Cabal To Transfer Ownership: To ESTsoft


MMOs are no stranger to changes in host, in fact just last year Archlord and several other MMOs changed hands due to various reasons. Cabal Online players received a notice yesterday that OGPlanet (not to be confused with Aion’s G-Unit) will no longer be supporting Cabal Online. Although the publisher did not give a specific reason why, they described the situation as forced upon them (ESTsoft decided not to extend the operating contract for some reason or another). Instead, ESTsoft will be taking over control of Cabal, after the game’s temporary shutdown on March 31st. According to the new website, http://www.cabalonline.net/, it appears ESTsoft and OGPlanet are still in negotiation as to what will be transferred over, and if player characters, stats, and items will make the transition. For a game whose level cap in the triple digits, let’s hope for the sake of players that the characters do transfer.

As I’ve already said, transfers of ownership are not uncommon in the MMO world, as developers contract out their games in foreign countries to third party companies. Codemasters for instance, has operated several MMOs in Europe ranging from Lord of The Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Fury, and numerous others. World of Warcraft moved from The9 to Netease last year, while Archlord changed hands from Codemasters to Webzen, and Acclaim took over Chronicles of Spellborn.

So best of luck to Cabal Online, wherever your future may take you.

Speaking of Drama: Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment!


Yep, it's that time of the week.

When we last left Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, the company had gone into bankruptcy, and an attempt to push out Gary Whiting has failed, leading to one question: So who is in charge? Well for now, we’re waiting for the courts to decide that. Until then, Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment is still in bankruptcy and unable to get funding for Stargate Resistance, let alone Stargate Worlds.

“Unfortunately, with the filing of the bankruptcy, CME was not able to raise any funding and the sales of the game were negatively impacted.  Without adequate cash flow, CME is unable to meet its financial obligation or pay its employees.  CME is not able to have its employees continue working without pay so many of them were laid off.  CME is currently seeking ways to keep the Stargate Resistance game operating and growing including partnering with other companies in a joint venture or outsourcing type arrangement.”
-Tim Jenson, CME

Cheyenne was paying their employees? I have a lawsuit filing that disagrees with that. Rumors have it that 70% of the company has been laid off due to financial issues, and Stargate Resistance may be in trouble of having its servers shut down not even six months after the title’s release.

Dangerous Expectations: One Million For The Old Republic


When Electronic Arts announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic is their largest development project ever, I immediately became worried for the title. In all likelihood, The Old Republic has an enormous budget, more than most other MMOs can shake a stick at, and as a result will have the eyes of EA glaring down on it when it does officially launch, and the resulting post-month 1 subscriber numbers are presented to the bigwigs. As I’ve mentioned before on several postmortem “What happened” episodes,  the number one cause of MMO death is not unsubstantial subscriber numbers, but lower than what the developer/publisher wanted.

So a game like The Old Republic will likely require a lot of subscribers to meet that budget they hooked into the title, and EA was kind enough to tell us exactly what that number is to break even: One million. Now, there are only a handful of titles that have over a million paying subscribers. A small handful, a very small handful. For some reason, one million has become the benchmark for success, even though several of the top 10 mainstream MMOs do not have one million subscribers. Not only does EA believe they will hit the one million mark, but they can see the game going up to two million and over.

Unfortunately EA may be setting themselves up not for failure, but for disappointment. Disappointment we can only hope doesn’t translate into EA pulling a Tabula Rasa and shutting the title down a year later. So far the experience from press testers has been positive, so who knows? Titles like Eve Online, Runescape, World of Warcraft, and Fallen Earth are not exclusive to breaking the rule of MMO releases: That the population peaks at launch and, following a sharp decrease after the free month, a gradual decline.

I think that, when The Old Republic does go into preorder, it will be right up there with Age of Conan and Warhammer Online for the most orders of the year. If Bioware can pull a higher than normal retention rate following launch, it will be good tidings for the foreseeable future. High expectations are dangerous, but not guaranteed to end in disappointment. Remember that.

More on The Old Republic as it appears.

Derek Smart: We're ****ing Done Professionally


The horse is a metaphor.

