If you check any gaming related website, electronics store, or wikipedia, you’ll find that Square Enix is set to release Final Fantasy XIV on the 30th of September for the PC, and sometime in March next year on the Playstation 3. What you won’t find, on the other hand, is a release date, or an acknowledgement of the Xbox360 version of Final Fantasy XIV, and Square Enix would like to rectify that.
In a recent interview with VG247, producer Hiromichi Tanaka stated that the 360 version of the upcoming Final Fantasy MMO is in fact not canned on the 360, but has rather been delayed and put on hold while talks continue with Microsoft. Going further into details, Tanaka explained that Xbox Live is virtually the only hurdle keeping Final Fantasy XIV from continuing development on the platform.
I’ve been pretty unrepentant in the past with my feelings towards Microsoft and have always backed up my philosophy that if you are a console gamer looking for an MMO, your best bet is to stick with a Playstation 3. The hurdles that the developers have been reaching with Microsoft are essentially set at Microsoft’s love of money, and their need to stick their fingers into everyone else’s cookie jar, leading to the point where a deal between Microsoft and the BBC to offer streaming BBC over Xbox Live (at no cost to Microsoft) was turned down because Microsoft couldn’t make any money off of it.
As much as I hate to play the pessimist, those who are waiting out on a 360 version of Final Fantasy XIV might as well wait in line behind those still hoping for a console edition of Champions Online, Age of Conan, and Star Trek Online, who are standing right over there with the folk waiting for Duke Nukem Forever and the rapture.
I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve been in rather a slump this year. We’ve seen the closure of Dungeon Runners, Metaplace, Cities XL, Phantasy Star, and now Chronicles of Spellborn, Exteel, and possibly All Points Bulletin in the near future. So, owing to that knowledge, we take what good news we can, and more specifically that good news is that Earth Eternal has been sold!
In a posting today on the Earth Eternal website, Sparkplay CEO Matt Mihaly (one of the two remaining staff members) announced that the bidding has ended, and the game has been sold to an unnamed buyer. The buyer cannot be named currently, as the contracts haven’t been signed and all of the formalities are not finished, but Mihaly has promised that it is a known company with the pre-existing audience to give the game its due attention. As he put it:
“I’m pretty happy this company won the bidding, as I think they have the resources and the pre-existing audience to help make EE a success.”
We’ll have the company name in about a week, but until then let’s throw MMO Fallout’s rule on speculation out the window and try and guess who it is. My bet is on Jagex, who seems to have a growing interest in funding fledgling MMOs. Whoever it is, it’s a big company according to the news report (“moved astonishingly quickly for a company of their size.”).
Great! Now all we need is for Realtime Worlds to announce that they’ve secured an investor and the week might not seem so bleak.
I’m going to inject a little politics into MMO Fallout when I say that, much like when former President George W. Bush gave a direct warning to the terrorists “bring it on,” Dave Jones’ prediction and seeming lack of care that All Points Bulletin would receive poor reviews was less than intelligent. Although here at MMO Fallout, I’ve always stated not to trust MMO reviews, preferring to utilize game sales, trials (be they limited or unlimited) and generally just the player’s own experience rather than watching a video or reading on paper what the game is about.
Back in early July, not too long after All Point Bulletin’s release, I wrote up an article explaining that the game needed to find its niche and stick with it. If they were going for an MMO shooter feel, than the MMO aspect needed to be beefed up greatly. Likewise, if they were going for a large-scale shooter/driver game, than the driving and shooting needed to be overhauled to make the game viable in a market of games with much better driving and shooting, that more importantly didn’t carry a charge to play. Going off of my earlier point, I should note that despite the embargo on reviews, once the reviews from reputable sources (take with grain of salt) came in, they were less than stellar.
Unfortunately, Realtime Worlds is in a rut a lot of MMOs get into after they launch: Launching the game with the hopes of doing large fixes will not cut it when your players are not willing to fund you, and investors aren’t willing to supplement your coffers to implement those changes. Gamesindustry.biz is reporting that Realtime Worlds has gone into administration, which is where the company is allowed to operate until they find an investor, despite being insolvent (unable to pay their debts).
Kinda reminds you of in 2008 when Dave Jones said that APB could compete with WoW on the market.
So is this the end for Realtime Worlds? Not necessarily. MMO Fallout will be here to cover the ongoing look for an investor. I’ll start my bid at whatever is in my change box of coins.
