Chaos has descended upon San Paro! Reloaded Productions has launched the prototype of Chaos Mode, a new game mode for APB: Reloaded that pits law vs chaos in a battle to the death. Currently in testing from May 30th through June 6th, Chaos Mode does not contain the contacts that you are generally used to receiving missions from. Rather, these contacts have been replaced by vendors who will be selling new tools of destruction, and players on both sides are given free reign to take to the streets and kill each other in the name of law, justice, or poops and giggles.
Players are scored based on kills and how long they manage to stay alive in this hellhole, with prizes ranging from temporary weapons and titles given to those who manage certain feats during the week-long testing. Just remember: This is a test of a possible new feature, so Reloaded Productions is looking for feedback from players on how to move the mode forward.
City of Steam has released patch 1.2, otherwise known as The Vault Unsealed. The update brings a massive amount of changes to the game, chief among which is the inclusion of two new elven races (Draug and Riven) and the raising of the level cap to 32. The new level cap is accompanied by a new wilderness area, a new PvP tournament event, and paragon mode, a higher difficulty version of dungeons. Players will also be subject to a large number of balance and stat changes to the game, and will find that they are no longer able to send items via mail. The folks at Mechanicst Games also removed some of the useless challenge rewards that I talked about in the review.
You can read the full patch notes here. As far as balancing goes, you’re going to have to figure those changes out for yourself.
What is TUG? TUG is a single and multiplayer survival sandbox game offering massive procedurally generated worlds drawing from Minecraft, Fable, Dwarf Fortress, Eve Online, and more. The game will feature many of the things you’ve come to love from a game like Minecraft, with the addition of integrated modding support, pet companions, and more. What is unique about TUG is you actually start the game off as a child, defenseless and only able to use your wits to survive. As you grow, you will be able to learn more trades, becoming an elite adventurer or a master craftsman.
Our friends over at Worlds Factory have pulled an exclusive interview with TUG developer Nerd Kingdom, and they give a good deal of discussion on the game’s mechanics and what is and is not planned for development and post release. You can check the entire interview out at the link below.
There is a sickness going around Defiance, and I’m not even talking about the Hellbug menace. Trion has launched a mini-event in Defiance that has players finding data recorders detailing a new Irathi-born disease that has spread to humans. The event is small, has no indication on when it will end, and may spiral into a larger story related to an upcoming episode of Defiance on Syfy or possibly just fizzle out and become nothing. Who knows? I certainly don’t. All I know is that I won’t be eating my pirogi in Shondu’s Consolate for a while.
MMOrning Shots is a (mostly) daily line of screenshots from various MMOs. Most are taken in-house or come to us in press releases, but if you would like your screenshot featured, send it over to contact[at]mmofallout[dot]com with the subject “MMorning Shots.”
“Interested” isn’t quite the word I would use to describe my attitude toward Blizzard’s upcoming MMO, Titan. It isn’t anything personal against the developer or the game itself, it’s just that at this early of a stage in development where everything we know about the title is from rumors and even the title itself is in codename phase, to get excited for Titan makes about as much sense as getting your hopes up for Sony Online Entertainment announcing Video Game: The Video Game. I say this because the news that Blizzard has drastically reduced the development team and has rebooted the title with a new direction and a delay until 2016 means nothing to me.
Rebooted to what? From what? I can hardly be happy or sad to see the old version go when I knew absolutely nothing about it. I’m sure that if Titan does indeed find its way to release, in some form or another, we will eventually find out what the original game was intended to be. Until then, you can’t miss what you never knew you had.
“Interested” isn’t quite the word I would use to describe my attitude toward Blizzard’s upcoming MMO, Titan. It isn’t anything personal against the developer or the game itself, it’s just that at this early of a stage in development where everything we know about the title is from rumors and even the title itself is in codename phase, to get excited for Titan makes about as much sense as getting your hopes up for Sony Online Entertainment announcing Video Game: The Video Game. I say this because the news that Blizzard has drastically reduced the development team and has rebooted the title with a new direction and a delay until 2016 means nothing to me.
Rebooted to what? From what? I can hardly be happy or sad to see the old version go when I knew absolutely nothing about it. I’m sure that if Titan does indeed find its way to release, in some form or another, we will eventually find out what the original game was intended to be. Until then, you can’t miss what you never knew you had.
Funcom has released their Q1 2013 financial details and the news is…good? Revenues have almost tripled compared to the same time last year thanks to the launch of The Secret World last year, which along with Age of Conan now make up the bulk of Funcom’s revenue. As many of you know, Funcom consolidated its live teams to the hub in Durham, North Carolina. Moving forward, the focus is on the developer’s currently operational games as well as a small number of titles currently in development.
