I am not the kind of person who dwells on the past, which is why I spend a lot of time looking at screenshots of games that I used to play that have since shut down. Black Prophecy no doubt required more advertising than it received. It wasn’t a bad game and you can see from the screenshot above that the game looks absolutely gorgeous. Gamigo shut the game down last year after it launched to low reception and after the developer Reakktor Media went bankrupt.
Thank you for joining me for a night cap. Remember a time when Darkfall was on track for launch? Neither do I. Now, I’m not going to be mean to an indie developer for not making a release date, I know only enough that much larger companies have just as much of a problem meeting deadlines, but I have to admit: the excitement is waning. It’s been a good month or two since we’ve heard anything of substance from Aventurine on the status of Darkfall: Unholy Wars. My personal diary (this website) says December 11th as the last day anything meaningful was revealed about the release of Unholy Wars, and even then it was a non-direct sometime-in-the-future statement.
It is February 1st, we’ll be heading into three months from the initial November 20th, 2012 target date for Unholy Wars, and even further if you would go as far as to count Darkfall: Unholy Wars as still being the final product of what was once called “Darkfall 2010.” On November 14th, Aventurine delayed launch until December 12th. Late at night on December 11th, the day before launch, Aventurine delayed Unholy Wars yet again to an undisclosed date sometime hopefully in 2013. Mid-December, Aventurine opened up preorders for Unholy Wars, allowing new players and old to join up and play the beta until the new game launched. Those players aren’t in any place to tell us anything, as there is still an NDA in effect.
And again, I’m not going to be mean to an indie dev for not making their launch date, but it begs to question: Did Aventurine really think that Unholy Wars would be ready for November 20th? If you read the news posts, the first delay into December is most closely attributed to the sudden and unexpected approval on Steam Greenlight. The second delay was due to a desire by Aventurine to have the game tested by members of the community. After that, how long can Aventurine keep the public’s attention before they all walk away to check out the other attractions?
After all, there is only so far you can go on trailers and feature lists.
Remember a time when that thing you loved was better than it was now and those guys were not as much as they are now and those problems with the things didn’t exist or weren’t as bad? Jagex remembers, and Mod Mark appeared on the forums to gather suggestions from players as to how they feel RuneScape should move forward, specifically in the realm of moving backward. In a forum thread, Mark asked players for suggestions regarding classic servers, pre-Evolution of Combat servers, reintroduction of old, phased out content, and more. The server was open for 24 hours, and unfortunately is closed as of this writing with 224 pages of feedback.
It’s been a fascinating read, and everyone has their own opinion on what was good, bad, ugly or epic about older versions of the game. Right now, we’re looking into all of your comments, suggestions and ideas: specifically about combat, both old and new. Were committed to making this year something special, and we really want look into those ideas that you feel most strongly about.
Jagex will be going into some detail about the ideas presented in an upcoming Q&A session on February 20th.
(Source: RuneScape Forums)
Here at MMO Fallout, I have a basic rule of thumb: If I have a problem with something, odds are so are other people. I tweeted a few days ago that my Darkfall account suddenly doesn’t exist, and haven’t had any luck recovering my old account to pre-order Unholy Wars for the discount. If you have tried to log in with a Darkfall 1.0 account only to be met with an error stating that your account doesn’t exist, this article is for you. Someone on the forums pointed out for me that it is impossible to log in with Darkfall 1.0 accounts, as Aventurine deleted them when the servers came down. The information is still floating around on the account servers, however, and that is the important part.
Linking your accounts is incredibly easy. All you have to do is register a new account on the Unholy Wars website and there will be an option to link your account with a Darkfall 1.0 account. Once you link accounts, you’ll see the pre-order price for Unholy Wars drop down to $15.
In Hellgate: Global on the Bridge level, there is a high possibility of running into what I call the dreaded dual-healers. Having one healer in the back is bad enough, because they will constantly heal whatever you are attacking at a rate much faster than you can damage them. On multiple occasions I ran into dual-healers, making the group impossible to kill at all since the healers would simply heal each other. In the screenshot above, I just finished killing off two mini-boss level necromancers in Path of Exile, both of whom spent the entire battle running away and summoning an enormous amount of skeletons to block the way, including resurrecting the skeletons I killed en mass.
Luckily, either the necromancers are programmed to not resurrect each other, or they simply didn’t have the chance to.
