Log Entry for the second week of May 2051: After my most recent encounter, I have determined it best to find myself a suitable permanent residence. Traveling for miles over these burned out plains, I pass by numerous, if not countless, houses and buildings in varying states of disrepair. Entire sides of the buildings gone, if not completely crumbled. In my passings, I find plenty of the various flora and fauna of the wilderness, and although I am not exactly living in style, there has yet to be a point where I become too hungry to walk.
But I write this because one day as I was foraging vegetables, a man approached me. Dressed in ragged clothing similar to my own, I presumed him to be the owner of the farm, readying my pistol only to find some cosmic force preventing me from willingly drawing my only means of defense. The man, however, simply approached me, extended his arm, and shook my own. When he spoke, I felt myself awash in heat, his voice reminding me of the depictions of God on the various radio shows, yet not as low pitched. He said;
“You have proven yourself to be a masterful survivalist, and you have foraged more than a thousand fruits, vegetables, and various other plants. For this, I want to give you a special reward.”
He reached into his pocket and retrieved an egg, which I immediately recognized as a prairie chicken egg, and number of chips reminiscent of my own poker-chip currency. Handing each individually to me, he turned and was gone in the blink of an eye. I will still remember his departing words;
“Keep hold of those. You will find use for them in the near future.”
Far overdrawn introductions aside, Fallen Earth has finally introduced achievements! The first batch of achievements, totaling five hundred, have been split into five categories of varying difficulty, and include everything from PvP encounters to killing bosses, scavenging, and crafting. The achievements are retroactive. And if you did not catch it from the above story, a second achievement pack is on the way, bringing with it rewards for achievements. The vanity pet reward system is really just speculation on my part.
Achievements are an interesting line in MMOs. On one hand, you have people who will grind out achievements just to say they got them all, even if that includes killing ten thousand of one particular NPC (I’m looking at you, Champions Online). On the other hand, you have people who absolutely hate the idea of grinding out achievements for rewards. Somewhere in the middle you have the casual gamer, who tries to go for the easiest achievements first and then sporadically goes up from there.
Achievements, if done right, can add a whole new level of involvement to an MMO. Warhammer Online is one of the few MMOs to take the achievement book and turn it into an integrated part of the game, the Tome of Knowledge, that gives you a lot of information on the world and the characters who inhabit it.
And to answer your question: Yes, I will be opening every Fallen Earth article with my little ongoing story.
Iron Man! Who wants his milk and cookies? Or would that be gin and tonic? Come give me a big ol’ hug, and then it’s nap time! So your expression right now is likely one of three: You either 1.) would like to know why I am coochy-cooing Tony Stark, 2.) recognize the picture and know exactly where this is going, or 3.) are completely lost.
Back in 2007, Marvel launched the Marvel Super Hero Squad, an initiative at advertising the iconic comic book characters to children. The action figure line shored up a kid’s show that is currently airing called the Super Hero Squad Show, featuring a whole host of Marvel characters in itself, doing exactly what you would expect a kid’s show like this to do: Make references far too old for its intended audience (Thor shouting “It’s hammer time.) and making the kind of jokes that kids love (Wolverine cutting his toenails with his claws, Thor using his warhammer as an extender to wash the wall, etc). Also Tony Stark is not an alcoholic to my knowledge.
Many of us have been waiting for the news on the Marvel MMO, and as many of you see where I’m going at this point, it’s finally here! This website popped up, and Gazillion Entertainment has finally announced Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, the MMO where you have the opportunity to harness the power of your favorite Marvel Superheroes, from Spiderman to Iron Man, and everyone in between.
Now, of course, this is not the Marvel MMO most of you have been waiting for, and luckily Gazillion still has that listed as its own game on their website. It will certainly not be as adorable as this little MMO, however.
More on Marvel Super Hero Squad Online as it appears.
When I said that there were unconfirmed reports that John Smedley had made the same speech of:
“Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay elements – combat, exploration and character progression. In Everquest 2, we’ve added a fourth element to the equation; a story“
in 2004, I definitely should have done some more digging. In fact, after further research after I published the article, I found that the reports had come from, who else, Derek Smart. It was Mr. Smart himself posting on the Kill Ten Rats blog.
