Perfect World Is Banning Neverwinter Foundry Exploits: Creators And Players


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Consider this a classic example of why we can’t have nice things. Neverwinter is just another of Cryptic’s games to feature a foundry, where players can create missions for other players to enjoy for their wonderful stories, deep and thoughtful mission design, and…ah who am I kidding? Neverwinter is an MMO and therefore the community will exploit everything until it is taken away from them. Players quickly found a way to exploit the foundry system, creating missions that are nothing more than a bunch of high value mobs in a pit, unable to fight back while the player farms them for gold, items, and experience.

Unfortunately for players, Perfect World Entertainment is apparently cracking down on large amounts of experience and items gained through the foundry. The patch released earlier today modified gains through the foundry, and Neverwinter has taken action not just against accounts that created the foundry missions, but against players who repeatedly used those foundry missions to level quickly. Some foundry creators are reporting their accounts banned, while others are claiming that their access to creating foundry missions has been revoked. Players who repeatedly used quick-leveling foundry missions are similarly reporting bans.

So far there hasn’t been any official announcement of the bans, apart from player reports.

Revenue Doubled Under Free To Play


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As much as I know there is a subsection of gamers who want nothing more than for The Old Republic to be down and out so they can justify kicking it over and over, I have bad news for you: According to an earnings call by Electronic Arts, The Old Republic has not only grown exponentially in size, it is making lods of emone. 1.7 million new players have joined since the game went free to play, bringing up subscriptions to just under half a million.

“The really interesting thing that’s happening inside the service right now is monthly average revenue for the game has more than doubled since we introduced the free-to-play option. And as we look forward, we’re going to continually invest in new content for the service and for players every six weeks or so.”

Granted that news shouldn’t exactly be surprising. We would have been more surprised if The Old Republic had somehow managed to have less players and be making less money after the transition.

(Source: Polygon)

Face of Mankind Kickstarting An Overhaul


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Face of Mankind is one of those games that most of you have likely tried at one point, or at the very least heard about it as a concept. The game relies almost solely on player interaction, between individuals and the factions that they represent. Alliances come and go, as do wars, and territories change hands on a regular basis. As an MMO, Face of Mankind has carried a small but dedicated base of players, which Nexeon Technologies hopes to grow with the announcement of Face of Mankind: Fall of the Dominion.

Fall of the Dominion seeks to relaunch Face of Mankind and create what its predecessor had always hoped to be, allowing players to have a real impact on the world around them. That said, Nexeon Technologies needs a cool fifty grand in order to see that dream to reality, so the team has appealed to the Kickstarter gamers to see their project through.

In Face of Mankind: Fall of the Dominion, the players may have as much freedom as they want; at the center of this lies an incredibly powerful Faction system. This system creates the foundation for every mechanic in the game, with almost all conflict potentially escalating to war if the politics aren’t played well. How it pans out is entirely up to the players to decide. Players can create their own faction, capture territories, and dominate the universe.

Can anyone say MMO Fallout Decomposed Boot Corporation?

(Source: Kickstarter)

See People Get Banned In Darkfall: Unholy Wars


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I have often said that MMO gamers are a notoriously vindictive bunch, and I count myself as part of that demographic. There is something undeniably satisfying about being able to see that a gold farmer or an abusive player that you reported has been banned, a satisfaction that is generally denied by developers unwilling to divulge any information regarding action taken against accounts. In games like RuneScape, where being banned means removal from the high scores, you can generally assume that someone is banned even if it isn’t explicitly stated.

For Darkfall Unholy Wars, there is the Unholy Banhammer, a database where no-goodniks are strung up on display with their username, clan (if applicable) and reason for ban for everyone to see. The list is populated pretty heavily by gold farming accounts with gibberish names like Fdsdgd Cvdfsggb. You can check out the complete list of names (currently 63) below, updated regularly.

(Source: Unholy Banhammer)

MMOrning Shots: Original Crisis


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Today’s MMOrning Shot comes from Sony Online Entertainment and showcases DC Universe Online’s upcoming DLC Origin Crisis. Players will be tasked with battling through time and alternate realities with Lex Luthor and Superman with the goal of preserving or altering the origins of certain heroes and villains. Origin Crisis also introduces a new powerset, Quantum, allowing the player to manipulate time and gravity itself.

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.”

