In hindsight, perhaps we didn’t need all of these people to investigate a couple of pods. Better safe than sorry, though. Eagerly awaiting Defiance’s launch on Monday.
MMOrning Shots is a (somewhat) daily line of screenshots from various MMOs. Most are taken in-house , but if you would like your screenshot featured, send it over to contact[at]mmofallout[dot]com with the subject “MMorning Shots.”
Hey folks. Get out your cricket bats, set your clocks one hour behind, and make sure your household knows you won’t be home for dinner, because it’s time for another episode of Omali Was Wrong. Not too long ago, I wrote a column about how Defiance on Steam was only at 33% toward the first tier of pre-purchase rewards with about two weeks to go before launch. In my defense, I did point out that using the reward level to gauge reception would have been inaccurate, given all of the variables to why Steam’s pre-purchase numbers would be low.
Regardless, you can all celebrate in my being completely off the mark. In the past week, Defiance has not just hit reward tier 1, it has surpassed all of (my) expectations and all three reward tiers will be unlocked. So if you were holding out on pre-purchasing via Steam until everything was unlocked, now is your time to shine.
The three Steam tiers come with extra stuff for your character in Defiance, plus a free copy of Rift and a discount off of the DLC season pass. Defiance launches April 2nd on PC, PS3, and 360.
(Source: Steam)
Jagex’s upcoming overhaul to RuneScape, also known as RuneScape 3, will be coming to all players later this summer. Before then, however, players are being invited to test out the new system in order to find any bugs or offer feedback to improve features before they go live. In preparation, Jagex has unveiled some details for how the beta will work, in a post on the main website. While gold and silver premier club members will receive guaranteed access, members will need to register for a chance to get into the beta. While the number will start out small and open up gradually, the announcement does state that all members will have a chance to try out the new game before it goes live.
The HTML 5 beta begins in just about three weeks. As with Evolution of Combat, we will be doing impression pieces once the beta goes live.
(Source: RuneScape)
Welcome to the Thursday Top 5, where everything is made up and the points don’t matter. Here at MMO Fallout, every Thursday I like to discuss the top five of something, and today I would like to go in a bit of a satirical direction and give aspiring developers tips on how to guarantee that your project won’t gather more than 5% of its goal, even if that goal is about the cost of a McDonald’s value meal.
Since this is another weekly edition that will use specific examples to critique Kickstarters, I will once again direct you to our lovely MMO Fallout Legal Expert: Schank Wellington.
The Thursday Top 5 series is purely the opinion of its author and is not to be used as a guide on determining your Kickstarter investments. For this topic specifically, we mean that if your Kickstarter fails, don’t come blaming it on us.
Offender: Main Street MMO
I saw the advertisement for Main Street MMO and my first reaction was: “this is pretty cool, but what exactly is it?” If you want to push your potential investors away, one of the best ways to do it is to focus on your gimmick and not explain the rest of the game at all. The premise for the world behind Main Street MMO is rather cool, the world is generated based off of satellite imagery of real locations. Otherwise I have no idea what this game is about.
Is it even a game, or is it supposed to be a simulation? What kind of monetary system are we talking about here? Is there a combat system? Looking at what little information talks about something other than the awesome simulation system that recreates the world, the game sounds like a way for local businesses to get a virtual presence. But for who? Do people walk around in the world? Can they level up? What is the point? Will I be able to raid Starbucks once I hit the maximum level?
At some point, hopefully founder Jon Brouchoud realized that apart from selling an interactive Google Maps, there is nothing on the Kickstarter Page that even comes close to detailing what the game is about, let alone making a product that sounds worth investing in.
Offender: Kingdoms of Mythic Might
How can you not want to throw ten thousand dollars (the limit) at Kingdoms of Mythic Might after reading this? The formatting and spelling has not been edited for this article.
Hey everyone! This game will be a unique blend of buildup stratagy and LIVE ACTION! This game will be free to play, will pay options however, unlike most games you CAN earn the buyable coins ingame via quests adventure areas. Please vote for a name if you don’t like the one I picked and, vote for if you wan’t the game to be flash based or 3D. 3D will be a bit hard unless I get MORE then my goal but, it could be “doable.” There will be 2 level systems. a standard level and a EPIC level system your epic level controls ability to own certain ammount of villages, unlock certain awesome troops, and allow certain command abilities and lots of other goodness. Standard levels increase basic stats like speed, intel, strength, and command/charisma. Pretty much the whole nine yards. There will be A LOT of features with this game, like making allies, becoming leader of a area, and brawling areas/ capture areas to control exta troop types like, cave trolls or goblind or wraiths etc. Last thing i’ll share “rest will be a (suprize)” is, there will be Classes and races. All giving boost to certain resource productions and skills. Like, Being a Undead mage would give you boost to your troop growth with small catpured ammount of enemies turning undead and joining your villages/army and you’d have ability to send a plague or a undead scourge etc. lots of goodness hope you like the ideas and hope to see you in the comment section! 🙂
It may surprise you to learn that Kingdoms of Mythic Might only achieved $105 of its $100,000 goal, a complete surprise given the $10,000 backer reward:
All the above PLUS these three things, Unlimited honor coins FOR LIFE meaning you’d be pretty much a god if you decided to play, Also, I’ll let you become a producer. a true part of the MAJOR desicion making. Also, I will fly out to you or you can fly out to me and we’ll descuss things. Maybe play some COD or, prank call some random people. OR, you know discuss the game I’ll show you concept art status up dates and you get to in person share concerns or, ideas.
This almost sounds like someone asked their ten year old kid what they wanted out of a game, transcribed his response, and then decided to fund a Kickstarter based on it.
