1.5 Million Concurrent On Blade & Soul


cat

Tencent Games is ready to talk about Blade & Soul’s performance in China, and the results are expectedly enormous. According to Tencent, the peak total concurrent players came up over the 1.5 million mark, with over 450 million creatures killed on the first day. Thousand Soul Demon has been slayed over 7.7 billion times, and the average queue time is apparently around six hours. This is hardly surprising when you factor in that the game launched with two hundred servers, and still had major problems with queues. Blade & Soul has so far exponentially outperformed all of Tencent’s previous games.

As far as Blade & Soul launching in the west, nothing to report.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Guild Wars 2 VIP Membership Discovered


forwhat

Dataminers on Reddit unearthed the above information regarding a VIP membership for Guild Wars 2. Although no price is detailed, membership includes a bundle of extras, including bank and inventory space, convenient banking/trading, and more. There are at least 20 tiers, going by the VIP badges found in the Mists beta client. Mark Kerstein, Head of Global Community, commented on the forums to point out that the VIP member is an internal experiment and is not intended for western gamers.

This is a testing branch. We conduct internal experiments for various territories on our testing branches. This particular experiment is not being tested for the West.

Whether or not VIP will make it into Guild Wars 2 in any territory will have to be seen.

(Source: Reddit)

Pathfinder’s Backing Of Elder Scrolls Online


2013-12-17_00007

Goblinworks CEO Ryan Dancey found himself in the news this week by penning an editorial defending The Elder Scrolls Online and the game’s planned subscription system. In the op-ed, Dancey states his belief that not only are subscriptions responsible for more than $100 million a year in the west, but that it is hard to imagine that the revenue from microtransactions even approaches 50% of that figure. Now Dancey’s figures are hardly scientific, but the overall point that he seems to be making is that the optimal route for MMOs (particularly Elder Scrolls Online) to take is to launch with a box price and subscription to recuperate development costs and then switch over to a system based in microtransactions with an optional subscription intact once it makes sense.

I remain convinced that the market is going to continue to support subscriptions for these games regardless of budget so long as the subscriptions are intelligently linked to a microtransaction model as well.  The evidence of ongoing success with that model seems incontrovertible and the implication that there are millions of people happily paying for game subscriptions shouldn’t be controversial to anyone who digs into the numbers.

Whether or not you agree with Dancey’s conclusion, the editorial is still a great read. Check it out at the link below.

(Source: MMORPG.com)

Pathfinder's Backing Of Elder Scrolls Online


2013-12-17_00007

Goblinworks CEO Ryan Dancey found himself in the news this week by penning an editorial defending The Elder Scrolls Online and the game’s planned subscription system. In the op-ed, Dancey states his belief that not only are subscriptions responsible for more than $100 million a year in the west, but that it is hard to imagine that the revenue from microtransactions even approaches 50% of that figure. Now Dancey’s figures are hardly scientific, but the overall point that he seems to be making is that the optimal route for MMOs (particularly Elder Scrolls Online) to take is to launch with a box price and subscription to recuperate development costs and then switch over to a system based in microtransactions with an optional subscription intact once it makes sense.

I remain convinced that the market is going to continue to support subscriptions for these games regardless of budget so long as the subscriptions are intelligently linked to a microtransaction model as well.  The evidence of ongoing success with that model seems incontrovertible and the implication that there are millions of people happily paying for game subscriptions shouldn’t be controversial to anyone who digs into the numbers.

Whether or not you agree with Dancey’s conclusion, the editorial is still a great read. Check it out at the link below.

(Source: MMORPG.com)

Planetside 2 Will Feature Weekly Updates


planetside2image2

Matt Higby from Sony Online Entertainment posted a thread on the Planetside 2 forums detailing that the company plans on expediting updates to better service the MMO shooter. Starting January 15th, Planetside 2 will enjoy weekly updates to address bugs, balancing, and more. There will still be large updates to the game, that will be included with the weekly updates as they become ready for release, but the overall goal is to allow SOE to work on bug fixing and balancing at a faster pace.

One final note, the first couple of these weekly updates are going to be a bit smaller than what you can expect to see later on, as we’re still shaking off the holiday cobwebs and getting used to the new development processes.

You can read the entire notice at the link below.

(Source: Planetside 2)

MMOrning Shots: To Battle!


This slideshow requires JavaScript.

For today’s MMOrning Shots, we continue our trek down nostalgia road with some very old screenshots of Final Fantasy XI. These shots are from 2002, I believe the Playstaton 2 version but don’t quote me on that.

