blog – MMO Fallout

Hard to believe Anthem launched nearly a year ago next week but it’s been pretty quiet on the western front with Bioware not doing a whole lot of updating to the game. It’s been so quiet in fact that people noticed Bioware hasn’t taken down the Christmas decorations, despite being nearly Valentine’s Day. Speculation has run rampant over the past few months, with signs pointing to Bioware working on an overhaul for Anthem that would address many of the bigger gripes of the player base.

Well that overhaul has been confirmed in case you didn’t read the title of this article. Bioware has posted an updated blog confirming that the team is still alive and working on Anthem and will be focusing on a long term redesign, with attention being paid to the core gameplay loop.

“Over the coming months we will be focusing on a longer-term redesign of the experience, specifically working to reinvent the core gameplay loop with clear goals, motivating challenges and progression with meaningful rewards – while preserving the fun of flying and fighting in a vast science-fantasy setting. And to do that properly we’ll be doing something we’d like to have done more of the first time around – giving a focused team the time to test and iterate, focusing on gameplay first.”

There will be updates for Anthem as the team works toward the redesign, with events and store refreshes coming but the game moving away from seasons for the time being.

Source: Anthem

Bungie Admits Mistake, Reverses Content Lockout

Not a stranger to controversy, Destiny 2 came under the spotlight yet again this past week during the launch of the Curse of Osiris expansion. While introducing new raids and quests, players quickly became angry over the news that players who did not own the expansion would be locked out of existing content, namely prestige raids, Trials of the Nine, and more.

In a post on the Bungie Blog, the team has confirmed the changes as an “unacceptable lapse,” and confirmed that prestige raids for the base game would be brought down to their original power level requirement, allowing all players to obtain the prestige raid trophy as well as complete the Legend of Acrius exotic shotgun. In the future, the team hopes to add a third prestige difficulty that will scale with the new power available in each expansion.

We’ve heard from the community that both of these plans aren’t working. The Prestige Raid was a novel experience that players value, even if they don’t own Curse of Osiris, and it was a mistake to move that experience out of reach. Throughout the lifetime of the Destiny Franchise, Trials has always required that players owned the latest Expansion. However, for Destiny 2, Trials of The Nine launched as part of the main game, so it’s not right for us to remove access to it.

The full Bungie Blog contains details on how each activity will be handled going forward.

(Source: Bungie)

The Newbie Blogger Initiative Is On

May has arrived, and that means another year and another Newbie Blogger Initiative. For those of you who don’t know, NBI is an annual event that hopes to bring more people into the big blogosphere that is the internet. In my case, it means hopefully populating the internet with writers who in all likelihood will far surpass my own abilities and leave me unemployed and homeless. The goal of the Newbie Blogger Initiative is promote new and upcoming game bloggers as well as for veteran bloggers to offer advice and mentor those who aren’t entirely sure what they are doing. I will also be present.

I wish there was an NBI when I started blogging…twelve years ago on Tripod websites. Over the course of May, I will be talking about various aspects of MMO Fallout’s creation and maintenance, as well as answering some of the more popular questions I have received over time. We’ll share some laughs, learn more about each other, and hopefully learn some lessons along the way. I will also likely be promoting some new blogs on the main page and sidebar from time to time, so check them out. These are good people.

If you have any questions or comments of your own for NBI, drop a comment in the box below or email me.

Stephen Calender Talks:

By now, you may be slightly familiar with the name Stephen Calender, ex-programmer for NetDevil. A few weeks ago, I brought up his blog post in a Week in Review, that went into detail starting at the acquisition of Lego Universe by Lego (and subsequent layoffs) to the relationship between Gazillion and NetDevil and even advice on how to get hired in the industry. In his post, he also expressed his “frustration with fellow co-workers who primed the rumor machine,” dealing with how the media (including myself) managed to come across the news of the NetDevil layoffs before some of the people actually affected by the layoffs, thanks partially to the quick dissemination of details by laid off staff.

The next day I found an email from who else? Stephen Calender, with the hopes of explaining that his intention was not to “take a jab” (as I described it) at the media. So after a short back and forth, I saw this as an excellent opportunity for both of us, and requested an interview.

The interview is huge, so I’ve taken the liberty of hiding it behind the break.

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Darkfall Doing Dynamics: Upcoming Updates

Dynamic events and MMOs go together like the layers of a sweet sweet cherpumple cake, and despite what some may claim you really don’t need to be a sandbox title in order to accomplish such a feat, and do it well. In the past, we’ve seen attempts at developer-run dynamic events, where the player’s success decides what happens next, but most of the time the idea of a dynamic world usually runs down to which guild/clan/corporation owns what territory. Eve Online, Darkfall, Mortal Online, etc, pretty much the same idea.

Over at Aventurine, the devs have been working on expanding and fleshing the lore of Darkfall, the latest being about a nomadic race called the Vargashi. The new lore is going to be used, according to a blog post, to spur on new dynamic quests. The blog doesn’t go into much detail, but does offer one example of a Vargashi NPC going into a town to request help in dealing with the Mahrim, or tasking players with aiding the nomadic race, even going against the person’s own race in some cases.

Overall it sounds like these dynamic quests won’t be necessarily world-changing, but rather on a more randomly timed, do-it-as-it-comes scale. Whether or not a player completing/failing the quest will have any impact on the world is yet to be seen.

In a blog post today, Aventurine discussed that the quests are being rewritten, with faction quests being more helpful towards newbies. Plans are also in place to optimize NPC cities to be more accessible, redistributing monster spawn, NPC locations, and dungeons, and far more than I can post here. You can read all about it on the link above, it is a long and very interesting read if you’re a current/ex/prospective player of Darkfall.

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