Tag: Earth Eternal

MMOs: Bring Them Back, Or Let Them Lie


I love reading about MMOs being resurrected, almost as much as I hate reading about MMOs being resurrected. On one hand, it’s great to see that a game I once thought dead has attracted the attention of another enterprising company. But then I sit back and ask myself, “do I really want someone else touching my game? Tainting my memories?”

So I will be publishing several lists of dead MMOs, and whether I feel they should be brought back or if they have given us all that they can.

The Matrix Online

As much as many of us would love to see The Matrix Online make a return, the franchise hit its heyday a long time ago and it is not coming back. Bringing back The Matrix Online would be a financial investment not only in infrastructure but requiring new people to learn how to code and maintain the system, an investment that only a person of questionable sanity would be willing to forego.

There isn’t enough interest in the Matrix anymore to justify bringing this ancient one back, so sorry but:

Verdict: Let It Lie.

Bringing Tabula Rasa back would require a bit of a lore-shift for the MMO. After all, since NCSoft worked the closure into the game, when the servers shut down on February 28th, 2009, it resulted in the AFS forces detonating a massive bomb that resulted in the mutual destruction of the AFS and Bane forces. So that leaves us with humanity: dead, and Bane: dead.

Of course, re-writing history is the easy part. But were someone to purchase the rights and the code, they would find the remnants of what could have been a masterpiece, and was gearing up for just that when NCSoft shuttered the title. Somewhat like Star Wars Galaxies, in the months after NCSoft announced the shut down, Destination Games worked tirelessly to introduce many of the features players had been asking for and probably quitting over since the game launched.

Buying Tabula Rasa would be far easier and likely much less expensive than working on an original sci-fi MMO of the same variety.

Verdict: Pitchblack Games Should Buy Tabula Rasa

Absolutely not. Take this from someone who supported Earth Eternal through every company and iteration the game has gone through so far. I personally found Earth Eternal to be a charming game, but commercial success this game is not. Consider the fact that even when Earth Eternal was 100% free to play, that no one was playing should be an indication that any money spent into reviving this title for a third run would be wasting money that could have gone to a more productive service.

Like a bonfire.

Verdict: Its Zombified Corpse Has Liquified. Stop.

Sure, why not. Lego Universe was a great game and there are many reasons it should be brought back, not the least of which being that LEGO continued the great NetDevil tradition of poorly advertising their game and then wondering why it didn’t gather the attraction they so desired. If LEGO Universe is to be brought back, however, some changes should come with it.

For starters, LEGO could do well with a similar subscription plan to Wizard 101: allowing families to bundle their subscriptions for a discount. Additionally, the game would need a more open trial system than it had pre-shutdown, and LEGO would have to do some real advertising.

LEGO Universe has potential, and not the kind that you use to describe a broken system. The game is fine, more people just needed to know about it.

Verdict: Resurrect it.

I have no idea how much it would cost to translate Everquest Online Adventures to a download-format and bring it back on the Playstation Network, but I’m guessing it would be expensive. When EQOA shut down, it wasn’t because the game was busted or Sony was going under, but simply because the game had become old.

There were no new players coming into Everquest Online Adventures, and for good reason: The Playstation 2 is a dead console and the Playstation 3 is not backwards compatible (sans 1st generation). Additionally, finding new copies of Everquest Online Adventures was near impossible, or otherwise extremely expensive. Unlike other MMOs, EQOA never had the opportunity to transition to a download format, and once the game was off store shelves, its death sentence was written.

Unfortunately, translating the game to be playable on new Playstation 3’s may be too expensive or even impossible on the very antiquated engine.

Verdict: Resurrect If You Can, Though You Probably Can’t.

Earth Eternal Shuts Down, Again.


