In my current line of customer service work, saying the wrong thing to the wrong customer can be devastating. Odds are, if you tell a customer exactly where they can stick their refund, you’re going to get fired on the spot. Now, business can do all they can to stop employees from saying stupid things, as that just leaves one or two customers annoyed and potentially lost for good. Meanwhile, when an employee reveals something maybe they shouldn’t have, or reveals something that, despite false, damns the company, then you’re going to have a real problem on your hands.
Enter Square Enix! I don’t get to talk about Square Enix, nor their unconventional conventions of MMOs, so I always jump on the opportunity… So essentially once since MMO Fallout started. MMOsite is reporting on a Square Enix Human Resources employee who revealed the following on his blog:
“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
Now being Mr. I-Hate-Rumors, I immediately assumed one thing: This means Square Enix will shift much of its attention towards Final Fantasy 14, which makes sense. As for Final Fantasy XI being shut down; considering the number of players who still enjoy XI, and the message shutting down such a profitable game would send that player base, Square Enix would have to be more insane than normal to think that the players would just jump right over to XIV. Sure, some will, but overall Square will wind up with a predicament similar to that of Asheron’s Call 2.
Final Fantasy XI is eight years old this year, and still remains one of the (if not the) most popular MMOs in Japan. The game is showing its age, but by no means is the title ready to go on the cart. No, I think Final Fantasy XI has a good few years left in it, assuming Square isn’t using Final Fantasy XIV as the club to beat XI to death. There are still plenty of events planned for Final Fantasy XI, yet to come.
Luckily, Square got right on the case: The post has been removed and there has been an announcement that the post is a lie. That being said, thanks to your average sensationalist blogs, the topic will be on whether or not Square Enix is lying.
It’s always a good idea to tell your employees, especially your Human Resource people, not to reveal information that might be damning to a game, especially if the information isn’t really damning, but you’re going to word it in a specially cryptic fashion that makes it look so.
Make a wish, kids, because Blizzard just donated one million dollars to make your wish come true. Last year, Blizzard ran a two month long charity drive with a simple premise: Purchase a Pandaren Monk pet for $10 USD, and 50% of that purchase will go towards the Make-a-Wish foundation. Despite the usual complaints on the forums, over two hundred thousand of Blizzard’s subscribers pulled their wallets out and made a purchase during that time period.
Although 50% isn’t nearly as much of a percentage as I’d like to see companies (especially Blizzard) give from a non-tangible item that costs barely a couple hours to code into the game, given that the Pandaren wasn’t made for the charity, I think I can give it a pass. The sheer girth of the donation, combined with Blizzard being up front about how much they were donating, makes it an alright move in my books.
Meanwhile the PLEX for Haiti event ended last week on Eve Online, with more than forty thousand dollars being donated. In Eve Online, if players donated PLEX, it was converted directly into cash and sent to charity.
Back when Cryptic Studios was more like “Cryptic plans for a company,” Perpetual Entertainment was taking care of Star Trek Online and another title, Gods & Heroes, an Ancient Rome MMO set in a realm of Cyclops, Gladiators, and more. Thanks to several rounds of layoffs by Perpetual Entertainment in 2007, Gods & Heroes was put on indefinite hold until 2008, when the company went belly up and had its carcass picked at by various developers. Perpetual was sued by their PR firm for holding back money as an incentive to get more buzz about the title, as well as bribing reviewers for good scores.
Much like how Cryptic picked off Star Trek Online, it is only natural that someone would pick up Gods & Heroes. Heatwave Interactive just so happens to be that vulture, and is happy to take the assets and move the game forward to release status. Heatwave is looking to gather an elite group of past G&H beta testers to give them information on where to go with the latest incarnation. They want to stay true to the title, and Perpetual’s vision for it.
Gods And Heroes is on board for a release date not yet set in stone, but Heatwave says they don’t want to take “another three or four years,” so I would bet my money on late 2010 at the earliest, with 2011 a more likely candidate. With the number of games shutting down in 2010, it’s always good to see a previously doomed title being revived.
