City of Heroes Dropping Localization In France/Germany


Community Manager Andy Belford over at Paragon Studios would like to thank you all for the tremendous support of the European communities ever since City of Heroes went live, and subsequently free. That is, except for the French and German communities who have not “seen rapid growth” in the past. As a result, Paragon Studios has announced that starting immediately, City of Heroes will begin phasing out support for French and German communities.

Official support for the French and German clients will end when Issue 23 is released, and players will be required to use the English language version.  The French and German servers (Vigilance and Zukunft) will not be closed down, however the content will be changed to English. In addition, all support tickets will still be answered in French or German.

(Source: City of Heroes website)

Darkfall Developer Blog: Korea And Onward


Who loves Korea? MMO Fallout loves Korea, and not just because the country has spiraled up to about 50% of my traffic over the past couple of days. Aventurine also loves Korea, in the latest Epic Blog Tasos Flambouras starts by commenting that the developers are heading to Korea to sign an agreement with new partners with more details to come next week.

In addition, you can check out the entirety of the blog to read up about changes to the user interface, the upcoming addition of “player points,” the addition of an achievement system, and new village control system.

Darkfall 2.0, the major relaunch of Darkfall is set to go live this year, or more specifically, sometime between today and the apocalypse.

(Source: Epic Blog)

Ghost Recon Online Keys: First Come First Serve


Hey there. If you’ve been looking for Ghost Recon Online keys, look no more. MMO Fallout has three keys to give away, listed below, first come first serve. Follow the instructions to redeem your key.

  • GRN-N9NM-CA9V-CAQQ-BHTY
  • GRN-N9TG-DMLX-3YWG-L73C
  • GRN-N9TM-JP9Q-K6G8-WGCL

Follow @mmofallout on Twitter or subscribe to our RSS for the drop on future beta keys and giveaways.

Gods & Heroes Doesn’t Have Developers


Gods & Heroes has had a rough life for an MMO. Back in the day the game began under Perpetual Entertainment which turned out to be not so perpetual and went bankrupt in 2008, orphaning its two MMOs. Already hit with a setback, Gods & Heroes was bought up by Heatwave Interactive, developed further and released in 2011 to almost no fanfare. The game was fun, but riddled with bugs and containing very little content outside of questing. Heatwave came out shortly after with a blunt announcement: The game wasn’t running up to par.

This January, Heatwave stopped charging subscriptions in favor of a buy to play system, with the promise of an upcoming free to play system. In an announcement today, however, Heatwave has announced that there isn’t much of a development team left, and won’t be until the game finds funding.

However, at the end of 2011, it was clear that we would either have to let the team go, or find another way to keep them around. So, in order to keep the game alive and have a real chance at getting the free 2 play effort funded, we’ve reassigned the majority of the development team to new projects and made the service free for everyone. The game will have to remain in this state until we find further funding. I hope my honesty and transparency about what has been going on with G&H communicates our commitment and belief in the project.

Gods & Heroes isn’t shutting down any time soon, however. There is enough funding to cover hosting.

There is definitely no expiration date on Gods and Heroes and funding for that is not an issue. I want to make it very clear that we have no intention on shutting Gods and Heroes down and we are committed to the IP.

Gods & Heroes is still available via digital distribution for $10 with no subscription fees.

(Source: Gods & Heroes Forums)

Gods & Heroes Doesn't Have Developers


Gods & Heroes has had a rough life for an MMO. Back in the day the game began under Perpetual Entertainment which turned out to be not so perpetual and went bankrupt in 2008, orphaning its two MMOs. Already hit with a setback, Gods & Heroes was bought up by Heatwave Interactive, developed further and released in 2011 to almost no fanfare. The game was fun, but riddled with bugs and containing very little content outside of questing. Heatwave came out shortly after with a blunt announcement: The game wasn’t running up to par.

This January, Heatwave stopped charging subscriptions in favor of a buy to play system, with the promise of an upcoming free to play system. In an announcement today, however, Heatwave has announced that there isn’t much of a development team left, and won’t be until the game finds funding.

However, at the end of 2011, it was clear that we would either have to let the team go, or find another way to keep them around. So, in order to keep the game alive and have a real chance at getting the free 2 play effort funded, we’ve reassigned the majority of the development team to new projects and made the service free for everyone. The game will have to remain in this state until we find further funding. I hope my honesty and transparency about what has been going on with G&H communicates our commitment and belief in the project.

