MMO Vs Non-MMO: Online Life Expectancy


It's in the game!

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.

  1. Def Jam, PS3/360 (March 2007) [3 years]
  2. The Godfather, PS3/360 (2006/2007) [4/3 years]
  3. Lord of the Rings: Conquest, PC/PS3/360 (Jan. 2009) [1 year]
  4. Mercenaries 2, PC (2008) [2 years]
  5. Need for Speed: Carbon, PSP (2006) [4 years]
  6. Need for Speed: Prostreet , PSP (2007) [3 years]
  7. The Simpsons, PS3/360 (2007) [3 years]

Whereas the following will be taken offline in April:

  1. 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.

Gamespot Vs Hi-Rez: What Journalistic Integrity?


When it pays to have an intelligent community.

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.

What Does the Better Business Bureau Say?


If Funcom's money was gold-backed...
No Accredation, no gold!

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.

Dad's Back! Richard Garriot Returns!


Get the canceled game, Dad's home!

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.

Dad’s Back! Richard Garriot Returns!


Get the canceled game, Dad's home!

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.

Not So Much RP In The MMORPG


Yet No One Said Arrrr

There isn’t much more of a vestigial appendage on the server list for your favorite MMO than seeing “RP” as the label. Back when I first started playing World of Warcraft, the role playing servers were populated with a number of hardcore guilds, granted guilds that would quickly try to get you booted off of the server if you didn’t chat using the correct out-of-context code, but hardcore guilds nonetheless. Over time, it became apparent that those guilds were moving out, and players who really had no interest in role playing were coming in, to occasionally add a ‘th to the end of their words, and doth speak’th like yon medieval men, prithee, despite World of Warcraft not being set in Earth’s Middle Ages.

As a hardcore role player sans rear-implanted-stick, I had to come to the sad reality that my kind is scarce, despite half of the MMO name being Role Playing Game, the in-character role playing was something I would have to search wide and far in order to find an active guild that actually actively participated in role playing (rather than “You role play a tank, I’ll role play support, we’ll pretend…that dragon killed your family and we’re gonna take its loot.”). That’s why I’m drawn to sandbox games like Mortal Online. Considering the title is still in beta, there is a lot more to do in the spiritual sense of thinking, rather than physically quantifying. Yesterday I played cleanup, making sure that the loot from dead criminals was safely tucked away in my bank. Today, on the other hand, I actively hunted down miners who had left their keyboards with a macro set up to play for them (Don’t worry, I check for activity before I attack). More often than not, I play a crafter of some sort.

The latest information from Everquest II was just what I needed to remind me that it wasn’t just writing with my left-handed that made me a minority of sorts, with the finding that only 5% of the game’s population are hardcore role players. Among the 40 page report was other information, including that role players play less hours, are slightly younger, and have a higher percentage of female players.

I am the player who uses the biography section of the character creator, even though it has no physical impact on gameplay. I’ve spent quite a bit of time creating a backstory for not just my superhero, but my nemesis in Champions Online, as well as any other MMO I’ve played in recent years. I don’t consider myself better than those who don’t roleplay, and I am certainly not under the understanding that I am enjoying more of the game than they are. In fact, there are several cases I can mention where I end up limiting myself:

In the case of Champions Online, I ended up passing over several powers that, while powerful, did not conceivably fit my character. My hero is a telekinesis power set, so giving him guns or robot minions wouldn’t fit. Equally with Mortal Online, where my end goal is to be a well known armor-crafter, I will have to give up my combat skills to specialize in the various crafting techniques.

Or maybe I’m just being pessimistic. Are there any other role players out there that are in the same boat?

Warhammer Online: Here's What You Wanted


Your Feedback To Good Use

In the last edition of Checking Up On Mythic, I talked about the developer’s latest spat with players, this time over how to deal with the over-encumbered and bloated scenario system. Mythic’s original idea, which consisted of removing 75% of the scenario maps, did not digest well with the community. In fact, from a PR point of view, Mythic’s platter of an announcement was infected with E.Coli. So being the official Developer That Could, Mythic went to the boards and asked the community, what would you do?

Well we have our answer, and Mythic has an idea of where they want to go with the upcoming scenario streamline: Foremost, Mythic hopes to decrease the amount of time waiting in scenario queues, based off of several factors that the company has been watching. Part of the update sees “always active” scenarios, maps that are (just that) always active, no matter what the progression of the campaign on either side. The game’s weekly event, Weekly Warfronts, will now not only contribute to the campaign, but all Warfronts will be open, rather than picking and choosing just one.

So Mythic does indeed listen. The reaction from the community has been mixed, but overall positive, and it’s good to see Mythic taking the medicinal approach rather than amputating the scenario system from the neck down.