Greetings fellow Earth Eternal fans,

It’s been a blast observing the Earth Eternal community participate in the Beta program and your feedback has been invaluable

Unfortunately, Earth Eternal will be saying goodbye on Thursday November 24th 2011 at 9:00 pm EST

We are still determining future plans for Earth Eternal but those have not been finalized and we hope to share them with you as soon as we can

We hope you had an awesome time because we certainly did

The Earth Eternal team

Stay calm, Omali, remember what your therapist told you. I’d be remiss to try and convince any of you that I didn’t know this was coming, especially after my rather scathing remarks about the title a few weeks ago,  but today marks the official announcement that Earth Eternal will be shutting down and similarly to Sparkplay’s announcement, this time around gives even less warning. When the servers come down at 9pm tomorrow night, they will stay off for good (or at least until future plans are determined).

I think I can inject some wisdom into the Earth Eternal team for their next go around: If I have more fingers on one hand than you do developers working on the game, you aren’t investing enough resources and should have seen the performance that Earth Eternal received. But now that the game has shut down a second time, and the community will experience a second character wipe, I should say not to be surprised when, if you do decide to attempt a third launch, your community is not as willing to support you.

How fitting is it that MMO Fallout’s 1,000th article would be about an MMO shutting down for the second time? No I did not plan that out.

Happy 1,000 posts MMO Fallout.

Maybe Earth Eternal Just Isn't Marketable


My first playthrough of Earth Eternal two years ago was rather similar to Gir from Invader Zim watching television, in that I spent most of my first few hours going from character to character thinking to myself “this is the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen…no, this is the most adorable…” I laughed, I cried (scorching my mouth with hot food), I got quickly bored and returned to whatever game I was playing at the time (probably World of Warcraft). Earth Eternal was charming, it had adorable characters and a great art style, but the game itself was boring. The entirety of the game’s content ran down to accept quest, kill creatures, turn in quest. No crafting, and enemies rather rarely dropped any loot at all so even the monotonous task of vendoring became almost wishful thinking. It was almost as if someone sat down and decided to base an entire MMO on the first ten minutes of World of Warcraft.

Where Earth Eternal would be loved by the free to play crowd was in the fact that the cash shop was virtually nonexistent. In fact, during the game’s initial run many of the people I’d talked to responded that they were not even aware of a cash shop until Sparkplay made everything free prior to the game shutting down. And as you know, Earth Eternal recently came back up under a new company and is in open beta.

Unfortunately, the new owner has placed about as much hope in the project, as news down the grapevine reveals that development had ceased for the time being on Earth Eternal, as the developers have been pulled to other projects. The game will stay online, for how long is up for speculation, and the cash shop has not been implemented. Luckily, no one has been fired or laid off, just moved to other projects.

Earth Eternal is a charming game, but suffers from lack of direction and shallow game mechanics. It might be a way to pass the time, but when push comes to shove and the fingers start reaching for one’s pocketbook, you start to see people turning away and finding higher quality products to invest their money into. Earth Eternal is a great novelty, but novelty doesn’t pay the bills, and clearly neither does Earth Eternal.

Maybe Earth Eternal Just Isn’t Marketable


My first playthrough of Earth Eternal two years ago was rather similar to Gir from Invader Zim watching television, in that I spent most of my first few hours going from character to character thinking to myself “this is the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen…no, this is the most adorable…” I laughed, I cried (scorching my mouth with hot food), I got quickly bored and returned to whatever game I was playing at the time (probably World of Warcraft). Earth Eternal was charming, it had adorable characters and a great art style, but the game itself was boring. The entirety of the game’s content ran down to accept quest, kill creatures, turn in quest. No crafting, and enemies rather rarely dropped any loot at all so even the monotonous task of vendoring became almost wishful thinking. It was almost as if someone sat down and decided to base an entire MMO on the first ten minutes of World of Warcraft.

Where Earth Eternal would be loved by the free to play crowd was in the fact that the cash shop was virtually nonexistent. In fact, during the game’s initial run many of the people I’d talked to responded that they were not even aware of a cash shop until Sparkplay made everything free prior to the game shutting down. And as you know, Earth Eternal recently came back up under a new company and is in open beta.

