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Tag: Europe
[NM] Bad Press: Don’t Read Too Much Into Konami’s Trademark Renewals
Konami this week silently renewed its trademarks for Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid in Europe and the press is already speculating on what this could mean: A Playstation Classic lineup? Remakes? Remasters? A surprise announcement at the game awards? Don’t hold your breath.
This story comes up whenever a developer is found to renew trademarks in some territory and while the speculation will certainly bring in views and thus ad revenue, the answer is rarely newsworthy. Right now the only upcoming Metal Gear related release that the public is aware of is Metal Gear Solid on the Playstation Classic. Apart from that, all is silent over at the smouldering remains of Kojima Productions.
That said, the fact that Konami is renewing the Metal Gear trademarks is nothing to get prematurely excited about. Outside of defunct developers, this process is done essentially on an automated basis or by third parties in order to ensure that said trademarks don’t lapse. Nintendo still owns trademarks for games dating back to the arcades and NES games from the 80’s that they have no intention of ever selling or developing sequels for, yet don’t want the trademark to lapse.
Konami may never develop another Metal Gear Solid game again, but they aren’t going to let the trademark expire because that means other parties could use it, and if there’s one thing that game developers hate it’s other people making use of their unwanted property.
Surprise! APB Reloaded Soft Launches On Xbox One
It’s been a while since Reloaded Productions first announced that APB Reloaded would be hitting consoles, so it came as a bit of a surprise when the announcement dropped last night that the game was now live. European Xbox One users can access a soft launch of the MMO while players in the US will have to wait a while longer.
The soft launch is being treated as more of a beta test than a live product, with users reporting major issues on the game’s forums. Cash shop purchases have also been disabled for the time being.
(Source: APB Reloaded)
Shanda Games In Severe Damage Control After Losing Two Years Of Data
Shanda Games is performing serious PR damage control after a “severe technical failure” resulted in two years worth of data being lost in their MMO Dragon Nest. While characters, gold, DNP, and AC are still intact, virtually everything else has been lost. The good news is, according to the news post, Shanda is capable of reconstructing lost data outside of the game, and will be providing players with a reimbursement package and a compensation package.
All titles, missions, quests, achievements, NPC points, guild points, cooking details, fishing details, trading house items, as well as inventory and storage items are gone for now. Cash Items have also been wiped.
When the servers go live, all characters will be jumped up to level 80. In addition, all characters will have their mandatory and relevant missions completed, along with 100 gold, legendary level 70 equipment, and epic level 80 equipment upgraded to +10. Cash shop reimbursement will be based on how much you spent between November and January, with all purchases prior to November being sent out over the course of the next week.
There is a ton of information regarding player compensation, which you can read at the link below. It’s hard to imagine that there are publishers that still operate their games without redundancies in cases of issues like this.
(Source: Dragon Nest)
Mechwarrior Online Introduces New Server
Mechwarrior Online has continued its global expansion with servers now available for European gamers, situated out of Strassbourg. Pirhana Games has revealed that average ping times have dropped by an average of 50% with some areas seeing more than a 75% boost to latency. Servers will be available for Oceanic players next month.
“The MechWarrior Online community has always been competitive by nature given the fundamentals of the MechWarrior gameplay, and now that we’ve added European servers a huge portion of our player base that lives in that region can experience MechWarrior Online at the highest competitive level,” said Russ Bullock, president of developer and publisher of Piranha Games.
Mechwarrior Online is currently in the final phase of feature implementation.
(Source: Official website)
Blade & Soul Hits Western Shores This Winter
Put down your torches and extinguish your pitchforks, because Blade & Soul is joining Fievel and going west. The long awaited MMO from NCSoft will go into closed beta this fall with a launch sometime during the winter. Players will be able to get their hands on six classes, four races, and a level cap of 45 at launch to go through the game’s first three acts (the Korean version is up to act 6).
Blade & Soul has been a bit of a mystery for the past few years, with NCSoft touting the game’s success and continued growth in its launch territories while refusing to give a hint on westward expansion. Today’s news should ease those pained hearts.
Gamers will be able to get their hands on Blade & Soul when it launches as a free to play game this winter.
(Source: MMORPG.com)
Black Desert Coming West In 2015
It isn’t so often that you hear about a release date being pushed up, but here it is. Black Desert, a rather anticipated MMO, will be hitting digital shelves in North America and Europe beginning in 2015. The western publisher will be Daum, generally a Korean publisher, who cited an inability to find a suitable western publisher as their reason for changing course.
The reason why Daum is bringing the game to Europe and North America prematurely is probably because of the increased hype and positive feedback from the western community. Daum is actually a Korean publisher, but they decided to expand to the west because they couldn’t find a suitable publisher in EU/NA for Black Desert.
Check back in 2015 for more information.
(Source: Black Desert)
Sony Online Entertainment and ProSiebenSat Parting Ways
Sony Online Entertainment’s deal to turn European customers over to publisher ProSiebenSat has been, how do you put this lightly, a complete disaster. The move left SOE’s European customers feeling like second class citizens, managed by a company with no experience in gaming other than running cheap browser titles. The end result, a whole lot of missteps and mismanagement. After two years of negative feedback, Sony Online Entertainment has finally announced that they are divorcing ProSiebenSat.1, and that players will be migrated back to SOE accounts in the near future.
