Funcom Q3 2011 Finances


Because most of you probably don’t care to read up on it yourself, MMO Fallout is committed to bringing you the important information from each quarter’s financial reports. Yesterday, Funcom revealed its third quarter finances to investors, and there is plenty to boast about. Revenues increased 55% in the third quarter compared to the second, but Funcom expects the fervor to somewhat die out, and has predicted a loss in revenue in the upcoming fourth quarter due to a foreseen diminished interest in Age of Conan.

The Secret World is “progressing well,” and the team is putting the final touches on squashing bugs, improving optimization, and balancing content. The game is still set for an April 2012 launch. Funcom’s final figures are rather low due to the development costs of The Secret World and a number of free to play games. In their “target scenario,” The Secret World will sell 30% more clients, and a healthy retention is around 490,000 subscribers. In their “Conan prediction,” Funcom expects only slightly better retention than Age of Conan (280,000) and one million sales in the first year.

Some more interesting information:

  • The cost of hosting Age of Conan since launch has been 18 million, excluding bandwidth costs.
  • The Secret World will cost approximately 4-8 million over the same time span, reducing costs greatly.

Final Fantasy XI Is Crazy On XI-XI-XI: 14-Day Trial?


Do not adjust your monitors, the title of this article has been transmitted as intended: Final Fantasy XI has released a 14 day trial. Still surprised? So am I, but apparently the folks at Square Enix decided to pull down one barrier for entry into the aging-yet-enormous-to-an-almost-intimidating-degree MMO. If you were holding off on trying Final Fantasy XI due to whispers of Play Online and its less than stellar service, you’ll be happy to know that Square Enix patched out PO some time ago.

All you need to sign up is your first name, last name, captcha code, and an email address. And if you do decide to buy the game at the end of your trial period (or any time before), you can enjoy 50% off of the complete package.

Lord of the Rings Online: Removing Transfer Restrictions


When MMOs open their games to the public, the standard servers tend to fill out rather quickly, but the servers that were popular prior to the transition are regularly first to become overloaded by a combination of new and returning players creating and transferring characters. In the case of Lord of the Rings Online, Turbine decided to restrict character transfers over to select servers: Brandywine, Dwarrowdelf, Elendilmir, Imladris, Landroval, and Riddermark. With the recent update allowing players to pay for characters to transfer with Turbine Points, Turbine announced that the restrictions will be lifted on server transfer.

That is to say, the transfer will still cost you the standard price: $25 or 2995 Turbine Points. You can check out the whole post here.

Got through the whole article without a TP joke. You all sit tight, this is a cause for celebration.

LiveGamer, Sony Online Entertainment Part Ways


According to the Live Gamer website, the two companies have ended their partnership and the service will shut down on December 14.

After careful consideration and review, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) and Live Gamer (LG) have mutually made the decision to discontinue auction services currently available in EverQuest II (EQII), Free Realms and Vanguard. Beginning on December 14, 2011, SOE will suspend exchange services for all three games. For EQII, SOE will merge the LG exchange-based servers with its existing game servers, specifically Vox will merge with Nagafen and The Bazaar with Freeport. LG continues to be a valuable partner to SOE for a variety of e-commerce services. SOE and LG will be updating the FAQs from time-to-time to help answer questions you have regarding the discontinuance of the auction services.

As stated in the announcement, more information is to come.

Splitting Everquest 2 Services Bad Idea, Merging In December


Let’s be honest, who among us did not see this service merger coming? Back when Sony announced Everquest 2 Extended, and how the game would be its own product split from Everquest 2, I questioned how long it would be before the Everquest 2 community either filtered into the service or filtered out completely, and Sony merged the two. Dave Georgeson states that this is due to Sony reviewing their other free to play games, but the factor of developing two separate versions of the same game must have had some factor.

As a result, EQ2X will be updated to bring gold subscription in line with what live players expect, losing restrictions on classes and races. Silver is being reduced to $5 from $10. Platinum, the $200 yearly membership, will be discontinued while anyone still with time left will live out the rest of their paid time without automatic renewal. In a surprising move, Georgeson revealed that power items will be removed from the cash shop. Potions, Rez scrolls, mastercrafted gear, etc, and a vote will be taken with the community as to how, or rather if, these items will be reintroduced.

This is great for people who have allowed their Everquest 2 subscriptions to lapse, but didn’t want to pay the money to transfer to Freeport and did not want to create a new character and start new. Everquest 2 changes to free to play in early December.

Atari: Star Trek Online Free To Play? Over Our Dead Bodies


Atari and I have never been on the best of terms.

 I believe I referred to Atari on a website that is not MMO Fallout, as an empty shell of a company that not only couldn’t keep itself on the NASDAQ stock listing, had a failed European branch, and has undergone more cosmetic surgery to change face than any other company in the business. Despite being relegated to the position of publisher for any notable title over the past decade, Atari has been downsized to the elderly man who keeps talking about his youth, and he buys up the younger crowd so he can live through them, even though his limbs are falling off from years of mistreatment.