Apparently it didn’t come to mind to any of us (except for myself, despite what I imagine to be numerous restraining orders by John Smedley against me attempting to communicate with him and all of my phone calls to him being directed to the local county police office), to actually contact John Smedley and ask if he said that back in 2004. That is, all of us except our best friends (as of ten seconds before I got the idea for this article) at N3rfed. John Smedley’s answer? Never been to New Orleans.
“Um. I’ve never been to New Orleans. That was the one year I missed it for family reasons 😉
I have no idea of [sic] I ever said that. But given that he’s attributing it to me in new orleans I doubt it. Maybe I said it some other year.”
So not a confirmation that it wasn’t said, and there exists no transcription of events to prove it, so we’ll leave it at this question: How is plagiarizing a quote from 2004 any better than a quote from 2008?
We do have one confirmation, however, that the coincidental misspelling of “multiplier” and “everquest” were due to rogue spell checkers.
More on Alganon as it appears. I promise this is the last article I will run on this issue.
When I said that there were unconfirmed reports that John Smedley had made the same speech of:
“Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay elements – combat, exploration and character progression. In Everquest 2, we’ve added a fourth element to the equation; a story“
in 2004, I definitely should have done some more digging. In fact, after further research after I published the article, I found that the reports had come from, who else, Derek Smart. It was Mr. Smart himself posting on the Kill Ten Rats blog.
Apparently it didn’t come to mind to any of us (except for myself, despite what I imagine to be numerous restraining orders by John Smedley against me attempting to communicate with him and all of my phone calls to him being directed to the local county police office), to actually contact John Smedley and ask if he said that back in 2004. That is, all of us except our best friends (as of ten seconds before I got the idea for this article) at N3rfed. John Smedley’s answer? Never been to New Orleans.
“Um. I’ve never been to New Orleans. That was the one year I missed it for family reasons 😉
I have no idea of [sic] I ever said that. But given that he’s attributing it to me in new orleans I doubt it. Maybe I said it some other year.”
So not a confirmation that it wasn’t said, and there exists no transcription of events to prove it, so we’ll leave it at this question: How is plagiarizing a quote from 2004 any better than a quote from 2008?
We do have one confirmation, however, that the coincidental misspelling of “multiplier” and “everquest” were due to rogue spell checkers.
More on Alganon as it appears. I promise this is the last article I will run on this issue.
I have not paid nearly enough attention to Archlord and, to be honest, I apologize for it. Not only do I have to start this out by bringing you back into the loop, but I had to do enough research into the Archlord archives just to bring myself up to speed. Last we left Archlord, back in January, I announced that Webzen, who had taken over hosting from Codemasters last year, was opening up a new server: Deribelle, which would play host to increased experience and drops, where players could transfer from the shutdown North American servers.
I am still not 100% back up to speed on Archlord, so if any players are viewing this I would love some information. Deribelle is still there, but American/Australian players are still without a server in their area to play on. There are currently four European servers and one Asian, and from my research of over 70 pages of Archlord threads, most of these servers shut down on a regular basis due to stress and server load.
Much of this might be attributable to the number of players attempting to reach the servers from America and Australia, who will be happy to know that Webzen has just announced the upcoming opening of Gracia, a server for American players. How for American servers is it exactly? So for American players that only American players, of the North and South variety, can transfer their characters over to this server when it opens for beta May 27th, for a live launch June 3rd.
As is usual for new servers on Archlord, the new server will play host to events as well as upped experience and drops. Hopefully I will have something to talk about by the time this update hits, but by Archlord’s way of getting into the news, that might not be until October.
NPD did a survey recently on the question we all ask: What MMOs do World of Warcraft players play when they no longer player World of Warcraft? Based on a survey of nearly 19,000, the reason I note this survey in particular is because NPD has a pretty good past of their surveys giving an accurate representation.
So, without further ado, here is the list:
Runescape
Dungeons and Dragons
Guild Wars
Final Fantasy XI
Age of Conan
Champions Online
Second Life
Lord of the Rings Online
City of Villains
City of Heroes
Eve Online
Treasure Hunt
Aion
Warhammer Online
Pirates of the Caribbean
Toontown
Dark Age of Camelot
Star Wars Galaxies
My only disagreement is lumping City of Heroes and City of Villains as their own games. City of X has been the one game representing both titles for several years now, and they are no longer standalone titles.
