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.

Darkfall Suicidal: Character Wipes Not Off The Table


One week ago, I put my money on the table that Darkfall 2.0, a relaunch of the game, would bring free to play to the game. There is still no information as to whether or not the game will indeed go free to play, so let’s focus on another avenue of the Darkfall 2.0 launch: Character wipes. As far as MMOs have it, the topic of character wipes is akin to playing that five finger game where you move a knife around your hand stabbing without hitting your fingers. In this case, however, it’s a chainsaw instead of a knife.

How badly do communities respond to character wipes, especially two years out of launch? As ZTZ on Massively put it, it would make the Galaxies NGE look like a set of patch notes. In the Darkfall Epic Blog, Tasos Flambouras (potentially soon to be renamed John Smedley Junior) toyed with the idea of a character wipe, noting that such an implementation would not be necessary, but indeed a possibility depending on how Aventurine sees the update:

This is a topic we’ll open up for discussion after we’ve given you more information on the new version of the game, so you can understand all the parameters involved.

Tasos refers to this update several times as the end of a chapter, and the beginning of chapter 2, and for the record my money is still on some sort of free to play, or buy to play, coming with this update.

I’ve seen a few people liken this to Shadowbane. Some of you may remember that Shadowbane was shut down in 2008 (five years after launch) to reboot the title, during which all characters were wiped. The game stayed up a good year after that, before shutting down. We’ll need more information on the specifics of Darkfall’s relaunch before making any comparisons between the two titles, however.

Smörgåsbord of Sony Online Entertainment News


Sony Fan Faire 2011 is still live until tomorrow, but there has been a plethora of information coming from the Las Vegas convention center. New expansion packs, updates on upcoming games, and more.

Everquest and Everquest II respectively are set to receive yet another expansion in the coming months. In Everquest, Veil of Alaris opens up a new continent, and releases Guild Hall exteriors so players can place their guild halls in neighborhoods which will be part of a further revamp. When the expansion launches this November, it will also raise the level cap to 95. In Everquest II, Age of Discovery brings with it a ton of new content, including new hired mercenaries and the ability to design your own dungeon. Also coming this November, the expansion will bring in a new class: Beastlord.

Plenty of updates were announced for DC Universe Online (including a fight against Brainiac at the Fortress of Solitude), Free Realms and a cross promotion with McDonald’s Happy Meals for Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures.

What is likely to draw the most attention is Planetside 2, which Sony revealed will bring back all three factions and has been redesigned from the ground up to not only ensure that most if not all of the field is worth battling over, but so even players with old computers can play. Players will fight over resources and will have to coordinate with their individual goals to boost their faction’s overall progress. There was also talks of player generated content, customization with weapons and vehicles, and user generated content. Planetside Next will be PC exclusive and still has no release date.

Everquest Next received very little information, other than a screenshot and a note that the game would also run on the same engine as Planetside Next.

Check out this trailer for Planetside Next:

Eve Online Heading To Japan Under Nexon


Despite what some may like you to believe, the cultural differences between the East and West are astronomical, and nothing showcases these differences better than our choice in consumer goods. In the MMO sector, grind-based cutesy free to play cash shop MMOs tend to do better in the east while the west prefers  less anime games, has a far higher tendency to reject pay-to-win cash shops, and isn’t afraid of paying a subscription or two.

CCP announced today that Eve Online is heading to Japan, partnering with Nexon who will take care of the localization. Japanese players will connect to Eve’s Tranquility server, unlike the Chinese market. The game hits Japan later this year, with Nexon also handling the release of DUST 514 in Japan.

It’ll be interesting to see how well received Eve becomes in Japan, given a major focus of the game is how corporations deal with one another, between players building up empires and stabbing each other in the back. More on Eve Online as it appears.

War Announcement Coming…At Some Point


I don’t make myself out to be an expert in the business side of MMOs, although I do try my best when writing articles here at MMO Fallout, even I recognize that the prospect of Warhammer Online going free to play is a tough one. On one side you have monetization, the need to populated the cash shop with items people would want to buy without feeling they need to buy. On the other side, Warhammer is primarily a player vs player title, so placing armor, weapons, or buff potions on the cash shop is a minefield Mythic would have to tiptoe quite carefully over. With a cash shop, Warhammer takes the risk of bringing in new (albeit less loyal) players at the risk of alienating their current base.

But this article doesn’t have much to do with free to play, at least not presumably. Earlier this week, Mythic took in a few WAR bloggers to see some interesting material regarding some upcoming patches. Thanks to the j0y of a magical document we call a non-disclosure agreement, we won’t hear about what that information is until some point in the near future.

From what we do know so far, it appears there will be a focus on fortresses, incentives to defend, and new zones. Other than that, as blogger Werit posted:

It is substantial news.  However, it is probably not what you’re thinking it is.  I was quite surprised when they told us about it.  Is that cryptic enough?  Don’t worry about it too much though, as we may see an official announcement in a few weeks.
So it isn’t free to play?

That Is Real Roleplaying: A Mortal Online Moment


Here at MMO Fallout, I’ve always said that most of my issues with sandbox games stem from a lack of content. When a company puts out a sandbox title, you have the option of being a crafter or a fighter, and often the choices are a toss up between pressing a button for hours on end or joining a group and kicking some serious ass. So you can see why such games generally devolve into systems where fighting is the main staple, and resource gathering is something done by macros through the safety of your guild.

The story I want to bring up today comes from BubbaJones on the Mortal Online forums. You can make of it what you want, this kind of scenario sounds like something that would keep me subscribed.

The other day (during MO’s night time), in Vadda, i was lounging around the bank and chatting with someone and out of the corner of my eye, i saw Cyde (a Red) proceed to run up to a crafter (by the utility vendor) from out of the bushes, one shot said crafter and promptly disappear into the darkness.

It created a commotion indeed, everyone yelling and running around, people panicked and warning others to huddle for safety.

Fighters were running around in groups of 2 and 3 to find the lurking Red who was hiding somewhere in the city.

It was Awesome, that feeling of danger – and what MO should be about.

Planetside 2 Announcement Coming.


Hold your BFR’s folks, something big is coming from Sony regarding Planetside 2, and hopefully not like March’s announcement. A clock has appeared on the Planetside 2 website, at 45 hours currently, putting the countdown to end sometime late Friday EST. Stay tuned for more information.

http://www.planetside2.com/