MMO Fallout

Shadowrun Online's Story System Is…Interesting?

Shadowrun Online passed its Kickstarter Goal of half a million dollars way back in August 2012, and while the game won’t be hitting its original May 2013 anticipated launch, the team over at Cliffhanger Productions is working hard and keeping the community informed. In an update released today, the team is blogging about how the story will work in Shadowrun Online.

The way the story will play out in Shadowrun Online is in phases, rather than the normal RPG storytelling mechanic of main quest and branching side-quests. Each player has their own story which forward the meta-plot for everyone. The example that they give is that players are tasked with taking down psychotic gangsters who are using a new drug. Once you personally take down enough of their hideouts, your personal plot advances and you move on to the next stage. Once enough players have raided these hideouts, the meta-plot will advance for all players and the global mission will be striking against the drug distributors. As players assist a group, that organization sees their influence rise, eventually leading to more missions given to other organizations to try and take them down.

Cliffhanger hopes that the dynamic systems in place will work fluidly and be fun to play for the community. One side effect of this process is that players need to be locked down to certain areas of the city that Shadowrun Online takes place in for the meta plot to make sense and work. So Cliffhanger is doing just that, even going as far as giving Shadowrun Online the subtitle: “Lockdown.”

(Source: Cliffhanger Productions)

City of Steam Successfully Greenlit on Steam

Congratulations are in order for the team at Mechanist Games for the successful Greenlighting of City of Steam on Steam Greenlight. City of Steam joins as one of the twenty titles approved in the sixth batch of games to be given the go ahead by Valve to release on the mega-platform. City of Steam is an upcoming browser game built for the UNITY web player and set in an industrial fantasy world with Steampunk elements. Players are able to take control of eleven races of creatures with four classes to choose from.

City of Steam is currently in between beta stages and is set for release sometime before Tupac finishes releasing new albums.

Reloaded Productions Overhauls APB Threat System

You have to stand in awe at how much Reloaded Productions has done with All Points Bulletin since they took over the property just a few short years ago. With the release of version 1.11.0 today, players in APB will find that the manner in which they gain or lose threat will be much different than it was before. The previous system works pretty simply: If you win a match, your threat level goes up. If you lose a match, your threat level goes down. The system makes sense in theory, but once you put it into practice it tends to fall apart at the seams. What if a player performs exceptionally but loses at the last second because of one reason or another? What if a player dominates the match but loses anyway because his team is terrible? What if a player AFK’s through the match and his team wins without his help?

With 1.11.0, APB: Reloaded’s threat system is moving toward a more participation focused scoring system. Everything you do in a mission counts toward your score, which in turn counts toward your threat. Kill enemies, complete objectives, provide cover for your teammates, everything is counted. At the end of the mission, the system tallies the scores and counts players against each other as if it were a free to play match (ie: you don’t get the #1 player’s bonus because you were on his team). Players below a certain participation threshold (AFK) will have their rewards nullified.

You can read the blog post at the link below.

(Source: APB Reloaded)

NCSoft Introduces Newbie Servers To Aion

Aion is in the process of updating to version 3.9, and players are already patching their clients and getting ready to enjoy all that NCSoft has to deliver. Patch 3.9 brings with it a number of updates, including a mass ban of over seventeen thousand botters, allowing players to run instances with each other across server boundaries, a new instance, and additional storage space. One update which stands out in particular is the introduction of beginner’s servers. One of the chief complaints that I’ve seen here at MMO Fallout regarding Aion is that the game shoves players into pvp areas either before they are ready to face other, higher leveled players. Others simply don’t want to engage in PvP.

In response, update 3.9 brings beginner’s servers, where players can start new characters or transfer their old characters over. Beginner’s servers offer most of the Aion experience with none of the PvP. The server is not without restrictions however, players are unable to trade items to each other, nor can they open up shops. The beginner’s server is a collection of players from other “home” servers, however the auction house on the beginner server will only connect to the individual player’s home server. Sending letters with attachments is disabled and players are unable to capture strongholds.

