What does baffle me about this is the tolerance or low expectations of MGM, owners of the Stargate license. Either MGM is not paying attention, at all, or they firmly believe that Cheyenne, in all of their continuing downward spiral, is somehow the only choice for a Stargate MMO. Or they don’t care anymore.
Back in March, I announced that Stargate Worlds was officially unofficially defunct, officially because Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment was so far into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and beating up Gary Whiting that the chances of release was somewhere between no chance and not a snowball’s chance in hell. In that article, however, I turned my guns to MGM, asking as simple question: Why have you allowed this to continue?
The legal battle over Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, over which likely none of you remember, is over, and CME has retained full rights to the game assets in a lawsuit between them and the makers of Stargate: Resistance. Essentially, although people like myself assumed that Fresh Start Studios would be the new enterprise for Cheyenne, the company sued Fresh Start to stop the fraudulent transfer of assets.
So Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment gets to keep their assets…but they have no Stargate License. Answering my question from back in March, the license with MGM expired this month, and MGM decided to terminate the license. Getting the license back will no doubt prove difficult for CME, and Gary Whiting (who has been back in charge for a while now, from court order).
Oh and, dear March 2010 me:
More on Stargate Worlds if it ever appears, but it seems as if this saga is finally coming to an end.
Dan Bull wants a new Elder Scrolls game, and here at MMO Fallout we share his desire, although we aren’t necessarily willing to sing about it. Of course, we can always keep up hope that the next Elder Scrolls is the MMO that Zenimax Studios is allegedly working on.
Oh well. We’re behind you, Dan Bull! We’ll just let you do the rapping, for all of our sake.
Dan Bull wants a new Elder Scrolls game, and here at MMO Fallout we share his desire, although we aren’t necessarily willing to sing about it. Of course, we can always keep up hope that the next Elder Scrolls is the MMO that Zenimax Studios is allegedly working on.
Oh well. We’re behind you, Dan Bull! We’ll just let you do the rapping, for all of our sake.
Back in February, I talked about a fledgling MMO from Perfect World Entertainment called Kung Foo! This martial arts MMO was running through the final days of the closed beta when Perfect World made a remarkable announcement: They were shutting down the game. But unlike the likes of All Points Bulletin, this premature shuttering was not permanent, but rather an elongated downtime to assess the game and its direction, with PWE pleased with its community response, yet displeased with the game’s content. Perfect World promised that the game would see launch sometime in 2010.
As the months dragged on, I will be honest in saying that I forgot all about Kung Foo! and its quirky style, and imagine my amazement when I get an email from PWE announcing that the game is coming back! Those of us like myself who closed beta tested the original Kung Foo! have been invited to test the closed beta for Legends of Martial Arts. LoMA, as it is called, begins closed beta on the 24th of November.
It’s always good to see a thought-dead title gain new life. More on Legends of Martial Arts as it appears.
Codemasters General Manager David Solari has been on MMO Fallout’s news bulletins before, with regards to Lord of the Rings Online Europe, but now I get to talk about him weighing his opinion on something not Turbine related. In an interview with Eurogamer on the topic of All Points Bulletin, Solari wanted to express his optimism that the defunct MMO could absolutely work, given the right time.
“[Realtime Worlds] made some key mistakes there, with some key stuff changed that game could be successful. I do think the game could be turned around but it would need nine months of hard work,” he added. “That game could have been successful but the cost of development and everything else was a huge thing. The money it had to make to support that was very high risk. If you could take a smaller team and make all the fixes and operate at a lower cost then it’s fairly unique: there’s not really anything else in the market out there.”
Solari makes a great point. During APB’s short life, I harped on a few points that the game could be fixed and turned around easily, but that Realtime Worlds would be fighting against the clock to fix the shooting and driving mechanics being lackluster in a driving and shooting game. But who exactly is going to pick up APB, Mr. Solari. You?
“We have not picked up APB,” he said, definitively. “I can answer you definitively,” he echoed, “we haven’t picked that up.”
Damn. Well there is still the possibility of Epic Games taking over. More on APB as it absolutely refuses to die.
Over here at MMO Fallout, we follow the mantra of publishing and forwarding ego-driven banter, and generally for the sole purpose of its comedic value. Much like how most humorous situations begin with a simple “hey, look what I can do,” the MMO world is no exception to events that begin with high self esteem and end with someone face planting into a stop sign.