“Any one of you in this industry who hires either one of these will get what you pay for. Just don’t bother asking *anyone* at QOL for a reference.”
-Derek Smart, Quest Online, on ex-employees  Hue Henry and Jason Blood

I’ve been following Derek Smart for a long time, even before he threw up a bloody coup that ousted David Allen from Quest Online LLC, because the more I read this guy’s text, the more I see a creepy Christian Bale aura around him. I mentioned in an article so fresh I can smell the ink, that Derek Smart took no time after his entrance to publicly slam David Allen and remind everyone that, no, he did not depart on good terms.

Derek Smart can be found commenting and blogging on Gamasutra, and if you click on the link you can read his comments (I have a few snippets here.) and get a good idea to the man’s character. Of course, Smart started off with:

“It was nothing personal nor was it designed to embarass anyone.”
-Derek Smart, Quest Online, on comments made over David Allen

Hopefully I’m not the only one who immediately thought of the, “I’m not racist but…” comment that always ends in racism, because in the link to the comments page I provided, Derek Smart takes absolutely no time pounding ex-employees Hue Henry and Jason Blood into the floor.

Jason (#2) and Hue (#3) were the two others, including David who started this co and ran it straight into the ground.
-Derek Smart, Quest Online LLC, on ex-employees Hue Henry, Jason Blood, and David Allen

Not a single one of these three had any meaningful experience developing games, let alone *shipping* a game – any game for that matter – yet, they blew through four years and millions on the most difficult genre to develop for: an MMO
-Derek Smart, Quest Online LLC, on ex-employees Hue Henry, Jason Blood, and David Allen

Now, Derek Smart’s career wasn’t always about insulting ex-employees. In fact, we’re going to jump back a long time ago (ten years) to the days of Usenet, where Derek Smart took the role of insulting his customers and not only getting into frequent, and well publicized, flame wars but encouraging and inciting them. I’ve edited some of the content for profanity, mostly because I just did an article on Fusion Fall today, and there will likely be chillins about.

Typical bull**** from a moron with ***t for brains. While we're
at it, you are so wrapped up in the twisted, warped lies, that
you've taken it further and started inventing your own ***t.
Where on the ****ing box did it say that BC3K had internet play?

What I do with my time, *Rob*, is no concern of yours. Mind
your business and I'll mind mine and until you tell us what
you've done with your time in the past four years, shut the
**** up because I don't remember anyone asking you for an opinion.

I already told UK owners to ditch their version and get the US copies.
I told EVERYONE that the UK version would NOT be complete. I still have
those messages. I even did a press release about it. So assholes go out
and buy the UK version so they can flame and abuse me some more.
**** 'em, it's their Quid. I'm not getting paid anyway so
what have I got to lose? UK owners who genuinely did not know what was
going on, sent me e-mail and I told them to return it and get the US
version.

Granted, this article isn’t completely about Derek Smart, or his microscopic fuse, because a lot of what he says has merit to it:

“You guys got the money, the game wasn’t ready and it ended up being a disaster when launched on Dec 1st. In the end after I was brought in, we ended up tagging it a “soft launch” in order to soften the blow of that disaster you guys created.

Then less than a mointh later, David was demoted. Yet, you guys KEPT ADDING STUFF TO THE GAME INSTEAD OF FINISHING IT. I was asked to take over – in a contract that David signed with the investors to make it happen.

Behind my back and against my authority, instead of FINISHING and FIXING the game, you guys kept ADDING to it. As I type this, the team are still working their way through UNFINISHED stuff that YOU left behind.”

David Allen is not an innocent bird in all of this mess, shockingly attempting to sign off Alganon to another company, as Smart points out:

“The day we found out – quite by accident – that Truegames had a team down in Chandler evaluating the game that David – even though he was told weeks before NOT TO DO IT – was trying to sign to them for pennies on the dolalr (a fire sale designed to cut the investors out and leave them hanging) – was the day I sent Jeff Luhan (who clearly had no idea what he was stepping into) a strongly worded email notifying him that David had no authority to act in that capacity on behalf of QOL and that we had NO interest in giving the game to them. He called his team back immediately. We fired David. An emergency session of the investors was then called.”

