Champions Online on the 360: Officially Canned


Only on PC

“It has always been, and still remains our intent to release on consoles, and as soon as we’re able to share more information about it, we will.”
-Daeke, Community Manager, Cryptic Studios, on Champions Online on consoles.

One  downside to the internet is that anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of “hey, you said this.” I don’t think I need to remind Mythic of Mark Jacob’s now famous quote regarding the health of MMOs being tied to how many servers are opened post-launch, but I digress. Back when Champions Online was still in closed beta, Cryptic still had high hopes to get the title out on the Xbox360, as one of the few console MMOs on the market. I even commented on Champions Online in 2010: A Blue Moon Year.

“Will we ever see a new 360 MMO? Champions Online and Age of Conan are just two titles slated to release on the Xbox360, and we learned earlier this year that it is Microsoft’s doing that is delaying these titles. With the cancellation of the planned BBC streaming, alongside another year of no MMOs on the 360, Microsoft continues to make an ass of itself in regards to its live service.”

Since I’ve already revealed the spoiler in the title, there’s no point delaying this any longer: According to a Cryptic Studios developer, the console version of Champions Online has been canned, with no plans to revive the project. In a post on the official forums, Jackalope had this to say:

“100% of our focus is on making the current PC product the best it can be. There are no current plans for a console version of Champions.”
-Jackalope, Cryptic Studios, on Champions Online on the 360.

This quote does answer a few questions players had, namely why Champions Online was announced for the consoles, but the more recent Cryptic title Star Trek Online has had minimal buzz about a console release. You can take Jackalope’s word with as much salt as you please, as this would not be the first time a high level employee has said something stupid or patently false about the game they work on, however we are going to have to take his word for the moment.

I’m sure Microsoft’s well touted ability to turn developers away from putting MMOs on their consoles had something to do with this decision, but the less-than-stellar reception to Champions Online since release may have been the final straw that broke the console’s back, in a manner of speaking. I’m sure the community will find some way to spin this news in a million different directions.

For those of you still waiting for a console MMO that is not Final Fantasy XI, or Massive Action Game, you are still out of luck. Age of Conan is still allegedly making its way to the Xbox360 this year, with The Agency, All Points Bulletin, and Free Realms bounding in next to an unnamed Turbine game, as well as possibly a Blizzard MMO.

MMOs on the consoles have historically had less of a chance of not only surviving to completion on the console platforms, but actually making it out the door to warm welcome. Searching deep enough, you can find a substantial list of MMOs dating back to the Xbox/PS2 console generation of console MMOs that were canned. So far Final Fantasy XI is the only console MMO to gain and keep a large number of subscribers, and even at that Square Enix has announced no plans to place Final Fantasy XIV on the Xbox360, although it will make its way to the Playstation 3.

More on console MMOs, and Champions Online, as it appears.

Champions In Court? Champions Online Free Weekend


Someone at DC Universe phones their lawyer...

While I don’t receive a substantial number of emails in regards to MMO Fallout, I have had people asking the same question lately: What happened to the Champions In Court subsection? The entire section is gone! That is true. In fact, the latest Champions In Court was released sometime in September 2009. Champions In Court quickly ran into a brick wall of no-content, as Cryptic quickly flew to the scene to start removing infringing characters. The same could be said for the idea that, as players became situated with the game, they settled on real characters rather than superhero lookalikes, and those who did settle on superhero lookalikes generally moved towards some form of parody hero, such as The Shark Knight. Oh and I was notified by someone I won’t name that making regular articles about lookalikes in Champions Online would probably inflame the situation further.

If he stops fighting crime, he'll drown.

With the upcoming free weekend, there will likely be new players creating their own Hulk/Goku lookalikes, and I may do a new Champions In Court special episode. If you want to “conveniently” find your way on to my screen, you can always stalk @Omali when the free weekend begins. I’ll be flying around Millennium City looking for lawsuits waiting to happen.

The free weekend starts on the 26th, players can download the client now over at Champions Online dot com.

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.