DC Universe: Hey, My D2D Code Ain't Working!


Accept my key before I flatten your face!

DC Universe Online launches today, and like any decent MMO the launch day issues are becoming too numerous to bore you with here on MMO Fallout. Among the problems I can actually help you with comes players who are having issues with their preorder keys from Direct2Drive. According to a few comments in my email box, players are having problems with their keys being accepted, with the majority of them facing the dreaded “this key is already in use” response. So, what is the issue? Hackers with key generators? Superman?

Nope. A little bit of research on my end has come up with a couple of solutions. According to a number of users on the MMORPG.com forums, you should go to SOE.com and set up your account from there. Following that, enter in your key and submit, which should still give you an error, but the key should still apply to the account. If the key was accepted, you will have the option to subscribe without buying the game. The subscription portion apparently can also be set up via the launcher, but don’t quote me on that.

A thank you to all of you who submitted this, and foremost a big thank you to Redcor, and a few others, on the MMORPG.com forums for figuring out a solution. Sony is apparently aware of the issue and is working on a fix, but this will have to do for the time being. If you’re having this issue and the fix above doesn’t work, I suggest using SOE’s customer support line.

DC Universe: Hey, My D2D Code Ain’t Working!


Accept my key before I flatten your face!

DC Universe Online launches today, and like any decent MMO the launch day issues are becoming too numerous to bore you with here on MMO Fallout. Among the problems I can actually help you with comes players who are having issues with their preorder keys from Direct2Drive. According to a few comments in my email box, players are having problems with their keys being accepted, with the majority of them facing the dreaded “this key is already in use” response. So, what is the issue? Hackers with key generators? Superman?

Nope. A little bit of research on my end has come up with a couple of solutions. According to a number of users on the MMORPG.com forums, you should go to SOE.com and set up your account from there. Following that, enter in your key and submit, which should still give you an error, but the key should still apply to the account. If the key was accepted, you will have the option to subscribe without buying the game. The subscription portion apparently can also be set up via the launcher, but don’t quote me on that.

A thank you to all of you who submitted this, and foremost a big thank you to Redcor, and a few others, on the MMORPG.com forums for figuring out a solution. Sony is apparently aware of the issue and is working on a fix, but this will have to do for the time being. If you’re having this issue and the fix above doesn’t work, I suggest using SOE’s customer support line.

Direct2Drive: Promo Code "Joker"


Direct to my bank card...

Is there an MMO you’ve been waiting to go on sale on Direct2Drive, but it just doesn’t seem to budge? Then boy do I have good news for you! For just this weekend, you can take 20% off of any MMO on Direct2Drive. All you have to do is take a $100 bill and send it to MMO Fallout, PO Box…

On second thought, my legal department is telling me that the above sale isn’t exactly legal. If you go to Direct2Drive’s website, add any MMO to your cart, and use the promo code “Joker” any time this weekend, you’ll save 20% off of the purchase price. This will work with items on sale, so your 50% off item now becomes 60% off (It’s 20% off of the sale price, not the original).

The sale lasts this weekend only.

Direct2Drive: Promo Code “Joker”


Direct to my bank card...

Is there an MMO you’ve been waiting to go on sale on Direct2Drive, but it just doesn’t seem to budge? Then boy do I have good news for you! For just this weekend, you can take 20% off of any MMO on Direct2Drive. All you have to do is take a $100 bill and send it to MMO Fallout, PO Box…

On second thought, my legal department is telling me that the above sale isn’t exactly legal. If you go to Direct2Drive’s website, add any MMO to your cart, and use the promo code “Joker” any time this weekend, you’ll save 20% off of the purchase price. This will work with items on sale, so your 50% off item now becomes 60% off (It’s 20% off of the sale price, not the original).

The sale lasts this weekend only.

Final Fantasy XIV Back On Shelves in WalMart


Dot com.

Back in November, I reported that Target and WalMart had pulled Final Fantasy XIV from store shelves, opting instead to only sell the game on their respective websites. I didn’t want to get into too much speculation at the time, as regular gaming stores (Best Buy, Gamestop, etc) were still stocking the title. Over the following month, I received a few reports from players who spotted the title on their store shelves, but couldn’t make a concrete statement without confirmation from either store’s corporate overlords (if the website reports that the item is not sold in stores, then the item is not sold in stores.).