“During all this, while he was complaining about not having enough money to operate, he was negotiating a buy out of his remaining shares in a ploy to abandon the team (who worked hard to make this game) and the company. We have all the emails and letters he was passing around the investors in order to get a golden parachute OUT of the company and AHEAD of the Mar 1st disaster he knew was going to come. I put a stop to that when I told the investors not to give him a dime and that the QOL team needed the money a lot more than Dave Allen did. Of course they listened to me.”

“Jason is lucky that QOL hasn’t decided to file a criminal complaint or take legal action. Yet.”

Given Mr. Smart’s pension for saying what is on his mind, coupled with the undoubtable stress of “dealing with the investors, getting the team on track, dealing with the police, the FBI (!), the banks, the attorneys (no less than three law firms to be exact) etc over this farce,” I don’t think you will find many people who are not stressed to the point of breaking.

So here we stand…er, sit. Alganon, for all intent and purpose, has become without a doubt, the biggest MMO soap opera of 2010. When the game does fully launch, all we can do is sit back and hope that the drama is over now that Allen, Blood, and Henry are gone from the company.

But for all that this spat on Gamasutra has done, Smart and Blood may have just as well been standing in a corridor calling each other “doodoo head,” because mud slinging in a public domain almost always results in neither side looking good, following the tirade of unprofessional, immature jabs and gotchas. Perhaps it was in Smart’s best interest to stop at “David Allen was fired,” because I’m not certain if Smart thinks public spats like this make him look edgy and cool, but in the words of the late George Carlin;

“You ain’t cool, you’re chilly. And chilly ain’t never been cool.”

This is MMO Fallout, and I can only apologize to anyone who disliked reading this as much as I disliked writing it.

Derek Smart: We’re ****ing Done Professionally


The horse is a metaphor.

“Any one of you in this industry who hires either one of these will get what you pay for. Just don’t bother asking *anyone* at QOL for a reference.”
-Derek Smart, Quest Online, on ex-employees  Hue Henry and Jason Blood

I’ve been following Derek Smart for a long time, even before he threw up a bloody coup that ousted David Allen from Quest Online LLC, because the more I read this guy’s text, the more I see a creepy Christian Bale aura around him. I mentioned in an article so fresh I can smell the ink, that Derek Smart took no time after his entrance to publicly slam David Allen and remind everyone that, no, he did not depart on good terms.

Derek Smart can be found commenting and blogging on Gamasutra, and if you click on the link you can read his comments (I have a few snippets here.) and get a good idea to the man’s character. Of course, Smart started off with:

“It was nothing personal nor was it designed to embarass anyone.”
-Derek Smart, Quest Online, on comments made over David Allen

Hopefully I’m not the only one who immediately thought of the, “I’m not racist but…” comment that always ends in racism, because in the link to the comments page I provided, Derek Smart takes absolutely no time pounding ex-employees Hue Henry and Jason Blood into the floor.

Jason (#2) and Hue (#3) were the two others, including David who started this co and ran it straight into the ground.
-Derek Smart, Quest Online LLC, on ex-employees Hue Henry, Jason Blood, and David Allen

Not a single one of these three had any meaningful experience developing games, let alone *shipping* a game – any game for that matter – yet, they blew through four years and millions on the most difficult genre to develop for: an MMO
-Derek Smart, Quest Online LLC, on ex-employees Hue Henry, Jason Blood, and David Allen

Now, Derek Smart’s career wasn’t always about insulting ex-employees. In fact, we’re going to jump back a long time ago (ten years) to the days of Usenet, where Derek Smart took the role of insulting his customers and not only getting into frequent, and well publicized, flame wars but encouraging and inciting them. I’ve edited some of the content for profanity, mostly because I just did an article on Fusion Fall today, and there will likely be chillins about.

Typical bull**** from a moron with ***t for brains. While we're
at it, you are so wrapped up in the twisted, warped lies, that
you've taken it further and started inventing your own ***t.
Where on the ****ing box did it say that BC3K had internet play?

