Checking Up: Whatever Happened To Huxley?


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Every once in a while I come across an MMO here at MMO Fallout and think to myself, “oh yea, whatever happened to that game? It never launched, or if it did I certainly haven’t heard anything about it.” Huxley is just that MMO. In fact, the last time we discussed Huxley here at MMO Fallout was over the fact that it did not make its intended release for 2009. So what in god’s name happened?

For the uninformed, Huxley is an Unreal 3 Engine first person shooter announced way back in 200x with the intention of release on PC and Xbox360, the latter of which was indefinitely put on hold. Originally designed to be an MMOFPS with over a hundred players per battle, budget restraints forced Webzen to reduce their capacities down to simple 32 v 32 matches, essentially making the game Unreal Tournament but only on those servers with the RPG mod enabled. On the PvE side, Huxley might have resembled Hellgate Global somewhat, with players grouping up to tackle instanced dungeons filled with monsters.

In June 2009, Huxley had its first closed beta test, followed by another in July. Following, Huxley went into open beta  on May 3rd, 2010. On December 30th, 2010, Huxley’s Korean services shut down completely. Following the closure of the Korean service, work on the international version has apparently come to a complete stop, with Webzen not even acknowledging the game’s existence on their website anymore. Curiously however, the page for Huxley still exists, although it hasn’t been updated since the game’s original anticipated launch date of 2007, and if you can find Webzen game cards in your local stores, odds are they still have the Huxley name on them.

So it looks like Huxley is dead in the water. Not such great news for those who participated in the beta and found the game immensely enjoyable, but closure to those of us who may have lost touch with the game’s progress over the past couple of years.

Lord British Presents…On March 8th


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Good news, internet. Richard Garriot has set up the website “Lord British Presents.” What exactly is Lord British presenting? That’s for him to know and you to find out, in less than a week. The website is laden with a timer and a form to be emailed when the announcement is made. What could it be? Another social game? A trip into space? Perhaps Lord British is about to announce that thing with the place that certainly no one has told me about. We will have to wait until Friday, March 8th to find out.

(Source: Lord British Presents)

OldScape Poll Ends, Jagex Alters Conditions


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Here at MMO Fallout, I’ve often said that Jagex’s polls are really little more than exaggerated PR stunts. Players are given the option of voting yes, or not voting at all, and the tally ultimately follows the rules of Who’s Line is it Anyway, where everything is made up and the points don’t matter. Following the tiered system Jagex laid out, and subsequently altered to allow more benefits with less votes, Old School RuneScape will now be available for an additional $5 membership fee with a small team dedicated to continued maintenance, and “possible” anti-bot updates.

In a news article posted today, CEO Mark Gerhard has detailed what players should expect with the full release of Old School RuneScape. Players will be able to vote on future changes, and will be happy to see the implementation of Botwatch to keep nasty cheaters and gold farmers away. In addition, the membership fee on top of the standard member cost has been waived, at least for now.

As a gesture of our own goodwill and an aspiration for this newly established community to flourish and hopefully grow I’ve decided that we will NOT be charging the additional $5 membership fee for at least the next 6 months!

The news article notes that the member fee will continue to be waived so long as population levels are healthy. So even without five hundred thousand votes, Old School players will still enjoy most of the benefits of the tier. The Old School RuneScape server is currently available in the form of early access to members who voted in the poll, and is still considered a work in progress as several features have not yet been fully implemented.

(Source: RuneScape)

Jagex Opens (Limited) Members Skills To Free Players


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In 2012, Jagex opened up a 14-day free trial for free to play players. The account is limited in regards to trading and acquiring items, and once the 14-day free trial ends, any items that are members only are unable to be used until that player purchases a subscription. With today’s release of the March developer blog, Jagex has announced some upcoming changes to the way free players are able to experience membership without the need to actually pay. Instead of a 14-day trial, free players will have access to a limited amount of the members world, as well as very limited access to members skills.

Talking of free players, we’re changing the trial system so that new players once again start off as a free player. To do this, we’re making Burthorpe and Taverley part of the free game, as well as the associated quests and training areas within it. We are also allowing free players to train members’ skills up to a maximum of level 5, giving them a taster of the kind of content there is on offer for players who subscribe.

The blog post also details Jagex’s continued fight against player-run gambling outfits.

Other alterations we intend to make this month are changes centred around the flower games and associated ‘risk’ gameplay that currently dominates the Grand Exchange. Exactly what these changes are and what form they take is going to be up to you – we’ve built a variety of solutions from rules changes, content changes and even our own versions of the games – and we’re planning on chatting to you to work out what solution works best for the community. Keep an eye on the news for details.

You can find the full list of scheduled updates for March at the link below.

