I told the Black Mage to play someone else’s class for once, and he begrudgingly obliged. If I don’t survive to Monday’s comic, it was not an accident.
I apologize for this being a few hours late. The original Friday comic was rescheduled for Monday to spruce up a bit.
I told the Black Mage to play someone else’s class for once, and he begrudgingly obliged. If I don’t survive to Monday’s comic, it was not an accident.
I apologize for this being a few hours late. The original Friday comic was rescheduled for Monday to spruce up a bit.
In a measure that will certainly cause more rage-filled comments here at MMO Fallout, Jagex has won their case against bot makers, with some tasty bit of extra information to top it off. In the case of Jagex Vs Impulse Software, the judge ruled in favor of Jagex on counts of copyright infringement under federal law, circumvention of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, trademark infringement under federal law, Computer fraud and abuse under federal law, and Tortious interference with contract (Tortious interference is when your actions damage a company’s relations with customers/business partners).
In addition, the members of Impulse Software are now forbidden by court order to write bots for any Jagex game, help write bots for any Jagex game, and even play any Jagex game, as well as releasing the source code for their bot software. The URL’s will be transferred into Jagex’s possession, as well as a large amount of documents they had relating to the program. In addition, Impulse has been ordered to put out a public apology.
The amount that Impulse is paying to Jagex has been sealed, so how can this news get juicier, I hear you ask. Pay attention to this little snippet:
Within 10 days of the entry of this Order, Defendants shall identify and provide all contact information in their possession to Jagex for all current or past resellers,script developers, code developers, and customers for any product marketed, licensed, or sold by Defendants dealing with any Jagex Game.
The developers and customer list handed over to Jagex? I smell Jagex Vs Jon Doe 2: Electric Boogaloo coming soon to a theater near you.
Today I uninstalled my entire catalog of free to play games. RuneScape, Lineage II, DC Universe, City of Heroes, Everquest II, Alganon, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Pitchblack, Star Trek Online, Hello Kitty Online (it was for screenshots for articles), Missing Ink, Gods & Heroes, Fallen Earth, and Age of Conan, and Team Fortress 2. Sure I was enjoying these games, but it wasn’t until Namco pointed out that they “can’t be high quality,” that I realized how fake and empty my enjoyment was. I mean, sure I was having fun playing through my dwarf fighter for absolutely free, but was I having the kind of fun I could be having by buying another PacMan re-release? I think not.
But Olivier Comte is right, the free to play industry is harming big budget titles. Just look at Modern Warfare 3, which sold 6.5 million copies in the first 24 hours. Or Skyrim, which sold 3.5 million copies on its opening weekend. Or hell, Portal 2 sold millions just in retail, not counting Steam sales. The point is that those games would have sold even more if there weren’t disgusting, greedy developers letting people play their low quality games for free. If there weren’t independent developers peddling their wares for sub-premium prices, maybe developers of real video games could have their voices heard without buying huge ads on gaming websites.
“The business model for smaller, easier titles is making an expectation to consumers that is whittling away at AAA development.”
Exactly. Just look at the substandard titles that are set to launch as free to play. Planetside 2? Bound to be a failure. Ghost Recon Online? What was Ubisoft thinking? Jagex’s Stellar Dawn and Transformers MMOs? Hurting the industry. Hell, i’d venture that DUST 514 will result in the cancellation of Modern Warfare 4, because who can keep up with low quality, but free games?
Sure some people might say that these are the rantings of a developer publisher seeing the market shifting and, rather than accommodate for the changes by shifting their development system, decides to throw a tantrum in the Walmart parking lot and blame their perceived future losses on the customers.
But that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Today I uninstalled my entire catalog of free to play games. RuneScape, Lineage II, DC Universe, City of Heroes, Everquest II, Alganon, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Pitchblack, Star Trek Online, Hello Kitty Online (it was for screenshots for articles), Missing Ink, Gods & Heroes, Fallen Earth, and Age of Conan, and Team Fortress 2. Sure I was enjoying these games, but it wasn’t until Namco pointed out that they “can’t be high quality,” that I realized how fake and empty my enjoyment was. I mean, sure I was having fun playing through my dwarf fighter for absolutely free, but was I having the kind of fun I could be having by buying another PacMan re-release? I think not.
But Olivier Comte is right, the free to play industry is harming big budget titles. Just look at Modern Warfare 3, which sold 6.5 million copies in the first 24 hours. Or Skyrim, which sold 3.5 million copies on its opening weekend. Or hell, Portal 2 sold millions just in retail, not counting Steam sales. The point is that those games would have sold even more if there weren’t disgusting, greedy developers letting people play their low quality games for free. If there weren’t independent developers peddling their wares for sub-premium prices, maybe developers of real video games could have their voices heard without buying huge ads on gaming websites.
“The business model for smaller, easier titles is making an expectation to consumers that is whittling away at AAA development.”