Allods Online is a very interesting title, not only because of the game itself but the community and the developers that surround it. Allods has what very few developers can boast about, a community where even though players complain about certain aspects, they are very ready to admit that they will continue playing, because the game is just that good. Just that good is exactly what Allods Online is, a shimmering glow of light in a sea of your run of the mill Asian grinders (Yes, I’m aware Allods is a Russian game), a title looking to be the World of Warcraft of the Eastern Seaboard:
Until, of course, those Ruskies ruined it for us. For anyone who plays Allods Online in North America, your jaw likely dropped when you logged in just a few days ago to find that the long awaited cash shop had finally opened, to the tune of ten times the price of the Russian version of the game (Every website I’ve visited parrots twenty times, but $2 to $20 is what we in the mathematical world call “ten times”). Mark this is the first major blunder of gPotato. Granted, at this point teasing the frothing-mouthed community would be about as smart as dangling your tasty fingers in front of a T-Virus infected Doberman on steroids, so gPotato waited about a day and came out with the next bombshell: The prices were intended. Missing the point entirely, gPotato attempted to calm down the crowd by assuring them that more items would hit the cash shop soon.
So you’re walking out of the crumbly mess that is the Allods Forums and thinking to yourself: “Well, at least that was the worst of it,” in which case you would be promptly crushed by two tons of irony. The latest patch to hit the Russian server (as patches normally do hit Russia before swarming over to the West) is less of a bombshell and more of a nuclear “whoops.” Actually, that’s a good idea. You heard the term coined here first folks, the “nuclear whoops.” Back on topic, the latest patch brings in sweeping changes to Allods Online.
Perfumes are the game’s method of removing Fear of Death, a debuff that lowers stats 25%, stacking up to four times, on a timer that increases as you level up. Previously, at end game the timer maxed out at 45 minutes, and perfumes could be purchased through a daily quest, or through the game’s gold shop. Fear of Death could also be removed by paying a lump sum of gold, and negated in many instances by being resurrected by a player. gPotato must have known its community wanted more, because carousing through the latest Russian patch notes, I found the following:
Increased amount of experience required to achieve levels of 20 to 40.
Spells resurrection is now subjected to objective effect of Fear of Death in the absence of the effect of Patron.
Number of health and damage caused by high-level monsters slightly increased (up to 25% at 40 m level).
So not only do monsters hit more (up to 25% more at higher levels), but it takes longer to level up, and being resurrected now subjects you to Fear of Death. Numbers one and three are pretty irrelevant to the overall point, but I’d like to take a closer look at number 2, because this is something a lot of Allods Online’ers have pointed out to me: What this means is that Heroic Instances, which cannot be exited, now have a requirement for perfume. As perfume lasts for 30 minutes, and costs approximately 75 cents per bottle, the Allods Online forums were kind enough to do my math for me and figure out that raiding at end-game will cost an easy minimum of $50 per month. Mounts were added into the game as well, but if you want them to be at peak efficiency you’ll have to buy feed from, where else, the gold shop.
Here’s an interesting note: Players are boycotting the cash shop, not by not playing the game, but by continuing to play for free. Presumably, the idea is to load on the cost to Gala-Net to host the servers, while throttling their income by not paying for anything in the cash shop. Pretty sneaky, sis.
Granted, this isn’t all coming from the community. The original team that developed Allods has been long gone since the days of the closed beta, making it not at all unbelievable that the game has taken a 180 in terms of direction and planning, from a title that was once about never having to pay a single cent, to a title about paying to keep yourself out of virtual hell. Rather than making a game where your income comes from many players paying small sums, Gala-Net decided to turn the title into a game where no one pays anything, because everything is too overpriced, and a subscription to another MMO is a much better deal than paying that same $15 on a couple days worth of perfume.
There are plenty of theories as to why these events are taking place, with the target audience closing in on itself as each day passes, with questions being asked: Is gPotato really that out of touch with how much players are willing to pay?
Allods Online is a great game at its core, and the support shown to it by its players is astounding on all levels, and really why I considered making this weekend Allods Online exclusive. The players are voicing their support for the title and making real suggestions: Bring the prices down and we’ll pay. Make the game a monthly subscription and we’ll pay.
Allods hasn’t “launched” yet, so it isn’t too late for Gala-Net to throw in some quick changes to the cash shop to get themselves back on the player’s good side. No developer should sit and watch their reputation thrown into the trash before release, and that is quite a big feat considering the warm receiving Allods was getting just a few weeks ago.
I can see the tunnel leading directly into my bank.
Allods Online is a quirky little WoW clone. On one hand, the developers have a clear passion for making the title the best it can be. On the other hand, they’ve been making some ridiculous updates to the game that make us ask the question: Which now-fired staff member thought this was a good idea?
