MMO Fallout

Redeem Ark Hunter Codes With Defiance

Hello, Ark Hunters!

Want a chance to get some extra stuff for your Defiance character? Trion has opened up a new section of the Defiance website, launching the My Ego feature where players can enter in alphanumeric codes in return for levels and prizes to be distributed in-game. There are 120 codes in total, although only 21 of them have been discovered by the community as of this writing, sprawled all over the web in the form of Defiance advertisements, emails, etc. The codes unlock a variety of rewards for the account, including extra inventory slots, permanent weapon skill buffs, and exclusive titles.

If you want, you can try to search the internet high and low for the codes, or you can just keep track of this Google document and enter in the codes as they are discovered. Defiance is scheduled to ship this year.

UPDATE: The Google Document above has been made private. Instead, you can find the Defiance ARK codes here at the Orkz Video Game Wiki.

(Source: My Ego)

Turbine Consolidates Cash Shop With Mithril Coin

Ever since Lord of the Rings Online went free to play, Turbine has been in a constant state of experimentation with the game’s cash shop. Most of the updates go by with relatively little controversy, and when Turbine steps over the line and draws fire from the community, they are relatively quick to take two steps back and reevaluate their plans. With the release of Update 10, Turbine is experimenting with a new idea: Consolidating multiple niche cash shop items into a single multi-function currency. Or in this case, the Mithril Coin.

With Update 10, players will find that some of their cash shop items have been converted into Mithril Coin. The Mithril coins replace a number of specific-use cash shop items, including fast travel tokens and daily quest resets. The ultimate goal is to streamline one section of LOTRO, allowing for numerous activities to be fulfilled without cluttering an already over-stocked cash shop with even more stuff.

Mithril Coins will replace some existing items, such as Revive Tomes and Stablemaster’s Writs. Our goal is to provide a simple, consistent interface for the services you already use. Ultimately it should be faster and easier for you to reset a quest, travel or quickly revive.

According to the FAQ, Mithril Coins could be expanded into other areas of the cash shop, based on player feedback.

We have no intentions of removing the store, which is a great place to buy bigger ticket items like account-based purchases and unlocks.

Judging by this comment in the FAQ, it would appear Turbine is moving the game toward a system where lesser goods are sold via real money currency (mithril coins) while the cash shop is reserved simply for big items (mounts, regions, expansions, etc).

(Source: LOTRO)

Neverwinter Presents $200 Exclusive Race

Those of you who played Star Trek Universe may remember the controversy that Cryptic Studios caused by encouraging players to purchase multiple copies of the game in order to take advantage of the retailer-specific cosmetic items upon launch. If you wanted to get your hands on the Next Generation Enterprise, as well as an adorable Tribble, you had to buy one copy from Best Buy and one from Gamestop. If you didn’t, according to Cryptic, you would have to go without them. Shortly after launch, Cryptic launched most of the items on to the cash shop, to the uproar of the game’s community.

So with a couple of years behind them and a brand new MMO (and parent company), what has Cryptic learned from Star Trek Online? Judging by today’s pre-order bonus pack, nothing. Kotaku revealed that players will be able to choose from several packages ranging in price from $20 up to the inglorious $200 Hero of the North Founder’s Pack. The packages range in goods, from bags to exclusive mounts, titles and bigger head-starts, the usual fray. The $200 package has something players should immediately sniff out as suspicious: an exclusive race.

Exclusive access to ‘Menzoberranzan Renegade’, a Drow playable race like the legendary ranger Drizzt Do’Urden, complete with unique racial abilities and tattoo

Cryptic has pulled this stunt before, claiming an item to be pre-order package dependent and then going forward and placing it on the cash shop at a significantly reduced price anyway. Knowing Cryptic, the appearance of the exclusive race on the cash shop is just about inevitable. An exclusive race, and a whole lot of lock boxes.