I do, however, feel bad for The last six items on the list. I hadn’t even heard of Treasure Hunt MMO, and I couldn’t find much information on it, but the fact that it is beating out six titles is both confusing and raises a few questions about those MMOs, for another article.
Any ex-World of Warcraft players here? What are you playing nowadays?
Mytheon, at its core, may sound a little like God Of War: The MMO. Deciding to take their fate into their own hands, the mortals have taken up arms against their gods, to bring them down and prove once and for all that they are capable of self sustainment. Mytheon is a top-down game, akin to Diablo, and is set to run on a free to play, microtransaction level when it releases this year (subject to change).
It appears the Fates (mortals) of Mytheon may be struck down, not by the Gods, but by the other hand that feeds them: The publisher. True Games, to-be publisher of Mytheon, is suing the developer Petroglyph Games, due to unfulfilled obligations. According to documents provided, Petroglyph was originally supposed to deliver a gold title back in November ’09, a date that was extended to February, and followed by a promise of delivery in March. When March rolled around, and off into the sunset, with no Mytheon.
Among True Game’s claims are that Petroglyph made unreasonable demands for additional funds and time, coupled with a lack of enthusiasm and efficiency, that threatened both companies. According to Petroglyph, True Games is trying to make Mytheon into something it isn’t: A full blown $15/month MMO.
I’m in the Mytheon closed beta, and what you don’t say is often more powerful than what you do say (not to mention I believe I am under Non Disclosure) so I will leave it at that. This does remind me of the current lawsuit between Bethesda and Interplay, as that is over the slow progress of Fallout for different reasons.
I don’t think it is a very well kept secret that here on MMO Fallout, I have a huge man-crush on Derek Smart. He makes me laugh, makes me cry, I send him flowers and he sends me restraining orders. We joke around, and we both love MMOs, and at the end of the day isn’t that what love is all about?
As I have pointed out numerous times, Derek Smart is not one to take it, whever it may be, lying down while the internetizens trample all over his beaten corpse. No, at some point Massively picked up on the story of Alganon copying a speech by Bioware, that was actually a speech from 2004 by John Smedley (as we found out.).
And who showed up to the party, but Mr. Smart himself?
OK, the weekend is officially canceled!
I have not yet issued an official statement because, tbh, I don’t have all the facts yet. Being a weekend and all, I don’t expect to know what happened until Monday. I am about to rush off to church, but decided to just post this quickly to let everyone know that this just came to my attention.
I hired a PR firm to handle media relations etc for QOL when I came aboard. They were tasked with that press release.
While I’m certain that there is a reasonable explanation for the similarities in the releases, I simply do not want to speculate but only to say that we are going to investigate this tomorrow.
Next week I will issue an official statement once I have all the facts.
Wait…So the PR firm wrote it all…but reading back, they were quoting you. You can read the press release, you are quoted as saying it. So what you are saying is that your PR firm fabricates quotes in order to make a statement. But I won’t finalize it here, you are on your way to church afterall.
I don’t know wtf you’re going on about or what motivates your ire (at least I have an excuse), but wtf does the announcement (in the news you linked to on MMORPG) about the game being released have to do with this discussion?
Of course I knew about the release. But how the hell am I supposed to know if parts of it were either plagiarised, referenced without credit to the source, based on homage or whatever if I didn’t compose it? Do we have to now go out and fact check press releases? Seriously?
More importantly, what has this got to do with Google Alerts? You do know how that actually *works*, right? Right? My guess is that you don’t. And even if you did, you’re trying to claim ignorance in order to continue your net rage ire.
The first I even heard of this issue was when Warcry sent me an RFC which I was greeted to this morning when I opened my email. Then I got one from Massively and others. Most of us with families and jobs, actually have *lives* beyond the Net. So its not like we’re no-life-having cretins looking to stir up trouble at every opportunity. So excuse me if I wasn’t trolling the net on Saturday when this was first posted.
