MMO Fallout

Battle For Graxia Is Going To Hurt Petroglyph

What does free to play, MOBA, MMORTS, and a well known IP have in common? All three fall under what I call the line of presumed success that isn’t so much of a line as it is a painting of a hole in the wall set up by a cunning cartoon coyote to entrap businesses with zero depth perception. Now I could stand here on my podium all day and scream to budding developers about how their market researchers are dead wrong, and that the success of high profile MMOs like League of Legends, DOTA2, and even titles like SMITE will not translate into guaranteed success for them, and may even scoop up enough of the market to ensure that they never see the light of day, but I am never going to convince companies like Mythic Entertainment that the money and staff that could have been spent on Warhammer Online was being wasted on a MOBA that nobody would want to play. Would the CEO of Petroglyph had listened if I had shown up in his bedroom at 3am and, instead of stealing the sample toothpastes from the linen closet, had warned him that Battle for Graxia was a bad idea?

As League of Legends continues to rake in more income than the GDP of some of Earth’s smallest countries, we will continue our frogmarch of MOBA titles trying to piggy back on their success and crashing miserably. Where MOBA games differ from MMOs, and I do know most of you don’t want me talking about the genre, is that unlike MMOs where you can afford to be a “WoW clone” and still have enough room to make the game your own and become successful, the MOBA genre is much harder to break into, since each game is more or less exactly the same. There isn’t a whole lot of wiggle room, and you either get your name out and succeed or flop horribly. Petroglyph tried this with Rise of the Immortals, and it flopped. Then they tried it again with Battle for Graxia, and the game is now shutting down just a month out of launch.

A few players on the Battle for Graxia forums pointed out just a few of Petroglyph’s failings: Not advertising the game, pricing above the competition, poor server infrastructure, and a lack of commitment to their games and players. Battle for Graxia beat All Point Bulletin’s record for how quickly a game could shut down after launch, and this news is going to hurt Petroglyph much deeper than simply the lost potential revenue. Shutting down your game one month after launch, which in turn followed a very long beta period, sets a bad precedent and anyone who reads up about them in the future may not have enough trust to make those crucial beta purchases. And why should they?

Battle for Graxia is shutting down on June 27th, with the cryptic message that Petroglyph reserves the right to bring the game back online at any point in the future, and that they hope to do so. Whether or not the community affords them another chance is an entirely different topic.

Path of Exile Unveils $12 Thousand Founder Pack

The $200 Marvel Heroes “Access Everything” pack doesn’t seem so ridiculous all of a sudden, does it? Path of Exile’s closed beta turned in a sum of $2.5 million thanks to the sale of collaborator packs, allowing the game to continue development and funding Grinding Gear Games for now and into the future. With the launch of the game’s open beta, GGG has turned to selling open beta supporter packs that include cash shop currency, exclusive pets, titles, digital soundtracks, and more. The cost of each individual pack starts at thirty bucks and goes all the way up to over twelve thousand dollars.

Sure you could invest that twelve grand into something intelligent like a used car, an Associate’s Degree, paying off your debts, a down payment on a house, the stock market, investment bonds, mutual funds, bathing in gold dollars, making it rain, bribing a politician, buying your way into office in a small town, investing in the future of MMO Fallout, I’ve forgotten what we were talking about. Ah, yes, twelve grand. For $12,500 USD, you receive a number of weapon effects, vanity pets, a Path of Exile logo and Tabula Rasa t-shirt, skill tree poster, another poster that is signed, a keychain, two stickers, your name in the credits, a unique item based on your design, designing a custom monster, a physical model of said monster, ten codes for an in-game pet for said monster, and free international shipping.

Then again, anyone who purchases the twelve thousand dollar package likely has enough money that the investment is a drop in the bucket. You can check out all of the packages at the link below.

(Source: Path of Exile)

Tabula Rasa Revival Petition

By the time it shut down, Tabula Rasa had a small but very dedicated community, and when NCSoft did announce that the servers would be coming down fans were enraged twofold. First for the simple fact that the game had launched in a rather poor state and the fan perception that NCSoft didn’t do a whole lot to save the title, and secondly when Richard Garriot sued the publisher (and won) for $32 million alleging that NCSoft fired Garriot, forging his letter of resignation to defraud him of stock options, and did all of this while he was in decontamination in Russia following his trip into space.

Much like our friends over at City of Heroes, the Tabula Rasa fans are yet another group of embittered fans who once called themselves NCSoft’s customers, and they are not going to let a game they enjoy go down with a whimper. A petition on gopetition.com is asking for ten thousand signatures to send over to NCSoft to bring back Tabula Rasa.

The petition is a nice touch, but we don’t see the endeavor going far. After all, we are talking about NCSoft, a company not known for its willingness to change course once the shutdown notice is given, and one which apparently would rather see its games rot in a digital warehouse than sell it off to a willing buyer. Second, the petition seems to assume that Richard Garriot was part of the game shutting down, which couldn’t be further from the truth. That being said, Garriot and NCSoft did not exactly part on a good note (see the above lawsuit), so any chance of the two getting together to revive Tabula Rasa is most likely slim.

There’s something to be said about horses and turnips here, but for the life of me I don’t know what it is.

