Tag: MMO

Eve Online: Your Stuff's Gone For Good


I lost a valuable Draconic Visage

Silly Eve-izen, that’s not even from the right game. Losing items in a game where you drop everything upon death, is nothing short of not news. Players are killed, hacked, and generally die for one reason or another, on a daily basis and, whether or not we want to accept blame (Lag, account theft, etc), more often than not we are met with a simple “sorry, your stuff’s gone for good,” should we try to retrieve it.

There are three levels of item loss, as I will demonstrate:

  1. If you want to annoy your players, allow them to be killed due to unforeseeable, yet annoying issues. Lag is chief in this category, not to mention players with easy access to exploits in the system, hacks, and other such software.
  2. If you want to piss off your players, kill them via in-game bugs and don’t return their items. In Runescape, it isn’t uncommon for at least one update every four or five months to have some instant-murder effect, or allowing player killing in a spot it shouldn’t be. When Mobilising Armies was released, one player lost an enormous sum of money simply by talking to an NPC, and was not reimbursed despite confirmation by a Jagex employee.
  3. And finally, if you want to get players to quit, take the items right out of their possession, by process of one of your intended features going haywire.

If you were logged into Eve Online today, or even if you weren’t, you may have logged in to find that one or more of your items were missing. Due to an unintended issue, the Eve Online ItemID recycling system ended up deleting a mass amount of items. How many? Up to fourteen thousand, to be exact. But how exactly did this bug happen?

In Eve Online, every item has its own procedurally generated ID (The ID is created when the item is created). In order to prevent items six years from launch being labeled #34054083489534890583890459348, Eve Online recycles ItemID’s back into the pool once the associated item is destroyed, or stacked with another stack of the same item. The retrieval system failed, causing items to not receive an ID when created under various circumstances, and thus disappear.

Although CCP is not returning lost items (they have no way to, the data trail is literally gone), they will be reimbursing players. Players affected are asked to file a petition with the list of items they lost due to the bug. As for how well players will be reimbursed, MMO Fallout will be listening in.

More on [MMO name retrieval failed. Deleting portion.] as it appears.

Welcome To The Crew: Aion Opens Test Server


With 16,000 accounts gone, less queues!
Let's test some Queues.

Test servers: Perfect for the developer who wants to publicly test things. Throughout history, or at least the past decade, test servers have been used for everything from stress testing to gauging player interest, to using player feedback to balance updates. In more recent years, a majority of developers have discovered the uses of a test server, and the number of MMOs that do not use these servers have dwindled substantially.

Surprisingly, however, players will not be given pre-made characters, and it appears that they also will not be able to copy existing characters over to the test server (a common practice in MMOs), but instead the characters that they do create will be placed in super-xp-mode, where leveling is quick and drops are jacked up for maximum efficiency. Whether or not this will slant feedback is up for grabs, but we will know that when the test servers launch next week.

More on Aion as it appears.

Xsyon: An MMO By The People, For The People


prefix-ed MMORPG, just in case you forgot.

Xsyon may not be the best looking game, but where the title faults in the super hi-def bloom that burns cornea and frightens small nocturnal creatures, it makes up in offering freedom to players. Throughout the short history of the MMO genre, there have been quite a few attempts at allowing the player to build the world around them. Star Wars Galaxies, more notably, allows players to build cities to focus their guild. Those cities, likewise, are able to take part in the overall galactic civil war.

In Xsyon, the developers have decided to take a different approach to the idea of post-apocalyptic. Rather than being in a world that is destroyed, that you are merely trying to survive while the world around you builds up (or remains stagnant), you are taking part in the rebuilding of the new world. Most, if not all, of human innovation is gone, kaput, and the leaders have fallen back to the old days of God worship and scavenging.

The manner in which Xsyon hopes to keep its players is to allow them to shape the world as they see fit. Before the game launches, those who preorder will be given access to a very small section, from which point they will be roaming around, exploring new areas, and discovering new methods of crafting, building, fighting, and more. As the players progress, so does the game, with players deciding everything from the foundation of new cities, even to terraforming of the current terrain. The environment is  in a state of constant flux, and it is up to the players to decide the future of the world. Everything down to the quests are player-given, where players can obtain quests ordered by the chief of the “tribe” (guild). New skills, new items, new objects, new creatures, most will be discovered in-game before they are announced.

Xsyon looks to be shaping up into a title similar to A Tale In The Desert, where early players will have a very different experience than those who join several months or years down the line. Of course, the fact that I can create my own cooking recipes is enough of a reason for me to dip into my pocket, but then again…I’m irresponsible with money.

There won’t be a trial for Xsyon until the game launches, and there won’t be an open beta (more on that tomorrow). Preorderers are given access to Prelude, a pre-game world that they have a great amount of freedom to shape and discover.

What Does the Better Business Bureau Say?


If Funcom's money was gold-backed...
No Accredation, no gold!

The triple-B, or Better Business Bureau, is quite an interesting outfit. One one hand, the organization has absolutely no authority over any business anywhere at any time, ever. On the other hand, its advice is taken very seriously by many consumers, by some as gospel, and by others who believe that the BBB actually has the above authority. The method that the Bureau uses to make grade is quite lenient on the business, if they are willing to respond to complaints. If someone complains to the BBB, they try to contact the company and the response determines the grade.