Monday Night Cap: EA Uses The Force


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After hearing that Electronic Arts has scored an exclusive license to develop and publish Star Wars games, I’m guessing at least some of you had an expression comparable to the one above.

“This agreement demonstrates our commitment to creating quality game experiences that drive the popularity of the Star Wars franchise for years to come,” said Disney co-president John Pleasants in a statement. “Collaborating with one of the world’s premier game developers will allow us to bring an amazing portfolio of new Star Wars titles to our fans around the world.”

On one hand, I would love to see Battlefront 3 be made on the Frostbite engine. The thought of upgrading the Battlefront model to include environmental destruction is one that makes me very happy. We know that Bioware can make great single player RPGs, and I trust the company if they’re going to continue the work that had been started on Star Wars 1313.

And yes, there have been plenty of controversies coming out of EA in the past couple of years, so all I’m saying is look at this with about mid-level expectations. Not so much the next coming of Half Life, but more the next coming of Poker Night at the Inventory: Something not a whole lot of people asked for but will probably be enjoyable regardless.

World of Darkness: A Long Way Out


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One of the downsides of MMOs lies in their very long development times, and it can be easy to forget just how far out certain games are when the developer is already talking about them. Take World of Darkness as a prime example, coming from CCP and set in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade. The more we hear about the upcoming sandbox MMO, the better it sounds. player-driven stories, permanent death, and more.

On the other hand, it will be a few more years until we get our hands on World of Darkness. At least two, likely more. The game is still in the stages of pre-production, and the team is unwilling to offer much in the way of deep gameplay videos. Luckily, though, the team has about seventy people working hard on getting systems in place, and restructuring Eve Online’s technology to work in a faster, more action oriented setting.

So keep those mouths puckered, World of Darkness will be ready for you to want to suck their blood before you can say vampire. In every language on earth, past, present, and future.

(Source: Penny Arcade)

MMOrning Shots: Marvel Heroes


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Today’s MMOrning shot comes from Gazillion Entertainment, showing off the new UI in Marvel Heroes.

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.”

[Community] RuneScape: Observations From A Noob


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RuneScape has become too friendly to new players over the years, at least that is what many longtime players will tell you. But is there truth to that statement? Muggiwhplar over at Tip.It says no, and argues that the introduction of Evolution of Combat (RuneScape’s combat overhaul) has made the game less friendly to free players.

So I did some research and, surprisingly, there were no guides anywhere written with low level combat training in mind. All of it was obsolete from pre-EOC. So if you’re a new player, you’re on your own to figure out how to train. This, again, wouldn’t be such a big deal if training in EOC wasn’t so niched. If you’re fighting monsters below your tier, your XP rates will be abysmal. If you’re fighting monsters above your tier, you won’t make a dent in them and they’ll destroy you. Additionally, every training spot is multicombat, so if the monsters are aggressive, you’re screwed.

You can read the entire post, as well as the following discussion, at the link below. How do you feel about RuneScape? Has the expanding list of skills and introduction of more complicated combat made the game less friendly toward new players?

(Source: Tip.It)

How Free Can You Be: RuneScape


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How Free Can You Be is a series of articles I had the idea for way back in 2009, and it deals with a complaint that I see a lot when it comes to MMOs: Players who don’t know what they’re going to be expected to pay for before they jump in. The idea was put on hiatus between 20010-2012 because of the massive amount of MMOs transitioning to free to play, and even those free to play models making pretty dramatic changes. So after waiting for the market to settle down, I’ve decided to give the column another go.

For the first game to cover under the new editorial, I’ve decided to pick RuneScape. If you have any feedback, I would love to hear it in the comments section below.

1. Free To Play Vs Membership

For the most part, RuneScape is still technically a “freemium” title, that is to say a game where a wealth of content is available to free players with the option to pay a subscription for the whole package. Membership costs approximately $8 a month and gives access to everything not part of Solomon’s General Store (more on that later).

There are 25 skills in RuneScape, all of which can be trained by free players to a certain extent. There are nine skills that were previously available to members only, but can be trained up to a maximum of level five which offers a bare minimum for items in those skills. There is an exception to this, since free players still don’t have access to player owned housing, and therefore have no use for leveling construction. Otherwise players have access to basic potions, fletching, agility items, and more.

