Tag: 2017

NCSoft Reports Growth For Fourth Quarter 2017


NCSoft today released their fourth quarter results for 2017 and the company has posted increased earnings across the board over last year. Sales, profits, and income grew over 80% over the same period in 2016 fueled primarily by the company’s massive success in the mobile market and the launch of the latest expansion for Guild Wars 2. Mobile sales dropped 41% over the last quarter as the launch fervor of Lineage M dies down, while Guild Wars 2 gained a 73% growth over the same period.

For the year of 2017, mobile sales accounted for 57% of total earnings while Lineage 1 dropped 59% with much of that revenue being players transferring to Lineage M. Revenues from Korea and royalties grew massively while the market share from US/Europe, Japan, and Taiwan decreased slightly. Fourth quarter earnings from the US/Europe did grow despite the overall yearly drop due to sales of Guild Wars 2 and its expansion.

(Source: NCSoft)

Wintersday Returns To Guild Wars 2 On December 12


December is here and that can only mean one thing: Winter celebrations are back! From December 12 through January 2, players can take part in Wintersday, with a variety of rewards ready to be reaped by festive adventurers.

Among the returning activities are:

  • The Winter Wonderland jumping puzzle
  • Toypocalypse: Band together with other players to defend gift-bearing dolyaks against an onslaught of malfunctioning toys
  • Tixx’s Infinirarium: Enter and help the jolly Toymaker Tixx prepare to share the wonder of Wintersday with all of Tyria
  • Bell Choir: Take center stage and make beautiful music to celebrate the season
  • Snowball Mayhem: Gather as many gifts as possible in this PvP snowball fight

Wintersday is available to all in Guild Wars 2.

(Source: Arenanet Press Release)

Humble PSA Bundle: Get $847 Worth of Games For $35


The Humble Bundles seem to just keep getting better. This time around, Humble is partnering with Yogscast and a slew of developers to bring us the Jingle Jam, a massive collection of games for the low price of $35. All sales from this bundle will go to your choice of a number of charities including Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Appeal, Cancer UK, The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex Association, and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, among others.

Current list of games includes:

  • Rust (Early Access)
  • Dungeon of the Endless
  • Q.U.B.E Director’s Cut
  • Garry’s Mod
  • Defend Your Life TD
  • Golgotha Run, a Dark Future Novel
  • Gunpoint
  • Warhammer: Vermintide Dwarf Helmet DLC
  • Teslagrad
  • ReThink
  • Guardians of Ember: Iron Spine Costume DLC

With another game unlocking every day until December 25.

Throw in $35 for the whole package and even a bit more if you’re feeling generous. As of this publishing, nearly seventy seven thousand have donated. While the deal is listed for 27 more days, the website does state that supplies are limited.

(Source: Humble Bundle)

2017’s Predictions Revisited: How Did We Do?


It’s that time of year, folks, where MMO Fallout looks back on our predictions for this year in order to hand ammunition to the very people who regularly remind me that I have no idea what I’m talking about. This year I did pretty well, out of 30 mostly serious predictions I would say that I only got about 6 wrong.

And when you’re done remembering the year, take a gander at this list of tips to keep your memory sharp into your 50s.

So let’s recap.

