes at the link below.

(Source: DarkScape)

Neverwinter Introducing New Astral Diamond Sources

Those of you keeping watch on Neverwinter are well aware of the game’s ongoing issues with Astral Diamonds, a main trade currency and target for gold farmers, not to mention a direct line for players to obtain Zen without paying any real money of their own. In the most recent dev post, lead designer Scott Shicoff details upcoming plans to introduce new sources of Astral Diamonds.

Hey everyone, Scott here today with a quick note about Astral Diamond sources. As you know, we recently made a change to increase the AD players earn via queued content. We know that players can’t always participate in that content, so we are looking at more ways to get AD into your hands. These first changes will be coming very soon.

Starting soon, players will be able to complete weekly quests in exchange for Astral Diamonds. It is just the first update to address the situation, and Shicoff assures the community that PWE is monitoring Astral Diamond movement and will use that information to mold further updates.

(Source: Neverwinter)

Grab The Park For $9.99

The Park is Funcom’s first return to single player gaming since Dreamfall: The Longest Journey in 2006. Launching October 26th, The Park is a self-contained story in the universe that players have been exploring in The Secret World. Players take on the role of Lorraine, a mother looking for her lost child, as her story unravels over the course of the game.

Amusement parks are happy places, filled with the joys of childhood and the exhilarating rush of fantastic rides to be dared. That was the vision of eccentric business man Nathaniel Winter when he opened the doors to Atlantic Island Park in 1977. Unfortunately, the park’s history turned out to be one plagued by tragedy and drama. Its freak accidents, grotesque killings and ghostly hauntings have inspired many a sensational headline, and locals worry the park is far from done claiming innocent lives.
For Lorraine, it’s where her worst nightmare began.

The entire experience promises to be short, just an hour or two. Those who pre-order will be able to get their hands on exclusive items for The Secret World, including the Chipmunk Killer costume and a set of talismans.

For those unwilling to throw the money down, MMO Fallout will be covering the game post-launch.

(Source: Steam)

Triad Wars: Grab An Ethereal Blade

Triad Wars has a new Halloween themed challenge available for all players. Log in between now and the 13th and you’ll be able to take part in a new challenge, taking you to a zombified Hong Kong where the Jiang Shi roam the city. Complete three tiers by racking up your kill count of these roaming zombies to receive money, face, and eventually an ethereal blade (pictured above). The challenge is one of four spooky challenges to come to Triad Wars over the coming weeks.

Players can also get their hands on Halloween loot bags containing various loot. This challenge lasts until October 13th.

(Source: Triad Wars)

DarkScape Drops High Alchemy

High alchemy is a spell in RuneScape that transforms items into cash, at the cost of fire and nature runes and with the benefit of being a potentially fast and profitable way of training magic. Incidentally, the spell has also been the root cause of much of RuneScape’s inflation in the past, a problem that the DarkScape team hopes to rectify with today’s update. DarkScape players logged in today to find that high alchemy has been removed from the spell book, although its limited uses still exist on the explorer’s ring.

Jagex has talked recently about how DarkScape’s new economy allows them to make more drastic changes to the game that wouldn’t be possible in RuneScape 3 or Old School. Considering the more hardcore nature of the game, Jagex plans on introducing a variety of extensive changes to fit the existing game around the new structure. Whether or not something will be introduced to replace high alchemy will be seen.

(Source: DarkScape)

Albion Online Introduces Auction Bidding For Housing

Albion Online is ditching its upkeep system in favor of a new way to keep you paying for your plots of land. Initially, plots of land will be considered unclaimed until a player puts down a bounty of silver to take over ownership. After a set amount of days, generally one or two months, the plot of land will come up for auction during which other players can outbid you for your plot. If another player wins the plot, they take over not just the land but the buildings that were erected there by the previous owner.

The good news is, the owner isn’t completely out of luck. For starters, owner bids count as double, so you only need half as much money to fend off competing bidders. Secondly, land owners receive a compensation based on the value of the buildings on their land should they lose the bidding war.