What I do with my time, *Rob*, is no concern of yours. Mind
your business and I'll mind mine and until you tell us what
you've done with your time in the past four years, shut the
**** up because I don't remember anyone asking you for an opinion.

I already told UK owners to ditch their version and get the US copies.
I told EVERYONE that the UK version would NOT be complete. I still have
those messages. I even did a press release about it. So assholes go out
and buy the UK version so they can flame and abuse me some more.
**** 'em, it's their Quid. I'm not getting paid anyway so
what have I got to lose? UK owners who genuinely did not know what was
going on, sent me e-mail and I told them to return it and get the US
version.

Granted, this article isn’t completely about Derek Smart, or his microscopic fuse, because a lot of what he says has merit to it:

“You guys got the money, the game wasn’t ready and it ended up being a disaster when launched on Dec 1st. In the end after I was brought in, we ended up tagging it a “soft launch” in order to soften the blow of that disaster you guys created.

Then less than a mointh later, David was demoted. Yet, you guys KEPT ADDING STUFF TO THE GAME INSTEAD OF FINISHING IT. I was asked to take over – in a contract that David signed with the investors to make it happen.

Behind my back and against my authority, instead of FINISHING and FIXING the game, you guys kept ADDING to it. As I type this, the team are still working their way through UNFINISHED stuff that YOU left behind.”

David Allen is not an innocent bird in all of this mess, shockingly attempting to sign off Alganon to another company, as Smart points out:

“The day we found out – quite by accident – that Truegames had a team down in Chandler evaluating the game that David – even though he was told weeks before NOT TO DO IT – was trying to sign to them for pennies on the dolalr (a fire sale designed to cut the investors out and leave them hanging) – was the day I sent Jeff Luhan (who clearly had no idea what he was stepping into) a strongly worded email notifying him that David had no authority to act in that capacity on behalf of QOL and that we had NO interest in giving the game to them. He called his team back immediately. We fired David. An emergency session of the investors was then called.”

“During all this, while he was complaining about not having enough money to operate, he was negotiating a buy out of his remaining shares in a ploy to abandon the team (who worked hard to make this game) and the company. We have all the emails and letters he was passing around the investors in order to get a golden parachute OUT of the company and AHEAD of the Mar 1st disaster he knew was going to come. I put a stop to that when I told the investors not to give him a dime and that the QOL team needed the money a lot more than Dave Allen did. Of course they listened to me.”

“Jason is lucky that QOL hasn’t decided to file a criminal complaint or take legal action. Yet.”

Given Mr. Smart’s pension for saying what is on his mind, coupled with the undoubtable stress of “dealing with the investors, getting the team on track, dealing with the police, the FBI (!), the banks, the attorneys (no less than three law firms to be exact) etc over this farce,” I don’t think you will find many people who are not stressed to the point of breaking.

So here we stand…er, sit. Alganon, for all intent and purpose, has become without a doubt, the biggest MMO soap opera of 2010. When the game does fully launch, all we can do is sit back and hope that the drama is over now that Allen, Blood, and Henry are gone from the company.

But for all that this spat on Gamasutra has done, Smart and Blood may have just as well been standing in a corridor calling each other “doodoo head,” because mud slinging in a public domain almost always results in neither side looking good, following the tirade of unprofessional, immature jabs and gotchas. Perhaps it was in Smart’s best interest to stop at “David Allen was fired,” because I’m not certain if Smart thinks public spats like this make him look edgy and cool, but in the words of the late George Carlin;

“You ain’t cool, you’re chilly. And chilly ain’t never been cool.”

This is MMO Fallout, and I can only apologize to anyone who disliked reading this as much as I disliked writing it.

Fusion Fall: Free To Play April 19th


Last December, I talked briefly about Cartoon Network’s MMO, Fusion Fall. For the fact that Cartoon Network boasted seven million registered players, I noted that the line between registered and active was thick, in the case of public relations, thick enough that if a company is showing off registered users compared to active users, all signs point towards the active population not being as high as they would like. Take Runescape for instance, that has over one hundred million accounts created, but approximately six million active, over one million of those being paying members. Active users are always a fraction of the total accounts even on free to play games because, if what Dungeon Runners told us is any indication, a sizable number don’t even finish downloading the game before they quit.