See…Russia! A handy ally in the development of Allods Online, mainly because the Russian version of the title seems to get everything before we do over in North America and Europe. The Russian version allowed us a glimpse into the perfume scandal, an item in-game that boosts health 50%, among other bonuses it also gets rid of “fear of death,” a debuff of 25% on all stats that stacks (up to 100%) when you die, on a timer that increases as you level up. According to my sources, at end-game this timer can reach 45 minutes, and the timer activates when you die in player vs player combat. gPotato launched the open beta not even a week ago, and with it came the first incarnation of the cash shop, the item mall, the extortion clinic, whatever you call it. What is riling up players, however, is the price:
For one character, it costs $20 USD to increase your bag size by six slots. Yes, for the cost of one month’s subscription to a paid MMO, plus a meal at Mcdonald’s, you could increase your bag slot size by six. According to the Russian Allod Online’ers, there was approximately an astounding 1,000% increase in price, across the board, for every item. A $2 item (converted from rubles) in the Russian version came out to $20 USD.
I was hesitant to write this article up because my own concerns that this was a bug were echoed by a few (a numerical error resulting in the decimal point placed too far to the right), but according to today’s announcement, the price appears to be not only intentional, but quite out of touch on gPotato’s part. They will be evaluating the item mall, not to change price, but (as they put it) to add more items to increase the user experience.
The community, thankfully, appears to be all ears to a compromise by gPotato. Although 95% (as of this writing) believe the prices are not reasonable, less than a third (as of this writing) were willing, in another poll, to quit over the fiasco. If gPotato acts quickly, we may see this event being left in the dust on the road to Allods Online’s future.
Allods Online is currently in open beta. More news as it appears.
Back in December, I referenced to three outcomes of the release of Stargate Resistance, the “replacement” for Stargate Worlds, with the former being released to fund the latter. Those three outcomes were:
This is the “everything went perfectly” outcome: Stargate Resistance launches, does well, and is used to fund Stargate Worlds and pay the employees. Stargate Worlds launches late 2010/Early 2011.
Going further down to earth: Stargate Resistance launches, does well, and Cheyenne takes a heavy look at Stargate Worlds and says “you know, this just isn’t working out.” Aside from a few more shooters, Cheyenne branches the Stargate brand to other forms of games, including real time strategy, console, and other areas of entertainment. Stargate Worlds is put on the back burner and is left there for eternity.
Hitting the pavement without a parachute: Stargate Resistance is either delayed to oblivion or launches to a less than stellar performance. Considering these losses, Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment either closes for good, is acquired by another company, or continues the same path it has been on for the past two years: perpetual delay.
Consider Cheyenne to have just pulled the chute only to find an ACME anvil in its place, as the company today filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Now, Chapter 11, as would be pointed out if I didn’t explain it, does not guarantee that a company is going under, just that they are restructuring in a way that will allow their debt to be paid back in a much more manageable way. This is a pretty standard procedure, and although it doesn’t absolve CME of its debt, it does offer them a chance at a brighter future.
Granted, Chapter 11 bankruptcy is usually akin to rearranging the cement tied to your legs, as you struggle to stay afloat. Although Cheyenne ME will live on for now, there is still no better outlook towards the future.
As for the company itself, I for one am glad to see Cheyenne doing everything it can to distance itself from Gary Whiting. Whiting, a chair-member of Cheyenne, is also the founder of MMOGULS, a controversial and of questionable legality, pyramid scheme that fronts itself as a website to connect MMOs. Currently MMOGULS offers nothing, for a price of $250 up front and $50 a month, with promised commission that hasn’t been paid in several months, according to investors. When investors sued Whiting earlier last year, this is what they were suing over.
Whiting will definitely be a blight on Cheyenne’s sheet, one that appears to be coming to an end, fast.
More on answering the question of “what the hell’s going on at Cheyenne” as it appears. I personally believe Stargate Worlds will have made its way to the defunct category by the end of this year.
The great part of MMOs that feature some sort of offline mode (Cities XL) is that even if the servers no longer become sustainable, the game doesn’t become a fifty dollar doorstop (I use Tabula Rasa to house my loose change, and Auto Assault became a great coaster for my tasty Starbucks drinks). Being the MMO enthusiast that I am, I often find myself getting into discussions with friends as to the benefits and downsides of MMOs, versus that of non-MMOs, and the major issue that pops up is life expectancy of the title, with said “friends” claiming that non-MMO games last longer because you don’t have to worry about the servers going offline.
That argument is half true, and for the sake of argument we are going to throw the single player aspect screaming out the window and focus on the online, multiplayer portion. Although it was once a normality for games to be run solely through dedicated servers, an increasing amount of Digital Rights Management software ends up requiring players to use some form of online authentication system to play the game’s multiplayer.
