Tag: Derek Smart

Quick Look: Alganon, Fall of the Ourobani Comic

I review Alganon’s comic book: Fall of the Ourobani.


Alganon lore is a topic I am not fully versed in. The game spans two factions divided by race (Humans and Talrok), in an endless battle over territory, power, and resources. Through past updates, Quest Online has expanded the lore through the library and via in-game updates. This winter sees the release of the next Alganon expansion, introducing the Ourobani race. To prepare for the expansion, Quest Online is releasing a comic book titled Fall of the Ourobani, the plot leading into the events that occur when the expansion launches later this year.

The first issue sets the stage for the expansion, introducing some key players to the Ourobani race. Bana’Serit, the future queen of the Ourobani, Tasa’harr, a member of the Ourobi Order, seeking a powerful weapon called the Worldhammer hidden in an ancient temple. The god of the Ourobani, the appropriately named Ouroban, is said to be so powerful (by his followers) that the Asharr and Kujix temporarily set their differences aside to destroy the faction.

Graphically, Fall of the Ourobani fits in with the art style of Alganon itself, and the desperate action of the Ourobani to get through the portal and escape the impending Asharr and Kujix armies almost gives the player a sense of sympathy toward the race. Every character is uniquely detailed, with pulsing muscles and flowing robes, each easily distinguishable from those around them. For instance, Tasa’harr is instantly recognizable as a Magus, even before the narration describes him as such. The dialogue, however, is one of the weakest links of the chain, with a lot of exposition, presumably to compensate for the fact that the story, from start to finish, is only 18 pages.

Overall the comic reveals a good chunk of lore, giving a proper introduction to the barbarian-styled race of the Ourobani as well as setting the stage for why the race is suddenly making its way back into Alganon, what they want, and why players should feel compelled to slaughter them by the thousands. It’s worth a read, even if you’re just slightly interested in the lore surrounding Alganon.

The digital comic will be available in about three weeks, although sadly the print copy will only be available at the two Comic Cons. Fall of the Ourobani was created by DC Comics and hopefully will not be the only issue in the series. If anything, the comic is excellent hype material for the upcoming expansion, and advertisement for Quest Online’s upcoming MMO Line of Defense.

This quick look was completed using the full release copy of Fall of the Ourobani, supplied to MMO Fallout by Quest Online. The images used are from the preview pages available at Alganon’s website.

Derek Smart Talks: Alganon, Free To Play


I know what you’re thinking: “Omali, you clearly don’t have a punchline ready for this segment,” and you would be one hundred percent correct, but I have good news. In my continuing efforts to branch MMO Fallout from the normalcy of sarcastic comments, random videos, rants, sales, and “I told you so” moments, I’ve decided to start trying to get interviews with various developers, starting with my first phase: “How Free Can You Be?” I’ll be trying to get interviews with various free to play developers, about their outlook and particular take on the business model.

So with fresh taser burns from my daily trash looting at the Bioware offices, I chatted with Derek Smart about Quest Online and Alganon.

First off, I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy day to talk about Alganon and Quest Online. For those reading this who might not play Alganon, tell us a bit about Alganon and Quest Online and yourself.

I have been a game developer for over twenty years mostly focusing on hardcore space games developed at a company which I founded and own, 3000AD, Inc.

Quest Online was founded and seed funded in 2006 by Greg Wexler and some other dude who used to work for him at one of his other companies, Mortgage Coach. The company developed the Alganon MMO game which was released back in 2009 prematurely by that very dude (later terminated) and to well publicized disastrous results. So I was brought in by the majority investors to head the company, rescue and finish Alganon etc. I’ve been heading the company and leading the team since then.

The holy grail of free to play developers is to strike a center where the player is not so encumbered by the cash shop that he feels forced to spend, but at the same time has an incentive to throw money down on items/equipment. What is Quest Online’s aim for the cash shop’s presence in-game?