(Source: Gopetition)

Line of Defense Will Be At E3

We still love Derek Smart here at MMO Fallout, even considering that mentioning his name tends to attract a flock of lawyers to MMO Fallout like a carcass on the side of the road, or more appropriately the ambulance driving nearby. Still, it is easy to forget that Line of Defense is in fact still in development, considering we haven’t heard much from the team over at 3000 AD in at least a couple of months. With E3 just around the corner, the folks at 300AD took the time to toss some screenshots up on Facebook.

Head on over to the link below to check it out. Line of Defense will be on the show floor at next week’s E3, alongside new shots and news.

(Source: Facebook)

Cryptic Opens Studio To Polish Champions Online

Better late than never, I suppose. Champions Online is a game that, despite its potential, has seen some neglect over the years. The game has been subject to a number of updates over the years that are either never fully realized or have spent their lives in a perpetual prototype or broken state. It appears that even Cryptic Studios is aware of this, because the developer recently announced the opening of Cryptic North in Seattle, Washington with the function of taking the ailing MMO and bringing it up to snuff.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Jack Emmert discusses the idea behind opening up an entirely new studio. Cryptic North is made up primarily of the old Flying Lab Software team responsible for Pirates of the Burning Sea. The team wants to give Champions Online the polishing that it deserves, and depending on their success may branch out into new projects.

Make better games. Make cost effective games. Treat our players better. Take care of our talent. Focus on working business models. A tried and true way to mitigate risk is diversification. And we also have a crazy diverse portfolio of games at [Perfect World Entertainment].

On another positive note, Cryptic is once again looking at porting their games over to consoles, with the upcoming PS4 and Xbox One. You may remember that Cryptic had plans to port Champions Online over to the Xbox360, but the project was cancelled last minute due to Microsoft’s lack of cooperation. With at least Sony having an open platform for MMOs, the likelihood of seeing a Cryptic MMO on the next generation consoles seems all the brighter.

(Source: Gamasutra)

TERA Servers Are Paid After June 11th

TERA players will be happy to know that the restrictions on server transfers have been removed, allowing movement to the previously denied Lake of Tears and Ascension Valley. Players are advised to make use of this freedom of movement, since server transfers will no longer be free soon. Beginning June 11th at noon Pacific, server transfers will cost 2,750 EMP (1,650 for elite) with a limit of the character being at least level 20, a transfer limit of fifty thousand gold, and a five day cooldown between transfers.

For the free transfer period, everyone’s cooldown period has been wiped clean.

(Source: TERA)

Old School Servers Are Here To Stay

RuneScape’s Old School server has been up and running for a few months now, with Jagex offering continuous updates to fix bugs and add in small features voted on by the community. One of the big questions that players have had since the servers launched is how successful they would be, what Jagex would ultimately decide about the possibility of an additional membership to play, and whether or not the servers would attract enough players to keep them operational.

Today Jagex released a developer blog for Old School titled “here to stay.” Players should be happy to know that the servers will remain online for years to come and, at least for the foreseeable future, will not require any additional cash.

When Old School RuneScape launched we said access would be included as part of membership for the first 6 months, and then we’d review the pricing. We’ve made that decision now, rather than wait for September… There will be no increase in cost for the foreseeable future and we aren’t planning to review the pricing again for at least the next year, if not much longer. You will be able to access both Old School and the main game for the price you are currently paying for membership.

Jagex is continuing to work on client stability, banning bots, and more.

(Source: RuneScape)

Jagged Alliance Online Now On Steam

As previously announced, Jagged Alliance Online is now available for download and play on Steam. The free to play MMO was originally launched on browsers via Gamigo’s game portal, and is expanding its visibility to the Steam community. The game weighs in at a rather light two gigabytes of storage space and recommends a 2.4ghz processor and at least four gigabytes of ram. As with the browser version, Jagged Alliance Online is always online and naturally requires a constant internet connection.

While the original game is free, Steam is offering 10% off until June 12th on two DLC packs. Each pack costs $29.99 ($26.99 on sale) and contains 80 new contracts, extra rewards, achievements, prestige contracts, an exclusive mercenary and $150,000 in cash. Check it out at the link below.

(Source: Steam)

Grab An Iron Man Heartbreaker Suit, Free

Gazillion Entertainment has teamed up with Alienware to hand out approximately ten thousand keys for a free Heartbreaker suit for Iron Man in Marvel Heroes. All players need to do is head on down to the link below and register/login with their Alienware account. An Alienware account is free and is usable for future product code giveaways, of which Alienware tends to have quite often. The Heartbreaker suit is also known as the Mark 17 Artillery level RT suit, as seen in the recently released film Iron Man 3.

They keys are going fast, so make sure you get in and grab one as soon as possible.

(Source: Alienware)

DC Universe and Planetside 2 Coming To PS4

Sony Online Entertainment is working hard to ensure that the PlayStation 4 is that console of choice for next generation MMO gaming. With DC Universe Online already available on the PlayStation 3, it was only a matter of time before Sony announced the manner in which the game would come to the PS4. Well, your wait is over. Sony has confirmed that not only will DC Universe Online be making the move over to next gen consoles, but that Planetside 2 will be coming to the system as well.

There hasn’t been any mention in the videos as to how server structure will work, but given precedent it is likely that Sony will segregate PS4 DC Universe players or integrate them into the Playstation 3 servers, and that PS4 Planetside 2 users will be on their own segregated servers from PC gamers.

More on this as it appears, you can find the two reveal videos at the IGN link below.

(Source: IGN)

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