MMO Fallout

[Perfect World] Help, My Region Is Disabled!

Good evening, folks. Omali of MMO Fallout here (who else?) with a short notice for some of you attempting to access the Neverwinter open beta. Some of you have been emailing me asking why you are receiving a “disabled region” notification. As always, I will remind you that I don’t work for any MMO developer and my inbox is not a place to send your technical questions.

Perfect World would like to remind you all that the following countries are banned from accessing any game on the Perfect World Entertainment library. In many cases, the ban is due to regional licensing, and in others it is due to administrative reasons. Unfortunately, this also includes IP addresses that are “close to” any of the following countries.

China
Hong Kong
Macau
South Korea
Taiwan
Vietnam
Russia
Egypt
Japan (Only in Rusty Hearts)

Neverwinter’s Double Diamond Dash Dismantles D’Servers

As a critic, I can’t get enough of the action combat and battling against iconic creatures from Dungeons & Dragons. As a fan, I’m creating many quests and campaigns with the foundry. As a reader, you probably figured out a long time ago that I’m reading from the news page. Cryptic Studios recently announced that with the rampant success of the Neverwinter beta/soft launch/massage parlor, that gamers of all sorts would be able to enjoy a weekend of double diamonds starting Friday and running through what I assume will be 11:59 pm PST.

Naturally, the servers are crashing, and by that I mean more so than they have over previous weekends. Perfect World has had to take the game down multiple times for emergency maintenance. Perfect World has been working to get the servers to a stable position, despite the overwhelming traffic, and ultimately the three servers currently available will be merged into one.

Neverwinter's Double Diamond Dash Dismantles D'Servers

MMOrning Shots: Black Knight’s Fortress

The upcoming Black Knight’s Fortress upgrade for RuneScape is visually impressive and can be seen when the update goes live next week. For now, see it with on the upcoming RuneScape 3 engine.

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.”

MMOrning Shots: Black Knight's Fortress

The upcoming Black Knight’s Fortress upgrade for RuneScape is visually impressive and can be seen when the update goes live next week. For now, see it with on the upcoming RuneScape 3 engine.

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.”

Buy Age of Wushu At Gamestop, Win A Swag Bag

We love Age of Wushu here at MMO Fallout, in that special way that I should probably point out that this article isn’t sponsored or backed by Snail Games in any way. Snail Games is offering five bags of Age of Wushu branded stuff to gamers who buy a copy of the retail edition from Gamestop, and submit a photograph with the game, receipt date, and Age of Wushu clearly visible.

Age of Wushu Concept Art and Lore Book: Contains 88 pages of stunning Age of Wushu artwork and background information on Wuxia, Schools, historical locations, and our development process.
Signed Copy of Age of Wushu Retail Edition: Signed by the entire Snail Games USA staff!
Age of Wushu Mouse Pad: A collectible mouse pad featuring the entire world map of Age of Wushu.
Age of Wushu Scarf: If you missed New York City Comic Con, this is your last chance to get one of these Wuxia-themed pieces.
Age Of Wushu Backpack: Good for holding stolen scripts and swag!

Changyou Plays The Victim With Project Tank Lawsuit

It takes a certain kind of person to deny any wrongdoing when they are caught with their hand in the cookie jar, while their hand is still in the jar. But once you’re caught, you might as well try to save face and play the victim, right? With the lawsuit moving forward by Wargaming.net over Project Tank stealing from World of Tanks, Changyou has posted the following on the Project Tank Facebook game client. The red text and quotation marks are their emphasis, not mine.

Wargaming.net LLP (developer & publisher of World of Tanks) has recently launched a series of underhand actions against Project Tank, including using their connections to shut down our facebook page (http:/www.facebook.com/projecttankofficial), over PT’??s purported “??infringement”? of their intellectual property rights.

Continuously sabotaged by Wargaming, Project Tank and Gamebox have never intended to pose a threat or compete at any platform with World of Tanks. The graphics used in Project Tank are our efforts to reconstruct WWII battle scenes. We feel truly shocked and bullied by Wargaming, a giant company of the gaming industry who is apparently “threatened”? by a closed beta phase browser game aiming to provide a cheaper, fairer, and more accessible war game to players around the world.

As we are dealing with this issue with legal measures to protect this game, the PT closed beta has now come to an end. The open beta server will be open in approximately a month. Please go to the link below to leave your email address to receive your reward (for open beta server) and updates of Project Tank.

Wargaming Sues Chinese Developer Over World of Tanks Ripoff

There are only two certainties in life: Death, and that if there is a product in existence, China has ripped it off and claimed it as its own. Now you can find a ripoff of just about anything in China, including MMO Fallout as I recently discovered. Litigation against these companies is generally extremely difficult, if not impossible, in part because copyright infringement apparently does not translate into Mandarin. I say this with the full knowledge that any time I talk about China being infamous for ripping off products, that MMO Fallout will probably be hit with a surge of attempts at breaking into the site. Twenty six thousand attempts in April, and still going strong.

World of Tanks developer Wargaming is taking the fight head on by filing a lawsuit against the developer of Project Tank, Chinese companies Changyou and Gamease. So how does a company steal a game based on tanks that existed in reality? By using the exact same historical inaccuracies and stealing the tanks that did not exist as well, according to Wargaming.

“Copying is evidenced by the fact that the designers of Project Tank copied historical inaccuracies found in WOT, each of which does not affect gameplay but which was included in WOT to simplify the tank modelling and rendering process. Copying is further evidenced by the fact that the designers of Project Tank copied tanks from WOT that never existed in real life, and which included features original to WOT.”

The Project Tank closed beta has been shut down with a message calling Wargaming’s litigation “bullying.” Wargaming is seeking damages and an injunction against Changyou.

(Source: Polygon)

MMOrning Shots: City of Steam Open Beta

Set your alarms for 10pm eastern and don’t wake up until then, because the City of Steam open beta is here. While the game is still in beta, there will not be any more wipes once the servers get up and running tonight. So no complaining, otherwise I’m going to hit you with this shoe. You can’t see it because this is text, but I’m holding it in my hand. It looks heavy and the heel is rather hard.

MMOrning Shots is a (somewhat) 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.”

World of Warcraft Down To 8.3 Million

Sound the alarms, prepare for the apocalypse, and call up your mother to tell her you never liked her cooking anyway, because World of Warcraft has announced a drop in subscriptions and that can only mean one thing: An apocalyptic flooding of the internet by the usual group of self-involved, cynicism spewing gamers that always pop out whenever news like this hits. Activision Blizzard has revealed that World of Warcraft lost 1.3 million subscribers last quarter, hitting 8.3 million at the end of March.

“While we have had a solid start to the year, we now believe that the risks and uncertainties in the back half of 2013 are more challenging than our earlier view, especially in the holiday quarter. The shift in release dates of competing products, the disappointing launch of the Wii U™, uncertainties regarding next-generation hardware, and subscriber declines in our World of Warcraft business all raise concerns, as do continued challenges in the global economy. For these reasons, we remain cautious. However, our focused and disciplined approach to our business has served us well in the past, and through continued investment and
careful management of our costs, we expect to continue delivering shareholder value over the long term as we have for the last 20 years.”
-Bobby Kotick

Blizzard released Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, which ranked as the #1 PC game for the quarter. Black Ops II ranked #2 in overall dollars.

(Source: Activision Blizzard)

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