Luckily, however, you can always transfer back to your home server whenever you’d like. The patch notes indicate that in the future players who opt to stick with the normal servers will enjoy bonus EP and a buff to loot drops.

(Source: Aion infographic)

OldScape’s Second Content Poll

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When Jagex announced the old school servers for RuneScape, they did so under a very clear promise: That the servers would be maintained with minor updates on a regular basis, depending on what the community voted for. Since then the plan has been unveiled for how the polls will work: Players are presented with a laundry list of update proposals based on forum feedback, and vote on each update individually. A poll must receive 75% approval otherwise it will be rejected.

The second content poll has ended and if you aren’t a member of the old school servers, odds are you have no idea what was in it. Players voted in approval to bring a free to play ruleset server, which is a little more complicated than it sounds. Old school RuneScape will still require a base RuneScape membership to play, but the server will act as a free to play server restricting members weapons/items. Many players prefer fighting with free to play rules because the combat is more simple and less varied. Players also voted in approval of an update to improve the game’s pathfinding code, allowing multiple players to use the same agility obstacles, official themed worlds, trade chat, and spell queueing.

Interestingly enough, players voted against an update that would allow them to rotate the camera while holding down the middle mouse button (63%), allowing players to queue for a world if it is full (70%), and allowing players to complete the Monkey Madness quest without gaining defense experience (61%).

Finally, wasting no time, Jagex has uploaded the third content poll for Old School RuneScape. The first question asks if players would like rare items to return in some form (currently at 85% approval) while the second asks whether or not the tradeable rares should remain tradeable (currently at 75%). The second content poll runs until April 17th.

OldScape's Second Content Poll

MMOrning Shots: ROBLOX Tornado

I’m not sure why I find ROBLOX’s many “survive the disaster” servers so endearing, but I do. Today’s creation comes to us from stickmasterluke and has, if nothing else, reintroduced my old fear of lightning. Or maybe it’s just because, as a child, I was trapped in a building for a short thirty seconds while lightning tore it apart from the outside. Yea, that must be it.

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.”

Watch Defiance Episode #1 on Amazon

Want to see the series premiere of Defiance but don’t want to wait until April 15th? Boy are you in luck. In what is either a case of itchy programming or intentional promotion, Amazon has put up the entire one hour twenty six minute series premiere of Defiance. According to a few people we’ve talked to, you can only access the video if you’re in the United States (or have a US proxy). Just click on the link below to view the video. It is listed as “Amazon Preview” but you’re able to watch the full episode.

Watch it before it’s gone! Otherwise just watch it on TV, it airs on Monday anyway.

(Source: Amazon)

Reminder: School Shooting Threats Are Illegal

There is a special level of stupid that describes a person who thinks that it’s funny to make public threats to shoot/bomb a school, whether they make them in offhand comments on online games or actually contact the school via phone/online/mail to make the threat. Eventually you have to ask yourself how many people need to be arrested and charged with making a threat before the other idiots get the clue and keep their unique sense of humor private.

I don’t know when that will happen, but I do know that 18-year old Thomas Frongillo of North Oxford has likely ruined his chances at a decent career. According to Telegram, Frongillo was arrested after he allegedly made the comment “I’m shooting up my school tomorrow” on the online game RuneScape. The incident was reported to Jagex by players, who presumably used Frongillo’s account information to identify him, and the evidence was sent to Oxford police, who in turn alerted the campus police. The transcript also included anti-Semitic comments and Frongillo drawing a swastika in-game.

Frongillo has been arrested and charged with threatening to commit a crime and threatening a bombing or hijacking. The kicker in this story? Frongillo is in the police academy studying criminal justice. According to Frongillo’s defense attorney, the comment was “a harmless jest,” and was not meant to be taken seriously.

What is it about RuneScape and real world violence?

(Source: Telegram)

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