Exactly. Just look at the substandard titles that are set to launch as free to play. Planetside 2? Bound to be a failure. Ghost Recon Online? What was Ubisoft thinking? Jagex’s Stellar Dawn and Transformers MMOs? Hurting the industry. Hell, i’d venture that DUST 514 will result in the cancellation of Modern Warfare 4, because who can keep up with low quality, but free games?
Sure some people might say that these are the rantings of a developer publisher seeing the market shifting and, rather than accommodate for the changes by shifting their development system, decides to throw a tantrum in the Walmart parking lot and blame their perceived future losses on the customers.
But that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.
For every decent article I write on this website, I’m inundated with people asking me to talk about “the great fall of Rift,” and how the game is apparently sliding down a population exodus to match or beat that of Warhammer Online all those years back. Still, when I have to make announcements like Rift placing more servers on Trial status and making sure everyone knows it is not the same as a merger, and assuring people that Rift’s consistent promotions to bring the client price down cheaper than a McDonald’s value meal is actually an aggressive marketing strategy by Trion rather than the desperate grab for players that some make it out to be, my job becomes rather difficult.
So my greatest asset is figures. Hard figures released by the developer, not half baked xfire statistics or polls on a thread where 80% of the people voting “I cancelled and hate this game” have never even purchased the game. According to Reuters, Trion has pulled in over $100 million in Rift during 2011, according to Trion CEO Lars Butler. And with impending releases in Asia, this figure only stands to increase over 2012. Trion has also received an injection of $85 million (this is not figured into the revenue) by investors.
$100 million in revenue feels more realistic when you account that at least $50 million of that came through initial box sales when Trion reported one million sales, before the major price reductions began. Figuring out the actual number of boxes sold (digital and retail combined) would be next to impossible with all the promotions Trion has done over the past six or seven months.
(Source: Games Industry)
If you plan on doing anything that requires logging into Playstation Network, you have approximately ten minutes (until 11am eastern) to do so, otherwise you will be locked out for thirteen hours until tonight. Sony is conducting routine maintenance on the PSN servers, meaning during this time players will be unable to sign into the service in order to access the Playstation store, account management, and Playstation Home.
This also means being unable to sign into Playstation Network to access your games online. To the best of my understanding, however, if you are signed in before the deadline, you will still be able to play multiplayer games, so make sure you do so in the next seven minutes (I’m going to waste half of that time writing this article). This includes, of course, Free Realms, DC Universe, and Massive Action Game.
Any trophy you receive during the off time will sync when the servers come back up, as normal.
Less than a week ago I discussed findings on the Dungeons and Dragons Online forums by sleuths far more skilled than myself, that Turbine has been buying up domains relating to Forgotten Realms and “____ of the Underdark,” as well as related to the fictional deity Lolth. Well that speculation has come to fruition, in a far shorter time than I had expected (generally domains are registered when the work is still in the “we can trash this if we ultimately don’t like it” stage, to prevent information leaking and squatters taking the domain). Turbine has announced the upcoming expansion to Dungeons and Dragons Online: Menace of the Underdark.
Menace of the Underdark takes place in the Forgotten Realms village of Eveningstar, and the area surrounding King’s Forest. Players will battle the forces of Lolth and the Underdark Drow. To aid them in their fight, the level cap is being raised to 25, and players will have access to the new Druid class.
Happy birthday, Dungeons and Dragons Online. A new class, Forgotten Realms, and an upcoming free adventure pack? Color my account reactivated. Menace of the Underdark is expected to hit sometime this summer.
(Source: DDO website)
Lineage II has not been having the best week or so. Between the number of technical difficulties that have cropped up, NCSoft has had enough trouble keeping the servers from buckling and passing out, let alone keeping them running smoothly enough to keep their players happy. Between crashing, lag, and game breaking issues, the community is understandably unhappy.
Luckily, NCSoft has a fix: Free stuff.
As many of you know, technical issues have created gameplay problems in the past week, leading to a less than optimal game experience for affected players. We deeply understand how difficult it can be to play in these conditions and we sincerely apologize for this inconvenience. You, the player community, are very important to us and we want to show you that we care and are working to right any wrongs that have happened.
NCSoft’s compensation package includes a 50% experience rune that lasts five hours, as well as five luxury cocktails, which boost your character’s abilities for 30 minutes each. In addition, NCSoft is running an even from January 25th to February 1st, in which players will enjoy no experience loss on death (unless in Chaotic mode), the reduction of the augmentation removal fee to 1 Adena, and the removal of teleport fees from most gatekeepers.
They are still working to fix some lag issues, warning that emergency maintenance will be taking place over the next few days.
(Source: Lineage II)
I’m confused about The Old Republic. On one hand, I’ve seen players complaining of over instancing on Ilum, but if Bioware was truly instance-heavy, the least they could do is balance out the population on the open world PvP planets. Granted, if Bioware had introduced the third Vulcan faction as I had suggested back in 2011, we wouldn’t be having this problem right now.
Sorry, I wanted to preempt any Dark Age of Camelot people who were ready to talk about the 3-faction master race.
MMO Fallout 