Our friends over at Missing Worlds Media have unveiled a new video showing off map construction using the new Unreal Engine. It is quite impressive how dramatically a scene can be altered by changing the lighting and leaving models untouched. For more details on the upcoming superhero MMO, check out the City of Titans official website at the link below.
(Source: City of Titans)
Surprise! We’ve known this is coming since Sony Online Entertainment first registered a trademark for H1Z1, but the cat is finally out of the bag. SOE officially announced H1Z1, a zombie sandbox MMO set to release its first public-playable version within the next four to six weeks. The game will see players scavenging stores and building up a defense in a persistent world, fighting both zombies and humans.
It will be our own version of America. We’ll have urban cities and desolate wide open places. All connected seamlessly. Our focus is building a sandbox style of gameplay where players can build shelters out of resources in the world. They can even work together to make amazing fortresses complete with weaponry to help defend against both the Infected and other players.
Check out the long Reddit thread below for the full reveal.
(Source: Reddit)
Superdata Research has once again come around with new insight into the industry. This time, the marketing group has come up with a list showcasing the average revenue per user of the top free to play shooters on the market. The list notes that games like League of Legends have nine players for every person playing Dota2, but that the latter brings in higher revenue per user because of its more core audience. World of Tanks and Team Fortress 2 lead the list by a wide margin.
You can check out more detail on the list and analysis on why it is important at the link below.
(Source: Superdata Research)
John Smedley posted on Twitter earlier today to reveal that an unannounced game is set to be revealed later on this evening, with gameplay footage to show.
Watch http://t.co/OfEekcv325 tmw between 5-6pm PST if you are interested in the new game we haven’t announced. there is gameplay footage.
Smedley later tweeted that players will be able to get their hands on the full game soon™. More to come.
(source: Twitter)
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Jagged Alliance Online, where the Spanish language version is now freely available to all. Spanish speaking players will enjoy fully tailored localization as well as community management and customer service in their language.
Check out MMOrning Shots every Lunes, Miércoles y Viernes.
The great part of having this small website is that I can easily reach out the my viewers and say “hey, this is what is happening.” MMO Fallout started out as a pet project nearly five years ago, and while it hasn’t grown massive in terms of viewership, we’ve managed to carve out a fine niche for ourselves. Five years ago I barely knew how to run a Counter Strike server. As much as it pains my wallet to say, I have learned more from this website than the past four years of college have taught me.
MMO Fallout has also given me a lot of confidence that I did not have before. I can’t describe how it felt three years ago when I introduced myself via email to a rather prominent developer and saw in the response “we know who you are, we are a big fan of your website.” Numerous big name companies consider MMO Fallout to be a legitimate member of the press, so much so that I have received emails for the past couple of years asking if any of my employees would be attending conventions and trade shows, to set up interviews. I have no employees.
I should point out right about here that this isn’t a farewell address and MMO Fallout isn’t going away as far as I am aware. I want to address a few things that have changed recently as well as those coming hopefully on the horizon.
I did get a few people asking who Connor is, in which case shame on you for not reading the contact page. This all started on Twitter with me changing my username back to Connor, which I followed by doing the same here on the main website. This is all a continuation of making MMO Fallout look more professional, a trek which started with moving off of free hosting, setting up our own domain, a more professionally created design, and by revealing my real name and photograph. I feel it’s about time that MMO Fallout started shedding its last vestiges of amateur behavior.
Essentially, I want this website to be something that I could stick on a resume and say “I did this.”
This one has been the most difficult. The biggest problem that I have had working on MMO Fallout is the fact that I am the only one here, meaning that if I don’t do something, it doesn’t get done. It also means that I am my own boss, meaning I have only myself to answer to if schedules aren’t being kept to. I have made several attempts to create regularly scheduled articles, however they either mostly fell through or the traffic that they gathered wasn’t worth the amount of work required. What can I say? I am a softy. As a full time student often involved in multiple production projects at the same time, and one who works, MMO Fallout often finds itself on the backburner.
That being said, I am essentially going back to the drawing board in terms of regularly scheduled content. MMOrning Shots has been well received and while it occasionally does not run, that is more due to the fact that most of the screenshots come from press packets and are reliant on a steady flow. I will also feature more reviews, previews, and MMOments if nothing more than to prove that the segment is for more than simply showing my disappointment toward Defiance’s DLC.
I am going to be doing a lot of experimentation to see what works, what doesn’t, and what is sustainable over a long period of time or even better served as monthly editions.
