$70 Monocle? We're Not Even Halfway To The Top


First off, Eurogamer owes me the sum of $4 for a now ruined blueberry bagel with peanut butter and jelly on it (the organic kind). The more I consider publishing this article, the more I’ve been refreshing the page, staring at the calendar hoping that today is April 1st, or someone hacked Eurogamer’s website to post a fake article. In an article just published, Eurogamer talked to CCP about future inclusions to the Eve Online Noble Exchange, including the possibility of a $10,000 gold-colored Scorpion (ship).

I guess the signs are out there. Take this, for example, from Eve’s Dev blog about the cash shop:

Deluxe tier outfits are aimed at flamboyantly rich capsuleers regardless of whether they measure their wealth in ISK, Aurum, PLEX, or currencies from Earth. While price is of little concern for these players, they could find themselves spending two or three times the price of an affordable outfit on a single piece for their ensemble. An exceptional tier is rumored to exist that represents a very special and rare investment for the wealthiest members of the EVE community.

So a special tier is planned for those who are above what is considered “flamboyantly rich” in “Earth currency.” Chariman of the Council of Stellar Management (CSM) Alex Gianturco believes that there is no reason for backlash against vanity cash shop items, regardless of how expensive they are.

“My perspective and the CSM’s perspective is that if they come out with something like – just as a hypothetical [example] – unique ship models with limited runs that they want to charge $1 billion for: as long as it doesn’t impact the competitive gameplay of Eve Online – If some crazy rich person wants to buy that, I don’t care and, by and large, the CSM doesn’t care, and that money helps go to develop Eve.”

Eve Online players are understandably standing once again on rocky ground after CCP’s own Arnar Gylfason refused to declare that non-vanity items were off the table forever:

“Saying never …” Gylfasson paused. “That puts me in an awkward position.”

It will certainly be interesting to see exactly how high CCP is looking to go in terms of cash shop costs, and what exactly will fill that spot of crazy rich. Like I’ve said before, going for an insanely rich item that is visual (other players can see on you in space) will likely wind up being a massive target painted on your ship for every player in the galaxy to target.

$70 Monocle? We’re Not Even Halfway To The Top


First off, Eurogamer owes me the sum of $4 for a now ruined blueberry bagel with peanut butter and jelly on it (the organic kind). The more I consider publishing this article, the more I’ve been refreshing the page, staring at the calendar hoping that today is April 1st, or someone hacked Eurogamer’s website to post a fake article. In an article just published, Eurogamer talked to CCP about future inclusions to the Eve Online Noble Exchange, including the possibility of a $10,000 gold-colored Scorpion (ship).

I guess the signs are out there. Take this, for example, from Eve’s Dev blog about the cash shop:

Deluxe tier outfits are aimed at flamboyantly rich capsuleers regardless of whether they measure their wealth in ISK, Aurum, PLEX, or currencies from Earth. While price is of little concern for these players, they could find themselves spending two or three times the price of an affordable outfit on a single piece for their ensemble. An exceptional tier is rumored to exist that represents a very special and rare investment for the wealthiest members of the EVE community.

So a special tier is planned for those who are above what is considered “flamboyantly rich” in “Earth currency.” Chariman of the Council of Stellar Management (CSM) Alex Gianturco believes that there is no reason for backlash against vanity cash shop items, regardless of how expensive they are.

“My perspective and the CSM’s perspective is that if they come out with something like – just as a hypothetical [example] – unique ship models with limited runs that they want to charge $1 billion for: as long as it doesn’t impact the competitive gameplay of Eve Online – If some crazy rich person wants to buy that, I don’t care and, by and large, the CSM doesn’t care, and that money helps go to develop Eve.”

Eve Online players are understandably standing once again on rocky ground after CCP’s own Arnar Gylfason refused to declare that non-vanity items were off the table forever:

“Saying never …” Gylfasson paused. “That puts me in an awkward position.”

It will certainly be interesting to see exactly how high CCP is looking to go in terms of cash shop costs, and what exactly will fill that spot of crazy rich. Like I’ve said before, going for an insanely rich item that is visual (other players can see on you in space) will likely wind up being a massive target painted on your ship for every player in the galaxy to target.

Much Ado About Vanguard


I took the liberty of stocking this article with tissues, as I’m sure there are a few Vanguard fans who will be shedding tears over this article. No, Vanguard is not shutting down (as I’ve talked about in previous articles). Massively has an article up about Sony Fan Faire 2011 regarding Vanguard today, where Salim Grant has confirmed that there are two updates to Vanguard planned to go into effect this fiscal year.

