Need A Scroll of Resurrection? Comment Below


If you’re like me, you would like to have a scroll of resurrection for the Cataclysm upgrade, free level 80 character, etc, but don’t know anyone who still plays World of Warcraft. Luckily for myself, I’m already subscribed to the twelve month annual pass and ineligible for this promotion anyway, but as a service to our good friends out there MMO Fallout is offering scrolls of resurrection.

For me to send you a scroll of resurrection, submit your realm name and character name in the comment box below. I need both, and this will only work if your account expired before March 4, 2012, and the reward will be transferred once you purchase a subscription. Your comment will be held in moderation and will not be approved, your username/realm will remain private and only visible to myself.

Note: The invitations were working before, but it appears that they are now restricted to my area. North America/Canada/Latin American players only.

Mists of Pandaria Dropping Support For Windows 2000


I apologize for this article being about two months late, but in a post on the World of Warcraft forums, Blizzard has announced that in preparation for the launch of Mists of Pandaria later this year, World of Warcraft will no longer be compatible with the Windows 2000 operating system.

In preparation for the upcoming release of Mists of Pandaria, updates to World of Warcraft will no longer support Microsoft Windows 2000. Microsoft ceased support for this version of their operating system in 2010. Players still using Windows 2000 are encouraged to upgrade prior to the release of Mists of Pandaria.

According to a user on the same thread, World of Warcraft is still playable on Windows 2000 by replacing OS .dll files with other versions. As a developer, Blizzard is widely known for ensuring that their games work on as many computers as possible, going as far as including operating systems long after Microsoft had ceased support. Still, all good things must come to an end, and users will have to upgrade if they want to continue playing.

More on World of Warcraft as it appears.

Everquest II And Cancer: A Froglok’s Story


This is a depressing post but I need some help.  My 6 yr old son has cancer and was recently given 6 – 12 weeks to live.

He has a frog that he likes to run around Tenebrous Tangle Island on; however, it is sparse and he has requested to add trees, fences, stairs, animals and all kinds of  other  items to make his  island fun and exciting.

Are there any decorators out there that would be willing to assist in adding these items (and any others their imagination poses) to help me make the island even more fun for him.  I don’t know how much I’ll be able to accomplish on my own while still providing him quality time to enjoy it.

Any takers, please send an ingame mail to any of my following toons:

Myrose, Mistymountain, Martine, Minuet

Thank you in advance.

MMO Fallout would like to extend our thoughts and wishes to Ribbitribbit and his family, and a big nod to the Everquest II community for joining together to create one of the best looking houses, and to Sony for promoting the event and getting more people involved.

If you want a link to the Everquest II thread, click above. Check out the video below for a slideshow made by user Cyliena. You can see videos of the actual Ribbitribbit’s reaction to the house here.

Everquest II And Cancer: A Froglok's Story


This is a depressing post but I need some help.  My 6 yr old son has cancer and was recently given 6 – 12 weeks to live.

He has a frog that he likes to run around Tenebrous Tangle Island on; however, it is sparse and he has requested to add trees, fences, stairs, animals and all kinds of  other  items to make his  island fun and exciting.

Are there any decorators out there that would be willing to assist in adding these items (and any others their imagination poses) to help me make the island even more fun for him.  I don’t know how much I’ll be able to accomplish on my own while still providing him quality time to enjoy it.

Any takers, please send an ingame mail to any of my following toons:

Myrose, Mistymountain, Martine, Minuet

Thank you in advance.

MMO Fallout would like to extend our thoughts and wishes to Ribbitribbit and his family, and a big nod to the Everquest II community for joining together to create one of the best looking houses, and to Sony for promoting the event and getting more people involved.

If you want a link to the Everquest II thread, click above. Check out the video below for a slideshow made by user Cyliena. You can see videos of the actual Ribbitribbit’s reaction to the house here.