Although this system sounds great, it presents a lot of problems down the road. Fast forward two years after a game has been released, and you will understand what I mean: Apart from game sales, that spike at release and generally fade fast, the servers have nothing but the company’s coffers paying for their upkeep. Whatever profit the company made on the game is probably dwindling fast just to keep the servers up, and the game has to be shut down. Garbage in, garbage out.
Every year, Electronic Arts brings the cart around and announces which games it will be shutting down online access to.
Def Jam, PS3/360 (March 2007) [3 years]
The Godfather, PS3/360 (2006/2007) [4/3 years]
Lord of the Rings: Conquest, PC/PS3/360 (Jan. 2009) [1 year]
Mercenaries 2, PC (2008) [2 years]
Need for Speed: Carbon, PSP (2006) [4 years]
Need for Speed: Prostreet , PSP (2007) [3 years]
The Simpsons, PS3/360 (2007) [3 years]
Whereas the following will be taken offline in April:
Burnout 3: Takedown, PS2 (2004) [6 years]
I removed several titles from the April list that were for the original Xbox, because Xbox Live is shutting down in April, making the April 15th shutdown announcement moot. Although there are some that stray further up and down the road, the general life span of an EA Games game is approximately two to four years. The previous line of EA’s games shutting down included a considerable number of the sports franchise 09 titles, including Madden 09, NBA 09, and NHL 09. The most ridiculous sounding takedown on the board is Lord of the Rings: Conquest, which was just released slightly over a year ago.
I’m not questioning the morality of EA Game’s decision in taking these servers down, as a lot of these games are quite unpopulated this far down the line, but if you are picking a game out of the bargain bin, take a look at how old it is and who made it, especially if you are planning on using the online mode. For example, you may pick up a copy of Madden 08 for a cheap online fix, only to come home and find out that the servers have been shut down a long time ago.
I walked into a local F.Y.E store recently to take a look at what sales the store had going on. That particular location was closing down, and had everything on sale. I located a boxed copy of the Sony Station Pass, that was dated 2006, and still advertised The Matrix Online. Further down the shelf I found, what else, Dungeon Runners. It was only ten dollars, but a ten dollar coaster is not appropriate for an electronics store. I later pointed out to a father and son who were there to find Madden 09 on the Wii (“because I can play it online.”) that they were better off finding Madden 10, because the online for Madden 09 shut down earlier this month.
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Battlefield 1942 are two games that are still up and running, have outlived most of their successors, and do not run on EA’s online service, despite being EA Games games. In several years, even big hits like Modern Warfare will eventually shut down their service. While games like Ultima Online stay alive for a decade or more despite a smaller community than they once had, they can be assured that the game will stay live as long as it is breaking a profit, whereas non-MMO titles have to worry about how long the publisher “feels like” keeping the title online.
Eurogamer! To many gamers, Eurogamer is a great source for gaming news, reviews, and other editorials. To Darkfall fans, on the other hand, Eurogamer is just another shady “unbiased” review website that backs up writers with questionable journalistic integrity. It feels like only a year ago that Eurogamer was launched into a controversy regarding the then-recently launched Darkfall. A contributor by the name of Ed Zitron wrote a scathing review of the title, scoring a 2/10 (Or a “Don’t touch this game”), and causing quite a stirrup at the Darkfall community. Aventurine, the title’s developers, shot back quickly: Publicly revealing logs from the accounts that revealed not only did the reviewer spend less than two hours in-game, but the majority of that time was spent in the character creation screen, with only a few minutes of login time each session. Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer did nothing to fan out the flames when he announced that Eurogamer was backing up Zitron. Of course, it was Zitron’s word (And who wouldn’t trust a man who laid out in writing his complete inability to do the most basic tasks in Darkfall?) versus Aventurine’s log files. Eventually, Eurogamer had another reviewer take a look.
Like water down the Niagara, the slip ups just keep flowing. This time, Gamespot is in some hot water after a review giving the recently launched Global Agenda a 5.5/10. Being as loyal to the title as one would expect a community, the Global Agenda community quickly did some dirt digging on the reviewer, and found quite a dearth in play time. The reviewer’s account, fittingly named DoofusJones, clocked in less than six hours of gameplay, making it to level 13 and wholly ignoring the subscription areas of the game.
