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Tag: Age of Wushu
Age of Wushu Merging Servers
Snail Games yesterday performed a server merge on Age of Wushu to address the game’s low population. January 7th marked the mergers of the White Tiger and Golden Kirin servers into the Blue Dragon server. As a result of the merger, all Jianghu rankings were reset as well as school rankings, NPC relationships, and guild territory.
You can read more at the FAQ posted below.
(Source: Snail Games)
Age of Wushu Merging Servers 8/28
Snail Games USA has announced that Age of Wushu will be merging two servers in order to increase player interaction and reduce low population areas. On August 28th, Black Tortoise will be merged into White Tiger during the game’s normally scheduled maintenance. According to the FAQ, character data including progression, guilds, and Jianghu Rankings will cross over. Characters with the same name will be able to keep their name with server distinctions added on, however school positions will be reset.
As this will be a fresh reset server, all school positions will be reset. Players can apply with School NPCs for positions in the school structure on day 1. The weekly school tournament will be conducted as normal on the first Sunday following the merger (September 1, 2013).
You can read the entire FAQ at the link below. While the new server is titled “White Tiger,” the server is not the same as the existing White Tiger.
(Source: Age of Wushu)
Age of Wushu's $600 Ferret
Ferrets are adorable, they are like a cute rodent with the intelligence of a pig, playfulness of a puppy, and the ability to poop in a litterbox like a cat. They are mischievous and will steal your car keys and go joy riding and if you’re really not paying attention may end up joining a chain gang and I’m sorry I’m getting distracted by that picture up top. At the same time, I fall into the category of people who will never own a ferret thanks to a fantastic allergy to pet hair, all of it. So to compensate I’ve delegated myself to crazy virtual pet guy, which is like the guy down the street who owns thirty cats but on the internet.
Age of Wushu has introduced a new pet ferret that can only be obtained between June 11th and June 23rd, and the process to retrieve it is simple: Top your account off with 2000 gold. How much is two thousand gold, you might be asking? Well let’s head on over to the Snail Games page where we can top off our accounts and-
Six hundred dollars. To obtain this pet ferret, Snail Games expects you to top off your account with six hundred dollars. To put that into perspective, with that same money I could buy a real ferret and keep it alive longer than the gold would last me in Age of Wushu. I could invest that $600 and have my money make money. Or make three months payments on my car (loan plus insurance). Or upgrade my computer with a new video card and some ram. Or try and bribe a politician, something useful.
At the end of the day, this is simply a gift for players topping up their accounts with a lot of money. If Snail Games decides not to sell the ferret by itself on the cash shop (assuming they aren’t already), that is their own marketing failure and they are ultimately the only ones who will be hurt by it.
Age of Wushu’s $600 Ferret
Ferrets are adorable, they are like a cute rodent with the intelligence of a pig, playfulness of a puppy, and the ability to poop in a litterbox like a cat. They are mischievous and will steal your car keys and go joy riding and if you’re really not paying attention may end up joining a chain gang and I’m sorry I’m getting distracted by that picture up top. At the same time, I fall into the category of people who will never own a ferret thanks to a fantastic allergy to pet hair, all of it. So to compensate I’ve delegated myself to crazy virtual pet guy, which is like the guy down the street who owns thirty cats but on the internet.
Age of Wushu has introduced a new pet ferret that can only be obtained between June 11th and June 23rd, and the process to retrieve it is simple: Top your account off with 2000 gold. How much is two thousand gold, you might be asking? Well let’s head on over to the Snail Games page where we can top off our accounts and-
Six hundred dollars. To obtain this pet ferret, Snail Games expects you to top off your account with six hundred dollars. To put that into perspective, with that same money I could buy a real ferret and keep it alive longer than the gold would last me in Age of Wushu. I could invest that $600 and have my money make money. Or make three months payments on my car (loan plus insurance). Or upgrade my computer with a new video card and some ram. Or try and bribe a politician, something useful.
At the end of the day, this is simply a gift for players topping up their accounts with a lot of money. If Snail Games decides not to sell the ferret by itself on the cash shop (assuming they aren’t already), that is their own marketing failure and they are ultimately the only ones who will be hurt by it.
Buy Age of Wushu At Gamestop, Win A Swag Bag
We love Age of Wushu here at MMO Fallout, in that special way that I should probably point out that this article isn’t sponsored or backed by Snail Games in any way. Snail Games is offering five bags of Age of Wushu branded stuff to gamers who buy a copy of the retail edition from Gamestop, and submit a photograph with the game, receipt date, and Age of Wushu clearly visible.