Back when I reviewed Bullet Run by Sony Online Entertainment, I noted that while the game was fun, it seriously lacked content. At launch, Bullet Run carried just two game modes (Team deathmatch and Dominion) while at the same time featuring a fully fleshed out cash shop. Bullet Run faced the same problem that many other free to play shooters do: There simply wasn’t enough content. The game itself could be functional and mostly bug free, as well as free itself, but in an era where first person shooters are literally a dime a dozen, and the competing free to play FPS titles have an insane amount of content and have long established their user base, the competition is cut throat.
Whether you put it up to a lack of content, an overbearing cash shop, or some other reason, Bullet Run is coming to an end as of March 8th.
After much review and consideration, Acony Games and Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) have mutually made the decision to discontinue development on the free-to-play FPS game, Bullet Run. As a result, SOE and Acony will sunset the game and end all game services for Bullet Run on March 8, 2013. We would like to thank the players for their dedication and support of the game.
As with any other shut down, players will be refunded for any membership extending past February 1st on a prorated level.
(Source: Press Release)
Things haven’t been all sunshine and lollipops for Gala Net. In fact, the company has been operating at a notable, and growing, loss for the past four quarters straight. In the most recently released quarterly report, Gala announced an operating profit in the red at -167,145 (thousand JPY). On the heels of this news, MMO Culture has learned that Gala Net’s operations in North American and Europe, as well as Brazil, will be sold off to Webzen. The deal was struck just a few hours ago, and the transaction will take place on February 15th, 2013.
Webzen appears to have picked up Gala Net on the cheap, to boot. According to Reuters, Gala Net was sold for $17.5 million. Gala Net is best known for its publishing of Allods Online, Uncharted Waters, Continent of the Ninth, and more. Webzen has been covered here at MMO Fallout over their publishing of Archlord after Codemasters dropped the title back in 2009. We will have to sit back and see how the two services change as a result of this acquisition, although all likelihood points to gPotato’s games being assimilated into Webzen’s library.
(Source: MMO Culture)
The closed beta for City of Steam is over and done with, and while the rest of us are waiting for the open beta to begin, Mechanist Games is busy at work getting the game ready for launch. If you were planning on getting your hands on one of City of Steam’s numerous collaborator packages, know that your time is limited. Actually, you have two days. As of 11:59 PST on Friday, February 1st, the collaborator packs will be removed from the City of Steam store and will no longer be available to purchase.
Some of you are probably thinking: “So what? I’ll just wait for the next batch.” Well, that’s certainly an impression you may have gotten when we phased out the Alpha Collaborator Packs, where we considered ending it then and there, but brought them back for the Closed Beta by popular demand. This time though, this is the last you’ll see of them (for realsies this time)!
After February 1st, City of Steam will still be selling Electrum (RMT currency).
(Source: City of Steam)
Wizardry Online is live and kicking. The hardcore free to play MMO launched today under Sony Online Entertainment, who issued a news piece advising players who participated in beta. For the sake of reducing complications between the beta client and the live client, SOE has advised that players uninstall any beta versions before launching the game.
With Wizardry Online’s Official Launch it’s time for a fresh install. Because the Launch version of Wizardry Online has a number of minor differences in the server environment, a clean install will provide you with the best possible experience of Wizardry Online and avoid technical issues.
Those of you not willing to install a fresh copy of Wizardry will be happy to know that this is simply a precautionary move. You may encounter some bugs that wouldn’t exist on a fresh copy, but the game should work alright.
(Source: Wizardry Online)
Larry Liberty, who is in fact not a super hero himself but the Executive Producer for DC Universe Online, has stepped up to the forums today to issue a notice for players of DC Universe, specifically those who play on the PS3 servers in the United States. Due to heavy load brought on by the launch of Home Turf, the US PS3 server has been experiencing some unplanned downtime and instability, as well as a few other unforeseen issues. Sony Online Entertainment is working diligently to fix the issues brought forward during yesterday’s mishap and may have to bring the server down again.
You can read the full letter below:
I just wanted to apologize for the unplanned downtime on the USPS3 server. Server population has been exceptional since the launch of Home Turf, and it’s brought to light two issues that only happen under very high load. We have addressed one of them already, and are investigating the other. We will be bringing the server back up with an update that will address several issues that were surfaced yesterday. Release notes will accompany the update with more information, but there are a bunch of fixes and polish work as well based on community feedback. One change I wanted to call out was the reduction in the cooldown timer on Base relocation. We’re changing it from the initial 7-day cooldown to 1-hour. It may be necessary to come down for an additional server update today. We’ll monitor load, and broadcast warnings in-game.
(Source: DC Universe)
![[DC Universe] SOE Working On US PS3 Server Issues](https://mmofallout.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/dc_scr_plyract_met_004_0610.jpg?w=1200)
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