Everquest Mac Accidentally Diagnosed As Dead


How much does John Smedley love you? Enough that, earlier tonight, he posted this on Twitter:

Ok EQ Mac Players. You are a wonderful group of players. We will leave it running with no changes or subscription fees. Details soon.

Sony announced with sorrow last month that Everquest Mac would come to an end on March 29th. Players mourned the loss of what many play for the experience of a “near classic” Everquest, what with EQMac still being based in the Planes of Power (4th expansion, 2002).

Additional details will no doubt come this week or next, but it is reassuring to see the game being run with no changes or subscription fees.

(Source: John Smedley Twitter)

Why Aren't You Playing: Drakensang Online


[Addendum: I mistakenly stated that Drakensang Online was built on the Unity Platform. This was incorrect, it is built off of Bigpoint’s Nebula3 engine.]

Drakensang Online is a straight up isometric dungeon crawler, ala Diablo, and for me that is enough of a reason to at least pick the game up and give it a play through. For fans of dungeon crawlers, Drakensang does not disappoint. Otherwise, the game doesn’t have much to offer outside of the wholesale slaughter of minions and collecting of gear with incrementally higher stats.

The first thing you’ll notice about Drakensang is that the game looks and sounds great. Not great as in comparable to your full client games, but the Nebula3 engine does an excellent job of cramming as much visual quality as it can into the tiny browser package.

Combat handles fluidly with very minor targeting issues. Most of your game time will consist of walking around city hubs with other players, upgrading your equipment, selling your vast quantity of loot, and taking on quests. The quests are the usual fashion of “kill ten rats,” “kill rats until they drop ten buckets” and “use items on nodes.” PvP takes place either through consensual open world or through team battlegrounds.

Following the lead of Diablo3, Drakensang employs a mechanic of health orbs that drop during battle that can be picked up to restore health. Bosses drop these at regular intervals as their health is whittled away, and they replace the necessity of carrying and sucking down large quantities of potions. In addition, while your list of abilities is rather small in comparison to most MMOs, you’re likely to find a proper use for each ability granted to you.

The cash shop in Drakensang is powered by Andermant, a currency that can be slowly obtained through normal gameplay via quest rewards and random drops, or via real money at a base rate of $2 for 1,600 up to 246,700 (odd number) for $200 (a 35% saving!). Andermant can be used to purchase temporary buffs in experience and strength/defense. To expand your inventory to its maximum storage (49 extra spaces) would cost you over $200, or 249,600 Andermant.

For what it is worth, I manage to accumulate at least forty Andermant in each play period (around an hour, sometimes less), most of which I put into upgrading my weapons and armor. You’ll come across chests in dungeons that require keys that can only be purchased with Andermant, to which I can only say give them a pass. I haven’t had a single chest open that was worth the hundreds of Andermant that the keys cost.

If you were one of those people who passed up on Torchlight because it didn’t have any multiplayer (and thus no PvP) and played Diablo and Diablo II primarily for the PvP, you will likely be put off by the presence of the pay-for-advantage system. Otherwise, I can’t see PvE focused players getting angry that somewhere, someone is killing bosses in one or two less hits. And even if you get bored with Drakensang, you can always return. It isn’t going anywhere, not with Bigpoint’s profit margins.

Drakensang Online isn’t exactly a deep game, but then again fans of the genre are likely here for the same reason people enjoy Serious Sam, for the hacking, slashing, spell flinging, and masses of limbs and entrails flying every which way. It is popular, open world PvP is consensual, and the cash shop is generous (to an extent) if you’d rather not throw real money in. Everyone of the same class looks virtually the same, but that factor quickly moves aside to the actual meat of the game: Gremlin genocide.

Why Aren’t You Playing: Drakensang Online


[Addendum: I mistakenly stated that Drakensang Online was built on the Unity Platform. This was incorrect, it is built off of Bigpoint’s Nebula3 engine.]

Drakensang Online is a straight up isometric dungeon crawler, ala Diablo, and for me that is enough of a reason to at least pick the game up and give it a play through. For fans of dungeon crawlers, Drakensang does not disappoint. Otherwise, the game doesn’t have much to offer outside of the wholesale slaughter of minions and collecting of gear with incrementally higher stats.

The first thing you’ll notice about Drakensang is that the game looks and sounds great. Not great as in comparable to your full client games, but the Nebula3 engine does an excellent job of cramming as much visual quality as it can into the tiny browser package.

Combat handles fluidly with very minor targeting issues. Most of your game time will consist of walking around city hubs with other players, upgrading your equipment, selling your vast quantity of loot, and taking on quests. The quests are the usual fashion of “kill ten rats,” “kill rats until they drop ten buckets” and “use items on nodes.” PvP takes place either through consensual open world or through team battlegrounds.

