On the other hand, I have plenty of time to play and review this copy of Lego Harry Potter on the Vita.
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.”
Perfect World Entertainment has announced that Neverwinter will be making its way around the world with new language and regional translations. In a press release put out by Perfect World Europe BV, the publisher has announced that Cryptic’s upcoming MMO Neverwinter will be localized in Turkey, Poland, and Italy. Players from those regions will be delighted to hear that the game isn’t just getting localized servers, but that the entire game will be translated into local languages.
“We are more than happy to announce Neverwinter‘s fully localized planned expansion into Turkey, Poland and Italy based on the incredible demand from those territories ” said Ömer Karakayal?, Territory Manager, Perfect World Europe B.V. “We are dedicated to connecting gamers with the best possible online D&D gaming experience in all-new territories.
Unfortunately the translations will not be accompanying Neverwinter’s launch this week, however gamers can look forward to Polish, Italian, and Turkish Neverwinter in Summer 2013. If you’d like to keep track of the game, you can head over to the Neverwinter Poland, Turkey, or Italian pages.
What’s that? A Crom joke? You aren’t the boss of me, mom! As we mentioned way back in the long ago days of July 2012, Age of Conan is still on track for a server merger that will mimic that of The Secret World’s single-server technology. That said, it’s been a while and not a whole lot of information has been released about how exactly Funcom plans on merging the services down to just one hub. In this month’s Game Director Letter, those secrets have been spilled all over our nice new carpeting, so let’s dive and and see what Funcom has stored in its coal hole.
The server transition for Age of Conan will take place in three phases. Phase one will see the movement of the physical servers to one physical location, setting the stage for phase two. Secondly, servers that share the same ruleset will be merged, including US and EU servers being merged together. After phase two, players will be left with one mega server for both PvE and PvP. Finally in phase three, cross server network layers will be implemented, allowing players on the PvE and PvP rulesets, although segregated, to queue for the same instances.
You can read the entire letter, including notes about upcoming changes to the tradeskill system and more. The team hopes to get the server mergers underway during May.
(Source: Age of Conan)
RuneScape’s economy runs partially on the idea that high level item drops from bosses don’t just require a good amount of time in order to obtain, but that the bosses are almost entirely open world, requiring players to compete with each other for the kill, and thus the loot. While most MMOs have moved over to a system where bosses are instanced and can be fought by players without the fear of being interrupted by others, developers like Jagex have held off from making the transition, generally citing either in-game economy or a desire for competition.
In an update released today, RuneScape will see the inclusion of instanced boss battles at the God Wars Dungeon. Players will have the option when entering a boss creature’s room to choose between the non-instanced, publicly accessible monster, or to enter their own instanced version complete with the ability to invite friends or clan members. That said, freedom isn’t free, and neither is your own private boss dungeon. If you want to kill a demon general without worrying about a clan crashing your game, you’re going to have to pony up some gold coins. Costs vary between bosses, and are paid on a per hour basis.
It will be interesting to see how the cost of using the instanced dungeons will balance the likelihood that more God Wars equipment will likely be entering market circulation. Instanced vs open world bosses is a big discussion in the MMO genre, with both sides fiercely defending their preferences.
Today’s MMOrning Shot is a photograph of an adorable bunny wearing an equally adorable hat, because sometimes I hate people and rabbits are nice because they don’t constantly try to hack into my personal accounts.
Star Wars: The Old Republic continues chugging along with new content updates. With update 2.1, players will be able to customize their looks at the new Appearance Designer Kiosk. Players will be able to change the look of their eye color, body type, hair style, and are even able to recolor their armor. What’s more, gamers will even be able to go the extra mile and change their species completely. And what better way to introduce this feature than with the release of the Cathar species? The Cathar catlike race possess powerful melee abilities in the world of Star Wars, including the ability of rapid healing. How much of that translates into the game will be seen.
Why can’t other games have remote looting? If you haven’t played Lord of the Rings Online in a while, the Riders of Rohan expansion brought with it a remote loot system. What this means is that you no longer click on mobs to loot them, rather the loot is added to a pending window with a one hour timer to retrieve or delete the items. What this means is that you never have to worry about running out of space and leaving loot behind, since you always have time to go to a vendor and get your bags in check, then loot whatever was in your pending list.
Can I have this in other games?
I am evil deficient. If you look into my achievements for any game that offers a good or evil path, you would find only the good path achievements unlocked. My vault dweller in Fallout 3 never had any inclination to destroy Megaton, Revan in Knights of the Old Republic did not turn back to the ways of the Sith upon recovering her memories, and I never saw a point in going in guns blazing when there would be too much collateral damage.
So I want to ask for today’s night cap: Do you avoid taking the evil path, even though it is obviously just a video game? If so, why?
Tonight’s night cap asks the question: Are you intimidated by threats of account deletion? Owing to how rare it is to find a company that is actually willing to delete characters/accounts these days, you might occasionally find an email in your inbox stating “thank you for playing, but due to inactivity your account/characters will be deleted in 30 days.” Deleting inactive accounts is a smart move when it comes to cleaning databases, clearing up character names, and reducing data storage, but most companies are willing to forego those benefits in favor of a more consumer-friendly attitude, especially since threatening to delete a customer’s data in an MMO where progress is key is more likely to simply ensure that that customer never comes back.