- Age of Wushu Concept Art and Lore Book: Contains 88 pages of stunning Age of Wushu artwork and background information on Wuxia, Schools, historical locations, and our development process.
- Signed Copy of Age of Wushu Retail Edition: Signed by the entire Snail Games USA staff!
- Age of Wushu Mouse Pad: A collectible mouse pad featuring the entire world map of Age of Wushu.
- Age of Wushu Scarf: If you missed New York City Comic Con, this is your last chance to get one of these Wuxia-themed pieces.
- Age Of Wushu Backpack: Good for holding stolen scripts and swag!
Age of Wushu's Subscription Is Character-Bound
Those of you in the know are likely already aware that Age of Wushu is a free to play title featuring a cash shop and VIP subscription. What you may not have known, even if you have played Age of Wushu during its long beta period, is that the VIP subscription is bound to your character, not your account, as stated by Snail Game’s Community Moderator:
VIP will be character bound. If you have VIP currently on Blue Dragon, you will not have VIP on White Tiger.
Age of Wushu’s VIP service costs $10 per month, per character that you wish to attach it to, and offers perks including offline leveling, increased rewards and warehouse/stall space, and more. I’d like to think that the problem here is some combination of poor translation and perhaps a misunderstanding of the market. Taken for what it is, VIP is basically a package of time-based perks that you buy from the gold shop. It isn’t a traditional subscription in the sense that you enter your credit card details and the game bills you monthly, you have to manually top off your account with gold and purchase the package.
Owing that, Age of Wushu’s VIP being character bound isn’t really surprising or unprecedented, even if it doesn’t invalidate complaints by some players that the service should be account-wide. Perhaps the mistake is that the VIP package sounds too similar to the traditional subscription services we’ve come to expect from other MMOs, which explains why some players are surprised that the benefits are character-bound. Either way, the reaction I’ve seen to this has been pretty mixed, with players split pretty much down the middle in support/rejection.
Age of Wushu’s Subscription Is Character-Bound
Those of you in the know are likely already aware that Age of Wushu is a free to play title featuring a cash shop and VIP subscription. What you may not have known, even if you have played Age of Wushu during its long beta period, is that the VIP subscription is bound to your character, not your account, as stated by Snail Game’s Community Moderator:
VIP will be character bound. If you have VIP currently on Blue Dragon, you will not have VIP on White Tiger.
Age of Wushu’s VIP service costs $10 per month, per character that you wish to attach it to, and offers perks including offline leveling, increased rewards and warehouse/stall space, and more. I’d like to think that the problem here is some combination of poor translation and perhaps a misunderstanding of the market. Taken for what it is, VIP is basically a package of time-based perks that you buy from the gold shop. It isn’t a traditional subscription in the sense that you enter your credit card details and the game bills you monthly, you have to manually top off your account with gold and purchase the package.
Owing that, Age of Wushu’s VIP being character bound isn’t really surprising or unprecedented, even if it doesn’t invalidate complaints by some players that the service should be account-wide. Perhaps the mistake is that the VIP package sounds too similar to the traditional subscription services we’ve come to expect from other MMOs, which explains why some players are surprised that the benefits are character-bound. Either way, the reaction I’ve seen to this has been pretty mixed, with players split pretty much down the middle in support/rejection.
Taco Tuesday: Don't Ban Griefers, Make The Game Unbearable
Today is Tuesday and that can only mean one thing: The cafeteria is serving up hot ground meat in between your choice of soft tortilla or crunchy corn shells. Regardless of your preferences of sauces and toppings, Taco Tuesday is inarguably the greatest day of the week, unless of course you hate life. It is around the taco table that we come together to discuss MMOs, in particular those big things and little things that make the genre great. So grab yourself a shell, load it up, and get ready to dig in.
Ever since MMOs first introduced the concept of open combat, the question has lingered as to how to allow players to battle each other to their heart’s content, while at the same time preventing people from griefing new players and driving away business. Games have attempted to throw in a number of features, all with varying success. Criminal systems are often used which prevent characters from entering certain areas/cities until they either wait out a period of time or grind faction points. The goal in these cases is to allow for free range murder with the penalty of inconveniencing the character for the duration of their criminal reign. Certain MMOs go further by punishing the character with experience/stat penalties if they are killed while flagged.
