Cornered Rat Software – MMO Fallout

Lessons From 2013 #4: Threats From Devs

Despite some of the criticisms I make here at MMO Fallout, I have a decent relationship with most developers that I talk about. I don’t water down my editorials and for the most part they are fully aware that anything negative is said with the best of intentions. That out of the way, MMO Fallout has received several threats of defamation and slander lawsuits, all of which disappeared when pressed to explain precisely what was said that was false or published with the intention of damaging said company/individual. Over at MMORPG.com, however, 2013 saw the delisting of two games due to the actions of their developers. Back in March, WWII Online was removed completely after Cornered Rat Software threatened to sue over comments made by users in the forums. Just a month later, Jason Appleton threatened the website over comments made about Greed Monger, resulting in the game also being removed.

Forums for MMORPG.com and big video games are often toxic pools of hatred, but a place where someone is allowed to vent their frustration, even if it is poorly worded, incorrect, or agenda-driven, is always preferable to one where the developer has a strangle hold and silences any criticism. The unfortunate side of the MMO genre is that as the market continues to push itself far past the saturation point, with games shutting down left and right, the very developers who can’t afford to push their customers away are doing just so, and they are the same people who will be sitting alone, wondering where everyone has gone and why no one returns their calls anymore.

This lesson of 2013 is that websites are not responsible for the statements that their forum users make, although if you want to shoot your potential for publicity in the head, you should target the largest MMO websites first to convince everyone else to stop covering your game.

World War II Online Greenlit On Steam

World War II Online: Battleground Europe has been greenlit by Valve. Battleground Europe joins the ranks of 25 games approved for release on September 18th, and while we won’t actually see the game show up on the Steam platform for a while, the gears are already in motion.

Thank you to all of our fans and believers, fellow steam supporters, for helping us pave the way to make this unique game come to the steam community. We’re sure you have a lot of questions and are curious to our release. We’ll keep you up to speed via announcements as this develops.

Congratulations to the Cornered Rat Software team and hopefully the release will give the game a much needed boost in population.

(Source: Steam)

WWII Online Removed From MMORPG.com By Cornered Rat Software

You may not have noticed that World War II Online suddenly went missing from MMORPG.com earlier today. The main game page for WWII Online and the forum directory became inaccessible, although threads were not deleted and can still be reached and posted in with direct links. The removal came with no immediate comment by either MMORPG.com staff or a developer, leading to speculation that the game’s sudden absence was due to anything from a technical glitch to demands by Cornered Rat Software.

Well the latter group is correct. The removal of WWII Online was at the request of Cornered Rat Software, as MMORPG.com administrator Meddle posted, confirming on the forums.

CRS requested that we remove the forums from the site. Our policy is to also remove the game listing as well in this event.

We’ve discussed here at MMO Fallout before that Cornered Rat Software doesn’t exactly have great track record on dealing with criticism, what with a very heavily moderated forum that is mostly closed off to the public and only accessible to accounts with active subscriptions. Being a third party website, the WWII Online forums at MMORPG have become a platform for current and ex-customers to vent their frustrations with Cornered Rat Software without fear of being banned in retaliation or simply having their threads shut down. As a result of the clash between former and current players, the forum subsection ultimately became a never ending, out of control flame war.

To MMORPG.com’s credit, however, the removal of the game’s forums does come at a high price: The complete removal of WWII Online from the website period. Whether or not CRS sees this as a preferable alternative to what was being posted is up for speculation.

[Community Concerns] Antwerp And Emergency Maintenance

Welcome to another edition of Community Concerns, a weekly editorial that looks at specific issues affecting various MMOs. Most of our topics are submitted by readers and (for one reason or another) rely mainly on player testimony.

Battleground Europe continues to rage on with a small yet very passionate and vocal community. World War 2 continues to be fought on the virtual battlefields, and with a game focused on capturing territory and one based solely in player vs player combat, you’re bound to have a good deal of drama in the community. For some players, however, a recent string of incidences involving server maintenance and the capture of an important strategic point became the straw that broke the camel’s back and resulted in an unknown number of people ending their subscriptions. To make a long story short, the Axis had spent several hours attempting to capture an important area (Antwerp) when Cornered Rat Software suddenly announced the servers would be coming down for maintenance, undoing the efforts of the Axis players. This came on the heels of another important area (Aarschot) which had undergone the same treatment about a week prior. For those not familiar with World War II Online, battles can last many hours, especially when fighting over important areas.