  1. Nostalrius getting a cease and desist and Blizzard announcing Pristine Servers: Nailed it on both counts, minus the part about Nostalrius allowing the cease and desist to escalate to a full on lawsuit.
  2. Laura K Dale would continue leaking Switch news: Also true, although we will never really know if Nintendo tracked down the person leaking the information.
  3. Steam overloaded with trash games: Yep, in the form of Steam Direct, Valve has never allowed so many shysters and con artists on their platform as they did in 2017.
  4. Firefall shut down: Called this one, although the folks at Red5 didn’t even bother to acknowledge the allegedly existing console version when announcing the PC sunsetting.
  5. Pathfinder Online will shut down: 100% wrong on this one.
  6. SAG strike ends: Called this one on all accounts, that there would be concessions on both sides and people would go back to not pretending to care about voice actors receiving residuals.
  7. Trions Worlds would bungle a launch: This is like predicting that the sun will rise, so I’m not exactly looking for kudos.
  8. Phantasy Star Online 2 still not coming to the west: And it still isn’t.
  9. MMOs launching in the East and dying before coming to the west: Kritika Online has already shut down in Southeast Asia before coming to Europe/Americas.
  10. Decent selling HD remakes with extras: Kingdom Hearts, Metroid, among other games.
  11. HD Remakes with microtransactions: As sure-fire as it seemed, I’m pretty sure that not a single game released an HD remake with microtransactions shoved in.
  12. Resident Evil 7 the first major VR game and streamers: Both happened, first being that Resident Evil 7 was a smashing success for VR and a streamer eventually did make a video that he crapped his pants.
  13. South Park: South Park released and it could indeed be summed up as “pretty good,” and the game was criticized for its poop jokes.
  14. Activision and Call of Duty: Well Activision didn’t hold development on Call of Duty, but WWII was a return to the series roots, and Activision has not explicitly addressed the falling sales from Infinite Warfare.
  15. No Man’s Sky gets updates, no players: Half correct on this, did not anticipate that people would flock back to No Man’s Sky in the numbers that they did.
  16. Bulletstorm Flops: It did, and odds are you’ll find Bulletstorm heavily discounted at your local game store. Currently Bulletstorm has less than 10 people playing, and peaked at launch at 1,200.
  17. Video game movies: Only one video game movie released stateside this year, the Resident Evil film. It didn’t underperform in box offices, but I’m guessing most of you already forgot about it.
  18. Daybreak becoming a home for wayward developers: Stay tuned.
  19. Valve being sued: Did not happen.
  20. Governments will pay attention to lockboxes: It’s starting to happen, although gamers are not seeing the inherent worthlessness of these boxes in many games.
  21. Troll games and Ukranian money laundering: Troll games have become more prevalent on Steam, and the platform is definitely still being used for money laundering by Ukranian developers.
  22. Yooka-Laylee Launch: Right on this one, the game launched and it was pretty well received.
  23. Game from ex-STALKER developers: I’m going to fit Escape from Tarkov into this list.
  24. Star Citizen misses its release dates: All of them.
  25. Camelot Unchained: The game didn’t launch, therefore the rest of the prediction is meaningless.
  26. Conan Exiles launches, Funcom realizes that developing MMOs is pointless: Yep, enough that they decided to reboot The Secret World as a non-MMO.
  27. Darkfall Reboots: They launched but have not yet cannibalized each other.
  28. H1Z1 will bring on new lead developers: 99% sure this happened.
  29. I get a lawsuit threat from an indie developer: More than once.
  30. John Smedley joins new startup: Of course he did.

Funcom Boasts Best Half Ever As Conan Exiles Propels Profits


Funcom’s second quarterly revenue report is out, and the results are as expected, positive. The combined success of Conan Exiles and Secret World Legends has propelled the Oslo developer to its best half in the history of the company, nearly halving their debt and increasing equity by 40%. Sales of Secret World Legends have exceeded company expectations, although the sales had little effect on this quarter’s revenue due to its late release and will not be seen until the next release. Overall revenue increased 79% over last year.

To complement its success, Funcom has rebranded as Funcom 2.0, with a brand new logo of a screaming face on a burning flag, to convey the developer’s passion, ambition, and history.

Two new games are currently in production at Funcom, with the Oslo studio working on a new Conan game and the Durham studio in the concept stage on a game that will be dependent on the success of Secret World Legends. In addition, Funcom has announced that it is partnering with Bearded Dragons to produce a new game for 2018. Funcom had previously revealed that Johnny Depp will be involved in a TV series based off of The Secret World.

(Source: Funcom)

2017 Predictions for 2017: 2017 Edition, Part 2: Let’s Throw Everything at the Wall


Since I’ve managed to once again push the new year predictions until it’s actually the new year, it’s time to throw everything I have in the old portfolio onto the table and get it all out of the way at once.