To be perfectly honest, we were lucky in some regard. You see, the game was not developed to be a F2P game supported by a cash shop. So when we literally cobbled that in, the game’s original design gave players all this content for free because there was only so far that we could go in order to monetize the game without doing a major amount of work. So the end result is that when we made the switch from a subscription model, we didn’t get much push back from the gamers because they could play the game without having to buy a single thing.

In the past year we have added numerous items to the cash shop, some essential and some vanity and we’re continuing to do that periodically. For example when we started implementing PvP we took the opportunity to added more cash shop items without making it so that the player with the most money wins. Though that can in fact happen at some point; but that’s the nature of the beast. 🙂

The level boost (about $10 total for the last twenty levels) is really the only “essential” buy to experience all the content available in Alganon. Can you give us an idea about what the big nonessential sellers are? Vanity pets, dyes, potions, boons, gear, temporary/permanent mounts?

That is correct. I don’t have the metrics on hand, so I really don’t know what the big sellers are.

Do you believe in the 85-10-5 rule for cash shop games (85% pay nothing, 10% pay a small amount, 5% pay substantially)?

Absolutely because that is pretty much the sort of metrics that I am seeing in our weekly reports. For Alganon, since you can play for such a long time without having to spend a single dime, our metrics – while improving in leaps and bounds – tend to be all over the map. That comes with the territory.

Alganon offers scaling PvP armor (the armor stats level with the player) on the tribute market. How is the tribute armor balanced so Alganon doesn’t become a buy to win game?

I don’t really have the answer to that because I don’t know. What I do know is that the guys try to make sure that the game doesn’t end up being “pay to win” like so many other F2P games out there.

The manner in which Quest Online has set up the tribute market is rather non-intrusive (barring perhaps the last twenty levels). How do you go about attracting a player’s attention to the tribute market’s existence, or is that a secondary function of the level cap?

We try to be as discreet as possible because as I mentioned earlier we don’t want to give gamers the wrong impression. While we do want to make money, we want to ensure that gamers stick around long enough to like the game and thus spend money on it so that we can continue to improve on it. We periodically have promos and such but we don’t go out of our way to make them intrusive.

How did Alganon’s advertising campaign in PC Gamer perform? From my personal experience playing, there seems to be a small but noticeable increase in concurrent users on Alganon compared to just six months ago.

It quite well actually. But it wasn’t just PC Gamer; we had campaigns on various online sites as well as other print media such as Beckett’s MMOG and others. All that in addition to our on-going Google and Facebook promos. I tend to spend money wisely, so I don’t believe in just throwing money at a marketing wall. For me, timing is everything and it has to make sense.The game’s population is growing, which is precisely why I am expanding the game as well as branching the IP out to other games.

What do you think the largest barrier is to more people picking up Alganon? Quite a few free to play games have noted a significant (30% in Dungeon Runners) percentage of players never fully download the client after they register an account.

I think it boils down to the MMO version of a perfect storm. We had the disastrous 2009 launch by my predecessor followed by the well publicized drama of his inevitable exit. And to make things worse, the game wasn’t even finished, it was buggy, had missing features etc. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it was a game you had to buy and pay a monthly subscription to play. Yeah, crazy stuff indeed. So there’s all that.

With so many choices out there, getting gamers to come back and take a second look, takes a tremendous amount of work, resources and marketing. So we have been taking it one step at a time. So our biggest barrier is getting gamers to come back; in addition to those who didn’t even bother to even check it out.

Launching off of the previous question, are there any plans for similar promotions in the future? Would Quest Online consider bringing back referral bonuses?

Yes we are considering that and several other promotions which will be announced in the coming weeks. In fact we have a promotion going on this weekend.

Alganon’s saving grace from its launch has been Quest Online’s dedication to fixing up the title, whereas a lot of other companies might have cut their losses, given the figurative finger to the early adopters, and moved on to another project. I think this is why the active Alganon community, although relatively small, are very adamant defenders of the game. Since your arrival, you seemed to have really rallied the development team, improving the game a lot since its relaunch back in 2010. Your thoughts?