Gods & Heroes isn’t shutting down any time soon, however. There is enough funding to cover hosting.

There is definitely no expiration date on Gods and Heroes and funding for that is not an issue. I want to make it very clear that we have no intention on shutting Gods and Heroes down and we are committed to the IP.

Gods & Heroes is still available via digital distribution for $10 with no subscription fees.

(Source: Gods & Heroes Forums)

TERA Korea Patch Adds In Cosmetic Cash Shop


Ahoy, TERAns! The great part of being on the lower end of the development scale is that kTERA gets all of the updates before we do here in the West. On one hand this does annoy a certain portion of the base who see the developer playing favorites, but on the other hand you might also see the Korean community as something of a guinea pig, to taste test the content for poison before it is brought over to the west. We saw this particularly with the Russian community in Allods Online a couple of years ago and TERA is no exception.

Over on the Korean TERA front, Bluehole Studios has added in a cash shop featuring time-limited and unlimited cosmetic items. There are eye glasses that sell for $2.50 for 30 days or $4 for 365 days. The mount sells for about $21 for 365 days. Before you explode into the comments section, it is important to note that the 365 day label is a farce, the items are listed for 365 days also have a note that they do not get destroyed after 365 days.

While the cash shop is cosmetic, there are gameplay changers included. Each item gives the user a set amount of T-Cat coins (22-30 for glasses, 304 for horse) which can be used currently to purchase twelve hours of crystal protection (no longer lose crystals upon death) and special sealing scrolls which are normally expensive items and are used in crafting.

You can check out the items here. So far no word on the cash shop making its way to North American and Europe.

DC Universe Legendary Is Even More Legen – Wait For It…


As part of a measure to keep all of their games in-line with one another, Sony Online Entertainment announced today that Legendary (subscriber) members of DC Universe Online are in for a treat. Starting April 3rd all Legendary players will receive a monthly “allowance” of 500 Station Cash on PC or Loyalty Points on PS3. In addition, players will be able to find Promethium lockboxes that can be unlocked free of charge, while free and premium members must buy keys from the cash shop. In addition, Legendary members will receive 150 replay badges which are used to reset instance loot lockouts.

Station Pass members are likely used to the restrictions by now, and can skip this section. You need a recurring subscription to receive the 500 station cash/Loyalty points, and the 500 station cash does not stack with other games on the station pass (You can still receive 500 station cash if you subscribe to each game individually). Loyalty Points on PS3 are due to Sony being unable to use Station Cash on the system.

In the future, Sony hopes to place DLC packs on the loyalty market.

(Source: DC Universe Online)

Warhammer 40k MMO Officially Cancelled


If this announcement sounds familiar, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. This time the announcement is official, Warhammer: Dark Millennium Online has been cancelled. Well, somewhat. In a press release today, THQ announced that the Dark Millennium will no longer be an MMO, but will instead become a single player game. So the title is dropping the “Online” and will henceforth be known as Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium, and thus is no longer a topic of conversation here at MMO Fallout.

 THQ Inc. (NASDAQ:THQI) today announced that it has refocused Warhammer® 40,000®: Dark Millennium™ from a Massively Multiplayer Online game to an immersive single player and online multiplayer experience with robust digital content, and engaging community features. Further product details, platforms and release timing will be announced at a later date.

In addition, over 100 employees have been laid off from the struggling developer. We already know that Dark Millennium was being developed with help from the Space Marine title, so the new iteration is likely to become a spiritual sequel. Dark Millennium Online was already looking at trouble with THQ acknowledging a lack of funds to publish the game.

As a side note, in a past poll 23% of MMO Fallout viewers believed either Activision or Trion should publish Dark Millennium.

(Source: THQ press release)

Age of Empires Online: Steam, Price Cuts


This is what happens when you, like me, stop paying attention to an MMO for a while. I’ll admit, Age of Empires Online has been offline for a while in my watch list, but today’s announcement that Age of Empires Online was merely worth a tweet until I noticed one important factor: When did the civilization packs come down so far in price?

Instead of spending $20 for a civilization pack, you can now pick these up for $10, which are temporarily on sale on Steam for 50% off. Persian, Greek, and Egyptian packs can be bought for $5.

So check out Age of Empires Online on Steam.

Video of the ___: Anarchy Online New Engine


Anarchy Online’s engine upgrade has been a long time coming, and while there is still some time to wait before players can enjoy the decade old MMO with brand new digs, the team at Funcom has promised to release a series of videos detailing new environments and player design.