Thar Be Sales On Steam, Landlubbers!


Updates:

  1. The sale is over. Go home.

↓ – “Activation and download may take up to 48 hours after purchase.”
♣ – Paypal is not accepted if paid in pounds or Euros.
♥ – 30 days only applies to new Station accounts.

Guild Wars Mass Ban, Disbanding


"I'm going to kill you with my ban-scythe"

This is Dhuum, he doesn’t like cheaters, hackers, botters, and exploiters. If you cheat, hack, bot, or exploit bugs, Dhuum will find you, and Dhuum will murder you in cold blood. As the God of death, when Dhuum takes your soul, there is no coming back, you are banished from the world of Guild Wars forever.

ArenaNet has announced that they have banned over 3,700 accounts, not to mention disbanding over a dozen guilds, with more on the way. Not only are players being banned, but they are being smitten in-game by the God of Death. See the video.

This isn’t the first NCsoft title to have flashy public executions of botters. Aion is well known to have GM’s personally firebomb chat spammers out of existence.

More on Guild Wars as it appears.

Guild Wars Five Years: Steam Sale This Week


Here at MMO Fallout, we work diligently to make sure that you have available to you, all of the information and best ways to get your hands on titles for the lowest prices possible. With the fifth anniversary of Guild Wars, Steam is offering the title on sale this week with the following prices, all in USD:

Games are on sale this week, so pick them up!

Guild Wars: Xunlai Tournament House Dies On Operating Table


PvP Tournament Removed....

Guild Wars players are likely fairly angry at the news that, after nearly a year of operational work, the Xunlai Tournament House will not be returning. A web-accessible portion of Guild Wars, the tournament house acted as a betting spot, where players could attempt to predict the outcome of the game’s player vs player tournaments.

“After much analysis and discussion, we’ve decided to permanently retire the Xunlai Tournament House.”

Unfortunately, at one point during ArenaNet’s seven month trump through the game’s code, it was determined that the entire tournament house would need to be rebuilt from scratch, pulling resources away from Guild Wars 2 that could not be afforded.

I don’t think this news is too surprising to Guild Wars players, although the fact that the house died to support Guild Wars 2 may disappoint and anger some, but hey: Stuff happens. More on Guild Wars as it appears.

Guild Wars Vs Account Theives: Aion To Follow Suit


With 16,000 accounts gone, less queues!
you must be this tall to buy gold.

No, not as in lawsuit. NCsoft’s Guild Wars has been taking several measures to protect accounts from theft, including their most recent venture: Requiring you to name one character on your account in order to log in (meaning I just lost access to my account). Aion, also published by NCsoft, is taking a similar run of reminding players to keep their accounts secure, although for slightly different reasons. Guild Wars has fansites being hacked to worry about, while Aion is more focused on irritated gold farmers.

Aion bans thousands of accounts on a weekly basis and as you can expect, such a move can get pretty costly for gold farmers. The result? Using your accounts to gold farm. It saves cash, and there’s nothing to clean up when the ban hammer drops. Aion has released a security warning to players regarding in-game links being used to phish accounts, as well as the possibility of NCsoft master account theft.

I don’t think players should need to be reminded to be wary of what they click on, but here we are.

I Don’t Do Reviews, For Good Reason


The Fallen Earth LLC Boardroom
Where we go to discuss Fallen Earth.

If you’re a visitor to mmorpg.com, you’ve probably found yourself stepping into the middle of a controversy. Apparently yesterday’s review of Fallen Earth caused such an uproar that mmorpg.com’s staff saw fit to remove it from the website. I decided to get my super sleuth kit, and by super sleuth kit I mean grabbing part 1 off of Google Cache before it was deleted.

Continue reading “I Don’t Do Reviews, For Good Reason”

I Don't Do Reviews, For Good Reason


The Fallen Earth LLC Boardroom
Where we go to discuss Fallen Earth.

If you’re a visitor to mmorpg.com, you’ve probably found yourself stepping into the middle of a controversy. Apparently yesterday’s review of Fallen Earth caused such an uproar that mmorpg.com’s staff saw fit to remove it from the website. I decided to get my super sleuth kit, and by super sleuth kit I mean grabbing part 1 off of Google Cache before it was deleted.

Continue reading “I Don't Do Reviews, For Good Reason”

Codemasters Loses Archlord Rights


archlord2

Just as I’m talking about the battle over the future of Dungeons and Dragons online, here comes news from another sector of the internet: Codemasters has lost their rights to operate the MMO Archlord in the United States and Europe. Instead, the servers will shut down on October 1st, only to be reopened a couple days later by the new host, Webzen.

As far as MMOs go, Archlord in the west was the MMO that never was, isn’t, and never will be. The game by itself received unfavorable reviews, with Gamespot summing it up in two words: Dull and repetitive. The title was smashed for its countless hours of dull grind, with little reward, in a world that often seemed to be populated only by yourself. It isn’t any surprise that it took only ten months after release for Archlord to ditch the subscription rate, and go completely free to play, ala Guild Wars. Nowadays Archlord is described as “empty and full of bots.”

What caught my attention was, in every location I found discussion on Archlord, the discussion regularly turned to one factor: Corruption from Codemasters. Shady bans and a response along the lines you would expect from your local Wal Mart or Mcdonalds. Players being conveniently banned after spending large sums of cash on the in-game currency (Archlord kept its microtransaction service), and more. According to some of my sources, this activity is almost a mirror image of RF Online, another MMO published by Codemasters in the west.

This may not be the end for Codemasters driving MMOs into the ground. According to several of my sources, Turbine is looking to bring their MMOs home, meaning Codemasters may lose its European publishing rights to Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online.

If you have any dealings with Codemasters on LOTRO, DDO, RF Online, or the soon to be murdered and then resurrected Archlord, please drop us a comment.