Unfortunately, the new owner has placed about as much hope in the project, as news down the grapevine reveals that development had ceased for the time being on Earth Eternal, as the developers have been pulled to other projects. The game will stay online, for how long is up for speculation, and the cash shop has not been implemented. Luckily, no one has been fired or laid off, just moved to other projects.

Earth Eternal is a charming game, but suffers from lack of direction and shallow game mechanics. It might be a way to pass the time, but when push comes to shove and the fingers start reaching for one’s pocketbook, you start to see people turning away and finding higher quality products to invest their money into. Earth Eternal is a great novelty, but novelty doesn’t pay the bills, and clearly neither does Earth Eternal.

Week In Review: Why Hath WoW Forsaken Me?


Thanks to World of Warcraft’s seven day welcome back week, I have something to hold my attention for seven days, at least until the little girl from The Ring comes through my television set to murder me (the joke’s on her, I’ll be playing The Room on a second television. Try and brave that to kill me). Other than the thought of impending death, I’m having a lot more fun on my recreated toon than I expected. I started a new undead hunter to test out the phasing and new quests. There are a lot of major changes to the game, like the removal of weapon levels and ammunition. I’m taking notes, and I’ll be doing a “Why Aren’t You Playing” on World of Warcraft at some point.

1. Earth Eternal Is Officially Back

At least to the point where you can play it. If you head over to the Earth Eternal website, you can log in with Facebook and install the client. You will need to make sure that the previous Sparkplay version has been uninstalled before you do, as conflicting installations can cause problems. There may be an issue with the requirement to sign in via Facebook, and you may have to wait a little while before the website recognizes that you have the game installed (this happened to me), but otherwise you can jump right in.

Earth Eternal is just as adorable as it was when we left it, and the game has undergone quite a substantial upgrade in the graphics department. Find me in-game, my username is Omali.

2. Bioware Hates The Heterosexuals

This falls into the category of “I wish this wasn’t true.” Over on the Old Republic boards, a poll popped up asking players what type of relationship they will pursue with their companion characters, choosing from same sex, opposite sex, all relationships, or none. Of course, this sparked a bit of a fizzle (not an explosion) on the blogosphere from the lunatic fringe, claiming Bioware was “discriminating against heterosexuals” presumably by not allowing them to spew homophobic drivel on the Old Republic forums.

What this ultimately ends up as is a matter of civil discussion, and people who don’t understand what that means. The subject of homosexuality is a touchy one, but in the context of the thread, Bioware was simply asking about your choice of partner, not your opinion on who will burn in eternal hellflame.

3. I Buy My Gold Straight From Kim Jong Il

This is an odd story, yet not all surprising. According to the New York Times, North Korea is employing hackers to break into South Korean MMOs in order to write bots for them to farm gold to sell for the government (and of course so his son can get his epic mount in World of Warcraft). The outfit that operates the bots reportedly brings in some hard cash, $6 million over two years, and is the same office that operates drug trafficking, counterfeiting, and other illegal practices for the glorious leader.

So the next time you see a gold farmer in-game, ask if you can have Kim Jong Il’s autograph. They like that. Also consider this another reason to gank bots in your favorite MMO. That gold you just looted could keep North Korea from achieving nuclear technology.

4. Firefall is Releasing Similar To Google Mail

In an announcement on the Firefall website, CEO Mark Kern has expressed his interest in launching the free to play MMO as close to the Gmail method as possible. The project is currently in friends and family beta, where it will slowly expand to allow more people. Oddly enough, Kern considers the game already “launched,” and believes that the expanded base is not bringing in new beta testers, but rather simply expanding a low-key launch to a wider audience via invitation.

First person to send me an invitation gets a free…something, I’ll figure it out.

5. Then Again, Darkfall Could See More Success

I admit, I’ve been hard on Darkfall for the past few weeks, given Aventurine’s refusal to acknowledge a wipe. I’ve hinted in the past that the wipe may have to do with the removal of certain skills, and revamping of others, explaining why Aventurine won’t call it a “wipe in the traditional sense,” or why the company feels that the issue won’t be as hot topic as players are turning it into.