Not As Massive is one of the columns I started to keep myself from becoming a one trick pony and to prevent the day when I’d suddenly get fed up with writing about MMOs and up and leave. I use the MMO Fallout Tumblr account for the MMO Fallout Book Club where I occasionally review movies, and I still talk about new games every now and then here.
I can guarantee that you will never see talk about MOBAs here at MMO Fallout, unless I end up bringing in a new writer who has any interest in the genre. I don’t, and they are not MMOs in my opinion.
This is something that has been on my mind for a long time. I would love to see MMO Fallout expand and become something bigger than I had ever imagined, but I don’t see that happening for the time being. I have no financial interest in bringing new people on board, in case I haven’t been clear that Google ad banner in the top right brings in about ten cents a month. I haven’t made enough to cover a single one of website’s $5 monthly fee yet.
If I could get people on board just to write news, that would be great, but that involves convincing people to do work for no monetary benefit in the hopes that their experience might be beneficial.
I couldn’t think of a way to end this article, so I will leave you on an obscure “and more to come.” Enjoy a photo of a kitty that stepped on a bee. He is just fine, by the way.
Those of you who follow The Secret World likely already know the story, but last week saw the addition and sudden removal of a mankini outfit from the in-game cash shop as part of the April Fool’s day patch. Not only was the item removed from the game without explanation, it was also removed and a refund applied to those who had already purchased the suit.
Joel Bylos posted on the official forums to explain that miscommunication caused the
To be clear: the Mankini outfit (and the wetsuit) was definitely an April Fool’s joke, and it was always my intention to have them be available for a limited time only in the store. However, it was never my intention to pull them from players who actually bought these items. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication between my team and Funcom management on how this was to be handled. Funcom management feels strongly that the Mankini outfit goes against what The Secret World intellectual property (IP) is all about and they did not want this item to stay in the game permanently.
Bylos assured the community that Funcom is working to ensure that such a situation is not repeated in the future.
(Source: TSW Forums)
Aventurine has revealed details regarding some upcoming changes to the territory control system in Darkfall Unholy Wars, set to change the world as you know it. Set for implementation by the time you read this article, control points will now exert an area of influence, each of whom offer their own set of buffs in gathering, gaining prowess, and looting creatures within its sphere.
Clans that are able to conquer linking territory will be happy to see that these buffs stack when in their area of effect, encouraging clans to go out and take over neighboring keeps. Activity within the region will also generate resources for the clan in the form of an automatic tax.
Check out the patch notes at the official website.
(Source: Aventurine Press Release)
How many times have you read an interview or developer diary and thought “oh boy, not this again?” Given the recent list of games being announced, I am willing to bet several times. If the video game genre is one thing, it is cyclic, and if you pay attention long enough you can almost predict how an MMO will perform based on what was said during development or post-launch. Certain buzzwords pop up and the people in PR are apparently deaf to the groans that they generate, because they keep finding their way into advertising. So to celebrate the industry’s pension for plagiarism, let’s look at the top 5 worst advertising pitches.
I considered not even adding this to the list because the days of designating your game a “WoW killer” are pretty much over. It took several years of MMOs claiming to be the next World of Warcraft and all of them failing spectacularly in the market before the public relations people realized that the phrase is just about cursed. When an MMO says that they expect to beat World of Warcraft, or match its success, you can bet that there is nowhere else this game can go but into the trash.
The WoW killer label is like an indicator of an early death, because there is no path for this game to head down where it will be declared anything other than a disappointment. Forget that the game is profitable on a couple hundred thousand subscribers, the developer has taken a stand of all or nothing in a contest that can not be won. These days you only see the Warcraft comparison in the community, as fewer games are willing to self-brand as the next champion.
What does realistic mean in a setting where you can never die? A world that throws out inconvenient aspects of daily living in favor of fun mechanics? Where you never have to eat or drink, sleep, go to the bathroom, hold a job, pay taxes, deal with physical and mental ailments, stub your foot, can’t climb up a wall or vault over a low fence? Where you can get stabbed a hundred times with a dagger or shot in the face twenty times and be fine because you were carrying a health potion? Where you can jump off of a cliff and survive because there is no fall damage.
In my view, realistic in media is always in the perspective of the universe that it represents, so a developer referring to their game as “realistic” is mostly meaningless unless you have an understanding of the world. More importantly, I can’t wrap my head around why you would want to make real-world comparisons in a universe where there are wizards, magic, and wizards selling magical male enhancement spells. I would even argue that the statement is counter-productive, because we purposely remove aspects of reality out of games for the fact that they’d make a game boring or because they don’t work in consequence free environment.
