And Now An Unsolicited Testimonial: Tribes Ascend


Tribes: Ascend is not Tribes Universe, let’s get that out of the way from the start. The game is not the multi-hundred player shooter ala Planetside that Hi-Rez had promised us, that game is currently on hold until development of Tribes: Ascend finishes. Now that we have that out of the way, Tribes Ascend is an upcoming shooter by Hi-Rez, the same guys that made Global Agenda. Billed as free to play from the start, Ascend is offering a rather useful package for those that preorder. The package costs $30, and bequeaths upon you 3,000 Tribes gold ($30 worth), a 30-day booster for experience, tokens, and points ($15 on cash shop) and lifetime VIP status which gives you a permanent boost in said exp/tokens/points, as well as priority access and VIP-only servers.

I love Tribes, and Ascend does an outstanding job of bringing the fast paced action back to its glory days. A third map was added in today, there are currently two game modes (capture the flag and rabbit), with continuous updates as the game progresses through the closed beta phase. I can’t help but be amazed once again at the skill of longtime Tribes players, who are able to use the geometry to move faster than I can keep track of them. They’re like watching someone extremely skilled in Sonic the Hedgehog, the speed at which they can still react fluently is beyond comprehension.

Playing completely free, I have a lot of respect for you. You have access right off the bat to the soldier (with that spinner disc launcher) and a gunner class, but everything else is locked up unless you buy gold coins to unlock the classes, preorder the game to obtain the 3,000 gold to buy the classes, or grind an enormous amount of tokens to unlock the classes for free. Each loadout costs 15,000 tokens to unlock for free, and now that my character is halfway through level 5, with the added VIP bonus, I’ve achieved around 1,200 tokens.

If you’ve been playing Tribes, odds are we’ve come across one another (my username is Omali). I’ve come across familiar faces quite a bit, especially since I tend to play in the off-hours. Otherwise, check out my Twitter page to see how you can nab a beta key.

Darkfall Free Weekend: This Weekend


Rejoice, fans of free for all sandbox MMOs, because Aventurine has a proposition for you. If you’ve departed Darkfall for any reason in the past, you are cordially invited to come back and experience the changes that have occurred in your absence. The instructions are relatively simple:

Anyone who does not have a currently running subscription needs simply login via the Account Management Page, ( here for European accounts, and here for US accounts) click on the button to activate your free days, and enjoy the benefits of our Happy-Hour weekend! All running subscriptions will automatically have 3 free days added to their account and don’t need to take any action other than to log-in.

The welcome back weekend lasts from Friday to Monday, according to the email sent out by Aventurine to past subscribers. In addition, players will partake in 400% experience gain, plus a massive increase in drop-rates and items dropped by foes.

So what do you have to lose? Other than everything equipped and on your inventory.

CCP Responds To Star Vault's Terms of Service


As a small website operator, I’m always interested in seeing what kind of overwhelming response can be generated when someone far more popular than me links to my story. Last week, I brought up the rather humorous story of Mortal Online’s Terms of Service being stripped directly from Eve Online’s, down to the accidentally placed “Eve Online” (seen above). Massively ran with the story and, unlike myself, they are popular enough to get a joking response out of CCP:

We shot them (the company that makes it) this message.

—
Star Vault:

We here at CCP couldn’t help but notice that our expert wordsmithing, legal poetry and cunning turns of phrase have been emulated with sincerest flattery by your technical writing and/or legal staff. In fact, ardent fans of our EULA have surfaced, themselves noticing your homage to our work. See their assessment here:http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11/09/mortal-online-plagiarizes-eve-onlines-terms-of-service/

EVE Online is a notoriously dangerous universe. So we have to caution you — in fact, we demand that you don’t follow our footsteps or use our copyrighted work. After all, internet spaceships are serious business, so probably best to keep our internet spaceship business out of your business language. Please stop using our legal agreements, and kindly remove our name from your website.

—
What are people going to copy next… our spreadsheets?!

CCP Responds To Star Vault’s Terms of Service


As a small website operator, I’m always interested in seeing what kind of overwhelming response can be generated when someone far more popular than me links to my story. Last week, I brought up the rather humorous story of Mortal Online’s Terms of Service being stripped directly from Eve Online’s, down to the accidentally placed “Eve Online” (seen above). Massively ran with the story and, unlike myself, they are popular enough to get a joking response out of CCP:

We shot them (the company that makes it) this message.

—
Star Vault:

We here at CCP couldn’t help but notice that our expert wordsmithing, legal poetry and cunning turns of phrase have been emulated with sincerest flattery by your technical writing and/or legal staff. In fact, ardent fans of our EULA have surfaced, themselves noticing your homage to our work. See their assessment here:http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11/09/mortal-online-plagiarizes-eve-onlines-terms-of-service/

EVE Online is a notoriously dangerous universe. So we have to caution you — in fact, we demand that you don’t follow our footsteps or use our copyrighted work. After all, internet spaceships are serious business, so probably best to keep our internet spaceship business out of your business language. Please stop using our legal agreements, and kindly remove our name from your website.

—
What are people going to copy next… our spreadsheets?!