Since I’ve posted that article up, I’ve had people asking the same question: When exactly is Free Realms going free to play, and up until now I haven’t been able to give much of an answer other than “beats me.” Although the announcement was made back in November, there has been a Duke Nukem style of “when it’s done” coming from the Fusion Fall development team. According to Massively, however, the date will be April 19th, when all of Fusion Fall opens up for free.

Fusion Fall is a fun game that, sadly, advertised to an age group that does not have the resources nor the means (for the most part) to pay for monthly fees, even if they are only five dollars. How Fusion Fall expects to fund itself is unclear at this time, but I would not be surprised to see in-game advertising as part of the deal.

More on Fusion Fall as it appears.

Bill Roper No Longer Executive Producer of Champions Online


What does this mean for Foxbat?

Bill Roper is to the MMO genre as JK Rowling is to children’s literature. On one hand, the man had a big role in Blizzard during the glory days of Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft. More recently, Roper’s name has been tied to Champions Online and Star Trek Online, both titles are doing quite well despite comments otherwise by trolls. On the other hand, Bill Roper is also responsible for the train wreck that was Hellgate: London, a game that (as it turns out) was only as good as its launch, and didn’t survive long enough to make those lifetime subscriptions worth it. Roper is also partially responsible for the coined term Flagshipping, named off of the company Flagship Studios, referring to a product being released in a buggy, unfinished state missing many of its promised features.

I should probably get to the point (and why 80% of you clicked this link…I’m talking about the title). Well, to the dismay of some and joy of others, Bill Roper has been replaced by Shannon Posniewski, as Executive Producer of Champions Online. Poz, as he is called on the forums, is expected to take the game in a brand new direction. Shannon has been the lead programmer on Champions Online and has been with Crptic since the City of Heroes days.

Now before you get your pants in a bunch, or start throwing a goodbye party for Mr. Roper, he is still working with Cryptic, just on other things (the rumored Neverwinter Nights MMO? He asked, stirring the pot). This announcement has come alongside the State of the Game, that promises more stitching of the level gaps in content, among other changes.

Poz has had quite a relationship with the community, so hopefully this will bring along the Cryptic I (and others) have been asking for for a long time: one that actually listens to player feedback and stores that feedback for future reference.

Good Luck Mortal Online: Launching This Month


This new decade shall bring great MMO improvements.
The baby Mortal Online was born...

March is upon us, and StarVault has used this opportunity to announce that Mortal Online will be shipping this month to…what? Stop snickering! I’m serious…yes, this month. No, I’m not being ironic. The company has admitted that there are numerous issues that need to be worked out, such as desync problems, among other gripes, but the desync fix should be coming as early as next week.

The announcement is a breath of relief for some and a daunting announcement for others, as there are some who still feel that the game is not launch-ready yet, especially considering the numerous delays over the past six months, it is possible Mortal Online may be launching early to stave off that ailment Gary Whiting knows only too well, bankruptcy. As for what Mortal Online will launch into is another story. A brick wall? A wall of trolls? A fountain of cash? Your guess is as good as mine. MMO Fallout will be here to bring you the coverage.

Derek Smart: David Allen Fired, Alganon Should Not Have Launched…


David Allen was banned.

Earlier this week it was announced that David Allen, President and co-founder of Alganon LLC, has departed for unknown reasons. Granted, it didn’t take long for the new President (Derek Smart) to step and in and clarify the situation:

“Dave Allen didn’t ‘depart’. I fired him back in February for insubordination and for acting against the best interests of the company, the LLC investors (who I represent), the game and the team.”
-Derek Smart

Unfortunately for Mr. Allen, the public humiliation doesn’t stop there. Smart goes on to mention how Allen was unanimously voted off the board by Alganon LLC investors.