When tasked with finding an analogy to describe Battlestar Galactica to Star Wars, the only thing I could come up with was to look at each franchise’s latest foray into media. Caprica, a prequel series to Battlestar Galactica, was cancelled at season one due to low ratings, before the season had even finished. On the other hand, Star Wars: Clone Wars grossed almost $70 million worldwide in theaters, and another $20 million in DVD sales, despite low scores from critics.
So when Bigpoint, the developer behind Battlestar Galactica Online, comes out at the London Games Conference and says that The Old Republic will never be profitable, I can only assume he means to imply that Battlestar Galactica will either perform better, or at the very least become profitable. Given that Battlestar Galactica is being developed on the UNITY engine (Cartoon Network’s Fusionfall as another example) as a browser based MMO, I like to think it can be said that it won’t take much to cover the development costs of this venture into the MMOG realm.
With Turbine taking Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons Online free to play and doing greatly by it, there is an air of elitism coming from the less popular of the free to play ilk toward the companies that maintain subscriptions, like the Grover Dill to the Scut Farkus, the loud annoying toadies who hide behind the guy who can actually put up a fight. What companies like Bigpoint don’t realize when they preach Turbine is that Turbine has infiltrated the free to play cash shop from within and has set the stage into motion that will utterly demolish the existing standard, all the while the very people they are trashing are holding them up like dopes.
What Lord of the Rings has done is they have taken the best of the free to play cash shop idea, namely no up front fees and no in-your-face costs until you’ve leveled up a bit, with a cash shop that sells things people will actually want to buy. But Turbine introduced what can be formally called a price ceiling to the model, where once a player goes over $15 a month, they can choose the flat rate subscription, and get the same content another cash shop grinder might cost up to and over a hundred dollars a month for, for the same flat rate. Not only will they get the same flat rate, but Turbine gives free cash shop points for extras each month.
Bigpoint invoking Turbine is like Justin Beiber invoking Keith Urban. Yes, you are using a popular example to bring up the rest of the genre, almost none of which who can attest to the same success that Turbine has had with Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online. That would be like me invoking Blizzard by saying that none of the free to play ventures hold a candle to twelve million paying players (regardless of whether or not they pay a subscription or hourly rate, they are paying).
But people will tell me not to publish this, as it gives Bigpoint exactly what they want: Publicity, and I say give them more publicity, because publicity exponentially emphasizes the response, and when Battlestar Galactica eventually does take its leap off of the development branch, Bigpoint is either going to make a grand entrance or fall flat on its face.
Bigpoint may think itself cool trash talking a company that could literally drown them in a sea of development money, but as George Carlin once said:
“You ain’t cool, you’re chilly. And chilly ain’t never been cool.”
MMOs are a bit like children in that eventually we have to ask when the babying has to stop and the real growth must begin. At what point do we start saying “no, don’t pull the cat’s tail, what the hell is wrong with you?” instead of “he doesn’t know any better.” No doubt this is what players have been asking themselves with Final Fantasy XIV, launched back in late September, now approaching the two month mark, and there is no doubt that a lot of players are not happy with the state of Final Fantasy XIV, which Square Enix’s Yoichi Wada summed up nicely:
“Currently, the service isn’t satisfactory,”
Just last month, we noted that Square Enix has given out another free month of game time to anyone who ordered Final Fantasy XIV before October 25th. In that post, I noted my observation that Square Enix sounded somewhat ashamed in their announcement, but that the move was a sign of good faith that the company was asking for another month to clean up the title, and was willing to extend the player’s free time in order to make up for it. Like getting a free milk shake because your chicken fingers are taking longer than expected…there I go with food analogies again.
This also comes after Square Enix lowered their forecast sales and net income for this quarter which, given that the figures are for the month ending in September, was not caused by Final Fantasy XIV, but rather will drive Square to work harder to sell more copies of Final Fantasy XIV, as well as retaining subscribers past the free period. Of course, while speaking to investors, Wada was dutifully optimistic in his “if we build it, they will come,” approach.
“The players who left will return if we satisfy them,”
Final Fantasy XIV has sold 630,000 copies worldwide, a formidable number although one that won’t exactly stand up to Warhammer or Age of Conan’s preorder numbers (granted, it also won’t hold a candle to either title’s free-fall exodus post launch). If Square Enix can dust themselves off and get back to the core of what made Final Fantasy so popular, then more power to them.