In addition to new content, Grant also confirmed that developers who had previously worked on the game are being brought back to fill in the empty areas of the game. The content, as stated by Grant, will be implemented in a way that it cannot be burned through quickly by veteran players, and will fill the gap for some time.

When asked about free to play, Grant confirmed that the idea has been tossed around the board room, but no consensus has been reached and such an implementation is not yet on the table. Doing so would require some form of revenue, meaning a Station Cash injection into the game in the form of a cash shop.

Oh the times they are a-changing. When John Smedley talked last year about Sony not being done with Vanguard, it looks like he wasn’t just blowing smoke up our collective-assuming that Vanguard can get a small number of developers together to introduce more content, perhaps the game could get that influx of old players necessary to really give Sony a reason to work on the free to play system. The recent price drop in Sony’s All Access Pass should also be enough of a reason for players to get involved in Vanguard who may not have tried it before.

Of course this is just well wishes from an old player. Maybe I’m just surprised that Sony is giving the game real acknowledgement other than “yes, I love my son, which is why I home school him and keep him locked in his bedroom.” Hopefully much more on Vanguard to come.

Compensation or Not: Fee Is Still A Fee


In an article on Games Industry, CCP talks about their upcoming shooter and companion to Eve Online, DUST 514. CCP’s CEO Hilmar Veigar threw out one of the best spins I’ve seen to date on the cost of the game, not calling it a cost but rather a “cover charge,” and claiming players are still getting the game for free.

“In the beginning you have to pre-buy credits, so you pay something like $10-$20 to enter the game and you get the equivalent number of credits in the game once you do that. We call this the ‘cover charge’,”

This goes into the whole argument of allocation of resources, or what your money actually goes to pay for, and was the subject a few years ago regarding mandatory tips at restaurants. In the latter example, it has been decided by courts that a tip must be compulsory, otherwise it is considered a surcharge and must be suitably declared as taxable income. It’s legal as a service charge, but cannot be called a tip or gratuity.

So for all intent and purpose, DUST 514 is not free to play regardless of how much you are compensated in in-game cash, because the charge is not voluntary. You’re not getting the game for free because you have to pay to access it.

“You’re really getting the game for free but you have to pre-buy credits in the beginning. We might go fully free-to-play down the line, but in the beginning we have a cover charge just to manage the initial launch of it.”

Anyone who visits this website knows I almost always side with companies on the art of making money, that is what CCP exists to do: Make money. Not just enough money to get by and provide everything for free, but lods of emone! I understand Sony’s big initiative with pushing free to play games on the Playstation Network, but pushing DUST 514 as part of the program and then requiring an upfront fee not only negates the purpose of the program, but it also damages the image of the program itself.

I’m fine with CCP charging $10 for DUST, even the proposed $20. Just don’t treat me like I’m a gullible idiot by calling the game free to play while requiring an upfront fee. If that’s the case, then Call of Duty is free to play because I don’t have to pay for its online either.

Star Wars Galaxies: Week 2


Week 2 into the Star Wars Galaxies “Let’s Play This To Death,” and I’m still going strong. As of the end of Week 2 (Sunday) I’ve managed to attain level 21 and my quest line as a smuggler on Tatooine has taken me to Jabba the Hutt’s own palace, where my attempts to shoot the bastard in the face with my blaster pistol have proven fruitless. Instead, I’ve been doing a large number of quests that involve pretty much what you’d expect from the Hutt family. Stealing pod racer parts, killing competing champions, finding ingredients for Jabba’s dinner (no jokes).

I can see what Sony was talking about with the community being engaging and friendly. I’ve come across a few players in my travels who were very kind, talkative, and willing to do some quests with me. The first, pictured above, Neesli Ofe. The second, to the left, Ihaf Iypisen. In both instances, I had to log off before our questing party was finished, so I apologize to both. Generally I’m not the one to finish first.

Having a friend to play is a big help in some areas, as population density makes Star Wars Galaxies a game of shoot once, pull ten mobs. Luckily for me the game has a system where your first “death” simply incapacitates you for ten seconds. Get up and allow the timer to run out (three minutes approximately) and you won’t have to worry about death. This feels like a copout, but it’s a blessing in an otherwise very unforgiving game.