Derek Smart goes on to say that the “soft launch” for Alganon on December 1st was a mistake, one that cost the company money and employees. Smart is looking to take the Quest Online team by the haunches, break their legs, and shackle those broken legs to their desks until they accomplish his goal of major changes to the game, most notably:

  1. Graphics/Style change: Smart wants to remove the idea that Alganon is just a “wow clone.” Smart has asked the team to throw everything out with the trash and get a new look and feel, not to mention a new UI, to give Alganon its own unique face. Derek has essentially confirmed the rumors that Alganon was a WoW clone, criticizing David Allen for focusing on competing with the behemoth on a budget that could never match.
  2. Alganon will remain free to play indefinitely, but with a purchase price (Ala Guild Wars).
  3. Paid subscriptions will be refunded. Quest Online is setting up an email address to deal with that.
  4. Everything that was added to the game before it was complete is being removed, and fixed.

The future of Alganon is still up in the air, spinning around looking for a safe place to land. As of yet, the current plans are to have the official launch on the 8th of April, although further issues may delay that to a later date.

Either way, Alganon is still the best place to go for drama. I guess this makes zero for two for David Allen getting fired from companies he founded. More on Alganon as it stumbles its way towards an April launch.

Hey folks, Derek Smart here.

I just wanted to make a few things crystal clear so that we’re all on the same page because in the coming days a lot of conflicting reports are going to start sprouting up all over the Net, and all will be based on conjecture, speculation and rumor. I don’t want this to be yet another “Artifact Ent” debacle because we all know how that turned out.

1. Dave Allen didn’t “depart”. I fired* him back in February for insubordination and for acting against the best interests of the company, the LLC investors (who I represent), the game and the team.

It goes way beyond that, but you’re only getting the short and subtle version.

Shortly after the investors of the LLC unanimously voted him off the LLC. Leaving his previous partner and co-founder (Greg Wexler, one of the most cheerful and straight up guys you’ll ever meet in your lifetime) and myself to run the company.

So yeah, he has been gone since Feb 22, 2010.

I am not at liberty to go into any further details at this time but only to say that eventually everything we do can and will catch up with us. It is only a matter of time.

Jason Blood and Hue Henry, his friends and the two other primaries who started this, are also gone.

I have no personal relationships with any of these three and the decisions surrounding these events were pure business. Nothing more. Nothing less.

2. The Dec 1st launch of the game should never have happened. It was a mistake that has not only cost the company money but has also cost people their jobs and put an otherwise exceptional product at risk.

As a game developer, I know all too well that if your game is not finished and you release it, thats just asking for trouble. No matter how great the game and technology are, it can and will fail. Especially in this industry climate.

The average gamer is as finnicky as a hummingbird on acid, with a very short attention span and a penchant for being largely unforgiving. In other words, pulling a stunt like that is the death knell for many a game and company.

3. I was brought on board by the majority investors in QOL since late December to “help” David and the team move the game and company forward. He wanted to continue doing his own thing, didn’t recognize my authority (even after I was made President and him demoted to COO) etc. We all just got fed up and the decision came down after he did one last thing that was the final nail.

4. I have been developing games for a very long time; most of them on a budget that is well within the limits of a small indie studio. I don’t and never have catered to the “run of the mill” mass market and that is primarily why I’m still in business long after most are dead, gone and forgotten.

Thus I intend to steer the team and company toward the goal of making Alganon the best that it can be and to help it find its own niche. We don’t want meeelions of gamers, though it would be nice. All we’re interested in are those of you who find value in what the team has built and who actually do like playing the game. You are the future of this game and without you, this is all a waste of time.

5. The team currently in place are stellar. I have worked with a lot of people in my career and I can spot flakes a mile away. These guys live, breath and love this game. They are true professionals previously caught in the middle of a rock and a hard place in terms of being unable to reign in powers that end up making bad decisions for the game and company. At the end of the day – and in this economy – you’d be hard pressed to disagree with the guy who controls your paycheck.

I have changed all that by introducing effective policies and strategies that have a single common goal: to operate as a “team”.

6. As a result of my involvement, quite a bit of changes are coming to QOL and to Alganon. They are too many to list, but here are the highlights:

a) This whole “WoW look-a-like” rubbish, is gone. I’ve essentially asked them to throw it all out and for the artists to come up with the game’s own unique look and feel for for both the web UI as well as the game UI itself.

