MMO Fallout

ArchAge Publisher In West Is…Trion Worlds

There’s been a lot of speculation about who might be publishing the notorious sandbox MMO ArchAge in the west, and we finally have an answer: Trion Worlds. So breathe a sigh of relief, gamers, it wasn’t who you thought it was going to be.

Leading online games company Trion Worlds and renowned South Korea-based game developer XLGAMES have entered into a strategic agreement for Trion to exclusively publish and operate ArcheAge® in the West. Created by Jake Song, best known for his hit game Lineage, the highly anticipated ArcheAge is poised to be the most polished massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) coming out of Asia. Trion will host the game on its Red Door platform in North America, Europe, Turkey, Australia and New Zealand.

There is currently no information regarding beta or launch dates.

(Source: Press Release)

Aika Online Transfers To T3Fun January 31st

Make notes on your paper calendar, kids, you have until February 10th to give consent to transfer your Aika Online details over. As of January 31st, gPotato will no longer be publishing Aika Online. On that same day, the title will be transitioned over to T3Fun’s services. All information, including account ID, email, password, and game data will be moved over in the process, but only if you sign in and migrate your account before the due date, otherwise the data will be lost forever. To prepare for the exchange of services, gPotato has warned that any items or gold in the auction house as of January 31st will be lost, and recommends removing said goods before such time.

Aika Online launched in 2009 under both gPotato and T3Fun, with the former publishing in North America and the latter in Europe. In February 2011, the two publishers appear to have settled territory disputes, as both games opened their doors to anyone to play, regardless of region. On October 27th, 2011, T3Fun shut down the servers for its version of Aika Global, making way for gPotato to rule all of Mordor. I suppose now the shoe is on the other foot.

(Source: Aika Online)

Falling Out #23: Expecting the Expected

Falling Out appeared before 7pm. Pay me.

Jagex: What’s Coming And Going

Jagex seems to do a whole lot of apologizing, whether it is for the lacking infrastructure, your bot-detection software banning legitimate players, the enormous resources squandered on “hobby projects,” lacking basic security to prevent unauthorized purchases, and playing vigilante justice against the operator of a fan site.

Mark Gerhard has posted an announcement on the RuneScape website detailing how Jagex plans to move forward in several areas of communication. For starters, they recognize that players were not informed properly that Botany Bay, Jagex’s bot busting tool, was meant to be introduced into the game gradually, learning about how bots act in order to learn how they operate and eventually be able to catch them automatically. To compensate for the heavy rise in gold farmers, and due to Botany Bay not being fully implemented for a good while yet, Gerhard announced that several parallel bot-busting programs will be coming in 2013.

On the topic of micro-transactions, Gerhard is unapologetic. The money that Squeal of Fortune and Solomon’s Store have brought to RuneScape has allowed Jagex to double the size of the RuneScape development team, allowing the company to tackle big issues regarding infrastructure and improving the game’s audio and visual quality. He does admit, however, that the two cash shops virtually dominated the release schedule, often times bringing in content that felt completely out of context in the game’s environment. Gerhard also admits that Jagex went overboard in 2012 with promotions, giving away far too much with promotions like Sizzling Summer. Promotions in 2013 will be less frequent, and do less to undermine player achievement.

Overall, 2012 had some pretty dramatic changes to RuneScape’s foundation, something which Jagex hopes to continue into 2013. Jagex plans to introduce two new skills, a number of more meaningful quests, temporary events, as well as improving the engine to allow multi-core support as well as porting the engine to HTML 5 and more. Gerhard ended the letter with a sign of gratitute towards the community:

I don’t believe we’ve ever actually thanked our members for helping us to make RuneScape into the incredible game it is today, not to mention providing a completely free game for millions of players. So, a very big ‘thank you’ to our members from myself, the RS team and the free community.

Jagex: What's Coming And Going

I don’t believe we’ve ever actually thanked our members for helping us to make RuneScape into the incredible game it is today, not to mention providing a completely free game for millions of players. So, a very big ‘thank you’ to our members from myself, the RS team and the free community.

The Secret World Opens Up Account-Wide Unlocks

Cash shops can be a major pain in the rear, especially if you’re the type of player who would take Bioware up on their 350 character slot limit. Buying multiple copies of the same piece of cosmetic clothing or vanity pet can get pretty expensive when you’re looking at three, four, or more alternate characters. As a measure of good customer service, many MMOs allow for cosmetic unlocks to be available account-wide, enticing users who might otherwise be dissuaded by the threat of high-costs to open up their wallet.

Starting today in The Secret World, it will be possible to unlock pets account-wide for the cost of 25% over the base cost of the pet. So for instance if a single pet cost 200 Funcom points (not a real estimate), the cost to unlock account-wide would be 250 Funcom points. If you already own the pet as of the transition, you will simply have to pay the 25% extra cost in order to unlock them account-wide. Additionally, Funcom will be rolling out the veteran reward system soon. Players who purchase a subscription will receive relevant points at the start of the period, including multi-month subscribers as well as Grand Masters (lifetime accounts). Funcom is planning on adding in a large variety of items, although the total list has not been fleshed out.

(Source: Funcom)

[Not An MMO] Report Bugs in Sim City, Or EA Will Ban You

There was a time long ago when beta testing was a privilege, an agreement between the user and the developer that you would test the game for bugs or to offer feedback on balancing or features, and in return you got to play the game early. The state of beta tests today, which mostly serve as little more than promotional tools and early access demos, is one that the industry only need to look to itself to find who to blame. Perhaps spending years treating a beta like it is a giant pre-release party instead of the low-key bug-busting event it should be was a poor choice.