More on Mythic and Warhammer Online as it appears. Dark Age of Camelot’s host change should be going live in just two days.

Warhammer Online: Here’s What You Wanted


Your Feedback To Good Use

In the last edition of Checking Up On Mythic, I talked about the developer’s latest spat with players, this time over how to deal with the over-encumbered and bloated scenario system. Mythic’s original idea, which consisted of removing 75% of the scenario maps, did not digest well with the community. In fact, from a PR point of view, Mythic’s platter of an announcement was infected with E.Coli. So being the official Developer That Could, Mythic went to the boards and asked the community, what would you do?

Well we have our answer, and Mythic has an idea of where they want to go with the upcoming scenario streamline: Foremost, Mythic hopes to decrease the amount of time waiting in scenario queues, based off of several factors that the company has been watching. Part of the update sees “always active” scenarios, maps that are (just that) always active, no matter what the progression of the campaign on either side. The game’s weekly event, Weekly Warfronts, will now not only contribute to the campaign, but all Warfronts will be open, rather than picking and choosing just one.

So Mythic does indeed listen. The reaction from the community has been mixed, but overall positive, and it’s good to see Mythic taking the medicinal approach rather than amputating the scenario system from the neck down.

More on Mythic and Warhammer Online as it appears. Dark Age of Camelot’s host change should be going live in just two days.

Back To The Drawing Board: See You Later This Year


Kung Foo!

Perfect World Entertainment isn’t happy with the current state of Kung Foo! their upcoming MMO that yours truly had the pleasure of closed beta testing. In fact, now that the testing is coming to a close in just a few days, they have an announcement to make: Rather than moving the game into open beta, Perfect World Entertainment will be shutting down Kung Foo! in order to optimize it with more content and improved localization for a relaunch of the closed beta later this year. The closed beta test was quite successful, and the company hopes to use this time to add in new features based off of player feedback.

I often berate Eastern MMOs for being shallow titles, but one thing that remains awfully consistent is the attitude of the developers. For companies like Perfect World Entertainment and Gpotato, they have a vested interest in keeping their customers happy, even if that means delaying their title by months at a time in order to avoid launching before it is ready.

More on Kung Foo! as it appears.

Dark Age of Camelot Europe: Great (If You Speak English)


Give me Electronic Arts, or Give Me Death!

Maybe not death. Perhaps where you accidentally clip your nails to far and you catch your skin and it hurts really bad to touch anything for a couple days.

Back in early January, I reported on news that EA/Mythic would be reclaiming the European grounds of Dark Age of Camelot from their current host, GOA. Electronic Arts, who of course now own Mythic, have decided to take over the operation of the European servers. I did originally mention that the transfer was less marred with controversy than the Archlord transfer last year, and I now have plenty of Warhammer and Dark Age of Camelot players who were very kind (in the context of sending feedback) to explain their grief with GOA and the way they have handled Dark Age and Warhammer in Europe.

Electronic Arts is set to take back the European Dark Age servers in a week’s time, on the 17th, but there are several issues to be taken up. Other than these, the merger is great for Europeans, especially if you are Americans.

  1. All current players will be given a free month of game time.
    1. This free game time is partially due to the fact that billing services will be down during the transition period, during which time it will be impossible to subscribe for new/existing customers
    2. Players may find that their form of payment is no longer accepted under the North American billing system.
    3. Your login name/password may have to change.
  2. Your player will keep all stats, friends, and levels.
    1. Although you may have to change your name, granted this is to be expected.
    2. Initially all of your housing information will be preserved, however once the merger to the North American servers takes place, you are bound to the server transfer conditions. Vaults and property will transfer, as will the value of the house deed, but you will need to buy a new house.
    3. Transfers to Ywain, the North American server, will not be available immediately, as Mythic will be upgrading all accounts to match the current North American version of Dark Age.
  3. In-game Customer Support Representatives will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
    1. However  customer support for all servers will only be available in English
    2. The Herald will only be published in English
    3. New servers are being prepared in German and French, however players on English (UK), Italian, and Spanish language servers will have to choose between Ywain (NA) and the German/French server.
    4. The new European server will be hosted in Germany.

Those are just a consolidated bullet point list, and I will admit deciphering the FAQ was slightly confusing. You can find the entire FAQ here and make of it what you will, but it appears that the Spanish, Italian, French, and German players will all be talking to each other on the same server, and UK players will have to sit through it or transfer over to the North American server.

More on Dark Age of Camelot as it appears. This transfer goes live one week from today, and Mythic expects up to 48 hours downtime, not including the previously mentioned delays with the North American transfer. I am interested in seeing if Warhammer Online will follow suit.