Luckily, WalMart is reporting that Final Fantasy XIV is back on store shelves. Still no word from Target, who placed the item on sale back in November and subsequently removed the game from shelves, currently only selling the game online.

I have had a few unconfirmed reports that Game over in the UK is pulling Final Fantasy XIV off of shelves, possibly for a planned reboot in 2011 including the magical life-saving patches Square Enix has planned for the game in the coming months. More on Final Fantasy XIV as it appears.

Isn't Reality A Bitch, Henrik?


Credit goes to Scream112 on the Mortal Online forums for the screenshot.

Any game, and really any concept in any medium, follows the same path. At the early stages, the developers dream up all kinds of stuff they want their players to be able to do in their world. Drunken bar brawls? Awesome! Skill based combat with no lag on an MMO? Brilliant! Full PvP with no restrictions? Blockbuster!

Eventually, either before or after release, the developer hits a brick wall and like any decent sinking ship, some of the furniture must be thrown overboard to keep stable. Thinking players would protect one another in cities, negating the need for NPC guards? Didn’t happen. Player owned housing non-instanced? Not possible under your engine. Epic sword of goat-slaying? Wasn’t as overpowered before someone decided to add half-goat half-human as a player race. Holding a Cataclysm style event? The established community would never accept it.

This week, Star Vault is coming to that basic understanding of reality by publicly announcing their plans to not only have their cake, but preserve it until a later time in which they may eat it. In this case, Star Vault’s own Henrik Nystrom has posted a new thread on the official forums detailing plans for the server lag. He stresses that this is not the desync we once knew, that has been eradicated. This lag, on the other hand, has to do with the way movement and attacks are predicted on the server’s end, namely that the server is not updating said figures fast enough (at least that’s what I got out of it).

On one hand, it appears that this update is going to be a last-ditch effort to fix the lag before less desirable updates have to be considered, either through localizing servers or completely changing the combat so that the current hardware can handle the combat.

“If this doesn’t bring us to an “acceptable” level when it comes to real time combat we may be forced at looking into localizing servers, which we really want to avoid at all means, or we simply have to look at “nerfing” the complex way of fighting, which of course is something we want to avoid.”

This is good news, and hopefully this effort by Star Vault to stamp out desync, or whatever term they call it, will go by without having to resort to splitting up an already small community, or changing the charm that Mortal Online holds to many of its players.

Mortal Online is one of those games I can’t wait to try…when it is finished and as lag free as they’re going to get it. Until then, I’m a college student with 12 grand in college loans, another 6 in my car, and another 15 grand on the way over the next two years for even more collegical goodness. I don’t have any disposable income.

Isn’t Reality A Bitch, Henrik?


Credit goes to Scream112 on the Mortal Online forums for the screenshot.

Any game, and really any concept in any medium, follows the same path. At the early stages, the developers dream up all kinds of stuff they want their players to be able to do in their world. Drunken bar brawls? Awesome! Skill based combat with no lag on an MMO? Brilliant! Full PvP with no restrictions? Blockbuster!

Eventually, either before or after release, the developer hits a brick wall and like any decent sinking ship, some of the furniture must be thrown overboard to keep stable. Thinking players would protect one another in cities, negating the need for NPC guards? Didn’t happen. Player owned housing non-instanced? Not possible under your engine. Epic sword of goat-slaying? Wasn’t as overpowered before someone decided to add half-goat half-human as a player race. Holding a Cataclysm style event? The established community would never accept it.

This week, Star Vault is coming to that basic understanding of reality by publicly announcing their plans to not only have their cake, but preserve it until a later time in which they may eat it. In this case, Star Vault’s own Henrik Nystrom has posted a new thread on the official forums detailing plans for the server lag. He stresses that this is not the desync we once knew, that has been eradicated. This lag, on the other hand, has to do with the way movement and attacks are predicted on the server’s end, namely that the server is not updating said figures fast enough (at least that’s what I got out of it).

On one hand, it appears that this update is going to be a last-ditch effort to fix the lag before less desirable updates have to be considered, either through localizing servers or completely changing the combat so that the current hardware can handle the combat.

“If this doesn’t bring us to an “acceptable” level when it comes to real time combat we may be forced at looking into localizing servers, which we really want to avoid at all means, or we simply have to look at “nerfing” the complex way of fighting, which of course is something we want to avoid.”

This is good news, and hopefully this effort by Star Vault to stamp out desync, or whatever term they call it, will go by without having to resort to splitting up an already small community, or changing the charm that Mortal Online holds to many of its players.