Recently we’ve seen developers trying to bring beta tests back to their roots, generally through the enforcement of a strict nondisclosure agreement and close discussion with users on the community forums, and a stern reminder that the test is indeed just that: A test. In the case of Electronic Arts and the upcoming beta test for SimCity, they responded in the same manner they always do: They threaten bans. In fact, according to the EULA, if EA thinks you knew about a bug and didn’t report it, you could lose access to “all EA products.”

“It is understood and agreed that, as part of your participation in the Beta Program, it is your responsibility to report all known bugs, abuse of ‘bugs’, ‘undocumented features’ or other defects and problems related to the Game and Beta Software to EA as soon as they are found (‘Bugs’). If you know about a Bug or have heard about a Bug and fail to report the Bug to EA, we reserve the right to treat you no differently from someone who abuses the Bug. You acknowledge that EA reserve the right to lock anyone caught abusing a Bug out of all EA products.”

As you might have guessed, actually banning for such an act would be difficult, if not impossible without the help of a specialized team of psychic mind readers. The wording offers a clear difference between someone failing to report a bug and a person who abuses a bug. So how do you prove someone knows a bug exists? If their account was spotted experiencing but not abusing said bug? There are a million different contexts in which a person could experience a bug and either pass over it due to inexperience in bug testing, not recognize it as being a bug, or not report it for whatever reason. Does that person really deserve to lose access to their entire Origin account for such a crime?

Of course not. It’s likely just a scare tactic. Hopefully.

(Source: Side Questing)

MMORPG.com Locks Discussion Of Its Own Editorial, Cites Rules

What a strange article. MMORPG.com, as with virtually any other MMO news site, does not allow the discussion of private servers and actively suspends/bans anyone who merely mentions the idea of their existence. I can’t blame them for this, after all I do it too. When you’re in a business where you’d like to get developers to respond to you every now and then, allowing your users to discuss how to play their game for free or on hacked servers is generally seen as no bueno. Again, entirely reasonable from everyone’s perspective. What I did find interesting is that MMORPG’s Garret Fuller published an editorial not only discussing how much he enjoys a particular private free shard for Ultima Online, but using it as an example of why people enjoy the classic shards and how today’s MMOs can learn from them.

It is the old version of the game and simply gives players the sandbox they have been looking for. The rules for most free shards allow players to buy into some stats and such, but the shard I play on is by the book for Ultima’s Second Age. After playing now for two weeks and using Razor’s Interface there are some valuable lessons I have learned about why players go back to sandbox games and why they stay active.

What is even more interesting, if not a bit humorous, is that the article does indeed violate MMORPG.com’s rules on discussing private servers, and Community Manager Mike B quickly showed up to lock the discussion thread for the article:

We’re going to be locking up the comments on this thread as this is a one-off piece by Garrett. As you all know, we do not allow the discussion of free/private/emulated etc. servers on our forums. We appreciate your understanding. Thanks!

The double standard is rather blatant on MMORPG’s part for publishing the article and then trying to dismiss any feedback or conversation about it by deleting threads and banning users, especially when the header for the article says “come discuss it on the forums.” If you can’t open a topic to feedback, it might be a sign that you know that the discussion will either not go in your favor, or you shouldn’t be talking about the subject to begin with. To openly invite people to discuss it, and then start deleting threads and banning accounts, well that’s just poor journalism.

(Source: MMORPG.com)

Eve Online Introduces Official Dueling Mechanic

The Eve Online community will never cease to amaze me in its creativity. For a while now Eve Online players have enjoyed an unofficial dueling system via a rather awkward system called “can-flipping.” One player would steal a single unit of ammunition from another player’s jet-can, the player would be flagged and could legally be attacked by player #2, allowing for something of a dueling system to exist in the relative safety of high security space. As the mechanic caught on, players have used it to set up entire tournaments and king-of-the-hill contests. So why implement an official feature when the emergent version has been so readily available?

Well, Eve Online launched Retribution, and chief among the changes to the manner in which players interact is that stealing from a player now flags the thief as legal to attack by anyone, not just the person they stole from. Thus, the unofficial dueling system was rendered broken (or at the very least unsafe). With the upcoming Retribution 1.1 patch, it will now be easy as pie to challenge another player. Simply send them a challenge in high security space, and CONCORD will step back and give the two of you five minutes to blast each other into space dust.

Just a warning to those thinking of joining in from the sidelines: Outside players are able to interact with the combatants just as they would normally, interfering with a limited-engagement via remote-assistance will flag the assistor as a global target).

(Source: Eve Online)

Vanguard Opens Up More Features For Free

What are you thinking about, Vanguard? Why so distant all the time? Reaction to Vanguard’s free to play transition last summer has been rather positive, but at the same time pretty lukewarm, with players noting the very restrictive free to play model that SOE had implemented as the primary reason behind the negativity. Before Vanguard even went free to play, Sony Online Entertainment was already doing patchwork on opening the game up more to free players, and since then the team has been working on fixing bugs, working on content changes, and planning for future updates.

In a post today, Producer Henry Burgess has revealed that both free players and members will receive a boost in Vanguard:

We have decided to expand and improve on the free- to-play offering for Vanguard. That means everyone can play any race, any class, to any level for free. You can also own a house, create guilds, and do a bunch of other things.

Free players will have full access to all of the game’s races and classes, as well as enjoying an unlimited gold purse and the game’s 50 active-quest limit. Free players will be able to have four bag slots, normal broker fees, 75 bank slots (compared to 25), as well as full access to caravans, brotherhoods, the ability to create a guild, and the ability to own a house. Members will enjoy a boost of 50% bonus experience, 12 character slots, double faction gains, a 10% discount at the marketplace, 20% discounted broker fees, two houses (20% discount on upkeep), 20% discounted mail fees, and a 20% discount on most other fees in-game. All of this with the other features members are already accustomed to (500 Station cash, customer support, etc).

(Source: Vanguard)

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