Ilum To Be Deprecated In 1.2, PvP In Warzones


If planets are children, Ilum is the son who plays by his own rules and inevitably is shot and killed at the end of the movie due to his own recklessness.  Since The Old Republic launched last December, the high level planet Ilum has been the subject of major bug and resource exploits, controversial bans, players grinding valor points by trading kills, and more headaches for Bioware.

As a result, Stephen Reid was seen on the Old Republic forums stating that Ilum will be deprecated in 1.2, to be reconstructed Vader-style to be more fun. Until then, rewards gained from Ilum will now be gained in warzones.

As we said during the Guild Summit, the PvP team is ‘going back to the drawing board’ with Ilum. That means they want to rework it to be fun and engaging. We accept there are issues with the current design and want to ensure that what we end up with is enjoyable for PvP fans. We have no ETA on when a redesigned Ilum might be available, but when we do have more news, we’ll share it.

In other news, Stephen Reid also mentioned that while Bioware would like to see a Mac client for The Old Republic at some point in the future, there are currently no plans to develop one.

(Source: TOR Forums)

TERA Beta Preview Part 3: Prisoner of Azerbaijan


[Editor’s Note: I highly recommend reading Part 2 before you read part 3]

I’ve mentioned before on Twitter and in discussions that I support a combination of a localized auction house and player owned shops that can be spread over the countryside. Granted, my business tactics come from a time where I could set up my shop NPC outside of a large raid dungeon and stock it with health/mana potions, buff potions, resurrection scrolls, etc, but that is a story for a different time.

For the beta, I want to say that it is working like a wonder. My Popori archer made it to level 16 this weekend without experiencing any bugs. There was one server outage this time around, but otherwise the connection in my server went along fine even at peak hours. Zones were once again overcrowded at all times of the day, however, but that is to be expected with only a few servers running and should space out at release.

First thing’s first: I was able to preview crafting and all I can say is that it is generic, but useful, and incredibly expensive. Buying the materials from the Weaponcraft materials vendor for my first weaponcraft quest cost me thirty thousand gold, of which I received one hundred back as payment for completing the quest. I did manage to get some real armor crafted, and considering the extremely slow rate at which looting mobs has been providing me with armor and weapons, crafting is looking to become a very useful asset.

Otherwise crafting is a simple method of gathering materials, buying stuff you can’t find on the field from vendors, and watching a progress bar load. And then once you no longer have use for a specific material, dump it on one of the ten thousand vendors carrying work orders for it. Crafting materials are in extremely high demand, and I hope that the outrageous prices that players are willing to throw for them in beta rolls over to the live game.

Leveling is still a rather mind-numbing grind of quests asking me to kill X-mobs, but I’ve noticed the inclusion of a new quest type: Guild quests. There are also special “suppression order” (repeatable) quests, and they were my number one annoyance this weekend. As far as I know, this is an intended “feature,” that in each quest you are generally required to obtain “proof” of a kill, meaning a drop. For myself, the drop rate on “proof” is so low that I managed to kill somewhere around forty centaur before the quest ticker moved up by one.

Again, I complain but TERA offers some of the most fun I’ve had in a recently released MMO. The action-combat is still the highlight, and in case the pictures don’t say it, the game still looks absolutely gorgeous. There are two closed beta tests left, with one open beta in April. I will see you then!

I received a few complaints last time for not talking about the lawsuit between NCSoft and Bluehole Studios, some people saying I shouldn’t be promoting TERA until the outcome of the trial is determined. One important factor you should know with the lawsuit against TERA is that even though NCSoft won in Korea, the game was still able to launch. I have very little doubt that even if NCSoft were to gain victory in the states that the court would actually shut down or prevent TERA from releasing.

gPotato Sunsetting Two More Games


For every day that goes by, the odds of successfully importing a free to play MMO from Asia to the west become more difficult. Several years ago, the only competition that a publisher had to contend with consisted of similar titles with an insane amount of grind, poor localization, and an almost nonexistent customer support to match the “pay to win” cash shop. Now that the Western free to play market is no longer a place where subscription games go to die quietly, the market has become ever more saturated with each passing fiscal quarter, and the market has only grown less tolerant of poor imports.