(Source: RuneScape)

[SMITE] New Single Purchase, All Gods


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Hi-Rez Studios is one of my favorite companies when it comes to the ease of free to play. Earlier this month we saw a Game of the Year edition of Tribes: Ascend release containing all of the weapon, class, and perk unlocks for one price. Following in that model, Hi-Rez has announced a single purchase option for their deity-battling MOBA, SMITE, and boy is it a good one. The SMITE Ultimate God Pack contains all of the 31 gods currently present in the game. To sweeten the deal even more, this pack includes all future god releases as well.

The pack was originally promoted as an immediate unlock of the first thirty SMITE gods, but has been significantly enhanced to include all future gods as well. Players purchasing the pack, including those who purchased it previously, will automatically unlock new gods as soon as they are released into the live game environment. SMITE has been seeing new god releases approximately every two to three weeks.

The god pack costs $29.99 USD. If you have already purchased this package, you will automatically unlock new gods as they are released.

(Source: Hi-Rez Press Release)

Wrath of Heroes To Shut Down, Mythic Denies Refunds


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Eventually someone will realize that despite the success of games like League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, and Valve’s DOTA 2, the MOBA genre is not the next line of games where companies can put out any product and simply sit back and watch the money print itself. Originally announced in 2011, Wrath of Heroes was supposed to be a slimmed down version of Warhammer Online. All the fun of Warhammer’s scenarios without the countless hours of boring crap that is required by an MMO. Regardless, the game never caught on as well as hoped, and as a result Mythic has announced that the servers will come down on March 29th.

Wrath of Heroes is perhaps another example on why spending money in a game that is still in beta is a bad idea. Wrath of Heroes will shut down having never left beta status, and Mythic has revealed that none of the gem purchases made by players will be refunded. While we have seen other companies perform partial or full refunds when a game is shut down mid-beta, Mythic has decided to not go down that route. Instead, any player who played after January 1st, 2013, or those who have an outstanding balance of gems, will receive one free month of Warhammer Online as well as a treasure chest with items for the MMO.

Undoubtedly this announcement will fuel discussion as to why a game still in beta was required to hit financial goals.

(Source: Wrath of Heroes)

DOFUS Gets Hit By DDOS Attacks


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Why would anyone want to hurt DOFUS? Over the past few years, the internet has seen the use of distributed denial of service attacks come into use more often and under increasingly casual motivations (Applebee’s didn’t microwave my food long enough, better DDOS them). Luckily most big companies are protected well enough that a player could never successfully DDOS, say, World of Warcraft offline. Smaller games, on the other hand, don’t have those same protections. Around this time last year, in fact, Perpetuum Online became the victim of a DDOS attack.

DOFUS website, forums, and game were taken offline yesterday as a result of multiple DDOS attacks on the servers. The company has beefed up security and put protections in place to hopefully prevent another attack in the future.

Yep, we had another DDoS attack early this morning. The server team is working on new protections for this.

The problem with DDOS attacks is that they were engineered so you never know who is behind them, since the attack comes from hundreds to thousands of computers. It could be a bitter ex-customer, a gold farming company exacting its revenge for disrupting its business, or a malicious hacker group attempting to find security holes. DOFUS’ sequel, Wakfu, is set to change hands from Square Enix at the end of the month.

(Source: DOFUS Twitter)

Jagex Bans 20,000 In Botwatch Update


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Last year RuneScape saw the first stages of Botwatch, a new system designed to end the constant game of cat and mouse between Jagex and gold farmers, and put an end to the rampant cheating, spam, and gold sales once and for all. Instead of altering the game’s code, Botwatch was designed to learn over time how bots behave, and learn the difference between human behavior and those dictated by machine. Botwatch is capable of banning on its own volition, and thus must be tuned to ensure no false positives are detected.

In a recent update to Botwatch, the program banned over twenty thousand accounts accused of gold farming:

We recently introduced the next phase of our anti-bot technology Botwatch, and it’s already showing its teeth in the battle against botting activity in RuneScape. Last night alone, we conducted a mass ban of no less than 20,000 gold farming accounts. This is a huge blow against gold farming, and you should see the difference in game right away. These new anti-bot systems aren’t limited to gold farmers, however – users of 3rd party clients and botting software are also being aggressively targeted by the newly updated Botwatch.

Last year Jagex introduced Botany Bay, where players can watch first hand as bots are executed and banned.

(Source: RuneScape)

ProSiebenSat.1 Suspends Some Planetside 2 Accounts Following Server Breach


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ProSiebenSat.1 has posted a notice on the Planetside 2 Europe website to notify customers that an unauthorized party gained access to one of their systems. While it is unknown if data containing usernames and passwords (which are encrypted) was stolen, the publisher has taken steps to prevent unauthorized access by suspending accounts suspected of being affected by the breach.

All accounts that may have been subject to unauthorized access have received an e-mail in which we have requested the user to change their password. If you are not able to log into your game, this means that your account has been suspended for security reasons. You can reactivate your account by following the link below and creating a new password. http://www.planetside2.eu/en/forgot_password

You can read the entire post at the link below, as well as an addition email address to contact in case your account has been deactivated and you are unable to retrieve it.

(Source: Planetside 2)