  1. The World of Warcraft Nostalrius successor will become a huge item among its community, bringing in thousands upon thousands of concurrent players. Blizzard will send a cease and desist order which the operators will ignore until they receive notice that they are being sued. Around that time, Blizzard will announce the Pristine Servers for WoW.
  2. Laura K Dale will continue leaking Nintendo information leading up to and beyond the release of the Switch. Behind the scenes, Nintendo will conduct major internal investigations to figure out who is giving her this information. It will turn out to be a friend of the fired employee Allison Rapp.
  3. Steam will officially hit the level of a premium television package: Hundreds of channels but only a fraction of it worth watching.
  4. Firefall will first announce that the console version is cancelled before revealing that the PC version is shutting down either simultaneously or a week or two later. Nobody will be surprised, however the last few hours will draw in a lot of people to watch the world burn.
  5. Pathfinder Online will shut down, the press won’t notice for a month and by that point most won’t bother covering it.
  6. The SAG gaming strike will come to an end with both sides making concessions. Gamers who previously took a side will go back to not pretending that they are concerned about people in the industry.
  7. Trion Worlds will launch a new game, expansion, or major update to one of their games, resulting in the servers being unusable for close to a month. People will continue to be surprised that Trion Worlds can’t handle launching anything. This will happen multiple times.
  8. Phantasy Star Online 2 still won’t come to the west.
  9. For that matter, other MMOs that the west wants will launch in Korea/China, flop because the local audience isn’t interested, then never come anywhere.
  10. More games will be re-released as HD remakes, but a lot will include extras like concept art, arcade modes, and bonus content. People will be annoyed at the idea of buying the game again, but will admit that the $20 isn’t a high price and the concept art is pretty cool.
  11. Developers will take a cue from Call of Duty and release an HD remake only to add microtransactions weeks after launch. Unlike Call of Duty, they don’t have as many bridges to burn.
  12. Resident Evil 7 will release and become the first major VR title to really “pull it off.” A streamer will admit live on camera that he just literally crapped his pants, he might even show the camera only to be banned by Twitch. (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pZNC7wQekk)
  13. South Park will release and be pretty good, but some gaming journalists and TV media will use it as a club and beat gamers over the head over a prolonged poop joke scene.
  14. Activision will announce that they are considering pulling an Ubisoft and holding off on future Call of Duty releases until they can figure out what is going on. They will deny that it has to do with the series plummeting in sales.
  15. No Man’s Sky will continue to update and add in features that should have been available on launch. The game won’t see much of a bump in users.
  16. Bulletstorm will release and sell a negligible amount of copies thanks to its high price. It will go on clearance at Gamestop within a couple of months and Randy Pitchford will call gamers entitled and cite the Duke Nukem cameo as a reason that the game is worth $50. Gearbox may or may not reveal one of the few games anyone actually wants from them: Borderlands 3.
  17. More video game movies will come out, they will under-perform and most people probably won’t be aware that they ever hit theaters.
  18. Daybreak Game Company will become the new foster home for wayward developers, picking up publisher rights for independent companies. New tiers will hopefully be added to the all access pass allowing you to play their games for a higher, but still cheaper, price.
  19. Valve will continue to get sued, and lose, over its refund policy in countries that are not America. Expect the policy to get incrementally better worldwide.
  20. More governments will start to pay attention to gambling in games, forcing rules like revealing lockbox odds and restricting who can participate. Gamers will fully realize that lockboxes are worthless investments.
  21. Troll games will become even more prevalent. Steam Greenlight will be marred in yet another controversy as a Ukranian developer uses the platform as a method of laundering money.
  22. Yooka-Laylee will launch and while it won’t recreate the nostalgia of Banjo Kazooie perfectly, it’ll still be a great game. The most ardent of purists will find some reason to complain.
  23. Another game will launch following a blatantly misleading advertising campaign. The press will call gamers entitled after nobody buys it and the advertising standards will find the developer not guilty because old men working in a bureaucratic office don’t believe that dozens of interviews and demo reels constitute advertising.
  24. Another few survival games from ex-developers who claim to have worked on STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl will head into early access.
  25. Star Citizen will miss its release dates. All of them.
  26. Camelot Unchained will launch and rather quickly drop its mandatory subscription because that system only works for a small number of titles. They will initially deny that the new system is free to play.
  27. Conan Exiles will launch and be pretty cool. The general consensus at Funcom will be that wasting money on another giant MMO isn’t worth it.
  28. Darkfall: New Dawn and Darkfall: Rise of Agon will launch. One will cannibalize the other and possibly die itself because the original Darkfall was a commercial failure.
  29. Paladins will change its name to WatchOver, Hi-Rez will continue to deny any inspiration from Overwatch.
  30. H1Z1 will bring on new lead developers, multiple times, with Daybreak announcing each time how committed they are to developing both versions.
  31. I will write a negative article about an indie developer who will email me with a not very subtle threat of lawsuit. He will immediately back down when I CC my attorney.
  32. John Smedley will announce that he has joined a new startup. Their first game will be a sandbox MMO. (Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-02-15-amazon-hires-john-smedley-to-lead-new-san-diego-studio)
  33. An indie developer will release a game that he genuinely thought was good. It won’t be, he will have a mental breakdown and pretend to have been a troll all along.