Just imagine an MMO where you break your leg and your character is permanently incapable of wearing heavy armor, running, carrying a backpack, walking without a limp. Or a game where you suddenly can not fight or run because your character had a genetic defect that only affects one in five hundred thousand and causes late onset asthma. Or a game where you quested in a swamp and found yourself out of the game for a week and a half because your character developed pneumonia and is bedridden.
Realistic isn’t fun.
When I hear sandbox, I immediately think “featureless.” Many of you know, as a gamer, I love sandbox games. What I find with a majority of MMOs that apply the term sandbox is that often it turns out to be an excuse by the developer to say “do it yourself” with the hopes that nobody will take them to task. No friends/foe list? This is a sandbox game, write the names on a piece of paper. No quests? This is a sandbox, make them yourself. Don’t feel like building cities or programming merchant NPCs? Tell the community to build the house themselves and if they want to sell stuff, do it the old fashioned way: Spam on the streets. This is a sandbox MMO, not a carebear hand-holding themepark you casual twit.
Eve Online has shown that the sandbox genre can be insanely profitable, but far too many companies equate player freedom to the developers having no hand in the way the community operates. If you look at how immersed in player interaction and the movements of the world CCP is, you’ll understand why Eve Online succeeded where games like Mortal Online have failed. If you want to think of the term literally, Eve Online’s sandbox is filled with shovels and buckets, where so many other MMO games think they can throw their players in the empty box with barely any sand and assume that they’ll figure it out for themselves. Hell, CCP hires economists to keep track of market activity.
If any of the list of games like Scarlet Blade were intended for the “mature” audiences that the advertisements suggest, I wouldn’t see an army of alleged adults swarming and throwing tantrums like children every time someone brings up how creepy it is to pay real money in a video game for the option to take the clothing off of your MMO character, or the fact that these titles are mediocre-at-best and are really just waifu simulators with a fantasy game attached.
You don’t make a game more mature by adding big boobs, buttcheeks, and sexual innuendo. In fact, if communities like those based around Scarlet Blade are anything to go by, you’d find more maturity in a group of teenage boys ogling a Playboy than you would in these game’s chat channels. Filling the comments section calling everyone prude, a loser, questioning their sexuality, for the simple act of pointing out that the advertising gimmick is tasteless, doesn’t help your case, by the way. To make matters worse, many of these games don’t even have boobs in them! Those Evony clones are the worst offenders, with banner ads that are 90% cleavage yet not a trace of CG boobs to be found in the game. That’s false advertising and I won’t stand for it.
Here’s how you make a mature game: You make a game. Trust me, look into any video game and you will find a pocket of mature gamers who just want to hang out and have a good time, and yes I am including Scarlet Blade in that reference. You don’t make a mature community by writing “mature” on your advertising, much like how my Kia doesn’t become a Porsche just because I wrote “Porsche” on it in sharpie. Make the game and the players will come to you.
I will admit, I revel in this far more than I should, and odds are so do you. How many times have we seen a developer slam free to play as incompatible with their game design, an inferior monetization model, with inferior communities and low prospects for success? Isn’t it all the more satisfying when the game goes free to play and those same people now have to pull a one eighty, with egg on face, and explain why they weren’t really serious and free to play isn’t the death stroke that they said it would be just a year prior?
I wouldn’t even call it taking joy in other’s failure, it is an appreciation for the fine art of tragic comedy, of seeing something with such bravado get struck with ten tons of reality. It is because you know that the more time that a company spends trashing their competition, the higher the likelihood that they simply have nothing good to say about their own product. Not only do they elevate themselves up and make their inevitable fall all the worse, they also stand to crush the community that rallied around their elitism who are the first to head for the door and toward the next up and coming product.
The gaming industry is all about big risks and big payoffs, but it is also one that tends to never forget mistakes, so why anyone would deliberately set themselves up for humiliation is beyond me. The old saying rings true in this case, if you have nothing nice to say, it’s better to just say nothing at all.
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from The Elder Scrolls Online, which I managed to take while the Aldmeri Dominion continues to get stomped in my home world. And despite that, the most frustrating part of this experience is knowing that Elder Scrolls Online saves its screenshots as bitmap files.
Check out MMOrning Shots every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
