Not that this will prevent any hate-mail, but I’ve included a nice chart on NCSoft’s sales for reference. Falling Out releases a new edition every Monday.
Tag: Lineage II
NCSoft Master Accounts To Be Merged In The Future
If your NCSoft account was created after July 12, 2012, you can ignore this article. Managing your NCSoft account is about to become slightly easier. In a few months, NCSoft will require all Aion and Lineage II players to migrate their NCSoft Master Accounts over to the new NC Account system. The benefit of this upgrade is that both Lineage II and Aion will pull from the same NCoin pool, meaning players of both titles will not have to fund both games respectively.
Once the account is migrated, players will log in with their email address. There are a few limitations, including that players can only have one of each account from Aion and Lineage II, for instance a player with multiple Aion accounts cannot merge them into one NC Account. Furthermore, unused serial codes will not transfer over to the new system, so any unused codes tagged to your account should be used before the account is migrated.
As of this publishing, migrating existing accounts is not currently available.
(Source: NCSoft)
Lineage II Compensation Detailed
Lineage II has not been having the best week or so. Between the number of technical difficulties that have cropped up, NCSoft has had enough trouble keeping the servers from buckling and passing out, let alone keeping them running smoothly enough to keep their players happy. Between crashing, lag, and game breaking issues, the community is understandably unhappy.
Luckily, NCSoft has a fix: Free stuff.
As many of you know, technical issues have created gameplay problems in the past week, leading to a less than optimal game experience for affected players. We deeply understand how difficult it can be to play in these conditions and we sincerely apologize for this inconvenience. You, the player community, are very important to us and we want to show you that we care and are working to right any wrongs that have happened.
NCSoft’s compensation package includes a 50% experience rune that lasts five hours, as well as five luxury cocktails, which boost your character’s abilities for 30 minutes each. In addition, NCSoft is running an even from January 25th to February 1st, in which players will enjoy no experience loss on death (unless in Chaotic mode), the reduction of the augmentation removal fee to 1 Adena, and the removal of teleport fees from most gatekeepers.
They are still working to fix some lag issues, warning that emergency maintenance will be taking place over the next few days.
(Source: Lineage II)
NCSoft Outsourcing European Hosting?
You know, I hadn’t really noticed until tonight how small NCSoft’s library has become in the west. With the shuttering of Lineage, Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, Exteel, and Dungeon Runners, us westerners are left with Aion, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, and Lineage 2. Four titles? Granted, we have Blade & Soul (hopefully) coming out at the end of this year, and Wildstar and Lineage Eternal coming at some point in the future.
I can’t help but notice, however, that NCSoft’s personal appearance in Europe has taken a lesser role recently. Lineage II’s European service was recently handed over to Innova for the free to play transition, and when Aion goes free to play early this year, Gameforge is taking over service of that title. So far this is only on NCSoft’s titles in Europe that have transitioned to free to play, with the exception of City of Heroes in which case the two services (US/EU) were merged into one under NCSoft. This leaves Guild Wars.
If I’m lucky, NCSoft will answer my emails about future title publishing.
Dr. NCSoft Prescribes Extra Lineage II Server
Lineage II’s free to play launched almost as expected: the servers were steamrolled by the Persian Army sized group of newcomers, and naturally players experienced problems reliably logging in and staying logged in last night. In preparation for the transition, NCSoft opened a brand new server (Shilen) and today revealed yet another new server, Magmeld.
Announced on Twitter and on the main website, NCSoft is advertising the server to new players and new players only. In fact, much like Shilen before it, character transfers have been disabled to Magmeld. Similar to Shilen, NCSoft is adding rewards for server firsts.
NCSoft’s next quarterly report should be rather interesting.
Lineage II Free To Play Brings Login Woes
Although Lineage II unofficially went free to play a week ago when NCSoft opened up all existing accounts, today brings the full release of Lineage II: Goddess of Destruction. With it brings the Path to Awakening, a system that gives players an incentive to grind through the levels (Lineage II is not an MMO where you can level solely through questing) by offering rewards, and the Goddess of Destruction expansion. You can head over to the Lineage II website to download the client and find more information on the game. Truly Free places forward all content free of charge to anyone willing to participate, while the cash shop is promised to sell only convenience items.
