Brad McQuaid is working on an MMO, the secret kind of MMO. The Kickstarter for McQuaid Online is on its way, but for now the man himself has posted a teaser picture on Twitter.
(Source: Brad McQuaid)
MMOrning Shots: Live Together, Die Together
I recently started playing through Path of Exile with a group of friends, rather than going it solo. There is an organized chaos to playing Path of Exile with a party that usually ends up with people shouting “where did you go” and a long list of expletives if someone picks up an item that they don’t need that you do. Then again, that may just be how we talk to each other.
Neverwinter Permanently Drops Prices
Over at Neverwinter, prices are falling faster than snowflakes on something that repels snowflakes, I am not very good with analogies. What I can tell you is that companions are currently on sale for 60% off until December 30th, after which the deal will be almost as sweet. When the sale does end on Monday, prices will be permanently reduced by up to 47%. Reductions depend on the rarity level of the companion, but range from 29% off to 47% off for the rarest and most common respectively.
Companions will be priced between 800 and 2500 zen, which can still be obtained in-game by trading astral diamonds, following the update on December 30th.
(Source: Neverwinter)
Is Relic Localizing Phantasy Star Online 2?
Earlier this year, gamers were dismayed to hear that Phantasy Star Online 2 would likely not be making it to the west, despite the game being fully translated into English for certain Asian regions. The news wasn’t a definite no, but allegedly Sega doubts the game’s ability to gain traction in Europe and the Americas. Luckily, that may not be the case. At the beginning of the year, Relic Entertainment was sold to Sega as part of THQ’s bankruptcy. A job listing has popped up on Relic’s website for a programmer/engineer to work on a live MMO from Japan.
Among the list of duties and requirements are:
- Ramp up and perform due diligence on an existing live MMO project in development in Japan, embedded with the live team
- 5+ years’ engineering experience from PC client/server based MMO development
It could be Phantasy Star Online 2, or it could be some other property.
(Source: Relic Careers)
RuneScape: 2014 Power To The Players
Jagex has declared 2014 to be the year of player-developer collaboration, not unlike every other year that the developer has promised to listen to its community better. How do you accomplish this? Through things. Foremost, Jagex plans on implementing an in-game poll system to allow better opportunity for players to vote on upcoming content.
In mid-January, we’re going to launch a new in-game poll system, which will give members at least one new content poll to vote on each week. In total, there will be up to seven guaranteed content polls each month, covering a range of topics including quests, minigames, combat updates, skills, bosses, reworks, core gameplay changes and much more besides.
How else? More polls! The announcement does detail plans to add in more quests, high level content, and a continued effort to remove RuneScape’s niggling problems. The first poll launches January 13th.
(Source: RuneScape)
Mark Kern Responds To Departure From Red 5
Recently we learned via a leaked email from Red 5 Studios that Mark Kern had been voted out by fellow board members. In a blog post on MMORPG.com, Kern gave his well wishes to those remaining at Red 5. As for his alleged termination, don’t believe everything you hear. Kern refers to his leadership at Red 5 as his Kobayashi Maru test, going on to use multiple film references to convey a rather vague point.
For the past twelve months, I was presented with a Kobayashi Maru test. When that occurs, the Captain must always find his own solution. While there have been rumors about whether I was demoted, terminated or maybe even corporately executed, I will only say this: remember that Han always shot first. It does not matter if the person revising history is George Lucas himself, because Greedo never shot first (sorry George).
As internal office politics often go, we may never know what really happened at Red 5 Studios apart from some anonymous employee comments.
(Source: MMORPG.com)
Special Nods Of The Year: 2013 Edition
2013 is on its way out the door, and I figured why not jump on the train and talk about some of the year’s notable MMOs? Those of you who have read my previous year roundups know that I’m not a huge fan of “best of” awards, and rather than assume that any developers would put much stock into my opinion, I decided to go ahead with pointing out some of this year’s highlights. This is not an awards show.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I dropped Planetside 2 like a sack of hammers barely a month after the game launched. I loved the original Planetside and Planetside 2 is quickly becoming the game that wasn’t possible on a technical level back in 2003 when Planetside launched. There are a few disagreements over how Sony monetized the game and how it is a massive shooter rather than an RPG, but I feel that the team has done a lot in listening to player feedback since launch, especially with the addition of the lattice system. I just couldn’t play it, the game wasn’t optimized properly and would not run on my system on the lowest settings.
I talk a lot about how easy it is for a game to lose players simply because it falls out of their habitual cycle, and that is exactly what happened to me. Eventually I uninstalled Planetside 2 to make space and haven’t come back to it until this month. Let me just say that the difference is day and night in performance, if you quit for similar reasons. Planetside 2 is a very fun game, especially now that the lattice system has congregated players and given the game some organization and flow. I managed to boost up my video settings and get into a massive battle without a single hitch in the frame rate. If I had such an award, I would give Planetside 2 the Most Improved for 2013. But I don’t have such an award, so ignore that statement.
Path of Exile offers the entire game for free in the least offensive, yet still commercially viable, method possible. Everything in the cash shop is cosmetic, minus character and bank slots, and you can’t pay to progress because there is no method available. No grinding for Turbine points to technically play for free, no dealing with timers or lockouts unless you pay a fee, no experience boosts, no nothing. It’s incredible, and not at all surprising, that Path of Exile is regularly targeted by the same group of entitled children who travel from game to game and demand that everything that the game has to offer be given to them for free and attacks any attempt by game developers to, gasp, make money. My only gripe with Path of Exile’s cash shop was that it didn’t offer much for players who wanted to spend five or ten dollars here and there.