You don’t go competing with WoW when you don’t have a WoW sized budget or the manpower to match. But thats what David wanted to do and I’ve pretty much tossed it all. The team was unable to actually do this previously due to David wanting it that way, even though they knew it was a terrible decision.

b) We’re also getting rid of the monthly subscriptions. They are currently suspended, but will be gone for good. I put that plan into place since Dec 2009 with a view to making the game “subscription free” but supported via sales (I was the one who had the client price reduced to $19.95 as well btw) of the client as well as micro-transactions. It is not a traditional F2P game, but if thats what we have to do in the long run, then so be it. For now, we’re taking baby steps.

c) All paid subscriptions are going to be refunded 100% with the game’s official launch and there will be an email address setup for you to request your refund.

I already approved the budget to do this. Believe me, nobody likes giving money away, but I felt that it is the right thing to do given the current circumstances and the team valiantly backs me up on this. For me, it is an apology of sorts because the game you paid up to a year for is not the game that you got when you signed up. Though I wasn’t around when it happened, I would still like to apologize for that.

d) EVERYTHING that was added to the game – when it should have been about fixing the game, tweaking it etc – has been disabled/removed on my orders. The team is focused on fixing game bugs, tweaking things etc and a new patch is out either today or later in the week.

The game’s official launch currently scheduled for Apr 8th will only happen if the UI changes and some critical elements and features are in place, tested and profiled. Otherwise we’re not releasing it, but would continue pushing patches for the pre-existing build for you guys to take apart and continue to play SUBSCRIPTION FREE.

There is a LOT more, but I am pressed for time.

The long and short of it is that nobody knows what the future holds for the game or whether or not it can in fact recover from the troubles of the “soft launch” and the stigma associated with its stability, missing features, WoW look-a-likeness etc but we’re going to give it our best shot and with my direction and experience, the team is going to focus on the goals mapped out.

The best part is that a few months from now you will get to look back at Alganon’s Dec 2009 launch and see the changes. We don’t know how long it is going to take for the game to find its footing and gain its own niche, but we’re going to throw every goddamn thing at it.

My community sticks with my games because I’ve always stayed focused on the people who actually buy and play my games. Those are the people who I have catered to. QOL is going to focus on the community that buys and plays Alganon. If you don’t like Alganon the game for what it is and not what you want it to be, fine, don’t play it, don’t come here, go and play something else. No hard feelings.

If you know anything about my industry career in gaming, then you already know that I value the people who keep me doing this. So if you stick with this game, I will take it as far as I can and with everything at my disposal. Having a stellar team makes it that much easier because at the end of the day, a game is bigger than any one person.

And no, Alganon is not going to be QOL’s only game. I will let you dwell on that for a bit, but until then, my lips are sealed. 😉

* Yes, legally I actually can say that.

Final Fantasy XI: Going Nowhere, In A Good Way


Because dumb employees can be managed...

Last month I wrote about how someone at Square Enix is sooo fired, when a high level Human Resources employee blabbed the following:

“I think some amongst you will know, but FF11 started in 2002 … Well, this year it’ll end and the stage will shift to FF14.”
-Square Enix Employee

Of course, with the nature of the internet, fans went wild. Is this an indication that Final Fantasy XI is going to be shut down when XIV comes out? Is this confirmation? Who knows? Square Enix knows, but unless that answer is anything other than “yes, we are shutting down,” anything they say is likely to be ignored by the group of players who are now convinced that the title is indeed set to be canned later this year.

But Square Enix has turned around and confirmed that no, not only is Final Fantasy XI not getting the boot this year, it is receiving even more updates! Square has announced three new scenarios for the not-so-Final Fantasy MMO, as well as an increase in the level cap to 99 (because all good updates have increased level caps). In addition, players will also see the gift of two new summons for use in battle.

So there you go, Final Fantasy XI..ers. If the announcement of new updates isn’t enough to convince you that the title isn’t going anywhere (at least for now), at least you’ll be occupied for the long grind to 99, long enough to forget about your woes.