What I have seen over the past few weeks is an outbreak of support for a wipe, even going as far as a full wipe. Some see it as a necessity to level the playing field, while others see it as a way to rid the game of ill-gotten gains through bugs, dupes, macroing, and exploits. Overall there appears to be equal pull in both directions on the forums, for and against a wipe of any sort.

My stance throughout all of this has not been predictive. Rather than trying to read the community and predict death or success, I’ve kept to stating the possibilities (on both sides) and citing past examples of wipes and their resulting success, or lack thereof. I’ve leaned a little more toward the death side of the fork in the road, so consider this a balancing “I still have faith this can work out” piece.

Earth Eternal Coming Back, Open Beta in North America Soon


Earth Eternal has been in the pipeline for a long time, since it shut down rather unsurprisingly last August, and it was revealed that the game was indeed sold at an auction but to an unknown buyer. Since then we’ve been speculating on who the buyer is, ultimately turning out to be a rather unknown Japanese developer Sankando. Just recently, Sankando rebooted Eartheternal.com:

Welcome back to the Earth Eternal universe! It’s been a long time since we last explored the exciting world of Earth Eternal but we are proud to announce the return of the US Earth Eternal service this Summer! Currently we are putting the finishing touches on the US server and we plan to open the game into Open Beta very soon. Please visit our forums and meet the fantastic community and dev team and check back often for the latest Earth Eternal updates.

Some information has been revealed already pertaining to the relaunch. Unlike the previous version, the new Earth Eternal will not play through the browser but rather its own client. The open beta is expected to start “very quickly,” so keep tuning in to find more.

Free Because No One Would Pay For It


As much as I hate to say this, the old cardinal rule still stands. While games like Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings, Champions Online, etc went free to play because of the prospect of making more money, there are plenty of products that are free because no one would pay for them otherwise. Dungeons and Dragons Online is about halfway in between, going free because not enough people were willing to get past the initial payment barrier to make the game profitable, but that has no stand on the game’s quality.

I thought about this because of my podcast subscription to Real Time with Bill Maher, a political talk show that airs on HBO, a premium channel. The audio podcast, on the other hand, is available for free on Itunes, and it will remain free because HBO puts less effort into maintaining it than I do with my press (mmofallout gmail) email. Episodes premiere on Friday and don’t make it to iTunes until maybe Monday or Tuesday, if we’re lucky. This week, I managed to download the episode on the following Friday because the files were not uploaded correctly and would not download all week. For a lot of episodes, the podcasts had random skipping, looping audio, and other random issues. For the first few episodes in the season, the episodes weren’t even being uploaded.

The audio issues have been going on since about 2008, according to reviews on iTunes’ app store, so it’s pretty clear that HBO just doesn’t care about the podcast. Yes, it’s free, but I’d be willing to pay the same subscription I have for my other podcasts (about $6-7 a month) if HBO would offer it and increase the quality, not forget to upload episodes, upload them the same day, keep the audio from cutting out, etc. In this stage, however, the quality of the podcast sucks, and I wouldn’t pay a cent to listen to it.

So I thought: What games are such low quality that I wouldn’t pay a dime for them, cash shop or not, and the first game I thought of was Earth Eternal. Now, Earth Eternal was a quaint game, but structurally it was World of Warcraft with everything stripped away except for vendoring trash and killing mobs for quests. That’s it, and that’s why the company crashed after just a few months of the game running. There was no reason to buy anything from the cash shop because the game was so shallow that you never felt compelled to spend money on it. It’s like when you were a kid and your “entrepreneur in training” friend would try to sell you his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or that rock he found on the road that looked like Abraham Lincoln’s hat. It’s funny, until you realize he is completely serious. So you give him an Indian Brush Burn, eat the sandwich, and tell him to stop being such a dork.

