My first, and for a long time only, experience with MMOs on the UNITY engine was Cartoon Network’s Fusionfall, and for all the criticizing I throw at Bigpoint Games for their public comments, I’m very happy that they had more faith in the engine than I did. I say this because I was playing the open beta for KULTAN today, Bigpoint’s upcoming answer to the sea-faring MMOs, and the game looks great to the point where the screenshots (even the one I presented) really don’t do it justice. And the game ran great, apart from a few issues I had with the controls and some problems with targeting, but that can be ironed out in development.
Of course this isn’t the first Bigpoint MMO built on the UNITY engine. Battlestar Galactica Online also does the engine justice. It is a system that is mind-blowing more in the sense of what a browser-based engine can do, rather than expecting Crysis-level graphics. Even in the short period between Battlestar Galactica and KULTAN, the amount of progress tells me that in just a few years the UNITY engine has the potential to evolve the next base platform for MMOs, in a similar way that the Unreal engine became the base for most video games you play today.
Almost immediately I thought “I’d like to see Runescape transition to Runescape 3, released on the UNITY engine.” Java is a great tool, but it is falling behind on the times. For an MMO, especially one growing at the rate Runescape is, the technology has become so old and lacks optimization that Jagex will only be able to stack so much on top before they are forced to switch over. The Java engine doesn’t lend itself well to “real time” on a mass scale, which you can see in Runescape’s mini-games and FunOrb’s mini-games that have some sort of fast-paced measure to them.
Moving to the UNITY engine would allow for keyboard movement rather than relying on point and click pathfinding, fighting would become far more engrossing than standing next to someone taking turns swiping a whip, and while Jagex could get the engine for free, porting the game over to mobile devices would be far easier than on Java. I’m not an expert on the engine, but I get the feeling that removing the point and click aspect of Runescape would also see a heavy decrease in botters, not to mention better support for anti-cheat utilities. Also, UI improvements! I’d no longer have to go through the game seeing every button for every interface I might ever need to use!
And for the people who can’t play Runescape 3, keep Runescape 2 open for five more years (blocking new accounts) and allow people to transition their characters to the new game. No, not everyone has a powerhouse computer, but UNITY engine doesn’t require one and holding back upgrades to accommodate little Timmy on the library’s computer just allows for Chris in Florida to run that many more clients on his gold farming…farm.
How did this article turn into Runescape? Anyway, I think I’ve made my point. The UNITY engine is the base platform for browser MMOs, and something about Jagex not stopping cheaters.
Every time I think Jagex can’t be more out of touch with community relations, they pull another move and surprise me. As you can read above, Jagex revoked the “gold” status of a fansite after one of its operators was “discovered” to be registered on the sex-offenders list in Tennessee. So instead of discussing the matter privately with the fan site operators, Mod SteveW (pictured above) decided the best choice was to head over to the Runescape official forums and publicly oust the person in question to tens of thousands of people who had never even heard of the fan site, let alone visited and knew this person. The result was that RuneVillage was forced to shut down its registration due to the virtual lynch mob that had formed on Jagex’s behest.
I’ll be the first in the blogosphere to call out Jagex (or at least the Community Management Team) as bullies. The way that this information was disseminated, with warnings and safety tips making up half of the statement, throws the whole situation completely out of context, making it appear as though the website was being used as a front for some sick predator looking for another victim, which according to outside documents has absolutely nothing to do with the actual charges.
For the record, I’m not against Jagex removing the fan site in question, they can do whatever they like. That being said, if Jagex had gone about this in a professional manner, most of you visiting this website tonight would still not know what Rune Village was, let alone the criminal background of one of its operators. Instead Jagex used the “we need to protect the children” route to portray a fan site as some kind of breeding ground for predators, accomplishing nothing more than harassing the members of the community and actually putting more people at risk due to the inherent risk of vigilante justice.
But for the guy at Rune Village, nothing says loving like being publicly shamed on a multi-million dollar company’s forums for a mistake you made two decades ago.