As per the above, the company expects the positive effect from the restructuring to materialize in full in the second half of the year. However, significant cost savings were realized in 1Q13 and the operating costs decreased by 1,197 TUSD compared to the previous quarter and by 2,232 TUSD compared to 1Q12.
The Secret World enjoyed its first full quarter under the new buy to play system, increasing player numbers and retention along with the launch of Issue #6: The Last Train To Cairo. Issue #7 releases this summer. Anarchy Online experienced a server merger which increased activity and players on the remaining servers. Funcom continues to work on the major engine upgrade to Anarchy Online. The Lego Minifigures MMO is on schedule for release and is currently in development for the PC in both client and browser form, as well as tablets.
One of Funcom’s lesser known titles, Fashion Week Live, was sold to 505 Games in Q1 2013. Funcom’s Montreal studio is currently working on bringing the Dreamworld technology to tablets, opening new opportunities for the developer. Funcom expects more cost reductions and lower revenues in the second quarter.
Funcom has released their Q1 2013 financial details and the news is…good? Revenues have almost tripled compared to the same time last year thanks to the launch of The Secret World last year, which along with Age of Conan now make up the bulk of Funcom’s revenue. As many of you know, Funcom consolidated its live teams to the hub in Durham, North Carolina. Moving forward, the focus is on the developer’s currently operational games as well as a small number of titles currently in development.
As per the above, the company expects the positive effect from the restructuring to materialize in full in the second half of the year. However, significant cost savings were realized in 1Q13 and the operating costs decreased by 1,197 TUSD compared to the previous quarter and by 2,232 TUSD compared to 1Q12.
The Secret World enjoyed its first full quarter under the new buy to play system, increasing player numbers and retention along with the launch of Issue #6: The Last Train To Cairo. Issue #7 releases this summer. Anarchy Online experienced a server merger which increased activity and players on the remaining servers. Funcom continues to work on the major engine upgrade to Anarchy Online. The Lego Minifigures MMO is on schedule for release and is currently in development for the PC in both client and browser form, as well as tablets.
One of Funcom’s lesser known titles, Fashion Week Live, was sold to 505 Games in Q1 2013. Funcom’s Montreal studio is currently working on bringing the Dreamworld technology to tablets, opening new opportunities for the developer. Funcom expects more cost reductions and lower revenues in the second quarter.
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes from RuneScape’s concept art division. It appears to be related to upcoming content Jagex has said will be related to the gods returning to RuneScape after the death of Guthix and the destruction of his non-intervention edicts.
MMOrning Shots is a (mostly) daily line of screenshots from various MMOs. Most are taken in-house or come to us in press releases, but if you would like your screenshot featured, send it over to contact[at]mmofallout[dot]com with the subject “MMorning Shots.”
When I first discussed ROBLOX, I referred to it as a virtual toy box, as if someone took a box full of Lego bricks and made them sentient and programmable. It isn’t an MMORPG along the lines of World of Warcraft, but it can be if the right person is doing the building. It isn’t specifically designed to be a first person shooter, but that hasn’t stopped its players from turning it into one. Just about anything you can think of to build, someone has probably already done it, and yet the community still comes up with new stuff to do. You can play paintball, survive Slenderman, take charge of a fishing ship, fight back a zombie outbreak, or enjoy a fun obstacle course.
Usually when I write about ROBLOX I get responses pointing to the fact that there are a lot of outside properties on display in ROBLOX creations, to which I have to say I’m not surprised. ROBLOX is a game that brings to life the child-like wonder and imagination of its players, so it only stands to reason that in the same way that kids play out their favorite video games or television shows, that the creations in ROBLOX will also draw heavily from areas like Minecraft, Naruto, Spongebob Squarepants, DragonballZ, Skyrim, etc.
ROBLOX has seen a massive push over the past year or so to optimize the engine and allow for a smoother experience for creators and players. Improvements allow for objects to interact with each other in a much more realistic fashion, without the kind of performance drain seen in previous builds of the engine. This has allowed for more optimized and realistic explosion effects, for objects to collide and interact with each other in the way you would expect them to, and more.
The most recent engine update brought in dynamic lighting, allowing players to add in some ambiance to their creations. It sounds like a minor change, but as you can see in the screenshot below, the effect is very noticeable. The update is still technically a work in progress, with more additions coming to better optimize the system and beef up its visual effects.
It is important to note that dynamic lighting is an optional addition, and must be programmed into the world by its creator, so only a small (but growing fast) number of creations are using it at this point and builders are still getting used to how the system works. Still, the recent changes to ROBLOX are all the proof that we need that the game still has a very long life ahead of it, with plenty of new toys on the horizon for its builders to play with.
I will also be working on a series of ROBLOX videos looking at various creations, starting with the first that should come out this week (I apologize for the lack of specificity, but my “real job” schedule has me working over fifty hours a week). You can check out ROBLOX for free over at the main website.
MMO Fallout 