Tag: En Masse Entertainment

Our Thoughts: TERA Gaikai


TERA is 50 gigabytes. That is as many as five tens and that is terrible. For some, fifty gigabytes may be too much of an investment in terms of bandwidth or time to give TERA’s seven day trial a go. Luckily this is where Gaikai comes in. Founded in 2008, Gaikai is an online cloud-based streaming service being employed by a growing selection of MMORPGs. The trials through Gaikai are currently very limited, both in time in and content. The benefit to this, however, is that the game can literally be booted up in seconds, playable directly through your browser.

You can’t beat Gaikai in terms of accessibility. You can play without ever having to sign up for an account, entering your email address or personal information, or linking your Facebook/Twitter/Bebo accounts. At the offset, you have three classes to choose from: Warrior, sorcerer, and lancer. The preview encompasses the introduction, starting the player off at level 20 with the associated class skills already unlocked.

As you can see, the graphics have been scaled back somewhat to function properly through the browser. Following a lengthy bit of running around talking to various NPCs, receiving equipment, and a lot of walking, the player is introduced to the combat mechanics and the demo ends with the player fighting one of the game’s big-ass monsters.

The demo is only disappointing in the sense that at least half of the demo is wasted on the most boring section: Tutorial. Once you get to the part where there is actual combat, the demo feels almost over and all you’ve accomplished is reading through quest text. For someone who has never played TERA, this is probably not the best presentation to make them transition on to the full seven day trial. All other systems except for combat are not mentioned at all.

I’m sure TERA will eventually support a better demo on Gaikai, but this feature feels rushed and ultimately is unsatisfying and poorly marketed as a result. Even with the scaling back of graphics, the game still looks great and handles just as well as it does in the full game, but overall it just feels half-baked.

En Masse Entertainment should create a Gaikai specific demo instead of simply plucking the first area and show off more of the game, including crafting, the political system, and broker.

TERA Launches With Strong 7-Day Trial


When you launch your game with both a client cost and a subscription, gathering new customers after the initial rush of early adopters can get pretty hard. In recent years, level-based trials with no time limit have replaced the one to two week trials of the past. Another hard wall that developers have faced in bringing in new customers, even with the free trials, is the growing size of game clients. Back when Dungeon Runners shut down, the developers noted that a large percentage of players would never even finish downloading the client, and Dungeon Runners was free!

TERA launches its seven day trial with some pretty generous offerings. Players are able to level up 8 characters to level 23 on one server (assuming you can do that in seven days), with some restrictions to certain chat channels, trade brokers, and player vs player combat. Trial accounts are also not allowed to vote in the elections, so put your vote-rigging plans to rest.

Additionally, if you don’t want to take on the 50 gigabyte installation that is TERA, you can try the limited Gaikai streaming trial. There is nothing to install for this trial, however it only lasts 30 minutes and you are restricted to the warrior, sorcerer, and lancer classes. Additionally, Gaikai services are only available in the United States and Europe.

Hit up the link below for details on both the 7-day trial and the Gaikai streaming demo.

(Source: Try TERA)

TERA/The Old Republic Discuss Server Transfers


Since I know how much you all love hearing about server transfers, I’ve lumped both games in the same article.

You may be aware of TERA’s pre-launch woes, particularly a lacking in space on player vs player servers. Alongside the release of a new PvP server, En Masses is opening temporary free server transferal for all players. Transfers are immediate, free of charge, and will remain so until the server populations level out. You can not transfer between PvP and PvE servers, and your character cannot have any chronoscrolls. For a full list of the restrictions, check out the announcement here. After the announcement, transfers will remain free if used for the purpose of balancing server population.

Now for games that have been released. Over on the Old Republic, Bioware has announced that server transfers will be held in waves, beginning in early summer. Players will be limited in which servers are able to transfer from and which servers can be transferred to, with more details to come as the time approaches. After, server transfer limits will open up, allowing anyone to transfer anywhere, although not necessarily for free. Presumably, if servers drop enough in population, Bioware may take the Warhammer route and retire servers.

 

Korean Supreme Court Finds Bluehole Innocent, Three Employees Guilty


Back when the internet was powered by Steam and everything cost a nickel NCSoft sued Bluehole Studios, a company made up of ex-Lineage III developers. There has been a bit of confusion with convictions being upheld while others were later appealed and overturned, and I hadn’t noticed that the case has made its way to the South Korean Supreme Court, who yesterday came out with their ruling.

Bluehole Studios has been found innocent of any charges of wrongdoing. However, three employees were convicted of leaking trade secrets and must both pay two billion won in restitution ($1.7 million USD, approximately). The story might be over for now for Bluehole Studios, but the three employees mentioned now face criminal charges for which sentencing will take place at a later date.

In January, NCSoft launched a lawsuit in the United States to keep TERA from releasing, and from the outside looking in this ruling does not bode well for a guilty verdict. While the case in Korea has successfully taken down those responsible for the theft, NCSoft has failed in their other objective: Shutting down TERA.

So those of you on the bench in regard to preordering TERA can probably breath a sigh of relief and grab those credit cards. TERA launches in just a few weeks.

(Source)