Following the lead of Diablo3, Drakensang employs a mechanic of health orbs that drop during battle that can be picked up to restore health. Bosses drop these at regular intervals as their health is whittled away, and they replace the necessity of carrying and sucking down large quantities of potions. In addition, while your list of abilities is rather small in comparison to most MMOs, you’re likely to find a proper use for each ability granted to you.

The cash shop in Drakensang is powered by Andermant, a currency that can be slowly obtained through normal gameplay via quest rewards and random drops, or via real money at a base rate of $2 for 1,600 up to 246,700 (odd number) for $200 (a 35% saving!). Andermant can be used to purchase temporary buffs in experience and strength/defense. To expand your inventory to its maximum storage (49 extra spaces) would cost you over $200, or 249,600 Andermant.

For what it is worth, I manage to accumulate at least forty Andermant in each play period (around an hour, sometimes less), most of which I put into upgrading my weapons and armor. You’ll come across chests in dungeons that require keys that can only be purchased with Andermant, to which I can only say give them a pass. I haven’t had a single chest open that was worth the hundreds of Andermant that the keys cost.

If you were one of those people who passed up on Torchlight because it didn’t have any multiplayer (and thus no PvP) and played Diablo and Diablo II primarily for the PvP, you will likely be put off by the presence of the pay-for-advantage system. Otherwise, I can’t see PvE focused players getting angry that somewhere, someone is killing bosses in one or two less hits. And even if you get bored with Drakensang, you can always return. It isn’t going anywhere, not with Bigpoint’s profit margins.

Drakensang Online isn’t exactly a deep game, but then again fans of the genre are likely here for the same reason people enjoy Serious Sam, for the hacking, slashing, spell flinging, and masses of limbs and entrails flying every which way. It is popular, open world PvP is consensual, and the cash shop is generous (to an extent) if you’d rather not throw real money in. Everyone of the same class looks virtually the same, but that factor quickly moves aside to the actual meat of the game: Gremlin genocide.

Falling Out #13: Sleeping Around


The second mistake is falling asleep in a house that Black Mage occupies. The first mistake? Occupying the same house.

Square Enix Redacts Server Merger Announcement


Remember last week when Square Enix announced the details of their server merger? Well who says that Square doesn’t listen to their community? After an enormous amount of discussion on the forums, Square is taking the server merger back to the drawing board.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for the wealth of feedback you have provided us with following the announcement made on February 9, 2012 (Thursday), regarding the World merge and character transfers. In order to ensure that the most desirable and effective outcome is achieved, we will be reassessing the method of the merger process.

Initially, the server merger was set to take the game’s eighteen servers and merge them down to ten. Square has promised to release more information as the company decides upon what to do next.

(Source: Lodestone)

Star Vault Has 5 Employees, Says Henrik At Web Hearing


Sweden’s Aktie Torget Exchange has posted a web hearing with Star Vault CEO Henrik Nystrom, of which you can find the full translated version below. For the sake of brevity, I have compiled some of the more important points.

If you didn’t catch Star Vault’s Q3 2011 finances, the company reported that they had reduced staff without offering an exact figure. In the first question of the hearing, Henrik directly addresses this topic:

5 people are employed by Star Vault, then we have a team that works in the form of project employment/freelance when there is a need for it.

As he has done before, Henrik discusses why the game has faced its population issues, particularly with regard to the experience new players have upon joining, that the existing community must be helpful to new players who seek assistance, otherwise they may not return.

When asked about how long he expects Mortal Online to survive, Henrik likened the game to MMOs that have survived for over a decade. He also notes that Star Vault expects Mortal Online to break even and start profiting in mid 2012. Publishing with LeKool to bring Mortal Online to China should result in some results this summer.

Star Vault’s long term goal is 50,000 subscribers, a goal Henrik sees as reasonable. The average demographic for Mortal Online is the 18-20 male crowd.

(Source: Aktie Torget Exchange)

Thanks to Slapshot1188 for the tip.

Darkfall's New Investors: InternetQ


Although inevitably someone will come and tell me otherwise, investors have historically had major impacts on MMO development and direction on a fundamental level. For instance, I would never make the direct claim that Insight Venture Partners told Jagex to reverse course and start including exclusive in-game items packaged in with certain vendor cards, but if you look at the history, the two match up. Now, you could also speculate good features coming from such new investors, including the reversal of the free trade restrictions, finally thrashing bots from the game, etc.

InternetQ has announced a €2.6 million investment in Aventurine, affected by a convertible bond set to mature in March 2015, but InternetQ can convert it into equity at any time. If this takes place within 7 months of the Darkfall 2.0 launch, InternetQ will own 40% of Aventurine, with the option to buy more shares to become majority share holder.

