What Happened This Week: Three E’s Edition


One day I hope to go to E3, maybe when MMO Fallout becomes more popular than the single person reading this article (that would be you). As with every week, I open up with a question: If you wrote a blog like this, at what point do you throw up your hands and say “this isn’t a matter of a company making bad decisions, we’re getting into fraud territory here.” If you’re still wondering, I’m referring to the recent mishap of Star Vault double and triple billing some customers, which lead to me giving serious thought to removing Mortal Online from the list, and warning any potential buyers. My reason was that the whole event brought me back to Mourning, especially seeing Star Vault’s apparent arrogance in the response. Not even an “I’m sorry,” a functionally irrelevant message, but one that could ease an angry soon-to-be-ex-customer.

So I did not remove Mortal Online, although much like with Mythic Entertainment, I’m keeping the articles on the table.

1. I Love You, Hellgate!

I love Hellgate, I’ve given no doubt about that in the past. The game brings me back to the days of Diablo, yet manages to incorporate swords, magic, and guns into a game that is very fun to play. Since us in the west lost Hellgate, the game has also seen the release of Hellgate Tokyo, and a major trove of content updates and upgrades. Luckily, the closed beta wasn’t really closed. Players had the chance of clicking on a button on Hellgate’s website with a 50-50 chance, yet I did not see a single person who was denied access through that button.

The beta was short, too. Cut the first day out because of server outages, and the beta lasted only the weekend. I couldn’t go back to the single player (I own the game from when it was live, and I already had the game installed), not enough Russian players not speaking English just to annoy the players and community managers. The website has “open beta test coming soon” plastered on the top of the forums, so the only remaining factor is how soon is soon. I’ve got a fever, and the only cure is more Hellgate.

2. Defiance Invokes Thoughts Of Tabula Rasa and The Matrix Online

Trion and Syfy are teaming up to create the MMO third person shooter Defiance, that will run side by side with the television show. I am a little concerned that Defiance will wind up in the same hole as another MMO-television tie-in that went horribly. My worry is that the game will be delayed long enough that the whole connectivity is lost, and players will see about as much interaction between the two as Star Wars Galaxies has on the original trilogy.

Still, I do like the idea of a third person shooter MMO, as an estranged player of Tabula Rasa from launch to shutdown, and Trion has already shown their abilities with Rift, so the future looks bright for Defiance.

3. DUST 514 Just Keeps Getting More Interesting

CCP’s upcoming shooter has always fascinated me, and not just because it is the first game that promises to seamlessly connect a PC MMO and a console first person shooter. Not exactly cross-console gaming, but as close as it gets for such a genre crossover. What also intrigues me is how the communities will connect, the hope of fostering a console game where players are expected to be just like the PC counterparts, or as Dr. Cox on scrubs would describe them, “bastard coated bastards with bastard filling.” This is present even in a previous trailer where the ships above, locked in battle, decide to renege on a contract and instead obliterate the entire playfield from above. This will lead to console mercenaries having to decide between a possible huge sum, and the possibility that the Eve players will betray them (if that is indeed a possibility). Hopefully DUST will foster an environment where betrayal is present, but at the same time does not sweep over the game, otherwise the population will drop like a stone. Wolves need sheep to survive, and without sheep they will cannibalize one another until there is no one left.

I want to say I’m surprised by DUST being a Playstation 3 exclusive, but I’m not. Considering the environment DUST is set in (close connection with PC game outside of Microsoft’s control, regular updates to match the growing battlefield and changing territorial ownership, connection to third party servers, etc), I had no doubt from day one that DUST and Microsoft wouldn’t get along. So although I have no confirmation of my hunch, I find it likely that this is another incompatible game with Microsoft’s very strict policies over Live.