For example, the company I’m employed at while I trudge my way through College (Target) has received almost 1,500 complaints to the BBB in the past 36 months. However, due to the response by the company in most of the complaints, and the nature of the complaints in other cases, Target holds an A rating. Really the only way to get a bad score by the BBB is to not respond at all, which you will see below.

So I decided to look up a few of our biggest names in the MMO biz (by looking at the poll on the web page) and check out their rating. Keep in mind that not being a BBB accredited business does not hurt your score.

Blizzard: A+

Cryptic Studios: F

Funcom: A+

Mythic Entertainment: F

NCsoft: C-

Sony Online Entertainment: A

Square Enix: A

An F for Cryptic and Mythic? In Mythic’s defense, their BBB rating is likely out of date, due to the whole Electronic Arts takeover (EA has a B rating), but an F for Cryptic? Looking more in-depth, I found it is because Cryptic wholly refuses to respond to any complaints forwarded to them by the BBB, forgetting the one rule of the BBB: Not responding kills your score!

And this list doesn’t even include Turbine, Aventurine, Jagex, and others that were not listed on the BBB website.

Rules: Why Do They Need To Be Repeated?


Shouldn't need to be said.

While logging into Lord of the Rings Online several days ago, I noticed the above warning on the main page. Turbine is banning anyone who exploits a bug with the skirmish system, without warning (no slap on the wrist) or appeal. They can tell who is doing it, and are watching for those who attempt to slip by.

This, alongside other examples I will get to, continues to make me ask: Why do MMOers need to be constantly reminded not to break the rules? Are we that exploitative, selfish, greedy, or ignorant that we have to be reminded that exploiting the system, cheating in some fashion, or otherwise break the rules is, in fact, against the rules and is punishable? Or does this small minority just have the mindset that they are invincible, that they won’t get caught. To me, this is akin to a police officer who greets with “now you know stealing is against the law, we will arrest you if we catch you doing it,” to everyone walking down the street, because a couple unruly teens in the neighborhood decided to ransack and beat the tar out of one of the older gentleman’s house down the street.

More after the break.

Continue reading “Rules: Why Do They Need To Be Repeated?”

Crimecraft Banned in Australia


Australia Breaks Crimecraft's Neck

I guess it had to happen eventually, what with Australia’s tight limits on drugs in video games, but after two months of the game’s release, it didn’t seem that that ban would be coming any time soon. According to Gamesindustry.biz, Australia has refused classification to Vogster Entertainment and their recently Free to Play MMO Crimecraft for the use of fictional drugs.

Although the drugs are fictional, the Classification Board decided that they were similar enough to real world drugs, citing in-game enhancements such as K-Dust, Birth, Chimera, and several anabolic steroids.

I’m not sure what this will do to Crimecraft’s sales that hasn’t been done already, but the prevalence of the title in online download shops makes it that much easier to obtain by locals in Australia. Crimecraft already features a free to play model, thanks to already poor sales.

Either way, Crimecraft just got that much harder to obtain by Australians.

 

One of the Best Ads of 09 Goes To…


I’ve been trying to find a video version of this for a little while now, and for some odd reason it never occurred to me to search Youtube. So without further ado, one of the best MMO banner ads of 2009, from Dungeons and Dragons Online: Broccoli Vs The Beholder.

Hunting Transgenders, the Chinese Way…


zombie-austin-powers
That's no baby, baby. -banned-

Imagine this, gentlemen: You’re walking through the streets, and at the corner you come across a beautiful woman, clad in nothing but a frilly bra and underwear. As she looks at you seductively, using the hottest /dance emote available, she says “4g 4 l4p d4nc3.” All of a sudden, you notice something about her is wrong. The chin, the hairy arms, the Adam’s Apple. IT’S A MAN, BABY!

If you’re a player who enjoys the occasional pixelated groping, or you work as a GM on Age of Conan, you’ll be glad to hear that, at least on King of the World that you won’t have to worry about that woman actually being a man behind the screen. Taking the phrase “pics or it didn’t happen” literally, and requires players to submit webcam pictures of themselves, otherwise male players playing as female avatars will be banned.

Continue reading “Hunting Transgenders, the Chinese Way…”

One Month Later: Champions Online


champ_banner

It was one month ago that Champions Online launched to the waiting crowd, the first in our Mega September that saw a number of new titles launch, old titles receive expansion packs, and an oldie hit its twelfth birthday. It is one month after an MMO launches that the honeymoon is over, as is the free month of membership included in the game, and the true players are separated from those who just stuck around because they had the free month.

Continue reading “One Month Later: Champions Online”

Crimecraft Going Freemium


There's no neck to break
I think this sums it up...

When I said that Crimecraft would stay online as long as it remained profitable, I was not specifically referring to the subscription based format. I try not to inject too much speculation into my articles, but I could not see Crimecraft running very long on a forced subscription based platform, even if it costs less than most other MMOs. There are just too many other shooters on the market that cost the initial $50, and then cost absolutely nothing to play per month.

Continue reading “Crimecraft Going Freemium”