Offender: A New World
Also: Prison World
Someone please tell me what A New World is about. Is it a fantasy game? Science fiction? Can I shoot guns? Do I wield swords? Is there a reason this only raised forty seven dollars in funding? I have no answers.
We are a company who is dedicated to making quality games, that keeps our fans happy. The happier our players are, the more likely they are to keep playing our game, as well as bring their friends with them. In order to provide the quality of work we want to we need funding so we can get all of our licensing done, and get all of our patents started.
Alternatively you could do what Prison World did and pepper your page with images from other developer’s games (and Black Ops 2) while talking about how ground breaking your game is because players chat to each other through chat and compete online in this online game and filling a very large paragraph while simultaneously saying nothing of value at all.
The sad thing about Treasure Hunter is that while this looks like it was put together in about twenty minutes from slightly altered stock models, the actual game does not resemble the picture above and including actual screenshots would have likely been the better alternative.
Offender: Visions – A Christian MMO
Also: Web Based Ultima Online Clone
And: Ban Notice
Most of the items in 2-5 might have been good products but were hampered by poor presentation. These games were likely perfectly represented by their campaigns. A poor quality Kickstarter to fund an even worse quality game.
Games developed in the west that are then brought over to the east have a tendency to not break into the market enough to sustain profitibility. Rift’s death in Korea has arguably been written on the walls ever since Trion announced that the game would still be operating with a subscription despite the market’s heavy focus on free to play games with cash shops. Even World of Warcraft operates on a pay by the hour model in Asia.
So it comes as not so much of a surprise that Rift didn’t catch on in Korea. MMO Culture is reporting that Rift is being shut down under CJ E&M on April 25th, and players will be refunded for any subscriptions charged past April 17th and that the web shop will be closed March 28th. Rift has just recently gone into open beta in preparation for release in China.
(Source: MMO Culture)
UK MMO developer RedBedlam is not unfamiliar with breaking new boundaries, having brought Roma Victor to the free to play scene long before it was the popular thing to do. Fast forward to 2013 and the studio is once again paving the way for others to follow with the announcement that their upcoming MMO, The Missing Ink, will be supporting the virtual currency Bitcoin.
RedBedlam’s CEO Kerry Fraser-Robinson stated the following in a press release sent out today:
“We’re delighted to support Bitcoin. We believe in the virtual currency and we think, as an Indie games developer, that this is exactly the type of payment option we should offer to players of The Missing Ink and also future games we have in development.”
The Missing Ink is currently in open beta and can be played by anyone with an account.
(Source: The Missing Ink)
I know what you’re thinking: “A MOBA that isn’t set in a fantasy theme? Bullschtack, Omali!” Personally I am still not convinced that this isn’t some hallucination brought on by the gas station sushi I ate just a few hours ago, but for the sake of staying true to reality, or for the laughs we’ll have when this sushi wears off, let’s just say that the press release is completely true. Bigpoint Games, best known for their UNITY has announced their upcoming MOBA game: Merc Elite. In Merc Elite, players will take the role of one of five classes and equip high tech weaponry in order to dominate their opponents. Merc Elite uses direct fire aiming and will require some strategic tactics to take on your opponents.
Bigpoint has boasted Merc Elite as the first ever military themed MOBA.
“A team of more than 40 people have developed our newest Unity Game,” says Jeff Lydell, Senior Producer at Bigpoint, “Merc Elite goes beyond standard free-to-play browser titles by employing stunning 3D graphics powered by Unity and delivering a flurry of PvP action that includes an array of high-tech weapons, cunning tactics and a variety of character classes, while ensuring fair gameplay with skill-based combat.”
Merc Elite is expected to launch this summer and take its place alongside Bigpoint’s other browser games.
(Source: Bigpoint Press Release)
Generally when an MMO hits that point where it has merged down to its last server, you can bet that the game is either one step away from the chopping block at worst, or will remain in maintenance mode for the rest of its life at best. Sadly this is exactly what Vanguard players are experiencing as Sony has announced that the Halgar and Telon servers will be merging as of April 4th. The servers will be down for twenty four hours, after which the Halgar server will remain online until the end of business on April 9th. All characters above level 10, plus those below level 10 which have logged in since October 3rd, 2012, and before the April 3rd transfer, will be moved over to Telon.
Halgar characters will also be reimbursed for the cost of their houses, however they will have to find new housing when their characters transfer over. For more details, click the link below to see the transfer FAQ.
(Source: Vanguard)
CCP’s shooter DUST 514 is currently in open beta, although the game is technically operating in a live environment and has been officially attached to the main Eve Online universe. CCP continues to expand the ability of players on both games to interact with the world on a massive scale. Along with the regular course of updates, CCP has announced Uprising, an upcoming expansion to DUST that focuses on several core features of the console shooter. Uprising brings with it a graphical upgrade, as well as new weapons and equipment. Player corporations can take over territory and planetary districts, all of them existing in the Eve Online universe.
“We reached a momentous milestone in January when DUST 514 and EVE Online became one and formed the largest single-shard MMO universe in the world,” said Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP. “Now our teams will continue to lay down more tracks between EVE Online and DUST 514 which will then be galvanized by our players every step of the way, inspiring us to go ever further.Uprising brings new features to drive meaningful human interaction, beautiful new visuals to astound, and increased ease of use, an important step in the journey.”
There are plenty more updates coming to DUST as it continues its open beta period.
(Source: CCP Press Release)
In their attempt to respond to ongoing community concerns, Bioware asked players on the Asia Pacific servers what they wanted to do about low population issues. Rather than merge the three APAC servers down to one, given that each represents a different playset (PvP, PvE, RP-PvE), the decision has been made to merge each server into an appropriate North America server. On the Old Republic forums, Bioware Community Manager Eric Musco posted the following:
There is no current date on when the servers will be merged.
(Source: The Old Republic)
MMO Fallout 