Whenever the discussion comes down to malice vs competence as a driving force, I tend to lean towards competence being to blame. After all, from an outside perspective it makes little sense that Cornered Rat Software would intentionally risk the goodwill of half of their player base because the team they personally rooted for wasn’t winning. Rather, based on commentary by the community, the real issue comes down to the server maintenance in itself, and how the lack of proper developers has resulted in Battleground Europe degenerating into a state where emergency server resets are required just to keep the game running at a stable level. According to Cornered Rat Software, some of Battleground Europe’s tech dates back to 1999-2001, which may help explain why some of the issues with the game architecture have gone unfixed.

If the maintenance, whether emergency or simply unscheduled, stems from an inability to fix the underlying cause, or an inability to hire someone to fix the underlying cause, that doesn’t bode well for Cornered Rat Software. If certain players are correct and Cornered Rat Software is indeed using server maintenance to throw the campaign in favor of the Allies to achieve as close to an even victory rate as they can get, well that is even worse. It doesn’t help that Cornered Rat Software doesn’t have a great record for dealing with criticism in a mature or professional manner. Battleground Europe’s forums are mostly closed off from the public, even from free player accounts, and are reportedly heavily moderated with little room for criticism over Cornered Rat Software’s lack of active employees working on the title.

This isn’t the first time Cornered Rat Software has caused controversy over its relation to the community. Most recently, Community Manager Xoom caught some flak last year for referring to free players as “free loaders” which he later apologized for. But people say things a little more bluntly than they expect all the time. The dealings of CRS on the forums and over at MMORPG.com are small beans in comparison to shutting the server down unannounced and undoing hours of effort by players on a semi-regular basis.

Mindless, But Wealthy, Drones: Battleground Europe Edition

Put-Your-Mac-Head-Inside-WWII-Online-Battleground-Europe-2 — If only...

For those of you who haven’t heard of Battleground Europe, it is widely regarded as the first MMOFPS in history, released in 2001 and is still running to this day. As someone who played Battleground Europe back when it was still just WWII Online, I have to say the quality of the title was unmatched, both in the implementation and the sheer force that the allies and axis threw upon one another in massive fields, towns, and cities, experiencing everything from raids to enormous bombing runs.

And as any MMO goes, Battleground Europe peaked, and began its dip into the game that exists today: A game that is even more barren and lifeless than its successor in the field, Planetside. I guess you could say the main difference between Planetside and Battleground Europe at the moment is that Planetside at least was successful enough to spawn a sequel.

But this article isn’t about making fun of Cornered Rat Software, or their near-comatose game. Unbeknownst to me, and 99% of the gaming community, the guys at CRS have been upping the funding lately, with the Builder’s Program (private investment) and through the increase in the base subscription price to $17.99 a month. Sure you can subscribe for three months and bring that price down, but we’re talking about the base entrance price for a monthly fee.

There is nothing to be worried about, like the game tanking, however. If the posts on the related threads are anything to go off of, Cornered Rats has quite a number of players willing to pay for subscriptions, often on multiple accounts, as a “donation,” despite not even playing the game. That must be nice for the folks at CRS, having people who expect literally nothing out of you, and are willing to pay you for just that. I also witnessed posters claiming that they hated the change in subscription, but would continue paying the price just to stop any snowballing of people leaving.

Whether or not World War II Online is a good shooter is irrelevant to the fact that not only will free trial players be walking into a dearth of population, but then they’ll be enticed with a cost higher than any triple-a MMO on the market. And the drones on the Battleground Europe forums can throw inflation and costs of development as much as they want. $15 is less funding than $17.99, but $0 and a disgruntled customer who isn’t coming back is far, far worse.

If you’re going to ask for higher prices, you’d better have something to offer that meets that increase. Games far more successful and independent companies far smaller than Cornered Rats have gone more years without raising their subscription price, or putting payment plans into effect with termination fees. So please, don’t try to play this off as a special case. It isn’t, and you aren’t.