MMO Fallout

Taco Tuesday: Don’t Ban Griefers, Make The Game Unbearable

Today is Tuesday and that can only mean one thing: The cafeteria is serving up hot ground meat in between your choice of soft tortilla or crunchy corn shells. Regardless of your preferences of sauces and toppings, Taco Tuesday is inarguably the greatest day of the week, unless of course you hate life. It is around the taco table that we come together to discuss MMOs, in particular those big things and little things that make the genre great. So grab yourself a shell, load it up, and get ready to dig in.

Ever since MMOs first introduced the concept of open combat, the question has lingered as to how to allow players to battle each other to their heart’s content, while at the same time preventing people from griefing new players and driving away business. Games have attempted to throw in a number of features, all with varying success. Criminal systems are often used which prevent characters from entering certain areas/cities until they either wait out a period of time or grind faction points. The goal in these cases is to allow for free range murder with the penalty of inconveniencing the character for the duration of their criminal reign. Certain MMOs go further by punishing the character with experience/stat penalties if they are killed while flagged.

Two recent games are taking a far more hardcore approach to dealing with griefing and mitigating those with a strong habit of randomly killing/kidnapping everyone they come across, and those games are Wizardry Online and Age of Wushu. Wizardry Online is a hardcore MMO with permadeath and open PvP, a combination which means there is an obligation to ensure that opting to be a criminal is difficult and dangerous. When one player kills another in Wizardry, the victim is able to place a bounty on the head of the killer. Bounties are temporary and will eventually expire. Players with more than five bounties will be imprisoned upon their next death. Imprisoned players are unable to delete imprisoned characters, nor are they able to access other characters on the same account. Between paying back bounties or long hours of grinding to get out of jail, a particularly bad griefer could be punished past the point of being willing to play anymore.

Age of Wushu features a similar jail system. Snail Games may not have implemented any kind of permanent death feature in Age of Wushu, but they’ve managed to make prison almost as bad. Instead of trying to explain it myself, I will allow user Smokefin to give his testimony:

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 from 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.

72 game hours in jail followed by 24 game hours with stats halved? That is harsh. Maybe a little more punishing than I would have thought, and apparently enough to cause Smokefin to quit.

Where do you stand on penalties for griefing/rampant ganking? Should the worst offenders have their games essentially rendered unplayable for long periods of time?

Taco Tuesday: Don't Ban Griefers, Make The Game Unbearable

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 from 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.

72 game hours in jail followed by 24 game hours with stats halved? That is harsh. Maybe a little more punishing than I would have thought, and apparently enough to cause Smokefin to quit.

Where do you stand on penalties for griefing/rampant ganking? Should the worst offenders have their games essentially rendered unplayable for long periods of time?

NCSoft Refuses To Censor Blade & Soul For The West

Just once I’d like to see a game receive a mature rating because the content is so hard hitting that it requires an adult mindset to digest. Until then, however, we’re going to have to deal with the fact that an MMO’s ESRB rating is generally directly proportional to the level of exposure of a certain part of the female anatomy. Of course I’m speaking of breasts, whether large, small, and of all shapes and sizes. In the past few years, we’ve seen a number of titles translated for the western audiences that end up being censored out of fear of either controversy or a bad rating by the ESRB/PEGI. These censors usually end up affecting classes/characters who could be misconstrued as underage, when they are simply small and petite.

A few gamers noted that a recent trailer for Blade & Soul that the game appears to have several alterations, adding some clothing where it didn’t exist in the Korean version. NCSoft released a press statement clarifying that they have only the utmost respect for Team Bloodlust, and that the censored models are solely for promotional purposes.

Due to ESRB guidelines, however, our marketing material must abide by a different set of considerations than the final product. This is why Blade & Soul‘s rating is listed as “pending.” It is NCSOFT West’s intention to accurately depict the game in its original, unaltered form, with only minor adjustments for gameplay considerations. In short: We are not planning to censor or alter the actual in-game content you have come to expect from an artist such as Hyung-Tae Kim and a studio such as Team Bloodlust. Rest assured that we love Blade & Soul as much as you do, and any modifications to the marketing material are not indicative of our plans for the final content.

MMOrning Shots: Exhausting Pipe

That piece on the chest plate looks like it might be some sort of coolant system, but it’s actually an Old Republic George Foreman grill for cooking up a grilled cheese sandwich on the run. Bounty Hunters have to eat too.

MMOrning Shots is a (mostly) daily compilation of random screenshots from MMOs played by the MMO Fallout staff. If you would like your own screenshot featured, send it over to contact@mmofallout.com

Final Fantasy XI Is Not Being Ported To Vita

Bad news, bears. All five of you who purchased a Playstation Vita (and I include myself in that) in hopes that Square Enix would eventually port Final Fantasy XI to it, as hinted in a news post from two years ago, are going to be sorely disappointed. Interested in seeing if there was any new details on the port (there were absolutely none at the time), I asked Square Enix over Twitter if there were still plans in place to port the MMO over to the Vita. Whether through technical limitations or the poor sales of the console, I received a very simple and to the point response:

no I’m afraid not.

So that is that idea out. There is still Phantasy Star Online 2 coming to the Vita, but otherwise the market is quite barren in the realm of open world MMOs. There is always hope for the future, and as long as the Vita is still in production we can always hope that someone will care enough to port an MMO over to it.