Path of Exile Patch Removes Login Exploit

Donde los yikes! The good news is that Path of Exile is proving itself to be quite popular with the dungeon crawling gamers, bringing the server down yesterday with a peak of almost seventy thousand concurrently. Even better, as often happens when the server is overloaded, Grinding Gear Games was able to patch a bug that had not yet exposed itself prior: In very rare cases, players randomly logged into accounts other than their own.

In addition, there is a very rare bug that caused some players to log in to accounts from other players. The scope of this bug is very limited (and in almost all cases, the players logged out without disturbing anything). Fixes for both are being worked on at the moment. Because the game experience is compromised and people are disconnected due to the crashes, we have turned the game servers off until they can be brought up in a more stable state.

Happily, a patch was deployed quickly fixing the bug and the servers were brought back up, with the number of affected accounts reportedly very small. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen an account system go nuts and start giving people access to places they shouldn’t be going, NCSoft’s account service did this back in January 2010, to approximately ten people before the exploit was fixed. Similar fast action from the GGG was responsible for keeping this bug from getting any bigger than it needed to be.

(Source: Path of Exile forums)

Trion Removes Falling Damage

When you have a game centered around exploration, taking a tumble off the side of a cliff can be, well, deadly. One criticism players have held with Rift is over the fact that their character’s bones are made out of crepe paper, as it is apparently rather easy to die from falling off of low heights. In response, Trion added this little note into hotfix #2 for patch 2.1 earlier this month:

Taking damage from falling should be slightly more survivable.

Oh patch notes, you are so silly. The “slightly” is a bit of an understatement, as it is impossible to die after leaping from off of a cliff (unless of course you fall into a pit of spikes or, say, a bag of vipers). Not everyone was entirely pleased with the response of removing fall damage, and Daglar from Rift posted on the forums to explain the update:

When we looked at falling damage, it wasn’t from the perspective of “Zomgz lets dumb down the game because people will fall and then quit” – it was “Will removing this make the game as a whole more enjoyable for the most amount of people, and does it fit into what RIFT is.”

Falling damage, much like the dodo, is gone for good in Rift.

(Source: Rift Forums)

NCSoft Latest Anti-RMT Shot: Bans All Chinese IPs

Gold farming in Aion is a pretty major problem. Similar to NCSoft’s other big name title, Lineage II, Aion players have become accustomed over the years to logging in and going through the ritual of reporting and blocking the new set of bots spamming the multiple chat groups and sending them whispers of cheap gold, fast delivery, and poor English (as opposed to MMO Fallout’s gold farming service which carries high prices, no delivery, and a staff of folks who understand English very well, especially the more vulgar parts of it). NCSoft has put forward various efforts to improving the process, like automatically clearing ignore lists of banned accounts, all the way back to launch when NCSoft sent GM’s in-game to blow up gold spammers.

And now, NCSoft declared all-out war on gold farming by firing the first shot: Banning IPs. NCSoft will be blocking Chinese IPs from creating accounts on Aion, due to high RMT traffic coming from the country. As for proxies, they will be blocked too if they become a problem:

Please note that proxies have become an integral tool for illicit behavior in MMOs, and as a result we do target them when we undertake anti-RMT efforts. However, legitimate latency reduction services are recognized, and a proxy will not be banned unless it is confirmed to be part of unsanctioned behavior.

And what happens if the gold farmers leave China? NCSoft is willing to follow them. The post makes note that should the gold farming become a problem from another country, NCSoft may begin knocking out access from other countries on a case-by-case basis. This only applies to newly created accounts, it does not stop current accounts from using their game.

(Source: NCSoft Aion)

[TERA] Want Founder Status? Get It Before It’s Gone

[UPDATE: It’s dead, Jim. TERA’s digital edition has been discontinued. If you haven’t picked it up by now, you’re out of luck.]