Well my first course of action was to see the game completed. Then we had to address the bugs, performance issues, touted but either missing or incomplete features etc. We had to get all that out of the way first in order to assess whether or not Alganon was worth saving in the long term. Of course the business model was rubbish to begin with and simply could not be sustained, so I got rid of that as well and took the game F2P. In the end, it came down to my deciding whether or not there was anything worth saving. So once all those obstacles were out of the way, I made that determination and so I rallied the troops who then hunkered down and just got on with it. It really boils down to focus. We came up with a plan and executed that plan in various steps and phases leading to where we are now: the expansion of Alganon.

On a completely unrelated note, I heard through a very reliable source that you will be present at E3. Will there be any news on Line of Defense?

Yes, we are unveiling the first Alganon expansion, along with a bunch of other good stuff. The PR which should be out on June 7th, contains all the information.

There really isn’t anything new on the Line Of Defense front, other than it is coming along nicely and is looking awesome. We are going to be releasing some new shots once the E3 noise dies down next week. In the mean time, this is the art for the posters and postcards available at the show. http://www.3000ad.com/lod/media/shots/lod_poster.jpg

I want to thank Derek Smart again for taking time away before heading off to E3 to talk to me.

What Happened This Week: 4/17-4/23 Edition


Every week I have a whole list of topics I want to talk about, that don’t fully fit in with the scope of the website. So I came to the decision, why not stick them in a weekly editorial? I’m also using this section to bolster some of the titles that don’t get talked about much here on MMO Fallout.

1. The Final Fantasy XIV Easter Event

I just completed the Easter event for Final Fantasy XIV, or Hatching-Tide as Square calls it. The event description is even more confusing than the announcement, especially given how simple the event itself was. A “scantily clad” woman (game’s description, not mine) is handing out colorful eggs in the three major cities. Every nonspecific number of hours (eight, I believe), you can get a new egg from her. Obtain four eggs, and you can turn them into the gentleman standing by her, in return for an egg hat, which looks rather ornate.

The events up to this point in FFXIV have been rather…passive, is the word I’m looking for. For the Christmas event, players rang bells in cities to obtain random materials that they would use to craft items with (Santa clothing, and food). Unlike a lot of other MMOs, they’re essentially just something to do every eight hours or so that takes up a few minutes at most.

2. People Need To Be Less Defensive

I got into a discussion on Rift with a player who was under the impression that contested territory zones could be captured by enemy forces. After being informed that contested was merely a label for zones that were PvP-mandatory (on PvP servers, you are automatically flagged in these zones), he responded with “well in most MMOs, the term means that the territory can be taken.” His only example was Warhammer Online and Age of Conan. I explained that Warhammer Online was a game strictly based toward territory control, and irregardless I was pretty sure that the game did not use the term “contested territory” for zones that were open for capture. World of Warcraft popularized the term, and since then it has been used almost exclusively to describe pvp-mandatory zones.

After a few minutes, I got a reply, something related to me having the need to “always be right,” and having no issue with making “blunt, personal attacks” against someone for “simply asking a question,” to which I have to say: LIGHTEN UP! Explaining to someone why their statement is wrong is not making a personal attack, and I apologize if I hadn’t properly laden the explanation with “I’m sorry, but…”

And yes, I understand why people are defensive. You can’t ask a question on any MMO without getting barraged with “lol noob,” and other idiotic comments. That being said, people need to better understand the difference between someone who is informing them, and someone who is just responding to be a dick.

3. Can We Drop The Premonition That Rift Is Dynamic?

I took a lot of metaphorical bricks to the face for comparing Rift to a certain other MMO (actually I called it Warhammer 2.0, which I noted would make it World of Warcraft 3.0), but this is what irks me about the game. The Rift system is fun, it offers an alternative to grinding quests, but it is not dynamic. Rifts open in the same spots, they spawn invasions that go to pre-determined locations to set down footholds, and those footholds spawn invaders to attack the exact same locations in the exact same manner. Hell, they even walk down the exact same paths.