Mortal Online is one of those games I can’t wait to try…when it is finished and as lag free as they’re going to get it. Until then, I’m a college student with 12 grand in college loans, another 6 in my car, and another 15 grand on the way over the next two years for even more collegical goodness. I don’t have any disposable income.

APB Closed Beta Incoming, Still No Earth Eternal


 

Adorable.

All Points Bulletin and Earth Eternal shut down around the same time last year, give or take about a month, and since then only one of the two has been getting much of any news coverage, and that tile is not Earth Eternal.

Over on the APB front, K2 Networks has been putting out regular blog updates on how the company is planning on dealing with free players, cheaters, private servers, and more. The latest blog post details hopes for a late-February launch of the APB closed beta, although any difficulties may extend that date into March. Closed beta details will be listed next week, but those of you tech-inclined folk may find some interest in the rest of the blog, detailing what K2 is currently doing to get the game back up and running.

Meanwhile, we’ve heard nothing new out of Earth Eternal. Neither the game’s Facebook or Twitter have been updated since around September, although off-site reports indicate that the game has been sold to Time Warner and will be rebooted sometime early this year. I am somewhat disappointed to see the lack of news out of Earth Eternal, especially since the buyer has never officially come out and announced themselves.

With All Points Bulletin, Earth Eternal, and hopefully Hellgate: London being brought back this year, who knows? Perhaps 2011 will be the year of MMO necromancy!

2010: A Retrospective, Answered Questions


This new decade shall bring great MMO improvements.
The baby Mortal Online was born...

2010, to me, was a bit like entering a shaved watermelon contest. I love watermelon, and I enjoy contests, and there isn’t much I won’t do for the promise of a trophy and perhaps a gift certificate to Denny’s. On the other hand, a trophy for “best shaved watermelon” isn’t exactly something I would use to start a conversation, and I would have my reserves of putting said trophy up on the mantelpiece, allowing it to share room with my many shuttered MMO boxes.

Last year, I wrote up my MMO Turing Test, which is supposed to be a dividing line between successful and unsuccessful MMOs. I have a better article coming up, but after I wrote up that article I started adding in the birthdays of MMOs to the calendar, that are over five years old. It is inspiring to see the amount of pink that covers the calendar page, titles turning eight, nine, ten years old, we tend to forget the older titles and focus on the younger games that die far too early into their lifespan. Rather than look at the Asheron’s Calls of the genre, we see the Asheron’s Call 2, the title that didn’t quite make it to pasture.

I am the first to admit my mistakes, and generally the first to gloat when I am right, so here are my predictions from last year’s article: 2010: The Blue Moon Year, and what went right and wrong.

  1. Is Ultima Online 2 coming out? Not likely, at least not for now. There hasn’t been much since 2009 when Calvin Crowner gave a passing hint at Ultima Online 2 being in development, and we haven’t heard much since then. Therefore, this question is still open.
  2. Is Sony working on a Star Wars MMO? Yes, and it launched. There were rumors back in 2009 that Sony was working on a casual Star Wars MMO, and it turns out that not only was the title in development, but it also launched. Star Wars: The Clone Wars Adventures launched in 2010 to the fanfaire of children everywhere.
  3. Will Stargate Worlds ever release? This is an easy no. Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has lost the licensing to the Stargate property, meaning that any chance of the company coming back from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy is pretty much moot, as they have nothing to work with. Stargate Resistance is also shutting down early 2011.
  4. Who Will Win the Superhero Clash? Quick answer? Nobody. I guess you could claim that Champions Online going free to play while City of Heroes remains subscription based is a point of victory to NCsoft, however neither title has truly knocked the other out of the market. I guess when DC Universe Online launches next year, we may see something more interesting come out of this fight.
  5. Sony remains an MMO Behemoth: No questions there. Next year, Sony plans on launching The Agency, DC Universe Online, Planetside Next, with Everquest Next in development for some unknown time. With our confirmed titles, Sony will have eleven MMOs operating side-by-side by the end of 2011.
  6. Will we ever see a new 360 MMO? No. With how much blocking Microsoft does, it’s probably best to not pick up an Xbox360 if you’re doing so to buy Final Fantasy XIV, virtually the only title that still has optimism for a release on the console.
  7. Who is making the Fallout MMO? I am. I kid, Interplay made a huge advancement against Bethesda and is currently working on the Fallout MMO.
  8. Jagex’s New MMO: It isn’t coming out, at least not yet. Last year, Jagex said 2010 for Stellar Dawn, now the aim is 2011.