Private servers being shut down is nothing new, and as much as players like to discuss the legality of them, at the end of the day they are illegal. Now, being illegal and warranting action are two separate things. Lawyers cost a lot of money (generally around $500 an hour), so paying a lawyer to draft up a threat against little Timmy’s private WoW server that peaks at twenty people who don’t pay anything and crashes every couple of hours makes no sense from a business perspective, and odds are neither Timmy nor his friends on the server are going to just go and start paying for WoW afterwards.
It is this idea that directly corresponds to why you see only certain servers shut down, and generally they fit into two categories: Massive amount of users and profit. You may see developers shut down the private servers with the most amount of players, and that is likely because, unlike Timmy’s server, they can presume a number of those players will indeed go back to playing regular WoW, owing to a newfound belief that any large server will be inevitably shut down and their progress gone. Free servers rarely see the ire of the developer, as they can be somewhat seen as free advertising: a lower quality version to incite people into paying for the full product.
Servers that make profit, either through charging subscriptions or introducing cash shops, are the type that are most likely to face litigation, and this is exactly what happened in the case of Scapegaming. In the case of this lawsuit, launched in October 2009, the operator of the server (Allyson Reeves) was operating a microtransaction system on her server, and according to the lawsuit managed to accrue more than $3 million in fees from players.
I will admit that the extra $80 million or so that the judge slapped on for willful infringement is a little exaggerated, and unfortunately it is required by law and will be appealed (and most likely reduced), but it takes a lot of stones to set up a server you know is already legally dubious, and then go ahead and start making a profit off of it.
Anyone who has played Champions Online or Star Trek Online knows Bill Roper, who took over for Jack Emmert after the latter left developer Cryptic Studios. And if you know him, chance states that you probably have some strong feelings about him, whether they be in the “Bill Roper is the devil,” “Bill Roper is the greatest developer ever,” or just “meh.” Knowing that, the gaming public will be either sad, jumping for joy, or casually nonchalant in their reaction to the news that Bill Roper has left Cryptic Studios.
In the following post on Champions Online’s website, Roper posted:
For the past two years I’ve had the extreme privilege of working with an amazing array of talented developers and just plain great people here at Cryptic Studios. Over the past few months my entrepreneurial spirit has become restless, and I’ve made the difficult decision to move on and look for new opportunities.
You can read the whole thing at the link above.
Hopefully Bill Roper will find success in whatever venture he chooses to move on to.
File this one under “how is this in improvement?” I don’t normally talk about game’s individual updates, but the upcoming patch to Warhammer Online, 1.3.6, is revamping the UI of the auction house to better fit the searching needs of the game’s players. As a result of this upgrade, all auctions are standardized to 48 hours, and Mythic has decided to remove the option of bidding on items, opting for a buyout only approach.
According to the WAR Herald, the options being removed are due to lack of popularity, so I won’t question that aspect. I do have to question how removing the aspects altogether, rather than allowing the few who do utilize them, can be an improvement. It is possible, of course, that the new infrastructure of the auction house required some of the options to be removed, but aside from a technical limitation point of view, I don’t believe there is much Mythic can say to convince me “no, this is for your own good.” I feel like I’m talking to the Apple of MMOs.
Personally in the grand majority of MMOs that I have played where an auction house exists, I’ve found myself setting up a tried and true method of selling my wares: start low, set a high buyout amount, and start gathering data on how well the items sell for. On World of Warcraft, this method has become a godsend in selling stacks of cloth and has allowed me to make a substantial amount of gold doing what is essentially a side-job.
Runescape is one of the few MMOs I can think of that only features a buyout option, although the Grand Exchange isn’t billed as an Auction House, and the system of buying and selling is 100% anonymous.
I have a feeling Mythic might offer their players some clarification, and hopefully if enough people ask for it bidding might be returned to the game.
File this one under “how is this in improvement?” I don’t normally talk about game’s individual updates, but the upcoming patch to Warhammer Online, 1.3.6, is revamping the UI of the auction house to better fit the searching needs of the game’s players. As a result of this upgrade, all auctions are standardized to 48 hours, and Mythic has decided to remove the option of bidding on items, opting for a buyout only approach.
According to the WAR Herald, the options being removed are due to lack of popularity, so I won’t question that aspect. I do have to question how removing the aspects altogether, rather than allowing the few who do utilize them, can be an improvement. It is possible, of course, that the new infrastructure of the auction house required some of the options to be removed, but aside from a technical limitation point of view, I don’t believe there is much Mythic can say to convince me “no, this is for your own good.” I feel like I’m talking to the Apple of MMOs.