I am waiting to get an official answer back from the PR firm, but from where I’m sitting, this is a non issue and I’m not throwing anyone under the bus.
Anyone with more than two functioning brain cells can read easily see that the opening commentary is nothing more than a reference.
Even running the original link* through http://www.copyscape.com doesn’t yield anything other than similar phrases being used in both releases.
The reference to “pillars” is a commonly used phrase in various structure driven arenas (e.g. the government). And the bit that preceded my commentary is a single line that the firm chose to use in order to make their point and precede my commentary.
“Traditionally, massively multiplier** online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars – combat, exploration and character progression,””
Nothing beyond that is remotely the same. Since John Smedley made similar remarks in a talk he gave, go find out who first uttered those words, source it, then go back and accuse anyone else who uses it of plagiarism.
And if you really want to have fun with semantics, go ahead and run “Traditionally, massively multiplayer online games” through Google. Have fun with that.
This is just stupid and why it even made the news is beyond me. But it just goes to show that sites – trying to scrap a few dimes together – will do anything for hits. And since we’re the latest flavor of the day, here we are.
You clearly have an axe to grind and have no common sense whatsoever; so arguing with you is going to just be a lesson in futility. So go ahead, have fun. I’m sure you need to validate your otherwise inconsequential [anon] existence.
This was in response to a player linking to the announcement dating back to April. To answer a question early on: Fact checking your press releases would be very nice. Not that it has happened yet, but a misleading press release can result in lost trust between you and your players, and at worst a misleading ad can result in a court reminder that misleading advertising is illegal. Despite another company doing your press releases, your company is still liable for what they say, and if fact checking even comes on the table, you should consider a new PR firm.
“Most of us with families and jobs, actually have *lives* beyond the Net. So its not like we’re no-life-having cretins looking to stir up trouble at every opportunity. So excuse me if I wasn’t trolling the net on Saturday when this was first posted.”
Stay classy, Mr. Smart. I only have the one functioning brain cell, but as I mentioned previously it wasn’t a reference as much as it was quoting you directly. And you can see that many of the phrases are not mere “similar remarks” but quoted word for word.
And if it makes you feel any better, nothing I do here is “for the hits.” I do it because, like a nurturing mother, I love you and, as one commenter pointed out at this juncture, the fact that Mr. Smart’s comments were rated into the dust just goes to show how the public is taking it.
First of all, I didn’t accuse anyone of anything – and I certainly didn’t say that anyone here didn’t have lives. But if the shoe fits, go ahead, wear it – and don’t let me stop you.
Reading comprehension is something that is taught at the very early stages of development. Some people basically never did learn it or leave school with the skills to put two coherent sentences together, let alone construct a paragraph that actually makes sense.
And others tend to deliberately take things out of context in order to continue promoting their attack driven agenda.
That said, I stand firm by what I said. Deal with it.
@ Warrior.
First of all, thanks for that particularly wasted effort. You clearly have no clue what you’re talking about and if you – ever – worked in PR, you would know that everything you just posted is patently rubbish. To wit: A CEO should go and fact check a PR written by a company hired to do it. You must have been working for PR in an alternate universe or something. Go ahead, give me your name and tell me the PR firm where you worked. Go ahead.
It is always delightful to see people in glass houses throwing stones. Especially at someone who clearly doesn’t care for angst driven man-children on the Internet behaving badly.
Attacking people – especially developers and people in authority – for no apparent reason is the real reason why gamers are, primarily, treated as nothing more than a means to a revenue stream and nothing else.
Even the headline for this news bit is quite unprofessional. Stealing is a serious accusation and quite clearly thats not what has happened here .This is yet another example of irresponsible writing passing for journalism in order to push people’s buttons, gain hits etc. Buy hey, to each his own – and thanks for the memories. Most people have more than two brain cells and can clearly something like this for what it is.
I see, so you didn’t call them “no-life cretins” and they could understand that if they weren’t so developmentally delayed. For the record, the CEO doesn’t have to fact check the Press releases, that is something that should be done by someone in the company however. Technically it is your job, just not necessarily directly. And you did check it, at least you approved it. According to your PR firm:
As a CEO he looked it over, approved it, moved it forward. While drafting the quote, I looked for inspiration from other press releases, about MMOs. Yes, sometimes it is easier to write something up by using someone else’s thoughts as examples.