The world of Star Wars Galaxies is massive, and I haven’t even left Tatooine. You can easily spend ten minutes just going from waypoint to waypoint for a quest, and that is with the added speed of a mount. Despite the game’s aged graphics, the game holds up rather well and instead opts to focus on the living, breathing world rather than trying to keep up with the current generation of games.

Speaking of atmosphere, the rebel vs empire battles are great. I occasionally see pockets of rebel and alliance, and at one point I came across a shootout outside of Tatooine between a storm trooper, Imperial officer, and a few rebel soldiers. The whole fight lasted just a few minutes before the rebel soldiers were cut down, but the spontaneous aspect kept me watching and observing. At this point in my Star Wars career, I assume I’m not affiliated well enough to engage in such a fight.

I want to talk about some of my gripes with the game, however. In a few aspects, the game has aged rather poorly. Although Galaxies is more action than its previous incarnation, I often find that putting my reticle on an NPC and firing is not sufficient in actually engaging in combat. Instead, I have to place my reticle and hit tab to target, and more often than not this still doesn’t target the NPC I want to target. When you are in the midst of fighting more than one person, quickly tabbing can be the difference between life and death. For me, this generally means death as the targeting system will skip over the person I mean to attack and focus on someone 200m away out of range, or worse someone in-range causing me to fire and bring yet another mob into the fight.

The targeting is my biggest issue this week, as it is my chief cause of death. Other than that, I’m really enjoying my escapade through Galaxies. The quests are well fleshed out, there are a ton of factions (as seen below) and the music is well done if not repetitive. With that in mind, I will cut this short until next week.

Week In Review: Let's Talk Disappointment Edition


I received an interesting email the other day from a reader, or at least I think he was a reader. This email was by a guy who presumably plays Mortal Online. I won’t post the email here, but he essentially tears into me for having a constantly negative bias against the game by posting pieces like Star Vault’s financial documents that show the game is not making a profit (one of the examples he actually used). You can see how I misinterpreted such a statement from this:

With our current cost structure, the Board expects that an additional approximately 1000 players to achieve break-even, a goal that we hope to achieve during the second quarter of 2011.

My apologies for having a far worse grasp of the English language than I originally anticipated, because for the love of me I can’t see where the mistake is. Anyway, the guy followed up with the usual hate mail I get with this comment: “If Star Vault wanted your opinion, they’d ask for it.” Naturally the implication is that I should stop writing about the company until they hire me as the new PR guy when Black Opal goes the way of his predecessor. I write MMO Fallout indeed for both players and companies alike, although I’ve never done much explanation for the latter. My work for companies is to provide stories, experiences that can be understood and integrated into the company’s own plan. I don’t teach what feature would go best with your open world sandbox game, but rather ideas like how to respond to false positives, or why developers should focus on retention rate over just funding with initial sales. I always try to stray as far as possible from becoming that guy that always criticizes but never has any ideas of his own.

1. Jake Song Says ArchAge Will Surpass Aion

I think it’s time to break out the old NCsoft chart, and not because I spent a lot of time making it and want to milk this cow dry:

Jake Song is the designer of ArcheAge, the upcoming MMO based on the CryEngine. You may also know him from his work at NCsoft with Lineage, a company that he is now targeting in interviews. Jake Song is making the claim that ArcheAge, when it enters formal operation expected sometime in 2012, will surpass Aion (NCsoft’s best card in the game). The question is, can he? The answer? Probably not.

This isn’t a question of Jake Song’s talent, the guy is partially responsible for NCsoft’s most popular franchise combined. There is, however, precedent in the field of gaming where an industry veteran forms his own studio to release a game in competition with his old company, and is thoroughly tarred and feathered when the game launches to poor reception. Don’t believe me? Ask Richard Garriot.

2. The Other Journalists Finally Got Wind of the Turbine MMO.

Many months ago, I posted about the upcoming Turbine console MMO thanks to a tip I received pointing me to the games section of the Twisted Pixel website, posting about a console game being made for Turbine. Since then, the announcement has been removed but the lights have finally turned on last month for a few other websites.

There is still very little known about this MMO, and by very little I mean practically nothing.

