Games Workshop Doesn’t Care About WAR People


Thanks Games Workshop!

One important point I need to get out of the way first:

-Games Workshop is the creator of the Warhammer world used in the Warhammer tabletop games, pen-and-paper games, and video games.
-EA/Mythic are the creators of Warhammer Online, the MMO.
-Curse/Warhammer Alliance is not a fansite.  Mere fansites do not make 3 million in revenue in a year, have a board of directors, or have investors.

In a perfect world, Mythic would be going under scrutiny for their own actions, and the lawsuits brought forth by Games Workshop would not have much of an impact on them, if any at all. Sadly, we do not live in a perfect world, and the end result is Mythic is being barraged for a lawsuit brought by Games Workshop against Warhammer Alliance. Games Workshop is currently suing Curse over Warhammer Alliance’s alleged infringement of GW’s trademark on “Warhammer Alliance.” Alongside trademark infringement, Games Workshop is also suing for cybersquatting, dilution, and unfair competition.

I didn’t make this an “In Plain English” article, because this doesn’t, and shouldn’t, include Warhammer Online. More importantly, this lawsuit does not involve Warhammer Online or Mythic Entertainment. Currently there are far too many reactionary posts by people blaming Mythic for this lawsuit, calling it an act of desperation among other things.

“Failing game seeks money anyway it can get it. Anyone can sue anyone for anything nowadays. It’s really sad.”
Projectkmo @ Massively

“I actually subscribe occasionally to Warhammer Online just to show my support. This will end that…”
Duulin @ Massively

So just to get this straightened out once and for all: Mythic has NOTHING to do with the lawsuit.

Alganon's Press Releases Are TOR Clones


I am on a horse.

I’ve been covering Alganon for quite a while, and I always get the same response: Omali! Alganon is a clone of World of Warcraft! Why not just cover the more popular one?

Well, Alganon may be a WoW Clone in terms of its old UI, and far too many other features that Quest Online is slowly tearing apart seam by seam, but when it comes to good ol’ press releases, Alganon is in fact a The Old Republic clone. Odd, considering TOR is still not released.

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.”

And the following from Bioware on The Old Republic from 2008:

“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.”

Tune in for my followup story, where I investigate whether or not the toiletries in Quest Online’s building were stolen from, you’ve never seen it coming, Icarus Studios.

Alganon’s Press Releases Are TOR Clones


I am on a horse.

I’ve been covering Alganon for quite a while, and I always get the same response: Omali! Alganon is a clone of World of Warcraft! Why not just cover the more popular one?

Well, Alganon may be a WoW Clone in terms of its old UI, and far too many other features that Quest Online is slowly tearing apart seam by seam, but when it comes to good ol’ press releases, Alganon is in fact a The Old Republic clone. Odd, considering TOR is still not released.

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.”

And the following from Bioware on The Old Republic from 2008:

“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.”

Tune in for my followup story, where I investigate whether or not the toiletries in Quest Online’s building were stolen from, you’ve never seen it coming, Icarus Studios.

Eve Online: Your Stuff's Gone For Good


I lost a valuable Draconic Visage

Silly Eve-izen, that’s not even from the right game. Losing items in a game where you drop everything upon death, is nothing short of not news. Players are killed, hacked, and generally die for one reason or another, on a daily basis and, whether or not we want to accept blame (Lag, account theft, etc), more often than not we are met with a simple “sorry, your stuff’s gone for good,” should we try to retrieve it.

There are three levels of item loss, as I will demonstrate:

  1. If you want to annoy your players, allow them to be killed due to unforeseeable, yet annoying issues. Lag is chief in this category, not to mention players with easy access to exploits in the system, hacks, and other such software.
  2. If you want to piss off your players, kill them via in-game bugs and don’t return their items. In Runescape, it isn’t uncommon for at least one update every four or five months to have some instant-murder effect, or allowing player killing in a spot it shouldn’t be. When Mobilising Armies was released, one player lost an enormous sum of money simply by talking to an NPC, and was not reimbursed despite confirmation by a Jagex employee.
  3. And finally, if you want to get players to quit, take the items right out of their possession, by process of one of your intended features going haywire.