Two recent games are taking a far more hardcore approach to dealing with griefing and mitigating those with a strong habit of randomly killing/kidnapping everyone they come across, and those games are Wizardry Online and Age of Wushu. Wizardry Online is a hardcore MMO with permadeath and open PvP, a combination which means there is an obligation to ensure that opting to be a criminal is difficult and dangerous. When one player kills another in Wizardry, the victim is able to place a bounty on the head of the killer. Bounties are temporary and will eventually expire. Players with more than five bounties will be imprisoned upon their next death. Imprisoned players are unable to delete imprisoned characters, nor are they able to access other characters on the same account. Between paying back bounties or long hours of grinding to get out of jail, a particularly bad griefer could be punished past the point of being willing to play anymore.
Age of Wushu features a similar jail system. Snail Games may not have implemented any kind of permanent death feature in Age of Wushu, but they’ve managed to make prison almost as bad. Instead of trying to explain it myself, I will allow user Smokefin to give his testimony:
72 hours in jail. I killed 30 people and after that i died to 4 other players and went to jail. Now i need to serve 72 game time hours of jail. I literally didn’t believe it at first, but its true. SO: I play 4 hours a day, that means that i will be released from prison in 18 real life days, IF i managed to be online all those 4 hours a day, after that i will be executed and i will have halved stats for 24 hour game time. So i’m back to normal in 26 days if i play 4 hours a day.
72 game hours in jail followed by 24 game hours with stats halved? That is harsh. Maybe a little more punishing than I would have thought, and apparently enough to cause Smokefin to quit.
Where do you stand on penalties for griefing/rampant ganking? Should the worst offenders have their games essentially rendered unplayable for long periods of time?
Taco Tuesday: Don’t Ban Griefers, Make The Game Unbearable
Today is Tuesday and that can only mean one thing: The cafeteria is serving up hot ground meat in between your choice of soft tortilla or crunchy corn shells. Regardless of your preferences of sauces and toppings, Taco Tuesday is inarguably the greatest day of the week, unless of course you hate life. It is around the taco table that we come together to discuss MMOs, in particular those big things and little things that make the genre great. So grab yourself a shell, load it up, and get ready to dig in.
Ever since MMOs first introduced the concept of open combat, the question has lingered as to how to allow players to battle each other to their heart’s content, while at the same time preventing people from griefing new players and driving away business. Games have attempted to throw in a number of features, all with varying success. Criminal systems are often used which prevent characters from entering certain areas/cities until they either wait out a period of time or grind faction points. The goal in these cases is to allow for free range murder with the penalty of inconveniencing the character for the duration of their criminal reign. Certain MMOs go further by punishing the character with experience/stat penalties if they are killed while flagged.
Two recent games are taking a far more hardcore approach to dealing with griefing and mitigating those with a strong habit of randomly killing/kidnapping everyone they come across, and those games are Wizardry Online and Age of Wushu. Wizardry Online is a hardcore MMO with permadeath and open PvP, a combination which means there is an obligation to ensure that opting to be a criminal is difficult and dangerous. When one player kills another in Wizardry, the victim is able to place a bounty on the head of the killer. Bounties are temporary and will eventually expire. Players with more than five bounties will be imprisoned upon their next death. Imprisoned players are unable to delete imprisoned characters, nor are they able to access other characters on the same account. Between paying back bounties or long hours of grinding to get out of jail, a particularly bad griefer could be punished past the point of being willing to play anymore.
Age of Wushu features a similar jail system. Snail Games may not have implemented any kind of permanent death feature in Age of Wushu, but they’ve managed to make prison almost as bad. Instead of trying to explain it myself, I will allow user Smokefin to give his testimony:
72 hours in jail. I killed 30 people and after that i died to 4 other players and went to jail. Now i need to serve 72 game time hours of jail. I literally didn’t believe it at first, but its true. SO: I play 4 hours a day, that means that i will be released from prison in 18 real life days, IF i managed to be online all those 4 hours a day, after that i will be executed and i will have halved stats for 24 hour game time. So i’m back to normal in 26 days if i play 4 hours a day.
72 game hours in jail followed by 24 game hours with stats halved? That is harsh. Maybe a little more punishing than I would have thought, and apparently enough to cause Smokefin to quit.
Where do you stand on penalties for griefing/rampant ganking? Should the worst offenders have their games essentially rendered unplayable for long periods of time?
MMO Fallout 