As always, I will revisit this list at the end of the year to see what I managed to get right. Until then, may the force be with you…or something.

2016 Predictions For The Year 2017 Part 1


2016 is coming to a close and that means starting predictions for 2017. This is the part where you make notes of everything I say and then come around at the end of February to let me know that my predictions were wrong.

1. Hero’s Song Will Shut Down

(Editor’s Note: About 20 minutes before this article published, John Smedley announced that Pixelmage is shutting down and Hero’s Song is cancelled.)

As much as I’d like to see the game succeed, I have a strong feeling that at some point in early 2017 we will learn that negotiations to fund Hero’s Song have failed and that the game will be shutting down. John Smedley will apologize for something that many of us saw coming when the game failed to achieve even half of its $200 thousand Indiegogo campaign, which it was glad to take anyway, and the sunsetting will be followed either by the announcement of Pixelmage closing down or of its next crowdfunding campaign.

Until that happens, however, we will sit back and watch as the numbers on Steam continue to dwindle and talent continues to jump ship to other developers.

2. Star Citizen Will Continue To Disappoint

And MMO Fallout will cover none of it. Star Citizen’s development cycle feels like the end product of sitcom writers sitting around a table and creating a fake documentary about a video game’s development. The kind where the protagonist starts out with a big promise and over the course of the episode just keeps digging himself in deeper because he started off with a promise he couldn’t keep and just keeps lumping on more and more stuff to cover the initial lie. It would probably star Kevin James as Chris Roberts.

The more Star Citizen tugs along, the bigger it gets and the more incapable it seems to be of following up on its promises. The fans and backers have sat through delay after delay, the game is now years behind schedule and slowly becoming something quite different than what was promised, Chris Roberts & Co. are making pretty regular changes to the terms of service to make refunds harder, if not impossible to obtain.

For the record, I think it’s pretty stupid to think that Star Citizen will never launch, and pointlessly malicious to hope that it fails. That being said, I know how hard gamers are to please when they’ve invested $60 into a game. Star Citizen has a lot of people pledging into the three and four digits for JPEG concepts of ships. Imagine your clientele base is hundreds and hundreds of clones of your mother. “Honey why couldn’t you be more successful? I know you raked in hundreds of millions in pledges but the Miller boy down the street became an oral surgeon and gave his mother grandchildren, why do you hate me and want me to die alone with no grandchildren?”

Star Citizen in 2017 will create more frustrated backers, will continue to be the light of the universe for the optimists and those desperately trying to justify their thousand dollar purchase, and Derek Smart will be there somewhere.

3. Corgis Will Continue to Appear in Games

This is just a given. The internet loves to fixate on certain things and presently one of those things are corgis. Why not? They’re adorable! They invoke that same reaction we have to babies, with their big heads, stumpy legs, and let’s not forget the fluffy rumps. Dogs love you unconditionally, but they’ll love you even more unconditionally if you provide them with meat, bacon, or just any old food and give them a scratchin on their heads and bellies.

Corgis are already being used as holiday pets, anniversary pets, pre-order bonuses, cash shop bonuses, and more. If you’re sick of the furry little devils, and shame on you if you are, expect to see a whole lot more of them in 2017.