The goal of this new system is to prevent a constant blockade of building plots – and also to give players joining Albion Online later a fair chance at owning a desirable building space. Theoretically, players now can purchase any plot – as long as they are able to outbid the previous owner. With this change, we want to encourage a more fluid market and also bring some additional „economic PvP“ into the game.

(Source: Albion Online)

Star Citizen Threatens Lawsuit Against Escapist Magazine

If you haven’t been paying attention to the ongoing drama surrounding Star Citizen, the public spat between Chris Roberts and Derek Smart has expanded to include a very critical article published, and subsequently backed up by, The Escapist. The article alleged discriminatory practices at CIG against racial minorities, enforced by Roberts’ own wife, that Roberts himself would routinely insult and demean employees, and that the company was “bleeding money and employees.”

Chris Roberts responded to the article by, naturally, blaming Derek Smart, and taking the time to dig up dirt on the article’s author to engage in personal attacks.

I know you say that “none of these come from Derek” but we both know that’s not true. You are quoting the exact same things in your email he has spewed in his blogs and twitter for months. If you want me to give you links to the exact same claims (which are patently UNTRUE) I can but we both know it’s coming from him and the few people he’s rounded up.

Derek Smart’s name, despite having no part in the creation of the Escapist’s article, comes up more than 20 times in Roberts’ response. Roberts also pulls from other unrelated events, including Gamergate, Randi Harper, and Brianna Wu.

In an update posted to the response page, Cloud Imperium Games has made it public that they intend to take legal action against The Escapist, maintaining the claim that the article was a conspiracy between the author and Derek Smart. CIG has demanded a public apology from The Escapist, as well as an apology to their HR department and an investigation into how the article was approved. Otherwise the developer intends to take legal action.

Normally, we would keep this behind closed doors, but we felt it was imperative to put our statement on record and indicate how disgusted we are with The Escapist’s irresponsible actions. Corporate at Defy Media asked us to delay publication of this letter while investigating, but we feel strongly that the record needs to be set straight without further delay.

As noted in the letter, anything expressed should not be construed as a complete statement of the facts.

(Source: Star Citizen)

Jagex Reveals 2016 Update Schedule

Runefest has come and gone, and with it has come the reveal of Jagex’s plans for RuneScape in 2016. Announced at Runefest and posted on the official website, Jagex’s stated goal next year is to make each update significant, and to involve players in the release schedule.

First, we want to change how we update the game, giving you more bang for your buck. Each month there will be a major release – something you can really get your teeth into. To support this, we’ll still have smaller, regular updates, keeping the game ticking over smoothly.

Updates next year include a new God Wars dungeon, a complete redesign to the mining and smithing skills, the conclusion to Sliske’s story line, new Barrows content, and more. Also up for release in 2016 is the NXT client, as announced one year ago, ushering in better performance, faster loading, and farther draw distances, as well as better graphics. More raids, more bosses, and more quests accompany the release of Invention, the first elite skill to be added into RuneScape.

Invention is similar to Dungeoneering in that it will draw from other skills and can be leveled up to 120. 2016 also marks RuneScape’s 15th anniversary, an event that the company hopes to celebrate in a big way.

(Source: RuneScape)

Dragon’s Prophet Shutting Down In November

North American players will no longer have access to Dragon’s Prophet after November 16th, as Daybreak has announced that the service will be coming to an end. While the game will still be available in Europe and Asia, there are no plans to allow players to transfer their characters over to these other publishers. In the announcement, Daybreak thanked the community for their support.

We are extremely grateful to all the Dragon’s Prophet community members and appreciate the support we’ve received from each and every one of you. We plan to make additional seasonal content and items available during the final weeks of the game and hope you enjoy them.

If you look back at the past year or so, the signs of the demise of Dragon’s Prophet are likely written on the walls. Dragon’s Prophet was suspiciously left out of the Daybreak All Access pass, leading many to speculate that Daybreak would ultimately be parting ways with Runewaker.

(Source: Dragon’s Prophet)

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