I should clarify a bit on the quality aspect, as this doesn’t just apply to the quality of the goods. This is also why I become, and I’ll describe it as a few companies have referred to me, a “disrespectful ass” when I see some games coming out with subscriptions attached to them, and I poke fun at them for having no business sense or etiquette. To announce a shooter that has a subscription and is not Planetside (an open world MMO), you are turning that shotgun around and firing it directly into your feckless noggin. Sure, Global Agenda had a massive amount of initial sales, and when the time came for the subscriptions to renew that game’s population dropped like a drunk in a ball pit. I said the same thing when CitiesXL tried to charge a subscription for its not-really-massively-but-still-charged-as-such multiplayer system, and what happened? They shut it down. They then released a new edition of Cities late last year that featured no multiplayer. If it’s any consolation to people angered by Cities XL’s multiplayer, Monte Crisco as a company was killed off by Cities’ poor sales.

Call of Duty’s subscription might work when it comes out, but I’ll say the same thing for this as I do for MMOs: They ain’t World of Warcraft, and you ain’t Call of Duty. You have neither the built up userbase or the tenure in the gaming world to pull off a stunt where only 2% of the community can opt in and still make you millions of dollars a month.

I used Earth Eternal as my sole example because it’s the only game that came to mind writing this article. I’m sure most of you can think of games that are free because nobody would pay for them otherwise. The fact that Earth Eternal was bought gives me a lot of faith in the genre, however, because if Earth Eternal can find a buyer, any MMO not restricted by legal issues (Star Wars Galaxies by licensing, for instance) has a chance of being bought and reintroduced.

Earth Eternal Is Coming Back…To Japan…


Unfortunately for those of us in the states and Europe, our hopes that Earth Eternal was picked up by Time Warner were dashed when it was announced that a Japanese company, Sankando, had bought the title and was planning to re-release it under the name Ikimonogatari. Unfortunately, this is where the news descends from triumphant to disappointment: Sankando will only release Earth Eternal in Japan, at least for the time being.

Right now our focus is on the Japanese release. We are investigating our options for an English re-release.

My guess is that Sankando wants to test the game in home territory before they go ahead and launch international operations, or invest the money in translating the game to other languages. That does, however, raise some valid skepticism as to the game’s viability and odds of reaching the Western audience. Earth Eternal was, to scope the game broadly, a bare bones browser version of WoW, albeit with adorable characters, that financially collapsed so hard, there is a black hole where the Earth Eternal offices used to be.

Hopefully the Sankando team will pull a Fantasy Earth Zero (In Japan) and turn Earth Eternal into a financial profiteer. MMO Fallout will continue supporting the game, although I have to admit I may refuse to change the category title. The game will always be Earth Eternal.

APB Closed Beta Incoming, Still No Earth Eternal


 

Adorable.

All Points Bulletin and Earth Eternal shut down around the same time last year, give or take about a month, and since then only one of the two has been getting much of any news coverage, and that tile is not Earth Eternal.

Over on the APB front, K2 Networks has been putting out regular blog updates on how the company is planning on dealing with free players, cheaters, private servers, and more. The latest blog post details hopes for a late-February launch of the APB closed beta, although any difficulties may extend that date into March. Closed beta details will be listed next week, but those of you tech-inclined folk may find some interest in the rest of the blog, detailing what K2 is currently doing to get the game back up and running.

Meanwhile, we’ve heard nothing new out of Earth Eternal. Neither the game’s Facebook or Twitter have been updated since around September, although off-site reports indicate that the game has been sold to Time Warner and will be rebooted sometime early this year. I am somewhat disappointed to see the lack of news out of Earth Eternal, especially since the buyer has never officially come out and announced themselves.

With All Points Bulletin, Earth Eternal, and hopefully Hellgate: London being brought back this year, who knows? Perhaps 2011 will be the year of MMO necromancy!

Looking Back, Moving Forward: November 2010


It's funny because it bashes WoW...

Small change in the LBMF structure. Now that November is done, companies are going to have to ramp up work if they’re going to get their game out and hit that 2010 release date. According to the MMORPG.com game list, there are more MMOs apparently slated for release this month than I can care to count.