TERA heads free to play in February, and if you intend on playing it you might have wanted to get your hands on a copy of the game back when Amazon had it on sale for $5. In fact, if you were thinking about buying it now, you’re too late. The TERA digital edition has already been removed from Amazon, but you can still buy it at En Masse Entertainment’s website for $20. Why would you want to buy a copy of a game when it is heading free to play? Simple: Founder status.

Players who had purchased a boxed copy of TERA (whether digital or physical) and redeem the account key will be granted Founder status, which grants rewards higher in some spots than a free to play account subscribing. Crazy, indeed. Eight character slots per server (compared to 2), a Founder title, an exclusive Terminus mount, 288 bank slots (compared to 72), and a few lesser restrictions over free players. So you’ll buy a copy from EME after the game goes free, you’re thinking. Well, you thought wrong:

When we launch, we will discontinue all digital sales of TERA, so any remaining physical boxes will be the only way to gain founder status. Please check with your local retailer. Boxes will be available only while supplies last, and no new boxes are in creation.

If you do get your hands on a copy of TERA post-launch, you’ll still be able to redeem the code and grant your account with founder status.

(Source: TERA FAQ)

[TERA] Want Founder Status? Get It Before It's Gone

[UPDATE: It’s dead, Jim. TERA’s digital edition has been discontinued. If you haven’t picked it up by now, you’re out of luck.]

When we launch, we will discontinue all digital sales of TERA, so any remaining physical boxes will be the only way to gain founder status. Please check with your local retailer. Boxes will be available only while supplies last, and no new boxes are in creation.

If you do get your hands on a copy of TERA post-launch, you’ll still be able to redeem the code and grant your account with founder status.

(Source: TERA FAQ)

Planetside 2 Roadmap Outlines Six Months

I know what you’re thinking. Given the MMO industry is addicted to launch delays like they are crack, what could possibly be interesting about yet another roadmap being released? Well, Planetside 2’s roadmap (assuming you can convince it to load) is a bit different than those you’ve seen in the past. Released just recently by Sony Online Entertainment, the roadmap reveals the next six months of Planetside 2’s development schedule. The list includes a new continent, adjustments to various skills, new weapons and features to be implemented, and more.

But you’ll also see that the roadmap isn’t just a list of things that are on their way. Rather, they are a list of suggestions by Sony Online Entertainment being proposed to the community. Players are able to vote various features up and down, and while that doesn’t guarantee that they will be included or excluded, it is a way to gauge interest in a feature before the development team goes through all the hard work of actually implementing it. Players are also able to leave comments and suggestions for the developers to read.

Planetside 2 isn’t perfect, but Sony Online Entertainment is dedicated to fixing it up as well as they can.

(Source: Roadmap)

Funcom Bigwigs Weigh In On Relocation

With the recent layoffs Funcom’s Montreal/Raleigh offices and closure of Funcom’s Beijing office, everyone is asking: What does this mean for Age of Conan? Or The Secret World? Or Anarchy Online? Or that Lego Minifigure MMO? Or that kid’s game you probably never heard of? Each of the game’s directors have written their own letters to the community this morning, giving some insight into how things will be changing down the road ahead.

Craig Morrison stepped up on the Age of Conan website to discuss future content. There’s no point in sugar coating it, as Morrison says, and development will be affected by the layoffs and consolidation of the development teams. Development on Dragonspine content, as well as the trade-skill revamp and more are still in progress with most of the content still on track for release this year. Over at The Secret World, Joel Bylos discussed similarly that development will hit some turbulence due to the consolidation of the development teams into one studio, and the loss of employees unwilling to relocate as part of the restructuring. He goes on to say that The Secret World still has a strong development team, and that Issue #6 is on track to launch at the end of February, containing new content set in Egypt as well as improvements to the game’s PvP, among other additions.

Overall, the message is pretty similar: Expect some bumps in the road for the near future, after which Funcom hopes to get everything ironed out and resume normal operations. It appears that, while they may take more time, pretty much all of the content that was in development for Funcom’s MMOs prior to the shift are still on their way, even if they take a bit longer than hoped for.

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