Wait…What? WHAT!? All Points Bulletin Is Gone…Taken Offline


OBJECTION!

See? This is what I get for going to school. Several hours ago, Realtime Worlds announced that All Points Bulletin will be shutting down within the next 24 hours. It feels like just last week we were reporting on Realtime Worlds heading into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, selling off MyWorld, and desperately trying to find a new bidder for All Points Bulletin. At the time, Realtime Worlds expressed that the game was still lively, holding 130,000 active players. In a post on the APB forums, Brett Bateman had this to say;

“APB has been a fantastic journey, but unfortunately that journey has come to a premature end. Today we are sad to announce that despite everyone’s best efforts to keep the service running; APB is coming to a close.”

According to Eurogamer, a source close to Realtime Worlds disclosed that the game will be pulled within 24 hours, as the company could not find a buyer.

“Despite all the talk, no buyer has been found so it looks like the plug is about to be pulled. We’ve heard that it could go tomorrow”.

Our thoughts and hopes go out to the now ex-employees of Realtime Worlds. It appears as though All Points Bulletin is already offline, as neither the forums nor the game itself are working currently.

I’ll be updating as more information appears, but this for all intent and purpose, this is the end of APB.

Pirates Of The Burning Sea Heading Towards Eff Too Pea


I wonder what Lief Erikson thought about microtransactions...

Technically the Eastern Free to Play grinders were the first to make the statement, but when Turbine brought Dungeons and Dragons Online back from the brink of disaster by turning it into a hybrid cash-shop-VIP system, and turned it into an out of control money machine, that moment was where the industry started taking notice. Over the past year, making the free to play shift has undoubtedly saved a number of MMOs, including Alganon with a huge influx of new players trying out Lord of the Rings Online and Everquest II (both of which claim they’re games were doing just fine, thank you).

Pirates of the Burning Sea hasn’t been in the MMO Fallout news scope very much, and with the latest expansion launching recently Flying Lab Software announced that the MMO will be heading towards a f2p model fairly soon. There is no set date currently, as of the announcement, but Flying Lab has promised more information to come.

As for F2P, all of the necessary tech is completed and is in testing, and we’re very close to starting the countdown. We’re excited as can be about it, and we’re looking forward to writing the next chapter of Pirates of the Burning Sea with you.

More on Pirates of the Burning Sea as it appears.

Should I Shutter Old Articles?


I didn't do it for cash.

When I set up MMO Fallout, I of course had the hopes and dreams that the website would last for a number of years, so I immediately started planning long term. One issue I decided upon early was that I would set the system to automatically close comments on articles when they hit their first birthday, so as to prevent comments down the line of “this isn’t the case anymore,” when the article the person is commenting on is long out of date.

I have been declining and deleting comments that specifically mention the article being out of date, as they are neither constructive nor worthy of discussion. Doing so is against my own policy, but they were starting to litter the comment box on some of my older articles that didn’t meet the one year specification.

So I’m stuck between two decisions: I can stick a warning on older articles that the information may be out of date, or I can go along with my other plan, to reduce the comment closure date to six months after posting. I like the first one, personally. It means more work, but I think it’d be worth it.

Any thoughts?

Codemasters Wants Some Well Deserved Hate


So maybe not that brutal...

If you are a newcomer to Lord of the Rings Online, and live in Europe, chances are high that you are currently playing on one of Turbine’s US servers. When Turbine launched the US-based servers last week, they did so with foresight, preparation, and server queues. Lots and lots of server queues. Codemasters, on the other hand, opted to delay the launch to an unknown date, so they could get some kinks out of the system.

Naturally, players are annoyed, and Codemasters wants to validate your anger through an inbox/contest.

The community liaison officers will be your target/punch bag/stress ball and welcome you to throw things at us. The choice of what you throw and how you throw it is yours but you have to be creative: describe it in a text, record a video, draw something or take a funny screenshot – there is no limit to your imagination! You can even bake a custard pie and we will administer the confectionary as requested. The ten most creative and/or funny submissions will receive a Codemasters Goodie Bag and we will feature them on our May Contain Gamers community blog.

PS: Don’t poison the custard pie. Who could say no to a goodie bag? Vent your frustrations and get rewarded for it. Granted, it might have just been easier if Codemasters hadn’t delayed yet another Turbine F2P venture…just saying.

My Package From Jagex Ltd.


My lord.

I got a package in the mail from Jagex Ltd, after a discount put me on a shopping spree.

I'm not wearing this. Ever.

Cheers!

Well, so it was a two item shopping spree, but what do you want from me? I’m not made of money!

Earth (Hopefully) Eternal Coming Back Soon…


Captain Crunch, not Captain Kirk!

Earth Eternal has been making the newsstands recently due to the game’s almost-closure, auctioning, and selling off to an unnamed company. To the dismay of many of us, on August 31st Earth Eternal shut down with absolutely no explanation or forewarning, bringing both the website and game offline, along with a long silence from the company’s Twitter and Facebook pages.