I don’t get paid to write for MMO Fallout, but I often get the idea that I have more integrity than some of those who do get paid. Although Ed Zitron was not paid for his review of Darkfall, the Gamespot reviewer was, even though the review has since been removed. Myself, along with a legion of millions of other gamers, would kill to have the opportunity to be paid to write reviews for MMOs. Hell, if MMO Fallout paid my college tuition, you’d see me here every waking minute I wasn’t at my regular job or at classes! Alas, my future is in political talk, but the legion of millions still stand.
As if Gamespot needs to hand out more stakes to the people who are still angry over the Kane and Lynch fiasco several years back. I vet my own articles before I publish them, and I do my own fact checking in-house, but I still do fact-checking. For the companies that actually pay people to be “main editors,” do your jobs and make sure the person doing the review isn’t skimming off the top and putting out a half-assed piece of work.
More importantly, and I regularly reinforce this, if you are looking for a source to base your purchase on, don’t read a review. Don’t listen to what Gamespot tells you, or any other review website. I even tell people not to listen to what I say in the “month in review” articles, foremost because MMO Fallout is not in the business of reviewing titles, and secondly because I don’t want people basing their purchases of a genre where enjoyment comes out of the player’s own experience, to come from a piece of text no matter the size. The Month In Review is meant to be an, albeit morbid, comedic article about my own failed attempts to reign in spending.
So I’ll say what I always say when it comes to choosing your MMO: Go window shopping, almost every MMO on the market has some form of demo available, and in cases of Champions Online and Warhammer Online, you can try entire sections of the game for absolutely free, without limits. You may go through a large number of MMOs before you find the one that suits you, but look at it this way: You’re not spending thirty dollars a pop for each title that eventually ends up gathering dust. And if a title doesn’t have a demo, that is their loss, not your own.
The triple-B, or Better Business Bureau, is quite an interesting outfit. One one hand, the organization has absolutely no authority over any business anywhere at any time, ever. On the other hand, its advice is taken very seriously by many consumers, by some as gospel, and by others who believe that the BBB actually has the above authority. The method that the Bureau uses to make grade is quite lenient on the business, if they are willing to respond to complaints. If someone complains to the BBB, they try to contact the company and the response determines the grade.
For example, the company I’m employed at while I trudge my way through College (Target) has received almost 1,500 complaints to the BBB in the past 36 months. However, due to the response by the company in most of the complaints, and the nature of the complaints in other cases, Target holds an A rating. Really the only way to get a bad score by the BBB is to not respond at all, which you will see below.
So I decided to look up a few of our biggest names in the MMO biz (by looking at the poll on the web page) and check out their rating. Keep in mind that not being a BBB accredited business does not hurt your score.
Blizzard: A+
Cryptic Studios: F
Funcom: A+
Mythic Entertainment: F
NCsoft: C-
Sony Online Entertainment: A
Square Enix: A
An F for Cryptic and Mythic? In Mythic’s defense, their BBB rating is likely out of date, due to the whole Electronic Arts takeover (EA has a B rating), but an F for Cryptic? Looking more in-depth, I found it is because Cryptic wholly refuses to respond to any complaints forwarded to them by the BBB, forgetting the one rule of the BBB: Not responding kills your score!
And this list doesn’t even include Turbine, Aventurine, Jagex, and others that were not listed on the BBB website.
Call him what you want, King Garriot, General Garriot, crazy, Richard Garriot is the big daddy of the MMORPG world, and has a special place in the hearts of many MMOers, whether you’ve played his version of Ultima Online (the old one) or Tabula Rasa. Ever since Tabula Rasa flew the coop and fell ten stories to its death, there’s been a lot of skepticism in the MMO world as to whether or not gaming genius Richard Garriot would make it back. He seemed busy with his new life flying the cosmos, and didn’t seem all that interested in the MMO landscape anymore.
Boy were we wrong, as Garriot himself is back with Portalarium!
“The Portalarium mission is exactly what I want to be doing next in games. This really takes me back to my roots in the game business – small development teams, low barriers to entry, affordable budgets for quality projects, and unlimited new interactive frontiers to explore together with our customers.”
-Richard Garriot
Interactive frontiers? Unlimited? Back to his roots? Excuse me if I glee. From my understanding, Portalarium will be starting out with a “portalarium player” that will act as a plugin to allow other gaming engines to work inside of social websites: Facebook, Myspace, etc. Where will Richard Garriot go from there?
Well that, my friends, will yet to be seen.
Unfortunately there is still no news on the $24 million lawsuit against NCsoft.
MMO Fallout 