MMO Fallout

Lego Minifigures Online Relaunching As Buy To Play

Lego Minifigures Online will be relaunching as a buy to play game, after a reveal by Funcom that the free to play aspect had a “detrimental effect on gameplay and kids’ enjoyment of the game.” The news comes alongside the announcement that Lego will see a launch on PC, iOS, Android, Mac, and Linux.

During an initial run as a free-to-play game on the PC, Funcom has been gathering valuable player feedback and have been able to review in detail how various components of the game’s content, gameplay and business model have played out.

Anyone who has previously purchased something in Lego Minifigures Online will be upgraded to the full version once it goes buy to play, with refunds offered where requested. Players who haven’t spent anything will need to buy the game to continue playing.

(Source: Lego Minifigures)

Neverwinter Welcomes 1.6 Million On Xbox One

Perfect World Entertainment has revealed that more than 1.6 million people have played Neverwinter on the Xbox One. Since its launch over a month ago, more than 1.6 million players have created 2.3 million avatars of which 92 thousand have reached the level cap. You can see the important figures in a handy infographic released alongside the announcement.

In order to celebrate further, we’ve granted the first 60 players to reach level 60 and the nine players to reach level 60 in the Beta a unique Volcanic Galeb Duhr companion to commend their status as a Neverwinter Champion. Check your Xbox messages for one from NW Community, which will congratulate you on your success.

Players can retrieve their special companions by talking to rewards claim agent in Protector’s Enclave.

(Source: Arc Games)

Wildstar 17 Hour Extended Maintenance And Something Extra

Wildstar will be undergoing a 17 hour maintenance today (5/13), during which time game authorization, account management, forums, and customer support will be unavailable. The game will still be available, however authorization will be offline.

Thank you for your patience during this downtime and we’re very sorry for the inconvenience. We will work very hard to bring the game up as soon as possible. There may be even a little something extra to follow!

What extra something? Stay tuned to find out. Maintenance begins in one hour from this publishing (3am EST).

(Source: Wildstar)

Discussing Business Models Now Banned on Wildstar Subreddit

With NCSoft’s latest quarterly report coming up, speculation is rising once again on the possibility of Wildstar either going free to play or buy to play. The Wildstar subreddit, which we should point out is run by fans and not NCSoft, is getting ahead of the game by banning any discussion of f2p/b2p until hard evidence or an official announcement can be procured.

Unless a Carbine Employee, or Moderator here announces any business model changes to WildStar, there is no longer a reason to continue trying to post such discussions, as they are creating a lot of unrest in the community.

NCSoft’s next quarterly release should be coming out this week, hopefully alongside some news on Wildstar’s future. Wildstar’s earnings in the last quarter of 2014 were about $5 million, a sharp 65% drop quarter over quarter.

(Source: Reddit)

[Community] Do You Take Part In Month-Long Events?

RuneScape is eleven days into its May roadtrip, and the hardcore among you are no doubt already finished and reaping the benefits. As has become a tradition, the month of May means the RuneScape Road Trip. Players are given a booklet with a set of 20 tasks that can be completed once per day, with the option to gather chits from employee events to skip an extra task once per day. Since today is the eleventh, it is possible that people are already done with the event.

Long term events have always been a point of contention among MMO players, between those on the casual side that may be unable to log in more than a couple days a week, and the content locusts who will quickly gobble up a month’s worth of content in a couple of days, including their four alt accounts. Jagex generally makes attempts on longer-term content by including methods to accommodate both groups.

How do you feel about long-term events in gaming? Let us know in the comments below.

Australia To See 10% Price Hike On Steam

A 10% price hike on Steam games sold in Australia is all but confirmed, as reported by PC Gamer. As some outlets have been covering, the 2015 Australian budget will include a tax on intangible imported goods, the goal being to apply the GST (Goods and Services Tax) that had not been collected due to the law being written before such goods had become a major market.

When the new prices go into effect is presently unknown.

(Source: PC Gamer)

Zynga Recovering With Higher Than Expected Earnings

Zynga’s stock has recovered most of its value following the announcement that CEO Don Mattrick would step down with Mark Pincus taking his place. Zynga’s stock fell heavily with Pincus’ return, down to a low of $2.38 from its $2.90.

Investors are responding well to Zynga’s latest quarterly results, in which the company announced severe downsizing. As part of proposed cuts, Zynga will shut down its $100 million dollar data centers and switch over to Amazon. In addition, the company will lay off 364 employees, nearly 20% of its workforce,

We need to be more resourceful in how we manage our costs in order to fund our investments in new games, people and data and analytics. We’ve overburdened our game teams with complexity and centralized expenditure.

The cuts are expected to save $100 million annually.

For the first quarter of 2015, Zynga’s daily active users remained flat (25 million) while monthly active users fell (100 from 108 million) and monthly unique users grew (73 million from 71 million). Revenue fell further, however earnings were higher than expected.

(Source: Zynga)

Tomorrow’s PSN Downtime Was Exaggerated

You may have read that on tomorrow, May 11th, the Playstation Network will be down for nearly ten hours for maintenance. The Playstation network status page originally had Monday’s maintenance scheduled to begin at 10:30pm EST on May 11th and run until 8am EST on May 12th.

Well that isn’t happening anymore. The new maintenance begins 9pm Pacific (midnight EST) on May 11th and ends two hours later.

(Source: Playstation Network)

Hacking Down 90% In H1Z1, Says Smedley

Daybreak Game Company has quite a history of cracking down hard on cheaters, and in a recent Reddit post John Smedley has claimed that hacking in H1Z1 is down 90% compared to last month.

The honest reality is that we’ve knocked hacking down to about 10% of what it was a month ago. We’re still working on no-clip cheaters. We’ve got a good system to track them, but we’re working on actually preventing it. Not a simple problem. Aimbotters are tough, but we’ve made great progress against them too.

Daybreak Game Company has been ruthless in its hunt of cheaters in both Planetside 2 and H1Z1, both in the effectiveness of its anti-cheat (see previous link) and the company’s habit of publicly shaming cheaters via Twitter.

(Source: Reddit)

Old School RS Polls Duel Arena Changes

Old School RuneScape is gearing up for its 33rd content poll, asking for player approval on changes to the duel arena, among other things. The major parts of the upcoming poll involve duel arena updates, a world switcher, clue scrolls, grand exchange slots, and more.

You can head over to the dev blog to see the entire list. The content poll may undergo some changes before it goes live, based on player feedback.

(Source: Old School)

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