So MMO Fallout asks: Have you ever received an account termination notice? Did this inspire you to sign back up or did you give up on the service completely? If the service is free to play, do you simply log in once to make them happy?
Even if you hate Age of Wushu as a game, there is little denying that Snail Games took the title to crazy town when coming up with some of the more inventive features.
I don’t know what my character does in RuneScape when I’m not around, and considering that all he does is look for a rich girlfriend when I am logged in, I think I’m better off ignorant. Have you ever wondered where your characters go when you log out? In Age of Wushu, your character is transformed into an NPC and continues living even when you aren’t controlling them.
Players have real jobs in Age of Wushu. While you are logged out, your character might be patrolling his school, acting as real guards toward players of other schools. For instance, if I logged out and my character worked as a guard, another player would encounter him while trying to sneak into the school. Players are compensated with experience and money for their actions while logged off, whether it be patrolling a school or acting as a street performer for random bits of change.
And offline living leads me into…
Living is harsh in the world of Age of Wushu. In fact, so harsh that your offline avatar can be kidnapped and sold into indenture servitude! Players are able to kidnap offline player characters. The person uses a knockout powder, stuffs the player into a sack, and runs off with them. The kidnapper at this point is flagged, receives a movement debuff (you try running with a sack filled with a person), and can be attacked by literally any player that comes across them.
The kidnapped can’t be moved out of the region that they are in, but they can be sold to other shops as slaves. The effect this has on the kidnapped player is that they log in at the establishment they were sold to, and must either stay logged in for five hours or pay for their freedom with silver coins. They also lose their accumulated offline cultivation gained in their normal job.
Snail Games went a little further by even allowing players to pay for a kidnapped avatar’s freedom while that player is offline, earning chivalry points for doing so.
Generally the best you can expect out of a game that leans toward hardcore pvp is a simple flagging system, whether or not that character can be attacked by the person they’ve offended, everyone, or no one. Age of Wushu has taken this to a new level by introducing the Jianghu System. Jianghu is described as a whole social networking concept, and provides a deep link between the player and both their friends and enemies.
There are seven relationship types in the Jianghu System. There are two “friend” modes, friend and close friend, where players gain intimacy points with one another by taking part in activities including sending congratulations, teaming up on quests, and more. On the other hand, players can become enemies or blood enemies by killing one another and raising their hatred rating. Players can see others listed as enemies on their mini-map, and cannot join teams or send gifts to one another.
Then you have followers (think Twitter), acquaintances (people you pass by), and blacklists (/ignore). In order to end a blood hatred with another player, they must have dinner together as per Chinese tradition. You might think that last part was a joke, but it is indeed a feature.
The feature goes even deeper by setting up relationships with NPCs just by doing stuff around them. Simple things like playing music around an NPC might make them hate you if they are musicians and they see you as competition. Many NPCs frown upon players kidnapping or killing each other without justification and will view the kidnapper/murderer unfavorably. NPCs at spectator sports won’t like you if you stand in front of them and block their view, while others will get offended if you get on your horse and stand near them. A good-aligned NPC will frown upon you buying off of an evil-aligned player in his field of view.
For this, the affinity system is essentially the Jianghu system but for NPCs instead of players.
Killing a player in Age of Wushu without cause (rival school, defense) adds 400 infamy to your meter and marks you as an enemy of that player. Players can place bounties on the heads of their killers, but only when those kills were unjustified. There are players with 0 infamy that can become constables, hunting down players that have outstanding bounties on their heads. Killing enough constables will lower your infamy.
All pretty standard stuff when you think about it. But unlike your average MMO where your character dies and loses some stuff and wakes up somewhere else, Age of Wushu has taken another step in punishing criminals: actual jail time. No, Snail Games isn’t going to come to your house and take you to real prison (they send your local police out to do it). When killed with an outstanding bounty, players go straight to jail without parole.
In prison, you’re pretty much stuck. Players with orange or red infamy levels can wait out their sentences or pay a hefty bribe to be let go early, or play a game of dice for a lower price to either be let out or lose a bit of infamy per roll. Players can attempt a breakout if they have a group of five friends who are willing to fight their way in to break them out, but it won’t be easy.
The highest level criminal is executed. If you aren’t able to break out (which is much, much more difficult than lower breakouts) and are too poor to pay the heavy fee to bribe the guard, your character is publicly executed. Once executed, the character is set to a very hefty 24 hour debuff.
So you think “whatever, I’ll just log out and get back on the next day when my character is executed.” Well you thought wrong. Punishments are dealt in game-time, and debuffs/jail time don’t mark down unless you are logged in. To give you a better understanding, I like to use this story by an AoW player who killed thirty people to show how rough the crime and punishment system is:
72 hours in jail. I killed 30 people and after that i died to 4 other players and went to jail. Now i need to serve 72 game time hours of jail. I literally didn’t believe it at first, but its true. SO: I play 4 hours a day, that means that i will be released out of prison in 18 real life days, IF i managed to be online all those 4 hours a day, after that i will be executed and i will have halved stats for 24 hour game time. So i’m back to normal in 26 days if i play 4 hours a day.
This one speaks for itself. In order to learn the Sunflower Manual move, male players must first be castrated. The side effect of this is that the character receives a 30% movement reduction for one day of game time, due to the excruciating pain of the process. There isn’t really much to say on this other than to admire the attention to detail.
Oh and luckily the process isn’t shown on screen.
MMO Fallout 