Rifts in Rift are essentially a version of Warhammer Online’s public quest system, that are invisible while the timer ticks down, and preventable (by destroying the invasion before it can set down a foothold). In fact, the system itself is really just taking a quest and removing the need to talk to a quest giver.

In one World of Warcraft quest line, you must kill a set amount of two types of Centaur. Turn the quest in for experience and rewards, and you get another quest to kill two different types of Centaur. Turn that in for experience and rewards, and you receive a quest to kill the lead Centaur. In Rift, you start phase 1, killing specific enemies that spawn. Finish the phase for experience and rewards, and you start phase 2: Kill other specific creatures. Finish that phase for experience and rewards, and start phase 3: Kill the boss.

Rift is a fun game. It is polished, it has a wealth of content, and Trion has been patching the game almost daily to ensure content comes out as quickly as possible, as well as tweaking content to appease the player base. Just don’t tell me that the rifts are dynamic.

4. Should Sarcasm Be Ban-Worthy?

I’ve mentioned before on here that I have GM’ed in MMOs (as I still do), and one of the biggest problems we face in handing out infractions is sarcasm, and if this article instills one piece of wisdom on you, let it be this: When using sarcasm in text, always remember your sarcasm tags (/sarcasm). When I read chat logs from players who are reported for, say, attempted account theft, there is no difference between “give me your password and I’ll give you free stuff,” and “give me your password and I’ll give you free stuff.”

So to answer my own question: yes, actually, sarcasm can very well get you banned, depending on how many times you do it. Most people get the idea after their first warning, but you’d be surprised at how many continue to the point where they are permanently removed, and then contact support to complain that they were “only being sarcastic,” and how we “can’t take a joke.” We can take a joke, you just need to work on your timing and presentation to make it funny.

5. If Nobody Plays, Why Is There So Much Lag?

Ask Derek Smart how many people play Alganon, and he’ll say over 100,000 active accounts. Me, on the other hand, I’ve physically come across one other person playing in the past couple months. This begs a very important question for those of us who do play: Why does the server lag and make me feel like I’m on my old DSL connection?

For the fact that any given area is exponentially more populated by mobs than players, Alganon still faces lag-related issues including mobs walking behind you, rubber banding, and unresponsive attacks. It’s never gone as far as dropping my connection, but I have more than a few moments where all activity simply stops for a few seconds.

I find it fairly hard to believe that the population is “growing,” as viewing how the servers react to the current load, a growth in the community would likely result in the servers committing stress-induced hari kari.

That’s all for this week. If you have any specific topics you’d like me to talk about in next week’s column, feel free to leave a comment.

Derek Smart’s New MMO: Line of Defense


Derek Smart Online

It’s easy to forget that Derek Smart still has a vested interest in his 3000A.D series, although a quick look at his twitter profile will reveal that his non-Alganon games are still being patched. Looking at the above screenshot, if your first impression is the gameplay of Earthrise combined with the graphics of our favorite super hero MMOs, you might be closer than you think. According to Line of Defense’s website (which at the time is rather sparse with direct details), LoD will be “twitch-based” and the gameplay surrounding two factions fighting over bases:

In the game, you can play as either a GALCOM military marine or an Insurgent soldier. The primary objective is to gain control of each of the four bases. You do this by waging war as an infantry marine (first or third person), on land or naval vehicles and aircrafts (fighter, gunships etc). You will take over bases by either destroying or hacking into and disabling their defense systems, thus making them vulnerable. You will do this 24-7 and 365 days a year on the Lyrius planet or in the space region above it – and all within a 100% persistent universe.

Sounds like the mass scale ground combat over territory in Planetside, in a freemium system.

Hybrid business model which caters to both F2P and premium models; both with access to in-game monetization.

More information on Line of Defense as it appears. Hopefully the combat will be engaging, because there won’t be any crafting.