The investment is specifically for Darkfall 2.0, the launch of free to play Darkfall in Asia, and development of InternetQ’s AKAZOO network.

With the Darkfall’s sequel launch later this year, Aventurine will have the opportunity to become a successful franchise.

Hold the phone: Darkfall is set to become a franchise? Is InternetQ suggesting that Darkfall 1.0 will continue alongside Darkfall 2.0?

It will be interesting to see the effect InternetQ has on Darkfall’s development. At the risk of sounding pessimistic, the press release tells me that InternetQ doesn’t fully understand exactly what Darkfall 2.0, or for that matter an MMO, really is and may be under the impression that Darkfall 2.0 is a standalone sequel (unless they know something we don’t)

(Source: InternetQ release)

Darkfall’s New Investors: InternetQ


Although inevitably someone will come and tell me otherwise, investors have historically had major impacts on MMO development and direction on a fundamental level. For instance, I would never make the direct claim that Insight Venture Partners told Jagex to reverse course and start including exclusive in-game items packaged in with certain vendor cards, but if you look at the history, the two match up. Now, you could also speculate good features coming from such new investors, including the reversal of the free trade restrictions, finally thrashing bots from the game, etc.

InternetQ has announced a €2.6 million investment in Aventurine, affected by a convertible bond set to mature in March 2015, but InternetQ can convert it into equity at any time. If this takes place within 7 months of the Darkfall 2.0 launch, InternetQ will own 40% of Aventurine, with the option to buy more shares to become majority share holder.

The investment is specifically for Darkfall 2.0, the launch of free to play Darkfall in Asia, and development of InternetQ’s AKAZOO network.

With the Darkfall’s sequel launch later this year, Aventurine will have the opportunity to become a successful franchise.

Hold the phone: Darkfall is set to become a franchise? Is InternetQ suggesting that Darkfall 1.0 will continue alongside Darkfall 2.0?

It will be interesting to see the effect InternetQ has on Darkfall’s development. At the risk of sounding pessimistic, the press release tells me that InternetQ doesn’t fully understand exactly what Darkfall 2.0, or for that matter an MMO, really is and may be under the impression that Darkfall 2.0 is a standalone sequel (unless they know something we don’t)

(Source: InternetQ release)

Stuck in TERA Queue? Enjoy Some Bonus Experience


I don’t know about you, but I hate queue lines, except in those rare moments when I find myself queuing in line for the gas station to open in the morning to buy a slushie. But enough of my small town stories. The point of my story is: I hate queue lines in video games, and if I’m going to be expected to sit around in my chair and leisurely consume carbonated beverages and watch television while I wait for a queue line to diminish, well by golly I better be compensated for it.

TERA has the right idea. I noticed while logging into the closed beta test tonight that the server was under around an 800+ person queue line, with a notice that if my time in line extended over ten minutes, I would be compensated with bonus XP. Ten minutes later, the notice changed to what you see above, and I was granted 13 minutes of bonus XP upon logging in.

See? Make it worth the wait.

Darkfall: Down The Path of Trammel


Whenever the topic turns to a free for all PvP MMO, I often bring up the subject of what I refer to as “Trammeling.” It is also known as “pulling an NGE,” and occurs when a developer makes dramatic changes to underlying fundamentals of a game in order to achieve what they believe will appeal to a broader range of gamers. And like New Game Enhancements, this runs the risk that the current population who are more likely to depart may not be fully replaced by the potential for newer, more casual customers. This is not the same as Ropering, the concept of alienating potential customers by monetizing everything up to each individual breath.

Today’s topic covers death in the upcoming Darkfall 2.0 relaunch. As of now, when a character hits zero health, they enter an incapacitated state during which another player can gank them, or they can wait out the timer or hit a button the bleed out and respawn at their bind stone.

When 2.0 launches, death will work slightly different. Rather than bleeding out, when the bar empties players will revive with minimum health. Aventurine hopes this will add another layer to larger scale PvP combat as downed players will need to be ganked to ensure that they are unable to get back up and start fighting. To balance this feature out in player vs environment situations, higher level monsters will be more likely to outright execute the player, rather than simply incapacitate them.

The changes don’t end at ganking, however. When ganked, a player will enter a state of limbo, during which they will be able to equip items from their bank box and then respawn near their tombstone. This is time based, will cost gold based on how much equipment you take, and is time based: If you don’t hit a specific button in time, you are still teleported back to your bind stone.

Community reaction to this news is naturally divided. More news to come as Aventurine releases more details.

(Source: Epic Blog)