I don’t often talk about legalities, but according to your presumably fired PR guy, you did approve that you said, in quotes, what was lifted from another person and used as your own quote. I might not be a lawyer, but claiming another’s quote as your own would likely fall under the realm of plagiarism, a form of theft. Again, the quotes weren’t just “similar,” many were exact right down to misspelling of “multiplier,” grammar errors, lifted directly from both quotes. But I’m not here to make accusations, so let us move on.
To sum it up, I’m going to go with Warrior’s third option, in his post on Massively:
3. Derek: You need a handler. Appoint someone you trust to counsel you and reign you in. As a CEO, you should not be posting long-winded rants about internal affairs. You should not be bashing your constituents, predecessors, or anyone you fired in public forums. You should not be involved in online shouting matches. While part of the job is to be a punching bag, proactively inviting attacks and controversy is not. There is a proper way to behave as a leader. There is a proper tact that you must take when communicating with stakeholders. Please show restraint and get a grip on your roles in the companies for which you are responsible. You do them a disservice otherwise.
You can find Derek Smart’s comments on the Massively article, here:
I know what you are thinking: The oldest graphical MMO out there, and people are still paying a subscription fee? To which I respond, quiet you! Meridian59, even in its old age, is still unique to virtually any MMO out there. Visually, it may be like someone turned Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall into an MMO.
Chat, as many articles have pointed out, is sparse on the global line. Global chat uses half of your mana pool, although that means that there is not much conversation going on, there is also virtually none of the meaningless banter you might find on another MMO. The community is very tight knit, as you would expect. Meridian59 was far ahead of its time, with a dynamic NPC faction system that goes as far as allowing guilds to take over servers if they are dedicated enough.
Unfortunately, as those of you who quit Meridian will know, you still must create an account via sending an email to subscriptions@meridian59.com with your intended account name, password, and email address.
With the recent move to non-profit, the death of its old company, and general age, Meridian59 may not be on this earth much longer. So if you’re going to give great grandpa Meridian a try, you might want to do it as soon as possible: It’s free!
More about Meridian59 as it appears…I don’t want it to close!
This is one of those times I must issue an apology: Saturday, May 8th, I issued an article (partly in sarcasm) that Alganon’s press releases may be clones of The Old Republic, owing to the following similarities in notation:
But, there is just slight similarity between the following press release on the Alganon website from April:
“Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars – combat, exploration and character progression,” Derek Smart continued. “In Alganon, in addition to these we’ve added the fourth pillar to the equation; a story. We delivered a fun, immersive adventure that gamers expect in a top quality massively multiplayer online game. To top it all off, we’re not done yet. A whole new adventure with new updates will follow soon, starting with a consignment house, new classes, PvP and much more.”
“Traditionally, massively multiplayer online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars – combat, exploration and character progression,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, Co-Founder and General Manager/CEO of BioWare and General Manager/Vice President of Electronic Arts Inc., “In Star Wars: The Old Republic, we’re fusing BioWare’s heritage of critically-acclaimed storytelling with the amazing pedigree of Lucasfilm and LucasArts, and adding a brand-new fourth pillar to the equation – story. At the same time, we will still deliver all the fun features and activities that fans have come to expect in a AAA massively multiplayer online game. To top it all off, Star Wars: The Old Republic is set in a very exciting, dynamic period in the Star Wars universe.”
Due to unconfirmed reports, I was unable to fully verify that the message did indeed originate from Bioware, and for that I must issue a correction. As Derek Smart dutifully noted, the press release did not copy Bioware from 2008, but John Smedley from 2004.
“Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay elements – combat, exploration and character progression. In Everquest 2, we’ve added a fourth element to the equation; a story“
So again, please accept my apologies for noting that the speech was two years old, when I should have noted it as six years old.
On the next episode of Feeding the Alganon Trolls, we answer all of your ambiguous, inflammatory questions: I don my miners hat and hazard suit and descend into the furthest depths of hell to locate Derek Smart’s home town.
MMO Fallout 