Of course, with the amount of people logging in today and creating accounts, the servers have become rather sluggish and have been coming down regularly. NCWest promises that they are working on the issue, and will be giving more information as it appears. Until then, you shouldn’t have any problem downloading and patching the game.
Just Kidding: Lineage II Becomes Free To Play Today
Omali you cheeky person, you say while you flick through the calendar here on MMO Fallout and see that yes, indeed, the free to play switch was announced for November 30th. You would be half correct: The Goddess of Destruction patch goes live on the 30th. Today, however, NCsoft has taken down the Lineage 2 servers at approximately 8am eastern for an estimated ten hours for maintenance. The patch notes are as follows:
- The Vesper Dreams event continues.
- The European server, Naia, will be moved to the United States. Moving forward it will be in the same physical location as Chronos. The Naia server time in-game will remain European: the next Castle Siege and Territory Wars on Naia will occur this weekend (November 26 and 27) as originally planned.
- All Lineage II game accounts become Truly Free.
- All characters’ vitality will be refilled. A vitality refill will happen with every regular weekly maintenance.
For now, the NCsoft account management is down for maintenance. You can find the announcement here, in case you still don’t believe me. You’re going to need an eleven gigabyte download for the client, so get to work!
Update: The NCsoft website is back up and accounts should be displayed as “playable” with an NCcoin amount listed.
Mark Your Calendars: Lineage II Free To Play
What do Lineage II and Ragnarok Online have in common? Nothing. Last month, NCSoft announced that Lineage II will mark the next product in their line to make the great transition to free to play, and what a transition it promises to be. Dubbed “Play Your Way,” players can still opt to pay a subscription for bonus loot, experience, and more, or they can opt to play the entirety of the game absolutely free. There are no content locks, so you can experience all the game has to offer completely free of charge.
The home page for Lineage II now displays a release date of November 30th. Head over to the link for more information, but it appears our source from the previous article was spot on that this would follow in lockstep with Innova’s service in other regions:
Anyone can play for free. However, if you pay the monthly subscription, you get permanent 2x Exp, SP, Drops, Spoils.Item store includes items like Buff Milks, 30-day rent-a-Buffpet, 30 day rent-a-Mount, New Hair Accessories, etc.
Free To Play Tuesday: Rhyming Title Edition
Welcome to November, everyone. Now if you are following the free to play mashup, as I do, you know that the market is getting a lot more congested in quarter 4 of 2011. We’ve already seen the free to play conversions of City of Heroes, Fallen Earth last month, and today sees the extended downtime of DC Universe as Superman prepares to turn to capitalism. When the servers come back online, players will be able to dive in and be horribly camped and murdered by players who are at max level and have been playing since launch. Enjoy!
Of course I kid, not that you won’t get slaughtered if you choose the player vs player server. Lineage II has also fully announced its switch to free to play, and from what NCsoft has announced, appears to be one of the most free games so far to don the term “free to play.” Players are able to buy vanity items, convenience items, and premium packs. Otherwise, all content is available for free. Expect more news later this year.
Makes you wish Star Wars Galaxies went free to play, doesn’t it?
Unsurprisingly: NCsoft Record Profits
If MMO Fallout were a physical entity, I’d have a lot more fun searching through its records, what with the shelves of documents and that ladder on wheels I’d get to ride around. Going back to the earlier days of Aion’s coverage, I discovered an announcement that the MMO had hit the three hundred thousand preorder mark, along with a reminder that it’s all about the retention rate.
So it comes as no surprise that NCsoft is reporting record profits over the past quarterly report. Profits are up over one thousand percent, while sales are up nearly one hundred percent. Unsurprisingly, Aion made up 48% of those sales. Surprisingly, however, Lineage and Lineage 2 are still selling very well, at twenty seven and twenty percent respectively.
NCsoft’s rebound is very welcoming to the gaming community, especially after the company’s net income plummeted 50% in quarter 3 of last year, shortly before Aion was released, and even more so as NCsoft attempts to suppress the memories of Tabula Rasa, whose failure hit the company hard this past year.
So good work NCsoft. Keep being who you are, and keep that sweet sweet cash flowing in.
MMO Fallout 