I don’t need to test my stress, because I already know it is far above the healthy rate for someone my age, or really any human being who is not half-robot. Back in the days when Perpetual Entertainment was not bankrupt and still making MMOs, their two staple titles were Star Trek Online and Gods and Heroes. When the developer went belly up, Cryptic picked up Star Trek Online, leaving Gods and Heroes to die in the Colosseum. Heatwave Interactive, a company likely none of you have heard of before, picked up the game in February looking to get it going sometime late 2010, early 2011.
Heatwave has reached the point where they are stress testing servers, and they need a few good testers to sign up on the main page. Currently the only scheduled test will take place this Saturday from 2-4pm Central time US.
Gods and Heroes looks to be a fun game, assuming it ever makes it to a live release, especially since there aren’t many MMOs set in Ancient Rome (alright so they don’t call it Ancient Rome). More on Gods and Heroes as it appears, especially now that it has its own category here on MMO Fallout (ooh, exclusive).
When Cryptic Studios announced that Champions Online would be going free to play, you couldn’t find a single conversation that did not turn to “will Star Trek Online follow?” Well that is what the community has been asking Jack Emmert, who came back with a simple proposition: If you eat your dinner, you will get dessert. Cryptic is taking a chance with Champions Online going free to play, and if that venture does well then the company will consider taking Star Trek Online in the same direction.
“We’re not sold one way or the other with Star Trek yet. If people want Star Trek to go free-to-play then get in and play Champions and help make it a great success, because that would send a strong message.”
This and more can be found in a Eurogamer interview with Jack Emmert, who wanted to be clear that the decision is not solely up to him.
“There are more people than just I on that decision and I can’t begin to say it would be an automatic ‘Yes, we’d do it.'”
Emmert goes on to talk about a few other projects, like user generated content that the team hopes to start in Star Trek Online and then move to Champions Online. Neverwinter, and a few other unnamed projects that Cryptic has in the works that will no doubt lend their features retroactively to Champions and Star Trek Online.
“It is definitely not fantasy-based. I can say that. It is something that’s pretty exciting. It’s under wraps and hopefully we can talk about it soon.”
Wouldn’t it be funny if Cryptic were picking up the Stargate MMO? Just saying…
Last month Mythic Entertainment’s own Carrie Gouskos made it quite clear that Warhammer Online is not going free to play…for now. In the interview with Ten Ton Hammer, she talked about the danger of monetizing power in a title that focuses so heavily on player vs player. There was that part at the end of the interview, now what was it…
We do have some vanity stuff that we’ve looked at and said if players want to buy it, that might be something we’ll make available. But power is really, really scary. And that’s the only thing that would be worth anything.
That’s it! Vanity items. When in doubt, don’t give it stats. Mythic announced today via the Herald that a few new items have hit the EA Store. They are as follows:
Server Transfer – $19.99 USD, this will grant you a code that can be redeemed for one server transfer for a single character.
Starter Mount Pack – $8.99 USD, all characters on an account will receive a deed to obtain a mount usable at level 2 giving players a 25% speed boost and have a 100% chance to dismount upon damage.
Trusty Mount Pack – $9.99 USD, all characters on an account will receive a deed to obtain your choice of a new mount usable at level 20 giving players mounts of up to 60% speed boost and have a 55% chance to dismount upon damage
Trinkets of the World Pack – $4.99 USD, all characters on an account will receive two tokens to spend at the new Trophy Vendor in the capital cities. Each token can be used to purchase one of 14 different trophies.
Specialized Training Pack – $9.99 USD, all characters on an account will recieve one War Tract that will allow them to immediately advance one full level when used
Herald Pet Pack – $9.99 USD, all characters on an account will be granted adoption papers to the Snotling Herald vanity pet. This pet will follow you around and give you a boost!
Initially I was posting that the Training Pack would allow someone with enough cash to fully level all of their characters, but the Herald was later updated to note that the items are one time deals (you can’t buy two training packs and get two levels).
If Mythic is considering moving toward a free to play model, this is certainly the way to do it. Remove the subscription and sell vanity items/mounts. A well-trained eye will note that Champions Online was setting itself up for just a similar model through the carefully named Adventure Packs that Cryptic released, and the RvR packs that Mythic are currently releasing may be gearing up for a similar switch, where the company doesn’t go full Turbine, but rather a halfway approach where classes/races/features are locked off and for sale either on a VIP basis or through individual cash shop purchases.
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