Emperor Status Isn’t For You


Elder-Scrolls-Online-Argonians

With Elder Scrolls Online just a few months away, Zenimax has been throwing information as fast as they can in the form of Q&A’s and interviews. If there is any feature that has been dramatically overhyped and probably deserves to be talked about as little as possible and probably ran its PR course the same day it was revealed, it would be the ability for players to ascend to Emperor. Official Xbox Magazine posted details on just what a player can expect to receive upon being crowned, chief among which is a permanent skill set unavailable to you dirty lower class peasants. You can read the article at the link above, I will continue treating the feature as low on the totem pole in terms of importance.

Why? Let’s face it, neither you nor I are ever going to be crowned Emperor. The way that the system will work is that the player with the most Alliance Points on the faction that wins over the other two will be crowned Emperor for a period. That means competing against your entire faction to rack up points. Ask yourself, can you compete against the guy who never leaves his house? What about the people who share a single character and are able to keep it playing twenty four hours a day? The guy who sets up multiple accounts on separate factions to farm points? The guilds who farm points? I suppose that if you can’t beat them, join them, but do you have the dedication? Or are you more likely to simply get frustrated in the effort and probably face early burnout from the game entirely.

Frankly I love the idea of games that include rewards that only a select portion of the community will ever see, giving the hardcore base something to strive for other than mindlessly grinding end-game raids for ever-increasing equipment with bigger numbers attached, and Zenimax is going a step further by giving the entire faction some nice buffs to enjoy while they have control of the empire. I would like to see some other method of crowning than simply picking the guy who has the privilege of never having to leave his computer, but I’ve gracefully acknowledged that this specific portion of the game is out of reach, and honestly was never intended for myself and 98% of the community to achieve in the first place.

And I am fine with that. There will inevitably be those who refuse to play on the principle of not having access to 100% of the content, no exceptions, but I think that the majority of the community will have an attitude similar to my own.

Emperor Status Isn't For You


Elder-Scrolls-Online-Argonians

With Elder Scrolls Online just a few months away, Zenimax has been throwing information as fast as they can in the form of Q&A’s and interviews. If there is any feature that has been dramatically overhyped and probably deserves to be talked about as little as possible and probably ran its PR course the same day it was revealed, it would be the ability for players to ascend to Emperor. Official Xbox Magazine posted details on just what a player can expect to receive upon being crowned, chief among which is a permanent skill set unavailable to you dirty lower class peasants. You can read the article at the link above, I will continue treating the feature as low on the totem pole in terms of importance.

Why? Let’s face it, neither you nor I are ever going to be crowned Emperor. The way that the system will work is that the player with the most Alliance Points on the faction that wins over the other two will be crowned Emperor for a period. That means competing against your entire faction to rack up points. Ask yourself, can you compete against the guy who never leaves his house? What about the people who share a single character and are able to keep it playing twenty four hours a day? The guy who sets up multiple accounts on separate factions to farm points? The guilds who farm points? I suppose that if you can’t beat them, join them, but do you have the dedication? Or are you more likely to simply get frustrated in the effort and probably face early burnout from the game entirely.

Frankly I love the idea of games that include rewards that only a select portion of the community will ever see, giving the hardcore base something to strive for other than mindlessly grinding end-game raids for ever-increasing equipment with bigger numbers attached, and Zenimax is going a step further by giving the entire faction some nice buffs to enjoy while they have control of the empire. I would like to see some other method of crowning than simply picking the guy who has the privilege of never having to leave his computer, but I’ve gracefully acknowledged that this specific portion of the game is out of reach, and honestly was never intended for myself and 98% of the community to achieve in the first place.

And I am fine with that. There will inevitably be those who refuse to play on the principle of not having access to 100% of the content, no exceptions, but I think that the majority of the community will have an attitude similar to my own.

Square Enix Invites Former FFXIV Subscribers Back


ffxiv_10182013_150221

Final Fantasy XIV has been out for quite a while now and, most assuredly, there are bound to be many of you among the crowd who have unsubscribed for one reason or another. With the launch of 2.1: A Realm Awoken, Square Enix would like to reintroduce you to the wonders of Eorzea, or more specifically the new content. Starting January 11th and going into the 13th, players with inactive accounts will be welcomed back for a free login weekend. After that, you’re on your own.

Check out the details at the lodestone link below.

(Source: Lodestone)

Defiance Third DLC Coming February


Defiance 2013-04-10 22-06-47-55

Trion Worlds has announced the next set of DLC for Defiance will be coming this February. No details have been released other than the following snippet and the name of the DLC: The 7th Legion.

When the world fell apart, one group kept their courage. Guided by the teachings of the Code of Bushido, the soldiers of the 7th Legion marched across Canada gathering survivors as they went. From one outpost to another they marched until finally they found a city which did not fall: Manhattan. There, they made their stand against the darkness, and Commander Yoshida Hiro called an end to their long journey. Now they have come to Paradise. What dread news could this herald?

(Source: Defiance)