3. Stephen Calender Bears His Soul

NetDevil is dead, and its death was not a peaceful one. In his blog, Stephen Calender (ex-NetDevil staffer) talks about the acquisition of Lego Universe by Lego Team, about the poor relationship between NetDevil and their parent company Gazillion, and the poor relationship between Gazillion and Lego. He also takes a small jab at the media (myself included) for taking Gazillion’s PR speak and turning a bad situation into something good.

How likely would you be to purchase or continue funding a subscription when you find out production of new features and content has been reduced? Whether or not you can trust people’s online comments, I saw message boards with statements just like that.

Stephen also talks about interviewers:

I spent two years of my life working on it, at least do me the courtesy of watching some YouTube videos of the game. It makes you wonder if they just are not gamers, or if there is so much deceit and deception anymore that people stop trusting resumes.

Read the whole article, it goes in depth about getting hired in the games industry.

4. APB: Reloaded Hates Your 32-Bit Operating System

An important factor to remember with APB: Reloaded is that, at its heart, it is a re-release of All Points Bulletin, the game that loved memory and loved 64-bit operating systems. Although GamersFirst has been doing some extensive work in rewriting the game to work decently on 32-bit operating systems, you still won’t have the same success as 64-bit. This is mostly because 32-bit operating systems (without some coding) can only map 2 gigabytes of ram.

So if you have a 32-bit operating system and want to play APB: Reloaded, consider downloading the game before you sink a hundred bucks into your G1 account only to find out the game doesn’t run well on your system.

5. Alganon: Free For All PvP Weekend

Alganon’s free for all PvP weekends are rather inventive. Given the game is already free to play, Quest Online managed to pull that even further by introducing these FFA-PvP weekends, allowing players to experience the siege system with no cost for buildings and without the offline study requirements to use the contraptions. In addition, battle durability (pvp armor) tribute costs are removed for the weekend.

If you haven’t tried Alganon or left, the community has become bigger. Not huge, but bigger.

Week In Review: Let’s Talk Disappointment Edition


I received an interesting email the other day from a reader, or at least I think he was a reader. This email was by a guy who presumably plays Mortal Online. I won’t post the email here, but he essentially tears into me for having a constantly negative bias against the game by posting pieces like Star Vault’s financial documents that show the game is not making a profit (one of the examples he actually used). You can see how I misinterpreted such a statement from this:

With our current cost structure, the Board expects that an additional approximately 1000 players to achieve break-even, a goal that we hope to achieve during the second quarter of 2011.

My apologies for having a far worse grasp of the English language than I originally anticipated, because for the love of me I can’t see where the mistake is. Anyway, the guy followed up with the usual hate mail I get with this comment: “If Star Vault wanted your opinion, they’d ask for it.” Naturally the implication is that I should stop writing about the company until they hire me as the new PR guy when Black Opal goes the way of his predecessor. I write MMO Fallout indeed for both players and companies alike, although I’ve never done much explanation for the latter. My work for companies is to provide stories, experiences that can be understood and integrated into the company’s own plan. I don’t teach what feature would go best with your open world sandbox game, but rather ideas like how to respond to false positives, or why developers should focus on retention rate over just funding with initial sales. I always try to stray as far as possible from becoming that guy that always criticizes but never has any ideas of his own.

1. Jake Song Says ArchAge Will Surpass Aion

I think it’s time to break out the old NCsoft chart, and not because I spent a lot of time making it and want to milk this cow dry:

Jake Song is the designer of ArcheAge, the upcoming MMO based on the CryEngine. You may also know him from his work at NCsoft with Lineage, a company that he is now targeting in interviews. Jake Song is making the claim that ArcheAge, when it enters formal operation expected sometime in 2012, will surpass Aion (NCsoft’s best card in the game). The question is, can he? The answer? Probably not.

This isn’t a question of Jake Song’s talent, the guy is partially responsible for NCsoft’s most popular franchise combined. There is, however, precedent in the field of gaming where an industry veteran forms his own studio to release a game in competition with his old company, and is thoroughly tarred and feathered when the game launches to poor reception. Don’t believe me? Ask Richard Garriot.

2. The Other Journalists Finally Got Wind of the Turbine MMO.

Many months ago, I posted about the upcoming Turbine console MMO thanks to a tip I received pointing me to the games section of the Twisted Pixel website, posting about a console game being made for Turbine. Since then, the announcement has been removed but the lights have finally turned on last month for a few other websites.

There is still very little known about this MMO, and by very little I mean practically nothing.