We constantly review community feedback via all channels and want to thank you for your ongoing dialog. We wanted to let you know that Sony Online Entertainment and ProSiebenSat1. Games have jointly decided to migrate all PSG accounts for PlanetSide 2, DC Universe Online and EverQuest II back to SOE in the near future. Please take a moment to read the FAQ, and watch for updates as we iron out the details of the process!
The region locks are already lifted as of this publishing, with account migrations coming next month.
(Source: SOE)
Perfect World Talks: RaiderZ
RaiderZ is an action-combat game from the minds of MAIET Entertainment, the folks behind GunZ: The Duel and GunZ 2. Released in 2012 as a free to play MMO, RaiderZ features active combat which places an emphasis on dodging and blocking incoming attacks, as well as an emphasis on crafting and big boss fights. Sadly, RaiderZ has hit some hard times with the announcements that Gameforge and Neowiz would be shutting down their servers in Europe and South Korea respectively. What does this mean for RaiderZ? I had to know.
So naturally, I saddled up and went directly to the source with my pen, paper, and a box of Necco Wafers in case I needed a bribe. With Perfect World Entertainment as the only western host remaining, I wanted to know where RaiderZ stood in terms of support from its remaining publishers, and developer MAIET Entertainment. PWE was kind enough to hook me up with Senior Product Manager Mark Hill, who had no problem answering my questions.
Omali: RaiderZ has shut down in Europe and Korea, with both announcing their closure around the same time. How did Perfect World manage to come out unscathed?
Hill: We are highly committed to RaiderZ and to the fans of the game, so we haven’t even considered closing our servers at this point. We feel that we can build upon the current success of RaiderZ and continue to improve the game for current and future players.
O: What do you say to players who might be concerned over the fact that half of RaiderZ’s territories just shut down?
H: It is very unfortunate if they were involved in the closure of servers that they were playing on. As a gamer, I know how it feels when a game you’re passionate about is no longer available, and it’s not a good feeling. That goes double for MMOs, and for the players that dedicate hundred and even thousands of hours to the game, community, and the publisher.
While I wish there was a way that those affected players would be able to resume their progress on our servers, it’s unfortunately logistically and contractually impossible. However, we do encourage anyone that is able to start up a character on our servers. I think they’ll find a solid and dedicated community to experience the game with, and it may even give them a chance to level up a new character in ways that they didn’t experience before.
O: With Gameforge stepping out of the picture, has any interest been expressed in picking up European publishing?
H: We’re definitely always looking for new market opportunities, and seeing the feedback from European players that were affected makes it clear that they still want to play. There are license and contract restrictions still in place even after they closed their servers, but we have discussed the possibility of Perfect World Entertainment bringing RaiderZ back to Europe. Of course I can’t promise anything, but it is something we are interested in.
O: Is RaiderZ region locked to North America or are players from Europe capable of creating accounts and logging in?
H: European players are able to create accounts on the Perfect World servers. They can register by visiting raiderz.perfectworld.com.
O: Have you considered putting RaiderZ on Steam to bring in a wider audience?
H: Oh man, you’re reading my mind! Yes, we have considered it. But before we do, we want to make sure the game is in top shape in terms of bug fixes, player retention, and overall game experience, which is what we’re working on now. Keep an eye out on Steam, though!
O: Is MAIET still committed to developing content for RaiderZ?
H: Absolutely! As a matter of fact, we have big expansion coming soon that is current being QA tested. You can read all about it in the forums here. We talk to the developers at MAIET every day, and we are both committed to making the game a success.
O: If MAIET does cease development, is there any chance of Perfect World adopting a license similar to Neowiz in Japan, allowing for more in-house control of content?
H: That’s a great question, but it’s not something that we’ve considered at this point. We’ve heard great things out of Japan, and are always open to new opportunities in order to ensure the continued success of the game, and making a positive experience for the players.
I want to thank Perfect World Entertainment and Mark Hill for taking some time to answer our questions. You can check out RaiderZ for free at Perfect World’s website.
TERA Will Remain Subscription Based In US/EU
Update: Gee that was fast. TERA’s European community manager has posted on the forums to confirm that more details will be released of the EU free to play transition in January.
Please understand that it is too early right now to talk about this but we will have more information for you about the EU version in January.
(Source: TERA Europe)
Original Story: Hold your horses, people. If you’ve been paying attention to TERA’s operations in Korea, you already know that NHN successfully launched a free to play server. Initially just a separate server and originally implemented as a temporary experiment, KTERA has announced that beginning in January, all servers will be converted to free to play:
Starting 2013 Jan 10th, TERA will go free-to-play, and with this start, new contents and changes will occur in political system, raid system, and massive pvp, with alliance and alliance training center?, 10man raid sorcerer’s fortress, and 20man raid kelsaik’s holyplace? and battleground of fire?.
What does this mean for the west, where En Masse Entertainment merged down to three servers? Nothing. TERA’s Community Manager, Minea, posted on the forums to state that TERA will remain subscription based in North America and Europe.
Regardless of the news from Korea, the good news is that TERA will continue to grow and improve with new game contents in North America, and all contents will be available for us should we decide to evaluate their use.
Korea isn’t the only country to be taking TERA free to play. TERA in Japan will also be heading free to play. The details of Japan’s transition are a little unclear, due to some poor translation, but the move appears to begin today (December 26th) with a single server and eventually open up the entire game in February 2013. There is little doubt that TERA will eventually go free to play in North America and Europe, despite EME’s insistence to the contrary.
(Source: TERA)
MMO Fallout 