Personally in the grand majority of MMOs that I have played where an auction house exists, I’ve found myself setting up a tried and true method of selling my wares: start low, set a high buyout amount, and start gathering data on how well the items sell for. On World of Warcraft, this method has become a godsend in selling stacks of cloth and has allowed me to make a substantial amount of gold doing what is essentially a side-job.
Runescape is one of the few MMOs I can think of that only features a buyout option, although the Grand Exchange isn’t billed as an Auction House, and the system of buying and selling is 100% anonymous.
I have a feeling Mythic might offer their players some clarification, and hopefully if enough people ask for it bidding might be returned to the game.
Realtime Worlds has released a press statement over the recent rumors that the MyWorld team has been cut, as well as cuts for the company’s MMO, All Points Bulletin. Colin Macdonald offered Develop-Online a few words regarding this past weekend at Realtime Worlds.
“The supporting infrastructure for a game inevitably changes once released, and those staff that couldn’t be redeployed to new projects in the Art, Audio, Coding, Design, Production, and QA departments have regrettably been made redundant.”
On the note of Project MyWorld, it appears as if the studio has not been cut completely, although they have seen a hit in staff. Unfortunately for the team, however, Realtime Worlds is still struggling to find a publisher for the upcoming title. According to Macdonald, the team is still looking at options.
But what about All Points Bulletin and the rumors that Realtime Worlds was looking to ship off the team?
“We’re completely behind APB, it’s got huge potential, and we’ll continue to make new content for it.”
According to VG247, the news website received information from an anonymous source at Realtime Worlds that the Crackdown (and All Points Bulletin) developer has restructured, laying off much of the crew. Generally this wouldn’t be a huge surprise in the MMO business, but if what the source said is true, the entirety of the MyWorld team may have been laid off, and Realtime Worlds may be looking to sell off the APB team.
“The MyWorld team has been completely laid off. As many as 60 may have gone, but there’s a rumour they may be trying to sell the team as a smaller entity. I don’t know the exact figure.”
As we”ve announced we had to restructure the company to make it so that we can focus totally on APB.
APB is still going strong and we fully intend to support 100%. In fact we have a cool announcement coming this afternoon, so keep your eyes peeled
Luckily, according to ABPMonkey, you have nothing to fear.
“We have no intention of shutting APB down! In fact we”re going full steam ahead and we”ve got some exciting stuff planned. Stayed tuned for an announcement this afternoon.”
MMO Fallout will be here to cover this announcement this afternoon.
Two months ago, I changed the “Month in Review” category to a monthly review called “Looking Back, Moving Forward,” and at the time I promised all of you that I would explain my reasons at a later date. As at least one person has pointed out, the legacy “Month in review” articles have been completely wiped from MMO Fallout, and I feel I have some obligation to explain why. As some of you know, it takes about five seconds to figure out my information by doing a who-is search on this website, and although the articles themselves were supposed to be a lighthearted joke, they were discovered by a potential employer, one who saw MMOs as a “waste of time,” and promptly lost any hope I had of getting the job.
Although video games have lost many of the stereotypes that once ran rampant, our particular genre has been held back multiple times from graduating with the class. Go on to your MMO of choice and start asking people if they admit or talk about said MMO in real life, and see just how many of them will respond with either “I don’t talk about it” or “I don’t even say I play this game.” For a lot of people, admitting they play World of Warcraft is like hanging a big sign that says “I have no life,” around their neck, an idea that could not be further from the truth. In fact, companies like Blizzard and Sony Online Entertainment just proved to the rest of the world that “normal” people do populate MMOs, and that the basement-dwellers that people often associate with the genre are such a tiny minority.
The sheer double standard of a lot of people is what frustrates me the most. For example, there is a Starbucks right in my place of work, and it sickens me to no end that someone will tell me that I spend too much on MMOs (I spend $20-$35 a month, if I’m playing more than one MMO, and virtually never buy anything from the cash shops) where they themselves spend $4 a day on one medium frappucino (that amounts to over $100 a month on a 5 day workweek). Or when that same person tells me MMOs are “childish,” right before they complain that they wanted whipped cream and chocolate shavings on their drink. The people who play games like Modern Warfare 2 or social networking games also seem oblivious to their own double standards. The same person who boasts about his all-nighter grinding towards the next level of prestige on Modern Warfare 2 will turn around and point to your two and a half hour raid in Gnomeregan and say “what a time-sink! You just grind and get no real life benefit.” Don’t even get me started on people playing Farmville who think MMOs are a waste of time.