Jagex’s CEO Mark Gerhard would like to see Runescape on consoles, but refuses to segregate the community by platform. In a comment to Develop Online, Gerhard has stated that Jagex is well-positioned to ship a console version of Runescape, but has been stopped at all corners by the big three: Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony. The subject of free to play is one that Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata hates with a passion, Microsoft opposes (Gerhard comments that “one console” wanted them to charge five euros mandatory for use) and Sony is the only of the three that would like to add Runescape to its free to play initiative.
Where the three giants agree, however, is not allowing the community to interact with those on rival platforms.
“We’re not going to frame [as in, segregate] our community into boxes just for a few million more customers. Of course I’d love a few million more customers, but I just wouldn’t do it. Not at the expense of fracturing it, because you almost become the disease you’re trying to solve.”
And yes, Final Fantasy XI is an MMO on the 360 with cross-console play to Playstation 2 users. This is a title we consider grandfathered in, because it was developed long before Microsoft or Sony had the volatile stance that they do now. Don’t fret, however, as Gerhard is not giving up the goal, and expresses trust that the big three will open up their doors eventually.
“But we’re well placed to be on all devices soon,” he added, “so we can have a global community”.
Stellar Dawn isn’t just an MMO that got me listed in Wikipedia, it is also the subject of a bit of controversy. Back in 2008-2009, then CEO Geoff Iddison stated that then-named MechScape was virtually complete and that we would see a public closed beta sometime in late 2009 with a release in 2010, following a previous announcement that the game would be done in 2009. In late 2009, new CEO Mark Gerhard announced that MechScape had been taken to the shed and shot, citing the company’s dissatisfaction with the game’s quality. Much of the game, including its engine, would be reused in Stellar Dawn, a similar yet different MMO set to release in 2011.
Jagex has been pretty adamant about the 2011 launch date, even up to swearing that the title will release this year. Despite that, we know extremely little about how Stellar Dawn will function, outside of knowledge that some features from the dead MechScape may or may not be pulled over. There also hasn’t been any in-game footage released, no screen shots aside from concept art, and the company has been very hush on features and gameplay aspects. Compare this to the press surrounding Guild Wars 2, The Old Republic, and really any other game coming out this year, and the silence is deafening.
On second thought, compare that to Jagex’s other title: Transformers Universe. Not set for release until an unnamed date in 2012, Transformers Universe has had far more exposure than Stellar Dawn. With multiple trailers, Jagex even appeared at BotCon and GamesCom to show off the character customization tool that players will use to create their Autobots/Decepticons.
Reportedly the game is in internal alpha, so the end result is still up in the air. I still can’t get past the idea that a game coming out later this year has had so very little revealed about it.
I care little for the inner-drama in MMOs, so the fact that the person who posted this was a player moderator, and had his status revoked afterward, plays no part in this video being posted here. With the overwhelming quantity of gold farmers that have infested Runescape since its reinstatement of free trade, Jagex has taken to issuing the usual “don’t look over there, look over here,” developer blog, promising that they’re doing something to stop the bots.
And more importantly: What is Jagex doing to keep the game from being swamped with bots and gold farmers like it was pre-trade? They seem to be very sure of themselves that their secret weapon can combat this.
I care little for the inner-drama in MMOs, so the fact that the person who posted this was a player moderator, and had his status revoked afterward, plays no part in this video being posted here. With the overwhelming quantity of gold farmers that have infested Runescape since its reinstatement of free trade, Jagex has taken to issuing the usual “don’t look over there, look over here,” developer blog, promising that they’re doing something to stop the bots.
And more importantly: What is Jagex doing to keep the game from being swamped with bots and gold farmers like it was pre-trade? They seem to be very sure of themselves that their secret weapon can combat this.
The latest trailer for Transformers Universe doesn’t reveal anything about the game (unless you weren’t aware that the game followed the Transformers line), but it has cryptic text, and a Transformer, so…who wants lunch?
Daniel Clough is the Vice President of Runescape, probably having just recently been promoted to the position because it is once again time for a public announcement by Jagex that they will be doing everything in their power to trounce the issue of bots and gold farmers that have not only come back in full effect since free trade was returned earlier this year, but have managed to infiltrate and saturate all manner of training spots.