If you were logged into Eve Online today, or even if you weren’t, you may have logged in to find that one or more of your items were missing. Due to an unintended issue, the Eve Online ItemID recycling system ended up deleting a mass amount of items. How many? Up to fourteen thousand, to be exact. But how exactly did this bug happen?

In Eve Online, every item has its own procedurally generated ID (The ID is created when the item is created). In order to prevent items six years from launch being labeled #34054083489534890583890459348, Eve Online recycles ItemID’s back into the pool once the associated item is destroyed, or stacked with another stack of the same item. The retrieval system failed, causing items to not receive an ID when created under various circumstances, and thus disappear.

Although CCP is not returning lost items (they have no way to, the data trail is literally gone), they will be reimbursing players. Players affected are asked to file a petition with the list of items they lost due to the bug. As for how well players will be reimbursed, MMO Fallout will be listening in.

More on [MMO name retrieval failed. Deleting portion.] as it appears.

Eve Online: Your Stuff’s Gone For Good


I lost a valuable Draconic Visage

Silly Eve-izen, that’s not even from the right game. Losing items in a game where you drop everything upon death, is nothing short of not news. Players are killed, hacked, and generally die for one reason or another, on a daily basis and, whether or not we want to accept blame (Lag, account theft, etc), more often than not we are met with a simple “sorry, your stuff’s gone for good,” should we try to retrieve it.

There are three levels of item loss, as I will demonstrate:

  1. If you want to annoy your players, allow them to be killed due to unforeseeable, yet annoying issues. Lag is chief in this category, not to mention players with easy access to exploits in the system, hacks, and other such software.
  2. If you want to piss off your players, kill them via in-game bugs and don’t return their items. In Runescape, it isn’t uncommon for at least one update every four or five months to have some instant-murder effect, or allowing player killing in a spot it shouldn’t be. When Mobilising Armies was released, one player lost an enormous sum of money simply by talking to an NPC, and was not reimbursed despite confirmation by a Jagex employee.
  3. And finally, if you want to get players to quit, take the items right out of their possession, by process of one of your intended features going haywire.

If you were logged into Eve Online today, or even if you weren’t, you may have logged in to find that one or more of your items were missing. Due to an unintended issue, the Eve Online ItemID recycling system ended up deleting a mass amount of items. How many? Up to fourteen thousand, to be exact. But how exactly did this bug happen?

In Eve Online, every item has its own procedurally generated ID (The ID is created when the item is created). In order to prevent items six years from launch being labeled #34054083489534890583890459348, Eve Online recycles ItemID’s back into the pool once the associated item is destroyed, or stacked with another stack of the same item. The retrieval system failed, causing items to not receive an ID when created under various circumstances, and thus disappear.

Although CCP is not returning lost items (they have no way to, the data trail is literally gone), they will be reimbursing players. Players affected are asked to file a petition with the list of items they lost due to the bug. As for how well players will be reimbursed, MMO Fallout will be listening in.

More on [MMO name retrieval failed. Deleting portion.] as it appears.

THQ: We Don't Need No Stinkin Million Subscribers!


Don't trifle in no stale subscribers.

“We don’t need the kind of subscriber levels that people throw around, like a million subscribers, to make a lot of money on this title. If we get anywhere near that level, we’ll be making a lot of money.”

Why thank you, THQ CEO Brian Farrel. MMO success is, as I have said before, relative. Technically any MMO that can make a profit and sustain both its viability in the market and the love of its developers over a period of several years is a successful MMO. Back in March, EA’s announcement that The Old Republic would require one million subscribers to satiate the title’s massive budget, and that they were hoping for two million, I wasn’t the only one to become worried. As far as Western MMOs go (discounting free to play eastern titles), one million is a lot if your name is not World of Warcraft, and very few titles have hit that one million mark.

So, those looking forward to the upcoming Warhammer 40k MMO may be worried, as a number of forum threads have indicated: Will Warhammer 40k be placed on the same pedestal of Warhammer Online, where the developers expected the MMO community to jump on the title as if it were the second coming of Jesus, resulting in substandard results and the great majority of servers shutting down?

