At 11pm today I did what any normal person would do: I purchased Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs and played in the dark with my headphones on. The best image I can think of to describe playing Amnesia is to remember back to when you were a child and you would wake up in the middle of the night to use the toilet or because you were thirsty, etc. You are old enough by this point to know that monsters don’t exist, but still…was your door always that far away from the bed? Does the house always make these noises at night? It sure is dark, and that shadow illuminated on your wall looks a lot like someone standing at your window. Don’t look, it isn’t real. In fact you might just be in a dream where nothing is off limits. Don’t blink. What was that noise? It’s coming from under the bed, or is it downstairs? There shouldn’t be anyone downstairs. Come to think of it, I never realized my bed had just enough room for someone to hide under and grab my legs. I think I’ll wait until morning.
That, in a nutshell, is the first hour of Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, except with the knowledge that yes, the monsters are real. And they will murder you.
It is nearly 1:30am EST at the time of this writing. After just a day on Kickstarter, Missing Worlds Media’s funding drive for City of Titans has raked in over $150,000 with the money just pouring in. With success seemingly in the bag, Missing Worlds Media has 31 of its 32 days left to make up the remaining 50% of the goal. The team posted an update on the Kickstarter page noting their surprise at the reaction. So far 1,134 backers have pledged to the campaign.
We’ve been working on that teaser video pretty hard. But we’ve been working on all the individual parts in parallel. We’ve got some scenes we didn’t use, and I think you’ll like them. We’ll have another video or two for you, and maybe more and newer things to show you, in a week or two.
You can check out the City of Titans Kickstarter at the link below or follow the campaign on our sidebar all month.
(Editor’s Note: This article was originally written in 2010 and subsequently shelved into the MMO Fallout archives. I don’t remember exactly why I cancelled it, but it is likely because I wasn’t sure if the nonspecific publisher that I mention threatening to sue me was serious, but I wasn’t going to find out by poking them with a stick. Enjoy)
Why are gamers so obsessed with the thought of customers suing companies, companies suing companies or companies suing customers? The last time I can think of a lawsuit being applicable would be when Sony released Trials of Obi-Wan right alongside the major changes to Galaxies that made a good amount of its content useless or so incompatible that it was removed. That was misleading to users, and possibly would have resulted in legitimate grounds for a lawsuit if Sony hadn’t quickly stepped up to offer refunds. But Star Wars Galaxies was a long time ago, what we need to focus on is the present, or at least the past couple of years.
I’ve seen an increase in the word “lawsuit” over at the capital city of trolls, occasionally referred to as the MMORPG.com forums. Every day there is inevitably a thread about how some developer is going to be, or should be, sued over an update, lack of an update, or just general dissatisfaction with the title in question. Cryptic should be sued for making Champions Online free to play, Turbine should be sued for making Lord of the Rings free to play, and Bill Roper should be sued for apparent crimes against humanity, depending on who you ask.
My favorite point of lunacy is when the fanboys of one game try to “incite” their developer of choice to sue another for making a “clone.” I’ve seen plenty of threads claiming a developer should be sued by Blizzard for making a WoW clone (exclamation mark for quests), while today I came upon a thread stating that Perpetuum Online should be sued for being “Eve Online but on the ground.” Even your good friend Omali has been threatened with lawsuits because someone believed enough that I was on a “crusade of misinformation,” and “had the goal of damaging their reputation,” among my readers by, in their words, reporting on news that put the company in a bad light. They were kind enough to mention me in a press release as an unaccomplished nobody, however. I take my attention where I can get it.
Is this really what you want? I’m all for justice and protection of creative rights, but this goes far beyond protection and into the gaming community’s dark void of hatred and vindictive blood lust. It isn’t enough for some people to just play the games they like and ignore those that they don’t, there is a very vocal minority that spends a lot of time actively campaigning against anything that isn’t in their liking. I suppose if there was some moral or ethical factor, this rant would even exist. There isn’t, so it does.
Stop talking about lawsuits. It muddles the water and makes legitimate cases more difficult to notice.
Was changing MMO Fallout’s menu layout necessary? I would argue yes.
Individual categories for games didn’t help organization, it harmed it.
Our metrics show that few actually used them.
Filing games into categories of “listed,” “covered but not listed,” and “not listed” was a massive waste of time.
Always trying to compact space.
I keep a list of people who actually care about which games are listed on this website. It is empty.
The growing number of categories didn’t help server stability.
So what does this mean for categories? Right now I have three main categories which will be expanded to:
News
Editorials
Games
Reviews
Previews
Reviews and Previews replace “Why Aren’t You Playing,” and “Beta Perspective,” but only because having that on the menu would take a lot of space. The “(p)reviews” we do will remain mostly the same, impressions pieces which highlight positives and negatives of the games without a final overall score. Overall, not a whole lot is going to change here.
The process is mostly to make the website more accessible, as well as more manageable by myself.