Bigpoint Invokes MC Escher In Concept Art


Click on the image above to see a larger version, and follow these simple steps: Starting at the room in the northwest corner, move your finger down the hallway to the large room. Head down the first flight of stairs, down the second flight of stairs, and down the third flight of stairs. Now head around the bend, through the archway, and find yourself on the same level as you started from, while remaining walking on a flat surface.

I need to lie down, my brain hurts.

Rift F2P? Over Scott Hartsman's Dead Body


Will Rift eventually become free to play? No one can say for sure. As long as Scott Hartsman has a say, however, anyone who wants to play the MMO will have to pay up. In an interview with Eurogamer, Scott Hartsman of Trion stated that Rift is still growing, and that there are absolutely no plans to change face and make the game free. After all, the game is so pupillary, why would they reduce to 85% of the community (ala the 85/10/5 rule) paying nothing?

“One of the assumptions people make is you can just take a game and throw a switch and change the model. For starters, you’d have to decide that that would be a good thing, and I do not think it would be – that would be a fairly large net negative for Rift and Rift community.”

Sorry, folks! If you want to get into Rift, why not take advantage of Trion’s rather aggressive sales strategy? The game is on sale very cheap, very often.

Rift F2P? Over Scott Hartsman’s Dead Body


Will Rift eventually become free to play? No one can say for sure. As long as Scott Hartsman has a say, however, anyone who wants to play the MMO will have to pay up. In an interview with Eurogamer, Scott Hartsman of Trion stated that Rift is still growing, and that there are absolutely no plans to change face and make the game free. After all, the game is so pupillary, why would they reduce to 85% of the community (ala the 85/10/5 rule) paying nothing?

“One of the assumptions people make is you can just take a game and throw a switch and change the model. For starters, you’d have to decide that that would be a good thing, and I do not think it would be – that would be a fairly large net negative for Rift and Rift community.”

Sorry, folks! If you want to get into Rift, why not take advantage of Trion’s rather aggressive sales strategy? The game is on sale very cheap, very often.

Jagex Removes Dice In Runescape: Fights Scams


Back in 2009 when Jagex created the bag of dice, an item that allows a player to roll a set of dice and broadcast the results to his clan chat, they didn’t exactly anticipate that players would take their invitation of emergent gameplay and go ahead and turn the item into a tool for underground gambling systems run by shady, often fly-by-night operators. And when Jagex threw the nuclear switch and knocked all of the bots offline a few weeks ago, the number of players sitting at the grand exchange (and elsewhere) advertising their dicing services rose exponentially. Barring one shattered poodle, Jagex was forced to step in and proclaim that this is why we can’t have nice things, Pepper.

In response to the growing complaints over spam, scams, and shady business, the dice have been disabled and will be removed upon the next content update. Mod Mark commented:

Don’t gamble! There are too many people who will try to scam you or alter the odds in their favour. It’s never supported by JAGEX unless it’s about gameplay (like the duel arena). It’s likely that dice scammers will move over to another method of trying to scam you, so please, be vigilant and remember… if it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably a lie.

Of course, dicing will simply be replaced by another popular method, assuming one hasn’t already. Still, busting bots and blasting a scam method in succession is rather impressive, even if the latter was essentially Jagex’s own Frankenstein’s monster.

Earthrise Moving To Free To Play: December 1st


Earthrise is one of those MMOs that journalists (or myself) look at and cringe. We’d love to see it succeed, because we support indie developers, but since we can’t cherry pick the news coming out of the title to put it in a better light without compromising our integrity, the end result is the perception of a group of writers forming a circle and kicking the company to death. On the other hand, my biggest problem with such MMOs is when the developer charges premium rates for a product that is not, by any means, premium quality. Look at Runescape, which could never have gotten away with a $15 monthly subscription back in the old days when it looked like this.

Then again, I consider any announcement of free to play to be a good thing, and that is exactly what we are here to discuss. Masthead Studios announced that Earthrise will be making the big dip into free this December. The actual transition does not take place until early next year, the December 1st date is for current and former players who had already purchased a copy of the game to play for free.

“The free-to-play model will offer convenience for players, it will not be ‘pay to win’ with items that ruin the balance of the game.”

The team plans to roll out the free to play system in a manner in which players can access without the servers crashing, and rather than opening the floodgates will be allowing players in intervals.

“Meanwhile Earthrise will be used as a test for the new free-2-play model and Masthead will limit the creation of new accounts. Invitations will be sent to selected new players and a new sign-up option will be provided. All existing subscribers will receive a number of invitations to bring their friends in the game. “

Mark Your Calendars: Lineage II Free To Play


What do Lineage II and Ragnarok Online have in common? Nothing. Last month, NCSoft announced that Lineage II will mark the next product in their line to make the great transition to free to play, and what a transition it promises to be. Dubbed “Play Your Way,” players can still opt to pay a subscription for bonus loot, experience, and more, or they can opt to play the entirety of the game absolutely free. There are no content locks, so you can experience all the game has to offer completely free of charge.

The home page for Lineage II now displays a release date of November 30th. Head over to the link for more information, but it appears our source from the previous article was spot on that this would follow in lockstep with Innova’s service in other regions:

Anyone can play for free. However, if you pay the monthly subscription, you get permanent 2x Exp, SP, Drops, Spoils.Item store includes items like Buff Milks, 30-day rent-a-Buffpet, 30 day rent-a-Mount, New Hair Accessories, etc.