It’s nothing significant.
Continue reading “Line of Defense Shows Life After Two Years”
Tag: 3000ad
Alganon Has Not Been Sunset, Is Still Planning A Comeback
Alganon isn’t dead, it’s merely resting.
You may be surprised to read that Alganon’s servers went down for maintenance and migration in November 2017 and haven’t been up since. In that time, Derek Smart’s company 3000AD has bought out Quest Online and now owns the Alganon game, the company is moving its servers to cloud-based servers, and there are apparently plans to kick the advertising back in once the game goes live again.
When will that be? After over a year, it’s not entirely set in stone. Derek Smart posted a couple of weeks back to confirm that the migration is still a work in progress.
The biggest problem that Alganon has is that it is an MMO. So you can’t just turn it off, unplug the servers, then plug it it back in. It has been running on legacy servers for many years; and when 3000AD bought it from QOL, I made the decision to not only move it to cloud servers, but also to make certain revisions along the way.
In addition to that, the game never really had that much marketing since 2012; so not a lot of people knew about about other than than the 250K+ accounts who already knew about it. So I’ve also been working with several parties on partnership deals which would see a territorial release as well as targeted marketing for it’s eventual relaunch.
Those of you who were around since the start, will also remember that I did the same thing back in 2010 when I took over the game. It was subscription based etc. It went offline for some time while it was being retooled for F2P etc. It later relaunched as F2P[qol.com], (I also refunded all subscriptions paid up to that time), then we added PvP[qol.com] etc
The game has not been sunset or I would have announced it as such. It’s coming back as soon as everything that I’m working on completes. Yes, it’s taken some time, but that’s how these things go. Plus, we’re not like other larger companies that handle MMO games, and thus have lots of people, resources, and money to do things like this within a reasonable time frame.
Source: Steam
Line of Defense To Split: Line of Defense and All Out War
Turns out Daybreak isn’t the only company that can split its games in half.
It’s been a while since we last heard from Derek Smart’s Line of Defense, the Planetside-competing open world shooter. According to the latest dev blog, 3000ad is wrapping up remaining features and continuing to port the game to Unreal 4 engine.
“The current focus is on improving the art assets, wrapping up remaining (the game is already content and feature complete, so there’s nothing to cut) WIP features, tweaking and debugging several items, and completing the game while continuing on with the UE4 port in parallel.”
As a result, Line of Defense will be split into two products: Line of Defense will become a session based game with up to 64 players per server while Line of Defense – All Out War will continue the persistent MMO version that has been in development for the past few years. The closed beta servers are expected to go online at some point in early 2019.
“We are expecting to push a new test build to those with access to our CBT servers at some point in Q1/19. No firm date yet. And no, we don’t expect to open the game to additional testers at this time. Those of you who already own a copy via the CBT which we ran for over a year, will retain access until final release.”
Source: Line of Defense
Line of Defense Leaving Steam
3000AD has announced that Line of Defense is leaving Steam, citing trolling and harassment from the community. In a post on the Steam forums, Derek Smart points to the lack of developer control when it comes to review bombing, the lack of proper moderators employed by Valve, and a lack of control over ratings and comments.
“You can flag a comment that blatantly breaks the guidelines. Then you get to hope that any action is taken. As I type this, there are a few of those on the LOD store page which not only have personal attacks, external attack links, entire essays attacking me – and NOTHING about the game.”
As a result, Line of Defense will no longer be sold on Steam in the coming future. Players who already bought the game will receive a second copy to be used since the Steam version will stop being updated. Instead, customers will access the game via Playfab.
According to Smart, this is not a guarantee that Line of Defense will never return to the platform.
“We won’t be the first developer or publisher to pull a game from Steam. And others have pulled a game, then brought it back later.”
Line of Defense is currently in Steam Early Access. It carries a “mostly negative” rating and is played by an average of .4 players in the last month [Source: Steam Charts].
(Source: Steam)
Line of Defense Combat Phase 1 Coming Tomorrow
3000AD has announced that Line of Defense’s first combat phase will hit the servers beginning tomorrow, February 25th. The update will unlock assault rifles, pistols, combat knives, and melee, with players receiving a random item from each class upon spawning into the world.
Phase 1 (of 6 planned phases which unlock various weapons, items etc) of the infantry combat is out of final internal testing and will be released tomorrow around 12PM EST / 9AM PST
For the full list of updates, check out the game’s changelog.
(Source: Steam)
MMOrning Shots: Signs From Above
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Line of Defense, where there appears to be a war going on in the stars. A star war, if you catch my drift. What I’m saying is that those clouds look like a Star Destroyer in battle with a rebel ship, which is either unintentional, a well placed easter egg, or the product of my overactive imagination.
Imagine all the MMOrning Shots every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Line of Defense Momentarily Made Free On Steam
Line of Defense went into early access last week and while the idea was that players would need to purchase one of the game’s founder’s packs to gain access, a mistake in the game’s Steam listing caused the title to be made available for free to anyone, buyer or not. The mistake was fixed by Valve, but not before several thousand players had managed to start the client download. Since the players had not purchased the game, however, they were still unable to access the servers and were thus unable to play. Several of those players then took to Steam’s review system to show their anger.
In a news piece on the Line of Defense website, Derek Smart responded to complaints, noting that while the game will eventually be free to play, the current box price is to weed out players simply looking for something new and free to toy around with.
We know that a lot of you are excited about the game; but the whole purpose of pricing this Early Access tiers this way is so that we can attract a specific dedicated crowd during the next three to four months of testing. It is a very large and involved open-world game. We’re a small indie team. For those reasons and aside from the fact that we do not have the resources, we simply don’t want to be distracted by large numbers of players who – for the most part – won’t contribute any meaningful feedback to the game.
Line of Defense is currently in early access on a heavily staggered release system.
(Source: Line of Defense)
Line of Defense Early Access Now Available
Line of Defense, the MMOFPS by 3000AD, is now available for purchase on Steam’s Early Access program. The servers don’t go live until around 10am on September 16th, you can get your hands on the early access packages for 50% off for the time being. The sale lasts until the servers go live and you can find a comparison on what each package includes at the following link. Features will be turned on one by one as early access progresses, with the final product launching free to play for all with an optional upgrade.
(Source: Steam)
MMOrning Shots: Shooting Things…And People
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from 3000AD, with Line of Defense getting ready for early access soon™. Those interested in a new open world shooter will be able to get early in for as little as $40, or you can wait a while and get in for free on launch.
Shoot up MMOrning Shots every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Derek Smart Explains Line of Defense EA Fees
3000AD recently revealed that Line of Defense is set to launch under Steam’s early access program at the rather hefty sum of $99 for the package. Derek Smart took to Twitter to explain the pricing as an insurance policy that only those interested in bug testing join, and that “freeloaders” are weeded out.
We’re a SMALL independent game dev making a MASSIVE game in a genre dominated and monopolized by SOE and their popular @planetside2 series. In contrast, from start to finish, LOD was developed by less than ten people. Including third-party contractors. Yeah. And unlike those other guys, we don’t take your money, then plonk you in useless assets (how do you like that hanger now?), a largely unfinished product or a product that may not even see the light of day. I don’t even need to defend against that premise; go look at my game releases. While they may not be everyone’s cup of tea, we still keep making them because we have and know our audience.
Smart also announced that Line of Defense will be adding in playable female characters.
(Source: Twitlonger)
MMO Fallout 