We are constantly looking into ways of making the game experience the very best possible for all of our players and as part of our on-going programme to rid the game of bots, Jagex is actively pursuing companies that support the macroing market as well as those who bot. As such we are currently pursuing various bot developers through multiple legal channels, although sadly we cannot yet disclose the full details of our actions for legal reasons. Separately, as part of normal legal process and procedure, we have also taken steps to acquire the details of all players who have purchased bots.
Once we have the information regarding the players involved we will take action specifically to ensure that these players are not compromising the game’s integrity through the use of a third party programs. We are committed to undertaking various initiatives to identify players and companies who are using and distributing bots within RuneScape and will endeavour to inform you all of these efforts as we can.
In the meantime, be safe, don’t fall to the dark side and we look forward to the positive outcomes of our actions ultimately making the game experience a better one for everyone.
If Jagex wants to give the impression that they are fighting bots, the first step is probably to put a damper to the legion currently inhabiting Runescape. Jagex should be improving their detection software, make it much more difficult to create throwaway accounts, the kind of inhibitory processes that stop a vast amount of accounts being created.
As I’ve stated before, Jagex’s main cause of concern with bots is and always has been the payment of membership via stolen credit cards, which cause Jagex a large sum in reversals and fees and harm the company directly. While bots are paying with legitimate forms of payment, you will not see the bot population drop significantly.
I have a question for all of you who read this introductory paragraph. Have you ever rage-quit an MMO? I haven’t. I’ve quit more MMOs in the past than I can count, but they’ve never been out of a fit of rage. Single player games, yes, I’ve stopped playing because every time I played I wanted to smash my keyboard through the monitor, but for some reason I’ve never rage quit an MMO. Getting griefed by some loser in Meduli who is abusing bugs to pickpocket me and then jump onto buildings, just doesn’t get an emotional response from me.
I still remember the time I died in Runescape and lost almost everything I owned (I had invested all of my money into very high level gear for the time), and I stopped playing for about a week. Not out of anger, but I went back and started recuperating my losses, and eventually I got all of my gear back. I suppose my reaction is because, in MMOs, death is meaningful when you can lose everything on you, so for many of us it triggers a sympathetic response. In a single player game, you lose the time you spent from the last checkpoint, which simply triggers frustration at having to play through the same area or sit through the same cutscene over and over again until you progress.
1. What Did We Learn From the Sony Incident?
First of all, we learned that even people giving testimony to Congress aren’t to be trusted. The media took the story that Sony was running outdated software and ran with it like the Olympic torch. Turns out, Dr. Gene (the security expert) was merely parroting what he had heard in the media, without actually looking at Sony’s records. The servers were indeed running an up to date version of Apache. What Sony needs to do is come out and say “Yes, we had a firewall, yes we were running up to date versions of Apache” if they haven’t already.
The offer of identity protection was a good move, but will ultimately not be useful. No relevant credit card data was stolen, apart from the twelve thousand expired credit cards Sony had stockpiled on a database somewhere in the off-reaches of their systems. Sony’s stupid move in all of this was foremost trying to take the hackers head-on, but secondly placing regular data in plain text. If they hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be hearing rumors of passwords being in plain text, or credit card data being unencrypted. It simply wouldn’t be as present.
2. So What’s The News With Lineage 2?
The announcement that Lineage was shutting down in the west was rather abrupt to those of us who don’t play, to be honest the game falls into the system of only appearing in the media when NCsoft releases their financial reports to tell us how great their games are doing in Korea. Make no word about it, Lineage is still going very strong in the east, and in 2010 actually outperformed Lineage 2 by a full 10% of NCsoft’s total income. The game made up 30% of NCsoft’s income in 2010 (20% Lineage 2, 44% Aion, 2% City of Heroes and Guild Wars respectively). Lineage, to my understanding, didn’t even have official support in the west for 64-bit operating systems until late 2010.
Lineage 2 is still active according to several active players I discussed the game with, but with biases the way they are, I have the feeling Lineage II will be next on the chopping block for the west, possibly coinciding with the release of Lineage III. I’m not one for calling death, but this is NCsoft we’re talking about, they don’t take under-performance lightly.