4. Let’s Talk About Our Final Fantasy

I know this annoys the Square Enix trolls, so I try to get in as much talk about Final Fantasy XIV as possible. Last time, I mentioned by admiration for Square Enix’s willingness to say “we’re not willing to let a failed launch set the stage for the game.” In the upcoming updates, Square Enix plans to make major changes to the combat system, starting with the introduction of auto-attack. With this update brings the removal of the stamina gauge, whereas effects dependent on the stamina gauge will be changed to reflect this update.

Among the other major changes is the removal of physical levels, altering of job names, and more introduction of notorious monsters, quests, and more. Then the game can work on smaller issues, like the holiday events being the same exact thing: (go to area once every 8 hours, collect items).

5. I Can’t Wait To Play For Free…I Mean Beta Test…

I was surprised when Bioware announced that there will be no open beta for The Old Republic. For a game looking to hit the public spotlight as much as Bioware is, not having a glorified broken free trial before launch seems almost suicidal. Hopefully this means Bioware has their servers figured out and don’t need a stress test for launch (please, contain your chortling). For what it’s worth, open betas are essentially demos of a not yet finished product. While a very small number of the population are there to test the game and give feedback, they are overshadowed by players looking to get a head start in finding bugs to exploit once the game goes live, and free loaders who just want a chance to play a AAA MMO without having to pay the subscription + box fee.

I have to laugh when people complain about betas being nothing more than glorified demos, as they’re generally the ones who will then get in-game and complain that certain features are broken.

I'm Taking Today Off For Birthday Activities


I normally don’t take weekends off, but I’m willing to make an exception today. Will have a Week in Review out tomorrow.

Happy gaming.

I’m Taking Today Off For Birthday Activities


I normally don’t take weekends off, but I’m willing to make an exception today. Will have a Week in Review out tomorrow.

Happy gaming.

Hellgate Global's Word Filter Is Amusing


Word filters are amusing, sometimes. In the olden days of Runescape, for example, the filter would turn bad words into cabbage, so someone might say “that’s cabbage’d up.” Just a history lesson, in case you Runescape players were wondering why Jagex has historically had such an odd fascination with cabbage and things cabbage related.

Hellgate’s filter, on the other hand, is just strange. You can find the full filter list on Google, but here are some of the…not so vulgar words that are filtered:

  • Ash
  • Audition
  • bloodyhell
  • bugs
  • goddam
  • irak
  • iraq
  • sadam
  • saddam
  • wigger
I also noticed that resbian is censored, along with about twenty misspellings of fcuk. You guys thought of everything.

Hellgate Global’s Word Filter Is Amusing


Word filters are amusing, sometimes. In the olden days of Runescape, for example, the filter would turn bad words into cabbage, so someone might say “that’s cabbage’d up.” Just a history lesson, in case you Runescape players were wondering why Jagex has historically had such an odd fascination with cabbage and things cabbage related.

Hellgate’s filter, on the other hand, is just strange. You can find the full filter list on Google, but here are some of the…not so vulgar words that are filtered:

  • Ash
  • Audition
  • bloodyhell
  • bugs
  • goddam
  • irak
  • iraq
  • sadam
  • saddam
  • wigger
I also noticed that resbian is censored, along with about twenty misspellings of fcuk. You guys thought of everything.

Mortal Online Close To Being Delisted From MMO Fallout


Here at MMO Fallout, I have a simple philosophy: You throw me a game, I’ll make sure that people have an avenue to get into it. As many of you have pointed out over the years, I will defend any game to the point of its death as at least worth trying and I can’t honestly think of the last time I ever advocated against dealing with a specific company on this website. Back in April last year, I had a serious talk after Mythic’s billing servers exploded. At that point, I applauded Mythic for quickly dealing with an issue that was not their fault (billing for most MMOs is handled by outside companies). You may remember that, by the time Mythic had an announcement ready the company was automatically refunding extra-payments. You may also remember the Mortal Online quote I had at the bottom:

“If it had been Star Vault making the account error, they would have simply replied with “Your carebear bank account just can’t handle our hardcore billing system. Go back to WoW, noob!”
-Hypothetical, satirical view on what Star Vault might have said.