So I award Path of Exile as the most free game of 2013, or I would if I’d been handing out awards.
RuneScape! Every time I think Jagex can’t surprise me, they do. RuneScape 3 launched in July and has thrown the game into an entirely new direction. A brand new customizable UI, new graphics, a more powerful engine, world events, and more. The first world event was a massive grind fest, but the latest has players battling each other all over the world for the glory of their god. The world entering a new age where gods walk amongst men, war could break out at any time, and the scars of their battles are left on the land forever. Seasonal high scores, bot busting technology, a second new skill coming early next year, and yet maintaining the same schedule of (mostly) weekly updates.
Of course, not everything worked out. The HTML5 client was developed with the expectation that browser developers would be increasing their performance along a specific schedule. The stars did not align, and RuneScape’s HTML5 client is still stuck in limbo alongside the original client release of Planetside 2. In response, Jagex is working on a dedicated client for HTML5 rather than relying on browser support.
In this hypothetical award ceremony, I would give RuneScape 3 Best Upgrade of 2013.
Final Fantasy had what few other MMOs get: A second chance, one that should solidify Square Enix as a company that has a side that actually gives a damn about their games, FFXIII notwithstanding. By any other company, FFXIV would have been dumped as the commercial disaster it was and forgotten in the big cementary of failed MMOs. Square Enix not only instated new leadership, they wasted little expense in getting the game back up and revitalized in a relatively short period of time. And what was the result? A Realm Reborn has been a major success.
I hope that Square Enix never forgets the opportunity they’ve been given, it doesn’t come around much. With that in mind, FFXIV: A Realm Reborn is the Best Revival of 2013, which does not exist because this isn’t an awards show.
We knew Electronic Arts wasn’t willing to spend the money to convert Warhammer Online to free to play, and there was no way that the publisher would willingly shut down a game that they had spent so much to develop and promote. If EA wasn’t going to give up the ghost on their own terms, the question simply became how long until the license expired and would Games Workshop be careless enough to renew given the abysmal performance of Wrath of Heroes and the fact that Age of Reckoning was in maintenance mode with just a couple of servers remaining. The answer is 2013 and no, respectively.
Warhammer Online’s shuttering was the exhale after a very long time of holding its breath.
Those of you who read MMO Fallout will know that I don’t have pet peeves, I have major psychotic hatreds. And I find it interesting that Arenanet set up this whole advertising campaign centered around players pledging their allegiance to the game and to no longer suffer through horrible grind. The introduction of bi-weekly living content updates brought out what I believe to be the worst kind of grind in an MMO, the temporary kind. You have two weeks to get the achievements and then your opportunity has passed, forever. I don’t hate the living world in Guild Wars 2, but I’d like to participate in the events for the enjoyment of the event itself, not to run down a list of chores every two weeks.
I have no award for this because this isn’t an award show.
Had Defiance been released as an open world shooter with DLC, I think it wouldn’t have been received as the large-scale Borderlands that it essentially is. As a general video game, Defiance is severely underrated with its base content and the numerous improvements that Trion has made over the months. As an MMO, however, Defiance deserves its low score thanks to a small world and a lack of stuff to do other than shoot things. If that doesn’t make sense, just think about how ice cream can be a fantastic dessert while still making for a poor laundry detergent.
With that, I would nominate Defiance the MMO that shouldn’t have been sold as an MMO.
TERA Receiving New Class In 2014
I feel bad for not noticing this sooner, but in my defense neither did any of the other major MMO news websites. On November 25th, Tera Today published an interview with Bluehole Studios on some upcoming updates in 2014 to the Korean service. Alongside a rookie server where players will be able to ease into the game as well as level up a bit faster, TERA will also be enjoying the release of a new class. The class is specific to the Elin race, a powerful mid-range damage dealer, although Bluehole is not saying that the class will never be available to othe races. According to the interview, developing new animations for each race takes approximately eight months.
You can check out the entire interview at the link below to read more about additional updates coming to KTera, and hopefully followed by other regions.
(Source: Tera Today)
Neverwinter Reflects On 2013
The end of the year is upon us, and what better time to look back at events that have transpired? Over at Perfect World Entertainment, Lead Producer Andy Velasquez took some time to talk about Neverwinter’s first year, or half year to be more specific. The note thanks players for providing extensive feedback regarding Shadowmantle, and notes the team charged with creating the game’s multiple events.
Shadowmantle has been our largest update thus far, and I am extremely proud of my team for being able to get it done so quickly while maintaining a high quality product. As always, there are things that we learned from this expansion that we will look to improve upon in our development process.
Velasquez also notes the release of a separate Russian shard, and how there are (naturally) more updates on the way. Neverwinter was, of course, not without mishaps its first year, including astral diamond dupes, auction house exploits, and the release of the banhammer on foundry exploits.
(Source: Neverwinter)
MMOrning Shots: Winter Festival
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from me, more specifically the very dangerous act of walking out onto a frozen lake in heavy metal armor. One of Neverwinter’s claims to holiday events has been to include a temporary skill that lasts for the duration of the event, and give players another thing to grind for. For the winter event, which thankfully caps out at level three, the skill is mostly just good for upgrading your fishing pole and finding better lures. There are fireworks and a few other pieces here and there, but the meat of the grind is for lights of simril from the various events.
If you fish up my corpse, have the dignity to bury the body.
MMO Fallout 