3. Stephen Calender Bears His Soul

NetDevil is dead, and its death was not a peaceful one. In his blog, Stephen Calender (ex-NetDevil staffer) talks about the acquisition of Lego Universe by Lego Team, about the poor relationship between NetDevil and their parent company Gazillion, and the poor relationship between Gazillion and Lego. He also takes a small jab at the media (myself included) for taking Gazillion’s PR speak and turning a bad situation into something good.

How likely would you be to purchase or continue funding a subscription when you find out production of new features and content has been reduced? Whether or not you can trust people’s online comments, I saw message boards with statements just like that.

Stephen also talks about interviewers:

I spent two years of my life working on it, at least do me the courtesy of watching some YouTube videos of the game. It makes you wonder if they just are not gamers, or if there is so much deceit and deception anymore that people stop trusting resumes.

Read the whole article, it goes in depth about getting hired in the games industry.

4. APB: Reloaded Hates Your 32-Bit Operating System

An important factor to remember with APB: Reloaded is that, at its heart, it is a re-release of All Points Bulletin, the game that loved memory and loved 64-bit operating systems. Although GamersFirst has been doing some extensive work in rewriting the game to work decently on 32-bit operating systems, you still won’t have the same success as 64-bit. This is mostly because 32-bit operating systems (without some coding) can only map 2 gigabytes of ram.

So if you have a 32-bit operating system and want to play APB: Reloaded, consider downloading the game before you sink a hundred bucks into your G1 account only to find out the game doesn’t run well on your system.

5. Alganon: Free For All PvP Weekend

Alganon’s free for all PvP weekends are rather inventive. Given the game is already free to play, Quest Online managed to pull that even further by introducing these FFA-PvP weekends, allowing players to experience the siege system with no cost for buildings and without the offline study requirements to use the contraptions. In addition, battle durability (pvp armor) tribute costs are removed for the weekend.

If you haven’t tried Alganon or left, the community has become bigger. Not huge, but bigger.

Gods & Heroes: Heatwave Fully Committed


Gods & Heroes is one of those MMOs that’ll make you snap your fingers, point at the monitor, and say “I think I remember that game. It launched, right? It was developed by Blizzard or something.” At least that’s what my editor in chief said when I pitched this article. Gods & Heroes, the oft-not-mentioned Rome MMO, has players collecting minions to battle creatures and lay waste to ancient Rome. The game launched at the end of last month, you can find its launch on the MMO Fallout calendar.

Moving on, if my snide remarks about the game’s reception haven’t clued you in, I will allow Heatwave’s CEO explain the game’s predicament:

As I have noted from way back in closed Beta, the economics of our game are different than those of most MMOs. We don’t need 500k users to be successful. However, our current growth rate isn’t good enough. The game deserves more people enjoying it and the three servers we have online aren’t even sweating. I’m sure some of you are concerned about what that means for the future of the game, and so I’d like to assuage your concern. Heatwave and team are 100% committed to G&H. We believe in it and as you’ll see in the list below, we are investing heavily in it and we will continue to do so.

Gods & Heroes currently costs $40, plus a subscription (or a $200 lifetime membership). According to the review on Ten Ton Hammer, the game was barren after two weeks (three servers), concluding:

It’s not that this is a bad game, it’s just far too little/late for this point in the market. The setting is wonderful, and there are some cool systems in play here…. it’s just marred by yesterday’s graphics, too little polish, and some weird design decisions. Wait until it goes on sale before you drop the money on it.

But fret not, as Heatwave has plans!

That said, in the coming weeks, we are going to begin a promotion that will drive thousands more players to the game and turn Baccus, Mars and Jupiter into communities bursting at the seams. Whatever we do, we will make sure that we first take care of you, our active players. You are the early adopters. The founders of Rome. Our “angel” investors even.

Gods & Heroes having issues is hardly surprising, given the tendency of MMOs with bad development cycles to suffer bad launches, even in the hands of another company. Gods & Heroes was one of the two games to be initially dropped when Perpetual Entertainment kicked the bucket years back.

My money banks on some sort of free trial.

Glitch: No Idea What I'm Watching


I don’t know what is going on in this trailer for Glitch, an upcoming free to play MMO, but it’s being created by the guys that made Katamari Damaci, so i want it.

Glitch: No Idea What I’m Watching


I don’t know what is going on in this trailer for Glitch, an upcoming free to play MMO, but it’s being created by the guys that made Katamari Damaci, so i want it.