(Source: Twitter)

ROBLOX Honors Erik Cassel With Charity Drive For Cancer Research

It is never easy to say goodbye to a friend or co-worker. Erik Cassel was the co-founder of ROBLOX, along with David Baszucki. Unfortunately, Erik passed away on February 11th, following a battle with cancer. To show their support and to remember Erik, players attended a memorial held within ROBLOX the following day on February 12th. In order to honor his memory, ROBLOX will be selling special hats and shirts, with proceeds from the sales going toward cancer research.

In honor of ROBLOX co-founder Erik Cassel, we’re featuring some special clothing items until February 25. Longtime users know that Erik could often be found in ROBLOX wearing the “Well Worn Hat” – this hat meant a lot to Erik, and now that he’s passed, it means a lot to us. We’ve re-named it Erik Cassel’s Hat, and we’re now offering it for 20 Robux. We’ve also made new commemorative “Erik” t-shirts, which are only a single ticket. We hope you’ll wear them in remembrance of Erik. Based on the sales of these items, ROBLOX will make a substantial donation to cancer research. Thank you to the entire ROBLOX community all for your respect and support.

We here at MMO Fallout send our thoughts and wishes to Erik Cassel’s family, friends, and coworkers, and hope the best for them in these difficult times.

NCSoft License Unreal 4 For Two New MMOs

No rest for NCSoft. Coming on the heels of Guild Wars 2’s success, and with the recent release of Blade & Soul over in Korea, and the upcoming releases of Wildstar and Lineage Eternal, you might fall under the pretense that the Korean publisher is up to their necks with work. You would be wrong, as NCSoft has inked a partnership with Epic Games to develop two new MMOs under the Unreal 4 Engine.

There are no confirmed titles in the works, and the two games are separate from NCSoft’s existing library. Rumors suggest that one or both may be either the long-delayed and thought to be cancelled Lineage III, and possibly Aion 2. Aion had recently stated a committal to existing IP.

Regardless, we won’t be seeing anything from these games for a long time. According to an NCSoft rep, not until after Lineage Eternal.

(Source: TIG)

MMOrning Shots: Disgrace

The humor in Side Quest is a bit sophomoric at times, but it gets by all the same. Side Quest is still offline (the game is mid-development) and will be until some major updates can be added in.

Mortal Online Shows Higher Resolution Textures

There is no denying that the citizens of Nave have faces only a mother could love, and in many cases a body of hair that even Robin Williams would be impressed by. Not too long ago, Star Vault set up a donation system where players are able to throw a little extra into the coffers. The idea, of course, is that while Star Vault does not receive 100% of revenue from subscriptions (I’m guessing much of it goes to licensing), they are able to keep 100% of the donations, which they put toward extra development goals.

The latest goal to be announced comes in the form of $6,000 toward the “character build” update, aiming to bring a brand new look to Nave’s player folk, both in the face and armor departments. The update will also allow several other features to be put into place, including general optimizations and a few other graphical improvements. The whole list of improvements is as follows:

Much better looking player characters (rebuild of all races and genders).
Better looking character face customization; more support for scars, tattoos etc.
Rebuild of all armor meshes/materials/shaders parts making them look much better.
Allowing us to add more and new armor parts in the game.
Almost all resource material gets its real and unique look.
Much better control over the dye system.
Better performance on player characters, no more 1-2s freeze lags when loading a bunch of players.
Removal of the texture merges system which means a big memory optimization on the client and better overall performance.
More players on the screen will not add cost on the client as it did in the old system.
A full new armor set will be included in this package; new types will arrive in the future now since the new system will allow it.

The donation system has drawn some controversy, although from outside the Mortal Online community rather than inside of it. The concept may seem surprising to players outside of the game, but the community hasn’t just embraced the donation system, they are the ones who demanded it be put in place to begin with.

(Source: Mortal Online)

Jagex Allows Vote For OldScape: Revive RuneScape From Aug ’07

scapemas

Would you pay $15 a month for access to classic RuneScape? No not that far back, we’re talking 2007’ish, before the original trade restrictions were put into place. Well do I have news for you. In a blog post on the RuneScape official website today, Jagex has outlined plans to release a snapshot version of RuneScape dated back to August 2007. Before, well, a whole lot. Just imagine, a RuneScape where Jagex never restricted trade (or nuked bots), where Dungeoneering doesn’t exist, no God Wars or top tier equipment, no grand exchange (auction house), etc. No evolution of combat and no microtransactions.

Want to go back to the nostalgic days? All you have to do is vote.

So, just like the poll for the return of the Wildy & Free Trade, which saw a jaw dropping 1.4 million votes , we will be running a similar poll and letting you – our valued members – decide the fate of ‘Old School RuneScape’, given that you directly fund the game’s ongoing development and supporting services. This decision – along with the level of service, investment and potentially any additional fee for the service – is truly up to you to determine.

The blog post highlights several stages of development depending on how many votes the poll gets, from the bare minimum (50 thousand) where the service comes back as a $15 a month subscription (yikes) and only receives critical maintenance.

At 250,000 votes, the membership fee comes down to $5 and will support a small development team to fix bugs and (hopefully) implement the modern anti-bot technology as best they can.
At half a million votes, the game will have a full development team and no additional costs, as well as some content development and anti-bot technology.
At 750,000 votes, the game will have all of the above plus the free portion available to non-members.

These servers, at any of the above levels, would be the exact version from back in 2007 and would maintain the ‘old school’ vibe and rules. The old graphics, hiscores, log-in, are all part of the same archived build and would be retained. We wouldn’t ever add any micropayment updates.

The poll will be live on February 15th and run for two weeks. Your options are yes, or don’t vote.

(Source: RuneScape Website)

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