Well, back on Sunday Mortal Online’s billing servers exploded, causing a number of players to be charged double, and even triple charged. I emailed Star Vault at the time to inquire whether reimbursement would be automatic, or if players would need to contact, and received this answer:

Players will need to check their accounts and bank statements and contact us if necessary.

It was getting this statement back from Star Vault that almost prompted me to completely remove Mortal Online from MMO Fallout, a difficult task indeed, however I draw the line when the line begins to rest on fraud. Foregoing the comment on the previous article about the lack of an apology, for a company to erroneously charge customers, and then turn around and require the customer to contact them in order to obtain a refund, well that sounds legally questionable. Essentially what Star Vault is saying here is “yes we double charged people. If they don’t contact us? Well we keep their money.”

For the record, I am not in the camp that believes this was intentionally done to gain money from people who might not check their accounts. Star Vault has said that they will refund any double/triple charges, and I have to take their word until proven otherwise. My concern stems from the fact that Star Vault is not actively seeking out accounts with extra charges, and crediting back the cards, a process that should be as simple as checking which cards appear twice or more in the same day, checking which accounts those cards are tied to (to ensure the person isn’t simply paying for multiple accounts) and refunding when you find an erroneous charge. If this occurred to a low number of subscribers as I’ve been told, such a process should be quick and easy.

Or maybe I’m just overreacting, and it’s just me.

Station Price Dropping To Little Over 1 Subscription: $19.99/Month


Sony Station access is an excellent deal, and it’s about to get even greater. Normally priced at $29.99, or the cost of about two Station subscriptions, Sony announced at E3 that the price will drop to $19.99, or 1 and 1/3rd the cost of a subscription to one of Sony’s MMOs. The announcement was made at E3 today, with no specific date other than “soon.”

For those unfamiliar with Station Access, the service grants players access to:

  1. Access to all of SOE’s titles:
  1. DC Universe
  2. Everquest
  3. Everquest II
  4. Everquest Online Adventures (Playstation 2)
  5. Pirates of the Burning Sea (membership perks)
  6. Planetside
  7. Star Wars Galaxies
  8. Vanguard
  9. Free Realms (membership perks)
  • Additional character slots for Vanguard, Everquest, and Everquest II
  • Bonus adventure packs.
  • More features added as new content is released.
    • It’s important to note: You MUST own the game in order to receive a subscription to it. You don’t have to buy Pirates of the Burning Sea or Free Realms, but you have to buy Everquest, DC Universe, etc in order to gain access. The pass covers the subscription, not the purchase of the client if one is required.
    Good news? Bad news? Sign of more downgrading to come? Hopefully not.

    Derek Smart Talks: Alganon, Free To Play


    I know what you’re thinking: “Omali, you clearly don’t have a punchline ready for this segment,” and you would be one hundred percent correct, but I have good news. In my continuing efforts to branch MMO Fallout from the normalcy of sarcastic comments, random videos, rants, sales, and “I told you so” moments, I’ve decided to start trying to get interviews with various developers, starting with my first phase: “How Free Can You Be?” I’ll be trying to get interviews with various free to play developers, about their outlook and particular take on the business model.

    So with fresh taser burns from my daily trash looting at the Bioware offices, I chatted with Derek Smart about Quest Online and Alganon.

    First off, I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy day to talk about Alganon and Quest Online. For those reading this who might not play Alganon, tell us a bit about Alganon and Quest Online and yourself.

    I have been a game developer for over twenty years mostly focusing on hardcore space games developed at a company which I founded and own, 3000AD, Inc.

    Quest Online was founded and seed funded in 2006 by Greg Wexler and some other dude who used to work for him at one of his other companies, Mortgage Coach. The company developed the Alganon MMO game which was released back in 2009 prematurely by that very dude (later terminated) and to well publicized disastrous results. So I was brought in by the majority investors to head the company, rescue and finish Alganon etc. I’ve been heading the company and leading the team since then.