Trends in 2010?

  1. Achievements: Call them what you want: tasks, achievements, deeds, goals, etc, if you’re killing 500 of a certain mob, you are grinding achievements. The achievement system as a whole is an evolving concept, and 2011 will no doubt bring more improvements to the old grind.
  2. Cross-Server: This one disappointed me most about 2010. I assumed that more companies would be looking into battleground style systems that worked across realms/servers, and no one returned my call.
  3. Returning the Classics: Not a major trend, but certainly an improvement. Everquest sees the return of a time-locked progression server, where players start out in classic Everquest 1999-edition, and move onward as each expansion unlocks after a set period of time. Over on the EA front, Ultima Online has shown quite a bit of interest in opening up a classic shard, to emulate the pre-Trammel (possibly) version of Ultima with all of its non-consensual PVP glory.
  4. Going Free To Play: You may offer your tribute to Turbine at the local wishing well. Now that Dungeons and Dragons Online has completely revolutionized the reaction to going free to play, I don’t think anyone was surprised by the following that the movement has attained, especially given that said movement was not initiated by something Blizzard did. This year we’ve seen the transitions of Alganon, Everquest II, Pirates of the Burning Sea, with more titles past and future hitting the bricks and taking a nosedive for the sake of boosting their community. Next year, Champions Online goes free to play, with the possibility of Star Trek Online following. Oddly enough, two of the MMOs everyone expected to go free to play (Age of Conan and Warhammer Online) were the two that felt the need, over the course of this year, to remind us that they are not going free to play.
  5. Price Drops: Well color me wrong on this. There have been a large number of editorials on how developers shouldn’t release a non-AAA item and expect AAA subscription costs, but overall the reaction to such ideas has been nil, or at least not responsive enough to garner any attraction. We do understand why, however. For a company to  lower its subscription to $10 under $15, they have to pull in a 33% increase just to stay even with what they had before, and most companies are not willing to make such a risky move.
  6. Unlimited Trials: I’m marking this one down as a success because the free to play systems above are really not much more than a heartily expanded unlimited trial. Much like New Coke, the trend appears to go toward launching a game with a subscription, then offering a trial, before cutting the subscription down to a system of perks and exclusive content, and launching the rest of the game as free.
  7. Bill Roper Will Still Be Hated: He is also gone, for now. Earlier this year, back in August, Bill Roper left Cryptic Studios to pursue plans that have not yet been announced to the public. There has no doubt been a shift in Cryptic’s mission statement, such as a promise of no longer using the Cryptic store as a crutch in Star Trek Online, and placing both of Cryptic’s MMOs into the free to play arena (next year). Either way, wherever Bill Roper goes, no doubt he will have his frothing mouthed haters there to call him a fraud.
  8. MMOs Not Named World of Warcraft: They came, they saw, they went free to play, and they crashed. 2010 saw the deaths of seven major MMOs, with even more smaller titles that couldn’t stand the heat.

Get Back Into Star Trek Online For $2


Get into the game!

Since its release, Cryptic has added a ton of features to Star Trek Online, most notably the introduction of player created content. With three seasons behind it, some of you are likely considering getting back into the game, or buying it, but would rather not spend the fifteen bucks to start up your subscription, or pay for the box copy.

Boy do I have good news for you. Amazon.com is currently having a sale on Star Trek Online for $2.50 USD. Now, purchasing the game will give you a CD key and a download link to the client. The key can be used on a new account to give full access to the game plus 30 days of subscription time. On the other hand, I had no problem adding a key to my own account.

I’m still doing some testing, but I had no problem added the Amazon key to my existing account. This doesn’t work in duplication, but if you need a reason to get into/back into Star Trek Online, what better than spending two bucks?

You can pick up the standard edition for $2.50: http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Online-Game-Download/dp/B0044DEPYG/ref=sr_1_5?s=videogames-download&ie=UTF8&qid=1293401428&sr=1-5

Or the Digital Deluxe version for $5: http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Online-Deluxe-Download/dp/B0044DEPZA/ref=sr_1_13?s=videogames-download&ie=UTF8&qid=1293401941&sr=1-13

The items offered in the digital deluxe version are worth far more than $5 in the cash shop, so pick that up today.