Nope! THQ wants you perfectly aware that they are not expecting one million subscribers, like some other studios. Warhammer 40k is aiming small. Not too small, mind you, but small enough that were the title to get even five hundred thousand subscribers, Farrel wants us to know that they’ll be making plenty of money. The aim is to develop the title with a small group of experienced programmers and developers, who will put out gold almost immediately, rather than beginning with flaky bronze and moving up from there.

Until then, get back into your formation soldier! What are you, some kind of free thinker? You will burn for that!

We will have more news on Warhammer 40k as E3 comes closer, so next month.

THQ: We Don’t Need No Stinkin Million Subscribers!


Don't trifle in no stale subscribers.

“We don’t need the kind of subscriber levels that people throw around, like a million subscribers, to make a lot of money on this title. If we get anywhere near that level, we’ll be making a lot of money.”

Why thank you, THQ CEO Brian Farrel. MMO success is, as I have said before, relative. Technically any MMO that can make a profit and sustain both its viability in the market and the love of its developers over a period of several years is a successful MMO. Back in March, EA’s announcement that The Old Republic would require one million subscribers to satiate the title’s massive budget, and that they were hoping for two million, I wasn’t the only one to become worried. As far as Western MMOs go (discounting free to play eastern titles), one million is a lot if your name is not World of Warcraft, and very few titles have hit that one million mark.

So, those looking forward to the upcoming Warhammer 40k MMO may be worried, as a number of forum threads have indicated: Will Warhammer 40k be placed on the same pedestal of Warhammer Online, where the developers expected the MMO community to jump on the title as if it were the second coming of Jesus, resulting in substandard results and the great majority of servers shutting down?

Nope! THQ wants you perfectly aware that they are not expecting one million subscribers, like some other studios. Warhammer 40k is aiming small. Not too small, mind you, but small enough that were the title to get even five hundred thousand subscribers, Farrel wants us to know that they’ll be making plenty of money. The aim is to develop the title with a small group of experienced programmers and developers, who will put out gold almost immediately, rather than beginning with flaky bronze and moving up from there.

Until then, get back into your formation soldier! What are you, some kind of free thinker? You will burn for that!

We will have more news on Warhammer 40k as E3 comes closer, so next month.

Cryptic To Announce New MMO: Late Summer


Picture related?

Back when Cryptic announced they did indeed have a third MMO planned, the lines in many of our (bloggers) heads drew together very quickly: Cryptic is owned by Atari, who is being sued by Turbine under allegations that they were trying to sabotage Dungeons and Dragons Online, so they could turn around and market their own secret Neverwinter Nights MMO (Neverwinter Nights is based on third edition D&D). When asked what franchise he would most like to work on, his answer being “Godzilla and Dungeons and Dragons.” I speculated in the article that this would reignite rumors of a Cryptic D&D MMO.

And reignite it did. In a recent interview with Bill Roper, MMORPG.com asked “Do you have anything to say to the D&D Forgotten Realms MMO rumors?”

“I can’t speak to the specifics of what we’re doing, but it’s true that we have another game in the works. We won’t be making an announcement until late summer, and we’re still a ways off from launch. I can say that this is a game and a franchise we’re very excited about. I think people are going to pleased and a bit surprised with what we’re doing in terms of the game, how we make it, and even how we sell and support it. The game is being developed around new design principles merged with Cryptic’s community-first approach to ongoing development.”

MMO Fallout will be here late this summer with all the news as to Cryptics new MMO.

Put Your Money Episode #1: ________ Station Pass


Back in January I asked a pretty simple question: Since Sony has had so much success with the Station Pass, an offer where players can pay the fee of two MMOs to gain access to eight (previously nine) MMOs, why don’t we see more packages where developers or publishers bundle together MMOs to increase subscriber numbers and population?

Put Your Money is my response to people who have been asking me just that: Put my money where my mouth is. If I’m soooo smart, then maybe I should come up with some deals. And deals I have come up with. I give to you, my ideal picks for what individual Turbine, Mythic, Cryptic (above), NCsoft, and Funcom. My goal was to hit a price with reasonable savings, while at the same time reasonable cost, with regards to number of games and their individual subscription price (as not all games have the same price). I did not include any upcoming games.

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City of Heroes: 6th Anniversary Video


Hopefully I’m not the only one whose finger hovered dangerously close to the “resubscribe” button after viewing this.

Happy sixth birthday, City of Heroes!