    The holy grail of free to play developers is to strike a center where the player is not so encumbered by the cash shop that he feels forced to spend, but at the same time has an incentive to throw money down on items/equipment. What is Quest Online’s aim for the cash shop’s presence in-game?

    To be perfectly honest, we were lucky in some regard. You see, the game was not developed to be a F2P game supported by a cash shop. So when we literally cobbled that in, the game’s original design gave players all this content for free because there was only so far that we could go in order to monetize the game without doing a major amount of work. So the end result is that when we made the switch from a subscription model, we didn’t get much push back from the gamers because they could play the game without having to buy a single thing.

    In the past year we have added numerous items to the cash shop, some essential and some vanity and we’re continuing to do that periodically. For example when we started implementing PvP we took the opportunity to added more cash shop items without making it so that the player with the most money wins. Though that can in fact happen at some point; but that’s the nature of the beast. 🙂

    The level boost (about $10 total for the last twenty levels) is really the only “essential” buy to experience all the content available in Alganon. Can you give us an idea about what the big nonessential sellers are? Vanity pets, dyes, potions, boons, gear, temporary/permanent mounts?

    That is correct. I don’t have the metrics on hand, so I really don’t know what the big sellers are.

    Do you believe in the 85-10-5 rule for cash shop games (85% pay nothing, 10% pay a small amount, 5% pay substantially)?

    Absolutely because that is pretty much the sort of metrics that I am seeing in our weekly reports. For Alganon, since you can play for such a long time without having to spend a single dime, our metrics – while improving in leaps and bounds – tend to be all over the map. That comes with the territory.

    Alganon offers scaling PvP armor (the armor stats level with the player) on the tribute market. How is the tribute armor balanced so Alganon doesn’t become a buy to win game?

    I don’t really have the answer to that because I don’t know. What I do know is that the guys try to make sure that the game doesn’t end up being “pay to win” like so many other F2P games out there.

    The manner in which Quest Online has set up the tribute market is rather non-intrusive (barring perhaps the last twenty levels). How do you go about attracting a player’s attention to the tribute market’s existence, or is that a secondary function of the level cap?

    We try to be as discreet as possible because as I mentioned earlier we don’t want to give gamers the wrong impression. While we do want to make money, we want to ensure that gamers stick around long enough to like the game and thus spend money on it so that we can continue to improve on it. We periodically have promos and such but we don’t go out of our way to make them intrusive.

    How did Alganon’s advertising campaign in PC Gamer perform? From my personal experience playing, there seems to be a small but noticeable increase in concurrent users on Alganon compared to just six months ago.

    It quite well actually. But it wasn’t just PC Gamer; we had campaigns on various online sites as well as other print media such as Beckett’s MMOG and others. All that in addition to our on-going Google and Facebook promos. I tend to spend money wisely, so I don’t believe in just throwing money at a marketing wall. For me, timing is everything and it has to make sense.The game’s population is growing, which is precisely why I am expanding the game as well as branching the IP out to other games.

    What do you think the largest barrier is to more people picking up Alganon? Quite a few free to play games have noted a significant (30% in Dungeon Runners) percentage of players never fully download the client after they register an account.

    I think it boils down to the MMO version of a perfect storm. We had the disastrous 2009 launch by my predecessor followed by the well publicized drama of his inevitable exit. And to make things worse, the game wasn’t even finished, it was buggy, had missing features etc. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it was a game you had to buy and pay a monthly subscription to play. Yeah, crazy stuff indeed. So there’s all that.

    With so many choices out there, getting gamers to come back and take a second look, takes a tremendous amount of work, resources and marketing. So we have been taking it one step at a time. So our biggest barrier is getting gamers to come back; in addition to those who didn’t even bother to even check it out.