This is part of the reason I started MMO Fallout in the first place, and that is to break down the barrier of entry into the genre. To have someone searching for Steam sales, for example, and come across “Oh look, Champions Online is on sale for $6 (Christmas sale), maybe I’ll try it out and see what all the fuss is about.” That person plonks down six bucks, and suddenly he is hooked. He goes to his friends and tells them about this great superhero MMO that costs $15 bucks but is “totally worth it, and there’s a trial!” They try out the unlimited demo and some people like it, and others don’t. Those who don’t like it might try to look for another superhero MMO, and find City of Heroes, and the whole cycle starts over again spreading to new companies, new genres, and new games. It’s like the crack in your windshield that spiderwebs out and eventually becomes a gigantic mess.
I don’t blame the people who have this stereotypes, because this always happens throughout the history of humanity outside of gaming. Those of you who early-adopted Guitar Hero will likely remember getting labeled as “losers who think they can play guitar because they play a video game.” Anyone who played Guitar Hero knows that no one plays it because they think it’ll make them good at guitars, and that stereotype is almost out the door now that Guitar Hero and Rock Band have brought rhythm games into the mainstream.
I hope World of Warcraft continues getting bigger, because the more people play it, the more they will realize that it can be played without completely sucking your life away. I hope Darkfall and Mortal Online get bigger, so people will realize that neither game is populated by sociopaths, bullies, or people who are bullied in their normal lives. I hope Runescape gets bigger so people will realize that not just children play it. I hope Eve Online gets so more people enjoy the idea of a spreadsheet simulator (I kid, I kid).
We cannot focus on the outsider’s stereotypes of us until we start removing our stereotypes of each other, and get rid of this in-fighting and elitism that plagues our gaming experiences. We need to sit back and lay some assumptions to rest:
STOP calling each other fat losers. Every time you do this, you are only perpetuating a stereotype.
Not everyone who likes PvP is a masochist/bully victim/little kid.
Not everyone who dislikes full PvP is a care bear/kid/casual gamer.
Not everyone who disagrees with you is trolling. That goes the same for someone who doesn’t like a game.
Likewise, not everyone who is loyal to a company is a fanboy, or an employee in disguise.
World of Warcraft is not just for casual gamers.
John Smedley/Bill Roper/Jack Emmert/etc are not Satan incarnate.
I’ve been in countless guilds/clans over the past decade, and I can say without a doubt that the MMO genre takes all kinds, and you cannot single out one group and make them the poster child. I’ve dealt with every type of player you can come across, from the kid who ragequits the guild because no one will power level his character while he is offline at school, to the authoritarian guild leader who, despite billing the guild as “mature,” won’t let you say “ass” in voice chat, to the little kid who knows far too many expletives to his age, and back up to guildmates who are on retirement and have to log off for a while because their grandchildren are coming over to visit. I’ve guilded with the prude, the overly flirtatious, the guys who pretend to be girls, the girls who pretend to be guys, the children who pretend to be adults, the guy who steals a guild member’s account and pretends to be him, the insomniac, the whiner, the guy who falls asleep at his keyboard in the middle of a raid because he is pooped out from working almost sixteen hours a day, the girl who is a girl gamer and won’t stop reminding us that she does in fact have lady parts, to the guy gamer who reminds us that he has man parts.
World of Warcraft is what really started breaking down the wall, and although I know a lot of gamers who scream bloody murder every time Blizzard does something that can be seen as catering to the casual masses. But while companies like Cryptic, Turbine, and Sony are off handing out free sweets in the form of unlimited trials and free to play games, we’ll find ourselves speeding towards the same conclusion that befell Dungeons and Dragons players in the 80’s: That no, we’re not freaks, and what we enjoy is a hobby, not a way of life. We don’t have delusions nor do we have our own separate realities. We don’t believe that the games are real, or realistic, and we’re not about to go Pardu and start stabbing random strangers in New York under the belief that they are wandering Goblins.
We as a community can only do so much to tear down the boundaries, and we need help from our corporate masters if we’re going to succeed. So I’m calling on Blizzard, Sony, Turbine, Cryptic, NCSoft, Square Enix, Quest Online, Funcom, Jagex, Bioware, Gala-Net and all the other developers and publishers to come out and make the public informed, so that you and I will not have to be “embarrassed” that we play this game, or that game, because of the social stereotypes we might face if we did.
This rant has gone on a lot longer than I anticipated, so I will end it on this note: I don’t talk about social online games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, and the others that you’d find on Facebook, but I support them greatly. They may be casual, they may be mindless, but they are addictive, and they are an integral part in breaking down the barrier between gamers and non-gamers, to integrate us into “normal” forms of entertainment.
As for why I picked Steam for the logo: no reason.
MMO Fallout 