Missing Worlds Media has made it official: The Phoenix Project, codenamed for the upcoming spiritual sequel to City of Heroes, will be called City of Titans. While originally the Phoenix Project Kickstarter campaign was supposed to begin September 8th, unfinished paperwork and some restructuring of the team caused a few delays. The good news is that everything has been square away, and the Kickstarter is set to launch October 2nd. Speaking to Incgamers, President Sara Quinn thanked the community for their support.
“We are immensely grateful to our community for their continued support and understanding at this somewhat fraught time. They have been amazing, and without the morale boosts they provided, this would have been much harder on all of us.”
You can check out City of Titans at its main page.
The good news is that Star Wars: The Old Republic is now safe to launch. Players who logged in earlier today were surprised to see that their clients had already begun downloading patch 2.4, which isn’t supposed to go live until tomorrow. I say surprised because upon the client restarting, they found out that the game had to completely redownload, all twenty gigabytes. The response to players affected? Bioware suggested maybe not playing until tomorrow’s maintenance, unless you’re alright with sitting through the download.
As some of you have already noticed, we unintentionally released the patch data for Game Update 2.4 this afternoon at 2:46 pm CDT before its scheduled deployment. If you have already begun patching or completed patching, we recommend that you do not run the Launcher until after tomorrow’s maintenance. If you do not run the Launcher until tomorrow, you will only have to patch Game Update 2.4. If you do (or already have) run the Launcher again prior to tomorrow morning’s update, you will need to re-download the entire game client.
The update has been fixed, although people who began patching will still have to download the client, just not as much.
The previous patch data has now been restored. If you are just now logging in, you are fine to play normally. Those of you affected by the patch this afternoon should exit the game and either repatch immediately or wait until after tomorrow morning’s update. Please note that if you repatch today, it will be a larger patch – around 12 gigs, rather than a more normal sized patch tomorrow.
Is it working or is it broken? Only sith deal in absolutes.
The good news is that Star Wars: The Old Republic is now safe to launch. Players who logged in earlier today were surprised to see that their clients had already begun downloading patch 2.4, which isn’t supposed to go live until tomorrow. I say surprised because upon the client restarting, they found out that the game had to completely redownload, all twenty gigabytes. The response to players affected? Bioware suggested maybe not playing until tomorrow’s maintenance, unless you’re alright with sitting through the download.
As some of you have already noticed, we unintentionally released the patch data for Game Update 2.4 this afternoon at 2:46 pm CDT before its scheduled deployment. If you have already begun patching or completed patching, we recommend that you do not run the Launcher until after tomorrow’s maintenance. If you do not run the Launcher until tomorrow, you will only have to patch Game Update 2.4. If you do (or already have) run the Launcher again prior to tomorrow morning’s update, you will need to re-download the entire game client.
The update has been fixed, although people who began patching will still have to download the client, just not as much.
The previous patch data has now been restored. If you are just now logging in, you are fine to play normally. Those of you affected by the patch this afternoon should exit the game and either repatch immediately or wait until after tomorrow morning’s update. Please note that if you repatch today, it will be a larger patch – around 12 gigs, rather than a more normal sized patch tomorrow.
Is it working or is it broken? Only sith deal in absolutes.
Neverwinter’s upcoming server merger is no surprise, the company has been straightforward about the fact that the three servers were there to spread out launch traffic as much as possible, and that they would be combined as soon as possible. In an FAQ posted to the Neverwinter forums, Perfect World has noted that the merger is close to being ready and will be rolled out as soon as possible.
We have always been fans of the single-shard model, and like our previous games, we’ve always wanted to optimize Neverwinter’s infrastructure to be able to meet this goal. We are excited to be close to meeting this goal and are excited about allowing all players in our game world to be able to communicate and group with one another.
The good news is that thanks to Perfect World’s unique handle system, players do not need to worry about changing their character name or guild name even if there are duplicates. When the merger does go through, all auctions will automatically expire and either sell to the highest bidder or return to the seller if there are no bids. Astral Diamond exchange orders will be withdrawn as well, and all mail and currencies will be merged to the new server. There is no timeline on when the merger will take place other than “very soon.”
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes from Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I’m not sure if the guy staring off into space is deep in thought, contemplating the vast unexplored wilderness that is the universe. Either that, or he thinks I am a bot and is in the middle of reporting my character to customer service. I suppose that isn’t as deep.
ArcheAge in Russia is making its way down free to play lane, and according to an announcement by Mail.ru, plans to offer even more for free than its Korean counterpart. Russian players will be able to level all the way up to end-game without paying a single ruble, and will have access to building houses and farms. Players who want to pony up some cash will be able to buy premium access which, at $10, features faster labor points recovery, 20% experience and 50% drop rate increases, and a stipend of Arc, the ArcheAge currency used on a mostly cosmetic cash shop. Arcs can be obtained in-game without spending anything.
Where ArcheAge is dipping its toes into alleged pay to win is in the ability to purchase labor points. Labor points are most easily compared to the energy from social games. Gathering and crafting costs labor points from your finite pool, which regenerates over time. The announcement has drawn ire from players who believe that the presence of labor points in the cash shop will unbalance the game’s economy.
MMO Fallout 