    Launching off of the previous question, are there any plans for similar promotions in the future? Would Quest Online consider bringing back referral bonuses?

    Yes we are considering that and several other promotions which will be announced in the coming weeks. In fact we have a promotion going on this weekend.

    Alganon’s saving grace from its launch has been Quest Online’s dedication to fixing up the title, whereas a lot of other companies might have cut their losses, given the figurative finger to the early adopters, and moved on to another project. I think this is why the active Alganon community, although relatively small, are very adamant defenders of the game. Since your arrival, you seemed to have really rallied the development team, improving the game a lot since its relaunch back in 2010. Your thoughts?

    Well my first course of action was to see the game completed. Then we had to address the bugs, performance issues, touted but either missing or incomplete features etc. We had to get all that out of the way first in order to assess whether or not Alganon was worth saving in the long term. Of course the business model was rubbish to begin with and simply could not be sustained, so I got rid of that as well and took the game F2P. In the end, it came down to my deciding whether or not there was anything worth saving. So once all those obstacles were out of the way, I made that determination and so I rallied the troops who then hunkered down and just got on with it. It really boils down to focus. We came up with a plan and executed that plan in various steps and phases leading to where we are now: the expansion of Alganon.

    On a completely unrelated note, I heard through a very reliable source that you will be present at E3. Will there be any news on Line of Defense?

    Yes, we are unveiling the first Alganon expansion, along with a bunch of other good stuff. The PR which should be out on June 7th, contains all the information.

    There really isn’t anything new on the Line Of Defense front, other than it is coming along nicely and is looking awesome. We are going to be releasing some new shots once the E3 noise dies down next week. In the mean time, this is the art for the posters and postcards available at the show. http://www.3000ad.com/lod/media/shots/lod_poster.jpg

    I want to thank Derek Smart again for taking time away before heading off to E3 to talk to me.

    Star Vault Partners With Lekool: Mortal Online In Asia


    Mortal Online is heading to Asia. In a press announcement, developer Star Vault announced that the company is partnering with Lekool to publish Mortal Online in China and other Asian countries. You may be familiar with Lekool from their publishing ventures in the United States: Caesary, Business Tycoon Online, and more.

    “We are very happy to enter into this long term partnership with Star Vault. Star Vault has very unique products that are rarely seen in Asia, we have got several publishers interested in Mortal Online from Asia, especially from China. We think there is a huge market for Star Vault’s games and we would like to play a role to make it happen.”

    More on Mortal Online as it appears.

    Trying On Trion: Happiness And (Almost) A Million Sales


    So much for the forum users claiming Rift had sold over a million copies since launch. According to Trion in an interview with Gamasutra, Rift is nearing its 1 millionth sale. Interestingly enough, VP of publishing David Reid also revealed that the 1 millionth customer, and whoever they refer, will get something special from Trion.

    “We are on the verge of selling our 1 millionth unit of Rift,”

    For some members of the community, Rift’s health has been in question since Trion announced the introduction of weekly allowed server transfers for no fee. With this announcement, Trion hopes to alleviate those concerns, while planting the idea that the free transfers are simply intended to be a convenience for players.

     “The subscription market is not dying, we’re clearly seeing that. The MMORPG market is not declining. We believe a quality product is going to continue to be something that gamers are willing to pay for as long as we continue to run the service as we should,”

    In an interview with Gamefront, Scott Hartsman made a great point on the evolution of the community:

    Back in the day, WAY back in the day, in the Everquest, Ultima Online days, nobody had real life friends that played online games, so you made all your friends online. These days, you have friends all over the place, and you probably do have real life friends playing the game. The world has changed a little bit. For us, we want to make sure that when you suddenly discover that your buddy from college or from the old job is playing on another server, you can click a button and go play with him. Chances are, you’re going to be happy, you’re going to stick around longer, and then everybody wins.

    More on Rift as it appears.