For the other sixteen skills, free players are able to level all the way to end-game (99 per skill, 120 for Dungeoneering) with certain limitations in access to weapons, equipment, potions, areas, and monsters. All of these restrictions, it should be pointed out, are lifted under membership and are not sold ala carte in the cash shop as in Turbine’s MMOs. As far as quests, skills, locations, mini-games, etc are concerned you are either limited behind free to play or you pay the $5-8 a month to unlock all of it. Jagex estimates approximately five thousand hours worth of gameplay available to free players. Skills that are fully available to free players are still limited once you hit higher levels. The most powerful tiers of equipment and better money/exp making areas are members only. For the sake of not pushing free players away, Jagex limits the use of members items to members worlds, so you will never be outmatched in PvP because the guy you’re fighting has equipment that you can’t access.

Overall, the freemium system in RuneScape is pretty inoffensive. Jagex has ramped up over the past couple of years bringing more content to those who aren’t willing to fork over a subscription, including opening up a preview of members skills, and CEO Mark Gerhard has even gone to some length to remove many of the in-your-face members advertisements that existed in the game world. New content is released every single week, with some exceptions, and except in a few cases is mostly members only.

2. Solomon’s Store

Solomon’s Store acts as RuneScape’s cash shop, and is the most likely reason that this “How Free Can You Be” article will need to be updated by the end of the year. Solomon’s items can be purchased by free players or members, with members receiving one free promotional item per month as well as a 10% discount on anything on sale in the store. The store has some pretty regular promotions, and nothing is as obscenely priced as you might find in some other games.

As for “pay to win,” that depends on your view of the game’s goals. Since RuneScape is all about leveling your skills and collecting large quantities of stuff, the fact that there are emotes and cosmetic outfits hidden behind the paywall will offend some more than it will others. For the most part, the goods in Solomon’s Store are purely aesthetic. Alternate animations to gathering or crafting skills, emotes and teleports don’t change the function of the skill itself, but they do allow you to show off to your fellow players. Cosmetic outfits that display over your equipment allow you to fight in style, with varying degrees of fashion.

Where Solomon’s store does step into the pay-for-advantage realm is in the pets. There are currently three pets for sale that can forage for items, but they can also bank one item every ten minutes from a player’s inventory (excluding when in the wilderness pvp area). The pet can also scavenge items dropped from enemies. Players are also able to buy bank boosters, increasing bank slots in increments of 50 up to five times. Jagex has stated that the bank boosters were supposed to be buyable with membership “loyalty points” accrued each month, however that has not been added in yet.

3. Squeal of Fortune

Squeal of Fortune is a small activity where players receive daily stipends of tickets to spin a giant wheel of fortune. Players can also choose to buy spins for real money, and spins can be received randomly in-game while skilling, fighting, or taking part in other activities. Rewards offered are mostly experience lamps, experience pendants (double experience gain in a skill up to a certain amount), low to mid level resources, cosmetic items, experience boosting clothes, and more.

In a previous article I wrote, I discussed that while Squeal of Fortune has the capacity to enrich a player who spends a good deal on spins, the odds of getting that lucky off of the mini-game are extremely low and, ultimately, a massive waste of money that could have been better spent as a donation to your old pal Uncle Omali. You have the chance of obtaining a grand prize of 200 million gold, high end equipment that is character bound, and more, but with how low the odds are, you’re better off planning for the martians to invade earth.

Perhaps the highest criticism against Squeal of Fortune has to do with the fact that there are indeed items that can shake up the game that are time-sensitive, a blatant and unapologetic grab by Jagex to encourage buying large quantities of spins. There was an uproar when Jagex introduced a discontinued rare item into Squeal of Fortune for a limited time. The developer has also recently taken to retiring items from Squeal of Fortune, again to gin up more spin purchases.

4. Conclusion

As far as RuneScape goes, you can’t get much better in terms of an inoffensive cash shop. Free to play has access to a lot of content, and membership grants access to every quest, monster, skill, and location. As I said earlier, with Jagex’s commitment to weekly content updates, odds are that this article will need to be updated in the future, in which case you will see a notice on this page.

To give some perspective, I originally pitched the How Free Can You Be set of articles in 2011, and picked RuneScape because it was the easiest game to review, with neither Solomon’s Store or Squeal of Fortune present. Barring Squeal of Fortune having a habit of some rather unsavory business practices, I give Jagex an A- on the “How Free Can You Be” meter, since the game can be played to its full extent without paying a dime above the membership cost, and Squeal of Fortune can still be enjoyed with the daily stipends.