So, I say…Keep playing Lineage 2. The game will die one day, so why not spend the time until then having fun instead of worrying about when the time will come?
3. Star Wars Galaxies Server Mergers
This one made me chuckle. Looking back at my previous article, I had to laugh thinking about how frustrated I was that I couldn’t get any information regarding the Galaxies server transfers, due to the random DDOS attacks that preempted Sony’s database being hacked and taken offline for the better part of the month.
Now that that debate is over, we can get back to the important discussion, namely how many servers will shut down when Sony finishes the free transfer system. My bet is on at least half, so about six servers if Sony does do a server merger, which likely depends on how the population shifts during the free transfer phase.
4. NCsoft Bribing Asmodians
To assist in the creation and leveling of Asmodian characters, players on selected servers with an Asmodian, level 10 or higher, will receive a huge supply of Berdin’s Amulets. Berdin’s Amulets deliver a 50% additional EXP gain from hunting, gathering and crafting. The effect lasts one hour, with a one hour cooldown after activation.
In short: Not enough Asmodian players at max level participating in PvP on select servers, Elyos players taking too much control. This is one of the big problems 2-faction MMOs have, is that generally one side steamrolls the other, causing the losing side’s members to leave, meaning an even bigger steamrolling on the following round of action. In a game like Aion, being on the losing side of faction warfare can mean never having access to certain content simply because your side does not have control over territory.
In addition to giving exp incentives for leveling up, Aion is allowing Asmodians on certain servers access to instances otherwise inaccessible due to the aforementioned fortress control. Players who do control fortresses will also be awarded greater than players on the Elyos side, as an extra incentive for participating, and succeeding, in turning the tide. You can read it all here.
5. Runescape Has The Best RP: Virtual Mafia Complete With Dirty Cops
Back in a time before research (2009), Jagex introduced virtual game pieces for Runescape, items in-game that allowed for community driven events, including stopwatches, tickers, and more importantly, dice. The introduction of dice, of course, lead to a Runescape version of craps. And inevitably, the online community being what the online community is, groups sprang up using this to scam from players. At the same time, legitimate gambling rings formed to allow for a safer environment to play.
Where there is gambling, however, there is a mafia behind the scenes shooting your friend Joey because he had sex with the don’s daughter. This may be my extra-strength medication talking, but I am fascinated by the idea of a mafia running a questionably legitimate (according to the game rules, not calling the outfit a scam), run by teenagers. If you head over to this thread, there is allegedly a clan on Runescape that uses a single world for dice games, and has a player mod either in the clan or on its payroll to mute the accounts of competing clans on their world.
If that isn’t brilliant, my name is Farmer Joe. Isn’t this the Valhalla of role playing? Here you have a virtual form of gambling, secretly run by the mafia, using corrupt police to virtually cut out the tongues of the competition. The only way this could be more extreme is if Jagex allows money to be transported in large quantities via suitcase, a Runescape version of crack cocaine for the dicing mafia to deal, and the reintroduction of player-vs-player worlds so the mafia could literally murder their competition. Or if the aforementioned teenage mafia don actually murdered his competition, although I can’t say I condone such conduct. This is the first thing that popped to mind when thinking MMO mafia:
What’s next? Runescape hookers? Already existent, just check a free to play world near a bank. In case you’re thinking about it, don’t. I already have the Runescape mafia on my payroll. You’d be surprised what those Runescapers will agree to if you package those chocolate coins with the foil wrapping and tell them it’s “rl geepee.”
That’s all for this week. Tune in next time, when I’ll be showcasing a thing. Better yet, I’ll be showcasing a thing in a place.
It’s easy to be indifferent towards gold farmers when they aren’t affecting your choice of spots, so for boss hunters and high level NPC farmers in Runescape, brushing off the effects of gold farmers is a lot harder once those same bots start overrunning your high level training areas, as seen in the above video.
When a company like Jagex has the kind of profits, again like Jagex (almost $60 million annually, and that’s profit), you’d think hiring a dedicated bot busting team would be in the cards. But again, Jagex appears to have the same apathy toward combating bots that I have toward paying my auto-loan.
MMO Fallout 