Turns out John Smedley wasn’t the only creator desiring free to play, cut back by an unseen foe. In an interview, Cryptic’s Executive Producer on Star Trek Online Stephen D’Angelo stated that,  “We’ve always wanted the game to be free-to-play,” he says, “in fact we tried to make it free-to-play at the original launch, but our publisher [Atari] didn’t want us doing that so we didn’t do that.” You mean to tell me I could have obtained the entire Original Series cosmetic series without buying multiple copies of the game? What a kick in the teeth.

Of course Cryptic shares no blame in this, after all they were an owned subsidiary of Atari at the time and what Atari said was law. The article goes on to talk a bit about how Cryptic is handling the free to play switch, drastically different than the Champions Online conversion which was met with “mixed results,” according to the article.

Atari publicly dumped Cryptic Studios earlier this year, selling the studio to Perfect World Entertainment. The game is set to switch to free to play in January 2012.

14 Minutes Of Lineage Eternal


NCSoft last week announced Lineage Eternal: Twilight Resistance. Although you won’t be fighting back hordes of sparkling vampires, the game promises massive battles, siege warfare, destructible environments, and more. The game is presented in the original Lineage isometric view, etc.

The trailer shows off some amazing concepts. Large scale battles, the destruction engine, boss creatures, cutscenes and more. The game looks like it will play similar to the isometric dungeon crawlers ala Diablo and Torchlight, with a few twists. The player character is shown using abilities by dragging the mouse and making patterns. A circle around the player unleashes a swirling blade slash that destroys everything around him. Enemies do not display health bars in the trailer. A grappling mechanic allows the player to both pull mobs within reach and scale normally blocked terrain.

You’ll have to watch the video to see all the glory for what it is.

DC Universe: Apparently Subscribers Wanted Priority Login


I have an itching feeling that the super servers for DC Universe were envisioned, developed, and either implemented or too far along to cancel when Sony received the green light to take the game free to play, because as Crimecraft has shown us: Merging servers to accommodate the subscriber population will cause all hell to break loose when the traffic suddenly rises 1000% (according to John Smedley) and the servers buckle like a cheap TV dinner tray. Luckily, Sony has been working around the clock to beef up the megaserver performance to accomodate more simultaneous players, and while European players have been having a bit more luck with open server slots, North American players are being subjected to constant server queues.

Not to mention, subscribers weren’t exactly happy that they were being forced to wait in the same line as their new found allies and opponents. Sorry, free players, but login priority for paying players is hardly newsworthy. On the plus side, if you want priority login, all it takes is a one time payment of five bucks. In an update rolled out, Sony added server queue priority for premium and legendary players, with legendary receiving the fastest queue time.

DC Universe’s Halloween event (spooktacular) has been extended until November 14th due to server issues.

  • Priority Queueing for Legendary and Premium players is now available.
  • Legendary Players will have the fastest queue time.

NCSoft Third Quarter Finances: Profit/Revenues Down


NCSoft has released its financial documents for the third quarter, and the report starts with “Revenue and Operating Income came down due to soft promotions for in-game items sales versus Q2.” In fact, the publisher is reporting a 22% loss quarter over quarter and 32% year over year loss in operating profit, as well as a 12% loss in sales over last quarter, and a 33% loss in net income over the same quarter.

Income from Aion rose slightly over the last quarter, with Lineage coming down from its big jump. Lineage 2 lost less than it did last quarter, while income from Guild Wars continued its decline and City of Heroes increased slightly. Lineage’s loss of revenue is noted as being related to scaling back of cash shop items in the game’s Korean and Taiwan distributions. The quarter over quarter expense increase is due to NCsoft’s Japan donation.

Now to talk region distribution. North America’s share dropped 10% over last quarter, with Europe dropping 6% of its sales. Japan’s share increased 6% over last quarter, with Korea dropping 13% and royalties taking a dip as well.

Next quarter will see a dramatic rise in sales by City of Heroes, and hopefully Aion with the number of content updates. The announcement of Lineage Eternal should bring some interest to the other two games.

Star Vault Crosses Games: Bans Mortal Online Rulebreakers In Eve Online?


The above is a screenshot of the Mortal Online terms of service. You’ll notice that failure to abide by the rules presented in the terms of service (not pictured) will not entitle you to a refund for any fees paid for the use of the Eve Online client, servers, or website, and you will forfeit any unused game time. I sincerely hope Star Vault didn’t pay a lawyer to draft up their terms of service, because it appears to be ripped directly, with a little rearranging, of the Eve Online terms of service.

The Eve Online terms of service can be found here, and the Mortal Online PDF here. Since this has apparently been in the game since launch, does this mean anyone banned from Mortal Online for breaking the rules can fight that they were not punished properly according to the terms of service?

Star Vault has updated their terms of service to ban players from the correct game, and no doubt myself from any future press releases.