Last December, gPotato shut down Tales Runner. More recently, the publisher announced that on March 27th, two more games will meet the same fate. Luna and Prius Online will both be turned off at the end of March. To compensate players, gPotato is offering compensation packages including cash shop currency reimbursement to use on their other titles.

So far in 2012 we have seen or will see the launch of TERA, The Secret World, Guild Wars 2, Neverwinter, and a whole lot more. and the free to play conversions of Aion, Star Trek Online, and Everquest (to name three), and the deaths of Everquest Online Adventures, Earthrise, and Lego Universe (so far). In an already crowded and competitive market, developers and publishers must become increasingly vicious to keep their games afloat and to not be tossed to the sharks.

Yea, Well, The Old Republic Will Fail When…


You may not be aware of it, but here at MMO Fallout I have a very lax policy of commenting. I don’t require you register, or for that matter even fill out your username or email address (a good portion of the comments here are entirely anonymous). There are well over five hundred comments spanning 1,100 articles, and in the two and a half years since MMO Fallout was funded, I think I’ve had to delete one legitimate (not a spam bot) comment but only because the person was using a large amount of racial epithets. Still, there are a lot more comments about this website off site than on site.

I think it has something to do with not wanting to risk looking like a fool on the off chance that your premise is inaccurate and you are unable to edit the message, which is also why I receive more emails than I do comments. With The Old Republic, I managed to hit a nerve with a few people every time I referenced the game this past year as clearly “the biggest release of 2011.” First I was told to wait until I’d played the game. Truth be told, I started playing The Old Republic around the time the Electronics Entertainment Expo was still running, so I already had experience. Then the closed beta weekends started and those same people told me to wait until open beta for the game to flop.

Naturally, closed beta turned to head start and I was told to wait until launch, that was when the game would flop. Forget that, by this point, The Old Republic had already been referred to as the best selling preorder for Electronic Arts. Finally the game launched, and this is where those same people started sending me actual “proof,” in the form of empty guild channels. I was told to wait until the dreaded first month passed, and that is when I would see subscriber numbers drop off and the server mergers start.

Well now Bioware has stated that The Old Republic has sold two million copies and retained 1.7 million subscribers, most of whom are past the first month. No doubt the next step will be waiting for the initial three and six month subscribers to drop off, and then we’ll play it by expansion. Will The Old Republic grow or decline? I don’t know, I don’t claim to foresee Bioware’s production schedule to ensure players at end-game don’t get bored too quickly.

In other words: I’ve already talked about how Guild Wars 2 will be insanely profitable and popular, and some of the fans shouldn’t take good news for The Old Republic as a personal assault on their game of choice.

Incoming Bot Nuke: March 2012


Jacmob is the creator of RSBuddy, one of the major bots back in the day. Why is he important? Following the bot nuke, and the shuttering of RSBuddy, Jacmob was hired by Jagex to work on anti-bot solutions. In a post on the RSBuddy forums, Jacmob talks about an upcoming March 2012 bot nuke:

It’s been a while since that preliminary bot nuke last October. Now that there’s been time for competent people to move on and various arrangements to be made, I will soon be making my final announcement on RSBuddy. In particular I will speak about the end of RSBuddy and what the approach will be to any further related projects. I will also speak in general terms about the larger bot nuke that’s due in shortly, which should encompass every type of bot and conclude the development time needed to deal with bots for a long while.

Hopefully there will be more details soon.

Tribes: Ascend Parodies Dead Rising


Tribes: Ascend has released a new video parodying Dead Rising’s serious trailer. Shazbot!

Hi-Rez has announced an April 12 launch date for the free to play shooter Tribes: Ascend, although anyone can get into the open beta now by heading to the official website.