4. More MMOs Will Hit Consoles

And it’ll be amazing. Perfect World Entertainment has been making huge strides this year on launching their library of games on Xbox and Playstation, to great effect with both consoles. Hopefully 2017 will be the point where Daybreak’s games start launching on Xbox, along with H1Z1 and whatever shooter they were working on a few months ago. Personally I’d like to see console users get their hands on Marvel Heroes, a great alternative to a very small list of similar titles on both systems.

More over, I feel like console games will continue the shift into pseudo-MMOs, like Destiny, now that developers are no longer considering the 360 and PS3, and their multitude of technical limitations, part of the equation. I think that Destiny 2 is going to be what Destiny was always advertised to be, and while the fans will be angry that they had to wait through a full game launch and a hell of a lot more money in expansions to get the product as originally intended, that it will be worth the wait.

5. I Will Continue To be Usurped While Writing Prediction Articles

This year I noticed a trend that whenever I wait until the next morning to publish predictions, the entity in question ends up fulfilling those predictions and making me look like an idiot. I predict that in 2017, my knack for procrastination won’t get any better, and as such I will continue to lose out on the very valuable currency called “I told you so.” Don’t believe me? See #1 on this list.

DC Universe Online Focuses on 2017 Updates


581

Daybreak Game Company has released their outward look for 2017 for DC Universe Online, and the content is looking pretty fancy. To end off the year, Daybreak will once again have an open episode period, allowing players to access (virtually) all episodes regardless of membership or content ownership. Next year’s updates will include large content updates:

First, just to doubly reiterate, we are continuing development on large content releases (Episodes), similar to what you are experiencing with Amazon Fury Part III. We know how important new story, new characters, and new primary progression is to everyone’s fun in the game. We are very pleased so far with the new gear system implemented in Episode 27. While we are looking at feedback for minor improvements, the core concepts of the best gear being on the vendor, auto-leveling dropped gear, and so on, remains the plan going forward.

In addition, Daybreak is continuing work on the planned revamp of player stats, item and gear sets, NPC stats, and more. Seasonal events will also be making their way into the game, with the first tasking heroes and villains with taking on the Anti-Monitor, an powerful adversary capable of tearing apart entire universes. You can read the entire list of planned updates at the link below.

(Source: DC Universe)

[Video] RuneScape: Golden City of Menaphos Revealed


Jagex today released the latest trailer for upcoming content in RuneScape, offering the first glimpses at the city of Menaphos, a desert area that has been locked away for years. In the trailer, familiar hero Ozan discusses his feats around the world of Gielinor, stopping short at gaining entry to the city. Menaphos was first teased back in 2005 with the update releasing the neighboring city of Sophanem. As a response to rumors of plague, Menaphos was closed to outsiders.

According to the trailer, Jagex is aiming for a June 2017 release for Menaphos.

Marvel Heroes Unveils Biggest System Update Ever


MarvelHeroes2015 2015-06-26 21-43-49-03

Marvel Heroes is gearing up to completely overhaul their titular ARPG, and everyone is invited to the party. As announced this week, over the span of several updates Gazillion Entertainment will be making major changes to how you level up and how you play in Marvel Heroes going forward. Long time players are well acquainted with the regular New 52 updates, bringing heroes up to date and tweaking them for the modern mechanics, but can you handle every character changing at once?

That’s right. Every single Hero in the game will be receiving a design update. All. At. Once.Naturally, we are spending more time on this project than most of our previous updates. In this post, we will be discussing three systems involved in this endeavor: Power Points, Talents, and Traits.

The most immediate change is going to be in powers. No longer will players have to level up to unlock powers and then stick points into those to make them viable. All powers will be viable as soon as they are unlocked, with power points being placed into your base stats. Items that affected powers previously will be updated to be just as useful as they were before. Secondly, all heroes will have five sets of talents. Talents exist in their own tree and can offer passive bonuses, mechanical changes, and even replace powers entirely.

Third, all heroes will now have one defensive and one offensive passive trait, themed after the character and unique to each person.

jpmmvus

Marvel Heroes is no stranger to massive annual updates, these types of updates are what transformed a mostly mediocre launch into the game that it is today.

(Source: Marvel Heroes)