Well, yesterday the Earth Eternal twitter sparked up:

The EE servers are closed until further notice. All your characters are saved and the new owners will be bringing the game back soon(ish).

On September 9th, the following was posted on Earth Eternal’s Facebook page:

Hi everyone. As you know, Earth Eternal is down. Our ISP pulled the plug for non-payment, which was expected. I wasn’t able to give you any warning, unfortunately, because I was at Burning Man and completely out of reach for the week that it went down. Full backups of all the data exist and the company that is in the process of buying Earth Eternal will be starting it back up again in the nearish future.

Hopefully more to come in the next week or so. Still no word on Earth Eternal’s buyer.

Direct2Drive Sales Continue!


If Funcom's money was gold-backed...
They did it for gold...

I wanted to bump this up to the top again so people can once again see the ongoing sale on Direct2Drive regarding MMOs.

  1. For the sake of space, I’ve moved previous month’s updates to the bottom of the page.
  2. [9/2]: Removed Alganon, as the game no longer has a client to purchase.
  3. [9/2]: Removed Fallen Earth, as it is no longer on sale.
  4. [9/11]: New Sale: Fallen Earth: Blood Sports for $6.00
  5. [9/11]: New Sale: Lord of the Rings Online: VIP Starter Pack for $4.95
  6. [9/11]: New Sale: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures for $9.95
  7. [9/11]: Price Reduction: Champions Online reduced again to $6.00 (from $19.95)
  8. [9/17]: New Sale: Star Wars Galaxies
  9. [9/18]: Removed Fallen Earth: Blood Sports, as it is no longer on sale.

Past Updates:

  1. [7/27]: Star Trek Online’s price has been heavily slashed!
  2. [7/28]: Final Fantasy XI: Ultimate Collection has been slashed again! $9.95.

Lineage II Merger: One Final Server


Poor Lineage II

[UPDATE] Since this article has recently started receiving a high amount of traffic, I want to point out that the information below was true as of this article’s publication (September 10, 2010) and that more up to date data can be found in the Lineage 2 category.

Lineage II is one of NCsoft’s biggest hits, scoring #3 worldwide in NCsoft’s sales lists for Q1 2010, and having the benefit of being so good that addicted kidults are willing to sue over it. Granted, most of Lineage II’s sales and subscribers come from Korea while over in North America and Europe, not so much.

So it is with great…I would imagine joy that NCsoft announced that the North American and European Lineage II servers will be shut down and accounts will be merged into two servers (one NA, one EU). As part of the merging process, any character under level 20 that has been inactive for a year will be deleted. In addition, players will only be able to keep seven characters from all servers combined, and those with the lowest experience will be deleted, so it is advised that players move items from low level to high level accounts, and figure out which they want to keep and which they would like to delete.

The merger hits October 5th (reflected in the MMO Fallout calendar, so you don’t forget). This move consolidates five US servers into one, and three EU servers into one. There is currently no information on how clans, alliances, Olympiads, castles, etc will play out.

More On LOTRO Europe


Sorry Europe.

“Hi folks,

Following our announcement on Wednesday regarding the delay of Free-to-Play in Europe, we can now provide you with a further update as to its status. It’s not good news I’m afraid. We are currently anticipating a delay of more than a week, potentially launching around the end of the month, and are still not in a position where we are able to confirm an exact date.

As you know, we were tracking a launch date of 10th September and up until recently thought this was still achievable; however, due to some major obstacles this date is simply not possible. Many of you have asked for a detailed explanation as to why this has come to be and why there wasn’t very much notice of the delay. Regarding the implementation challenges we talked about, the good news is that our Store and new servers are just about ready to roll, barring some final, live stress testing that needs to be performed.

We understand this is disappointing for you, more so because of our lack of communication in the earlier part of the week coupled with the last minute bad news. As the situation was changing literally from hour to hour, we weren’t in a position to tell you anything with any stability to it.

As we work to bring Free-to-Play to launch here, all eligible players will still continue to accrue loyalty rewards as per the rewards table on the website. We’re also laying on a bunch of your favourite live events on all servers starting next week and we’re introducing a community competition to allow you to take out your frustration on us and win some great prizes in doing so. We know this won’t substitute for the new Store and Enedwaith, but maybe it will make things a little more fun for you as you wait. Look out for announcements on all of these things within the next few days.

As always, thanks for your support and patience and a particular thank you to all of you who took the time to send us personal messages, those were awesome and really appreciated!”

So no free Lord of the Rings until possibly later this month. Isn’t it about time Turbine took Lord of the Rings back under their watch?

Lord of the Rings Free To Play Trailer: You Shall Not Pay!


This is the extended trailer for Lord of the Rings Online, which will be airing exclusively on G4TV for the next few weeks. No doubt the product of Warner Bros being the new frontman, television ads are extremely expensive.