No pointless grind. No boring crafting. No inconsequential resource collection. Just pure war on a very large scale.

Derek Smart's New MMO: Line of Defense


Derek Smart Online

It’s easy to forget that Derek Smart still has a vested interest in his 3000A.D series, although a quick look at his twitter profile will reveal that his non-Alganon games are still being patched. Looking at the above screenshot, if your first impression is the gameplay of Earthrise combined with the graphics of our favorite super hero MMOs, you might be closer than you think. According to Line of Defense’s website (which at the time is rather sparse with direct details), LoD will be “twitch-based” and the gameplay surrounding two factions fighting over bases:

In the game, you can play as either a GALCOM military marine or an Insurgent soldier. The primary objective is to gain control of each of the four bases. You do this by waging war as an infantry marine (first or third person), on land or naval vehicles and aircrafts (fighter, gunships etc). You will take over bases by either destroying or hacking into and disabling their defense systems, thus making them vulnerable. You will do this 24-7 and 365 days a year on the Lyrius planet or in the space region above it – and all within a 100% persistent universe.

Sounds like the mass scale ground combat over territory in Planetside, in a freemium system.

Hybrid business model which caters to both F2P and premium models; both with access to in-game monetization.

More information on Line of Defense as it appears. Hopefully the combat will be engaging, because there won’t be any crafting.

No pointless grind. No boring crafting. No inconsequential resource collection. Just pure war on a very large scale.

Alganon Special Pack On Sale


Player Vs Price

Alganon has no subscription, and technically doesn’t even have a client price. You can download the game and play it for free, although doing so will incur some penalties on your account. For instance, you won’t be able to create a guild, access chat channels past say/tell/group/guild, get the last 20 levels, and you will have a decreased quest log capacity, not to mention additional character slots. Now you can buy all of these separately, which can get expensive (Over eight thousand Tribute, or about $40) or you can buy the super pack, which costs 3,627 tribute (You’ll need to invest $20 worth of tribute to buy it).

Quest Online regularly has sales on the Super Pack, and it is currently discounted to 3627 tribute, about twenty dollars USD. If you don’t care about most of the perks with the pack, you can always ditch guild creation and buy the communications and level cap for $10. In fact, you might want to ditch the communications perk, as Derek Smart posted on the forums:

I already asked for chat channel restrictions to be removed. In fact, I asked for that months ago once I heard about it; but the team gave a compelling reason for having it that way. Just last week, I overruled that and asked for it to be changed. Once the spam starts flying (now that they can do it with impunity just by downloading a free copy of the game), I hope nobody complains about it. There is a reason (stated many times) why it was done this way.

Check out Alganon: http://www.alganon.com

Type MMO Fallout in the reference box, and enjoy a 0% discount. Just don’t use me as collateral, because then your transaction is guaranteed to be declined.

Note: I don’t think there’s a reference box, but if there is MMO Fallout is not affiliated with Alganon or Quest Online, nor is this a solicited advertisement. But if there is a reference box, type MMO Fallout in for poops and giggles.

It Takes Two To PvP: Alganon Edition


Player Vs ____

Quest Online has been talking for a few months now about bringing player vs player combat to Alganon, and has recently laid out their plans for the next few months on how exactly this will work. Starting foremost, Alganon will see the addition of open world PvP, allowing flagged players from opposite factions to fight one another anywhere. Additionally, consensual PvP has been added in the form of dueling, non lethal. The next phase will introduce towers and keeps, ala Warhammer Online, into the world for the two factions to fight over. Finally, Alganon is looking to bring in instanced battlegrounds, ala a whole lot of MMOs.

Suffice to say, Player Vs Player, especially that on the keep/tower/instance level, requires players which Alganon, also suffice to say, does not have. As much as I love Alganon and praise it here on MMO Fallout, I fully acknowledge that given how difficult it is to get a conversation going on Alganon, getting a duel or a war going will be next to impossible. I hear Quest Online is going to have some sort of marketing campaign (Not that there’s much better marketing than an article on the MMO Fallouts, right?), but right now the game is for all intent and purpose…single player.