My biggest disappointment with November was probably that there won’t be a 2011 MMO calendar. The 2010 MMO calendar on my wall, many of the months having various autographs, came out last year to benefit St. Jude Childre’s Research Center, and apparently is not coming back for 2011. I may just buy a Guild Wars 2 calendar, or perhaps just use my Nintendo 2011 calendar I received as part of the Nintendo Club.

The Good:

  • Star Trek Online Free To Play: Sure, Cryptic may be bribing us by saying “play Champions Online free to play and perhaps spend some cash, and maybe we’ll consider throwing you a bone in Star Trek Online,” but who cares? Star Trek Online may be going free to play! Although it will be limited, a free to play transition for Star Trek Online should be just what the game needs to get some big traffic, especially with the changes in response to player gripes, and the introduction of user generated content.
  • K2 Networks Picks Up APB: K2Networks, also known as GamersFirst, picked up the rights to All Points Bulletin and plans on reviving the game early next year, after an extensive patching to make the game suitable for its new free to play environment.
  • PvP In Alganon: Well, technically to have player vs player combat you need more than one player, but we can work on that at a later date. In the November patch, Quest Online added a system for flagging for PvP, as well as dueling. In future patches, Alganon players will see a keep/siege system similar to Warhammer Online, as well as a renown system that players will level up for gear.
  • Pirates of the Burning Sea now Free: Flying Lab Software released the free to play transition to Pirates of the Burning Sea this month.

The Bad:

  • No City? I’m On Break: A company royally breaking their game in a patch is not all too uncommon, in fact I can name at least one game (rhymes with ShroomTape) where such an event occurs every other week. When Mortal Online released a patch that inadvertently removed a city, killing its occupants and creating a gigantic void for players who came anywhere near it, much of the angry response came not because of the glitch itself, but because of the response. The players were told that the missing city could not be replaced for a few days, because the developers were off for the weekend.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Not Satisfactory: It isn’t often a company comes right out and says “our game isn’t satisfactory,” but Square Enix did with Final Fantasy XIV, and after bad news on the financial grounds, they are committed to keeping their current subscribers (who haven’t paid a dime in subscription fees three months after release) and bringing in new players. To top off this need for players, I found that stores in the US, and possibly other countries, are pulling Final Fantasy XIV from shelves. Target and WalMart are now only selling the title online.
  • Star Gate: No More Resistance: Square Enix isn’t the only group getting a double whammy this month, as Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment announced that they had won the lawsuit against Fresh Start Studios, gaining their assets back for Stargate Worlds. Unfortunately, MGM terminated the agreement with Cheyenne over the Stargate license, meaning for right now the MMO is dead. Later on in November, Fresh Start announced that Stargate Resistance would be shutting down early next year.
  • Aion Million Man March: Later on in November, mmosite reported on a protest in Aion China against the rampant botting in the game. An estimated thirty thousand players appeared to congest cities in a number of servers in protest, shutting down four servers in the process.

The “What’s Happening in December?”:

  • Earth…Something or Other: Earth Eternal shut down back in August after the developers stopped paying the bills, and I think it’s safe to assume that Sparkplay Media’s CEO is now unemployed. We still don’t know who purchased the game, although all signs point to Time Warner, and there is no indication when the game will be brought back online. Guess we’re in for another month of waiting.
  • Anarchy In The Cash Shop: Anarchy Online last month launched the game’s brand new cash shop, offering everything from level packs, stims, and more for a nominal fee. I’ll be watching to see if there are any financial reports gloating on the success of the cash shop, or if its existence is merely pushed to the back as something of an embarrassment.
  • Cataclysm Shakes WoW: Oh look, a mention of World of Warcraft on MMO Fallout! Although the damage to the World of Warcraft has already been done, for the most part, in the Shattering event, Cataclysm launches in just a few days bringing new races, new areas, and generally a whole lot of new to the World of Warcraft.
  • And More!
http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/problem/stereoty.h