Also, is Alganon trying to be more like Warhammer Online? In the November newsletter, not only have they announced a keep system (capturing towers and keeps, to rush in and kill the keep leader). I brushed this off until I saw the plans to introduce a renown points system that gives access to more powerful PvP weapons and armor. Renown? Keeps? You cunning devils, Quest Online, you had them thinking the whole time that Alganon was pulling from WoW, when in fact it was pulling from WAR!

Of course Alganon does have one up on WAR, for starters it’s free to play, no subscription required.

More on Alganon as it appears. Until then, make sure you’ve paid your tithes to Tzeentch…

It’s Finally Over! QOL Vs Allen Ends In Settlement.


OBJECTION!

File this one under “oh thank God!” Yesterday brought wonderful news from Derek Smart of Quest Online. The ongoing back and forth lawsuit between Quest Online and David Allen has ended. In a press statement, Quest Online announced:

Quest Online, LLC, today announced that the lawsuit filed in the Maricopa County Superior Court (Case # CV2010-010391) in June 2010 against previous LLC Manager and Alganon creator, David Allen, has been settled with the purchase of Mr. Allen’s equity in the LLC; and that Mr. Allen is no longer associated with Quest Online, LLC.

There isn’t much to be said about the terms of the settlement, other than that Quest Online apparently purchased the rest of Allen’s equity in the company, and that Allen no longer had any association with Quest Online. Now we can finally get back to Alganon, and speaking of Alganon, did you know that the game no longer has a client price?

More on Alganon as it appears.

It's Finally Over! QOL Vs Allen Ends In Settlement.


OBJECTION!

File this one under “oh thank God!” Yesterday brought wonderful news from Derek Smart of Quest Online. The ongoing back and forth lawsuit between Quest Online and David Allen has ended. In a press statement, Quest Online announced:

Quest Online, LLC, today announced that the lawsuit filed in the Maricopa County Superior Court (Case # CV2010-010391) in June 2010 against previous LLC Manager and Alganon creator, David Allen, has been settled with the purchase of Mr. Allen’s equity in the LLC; and that Mr. Allen is no longer associated with Quest Online, LLC.

There isn’t much to be said about the terms of the settlement, other than that Quest Online apparently purchased the rest of Allen’s equity in the company, and that Allen no longer had any association with Quest Online. Now we can finally get back to Alganon, and speaking of Alganon, did you know that the game no longer has a client price?

More on Alganon as it appears.

Alganon Going Free To Play…Again.


“Back in June, I decided to put a moratorium on articles dealing with the pending litigation between David Allen and Quest Online, mainly owing to my desire to publish something about Alganon that didn’t have to do with lawsuits or the back and forth blog posting between Derek Smart and David Allen. That being said, I haven’t had much to talk about lately on the title, although I still push to find something new from the indie MMO. A lot of quotes from Derek Smart detailing the events leading up to and following David Allen’s forced departure and the direction he is taking Alganon, but that’s about it.”

I know what you’re thinking: That’s some pretty devilish timing, Omali. You wish for some news to publish about Alganon and BAM! down it comes from the sky. As many of you will remember, Alganon earlier this year dropped its subscription model until the game could fully launch under a free to play model with a cash shop. Up until now, Alganon has required you to purchase a client, one that has been permanently slashed to around $20 on most digital distribution websites.

So Quest Online is making it even easier to get into the game by removing the cost of the client. Starting this Friday (the 13th), you will no longer need a client to play Alganon. If you’ve already purchased the client (like I did), then Quest Online is offering you perks in the form of more character slots, higher ability/level caps, a higher quest limit, and more right off the bat, that players coming into the free-client game will have to pay for access to.

In the newsletter, Quest Online has also announced two new classes (Champion and Reaver) that are redesigned from the soldier class, with more updates being added, and more content on the way.

With literally no barrier to entry, now is the best time it has ever been to get into Alganon.