Bad news, Playstation 3 users: You’re going to have to make more space on that hard drive for Final Fantasy XI. Square Enix has announced that in February, a patch will be added to Final Fantasy XI that will require more hard drive space on the Playstation 3, but only on specific models. The models are the 60gigabyte and 20gigabyte which are backward compatible with Playstation 2 games (otherwise this doesn’t apply to you, because you can’t play it anyway). Unfortunately, for users with 20 gigabyte hard drives, this means you won’t be able to play Final Fantasy anymore until you upgrade.
The new space will be 21 gigabytes, reportedly for the purpose of preventing fragmentation on the hard drive. The actual game itself takes up around 12 gigabytes. Playstation 2 and PC users will not be affected by this at all.
Even if you hate CCP, even if you have no interest in Eve Online or DUST 514, you have to admit that the very concept of an space ship MMO on the PC interacting in real time with a first person shooter on the Playstation 3 is astounding and exciting. DUST is expected to release in Spring 2012, at least according to Wikipedia, and registration for the beta test has begun for Eve Online subscribers. Hopefully CCP will follow the proud Sony tradition of opening the beta to Playstation Plus subscribers.
On the positive side, it appears you will not be forced to join a corporation to play the game. In addition to corporation vs corporation and contract fights, players should be able to join random matches. The corporation vs corporation matches, however, will be for territory control and the aforementioned contracts with Eve Online players.
I know what you’re thinking, “Omali I don’t like to play graphical spreadsheets. I want Eve Online’s unforgiving world but in a more relatable game.” World of Darkness, based on the tabletop RPG, is supposed to be just as hardcore as Eve Online and the upcoming DUST 514. Players live in a world run by immortal vampires, and if the combination of CCP and the existing lore is to be reckoned with, World of Darkness is set to bring forward a deadly world of politics, player interaction, open world combat, and perma-death.
There is still no word on a general release date for World of Darkness, and 2012 seems out of the question for now.
I believe Sony has talked before about the Playstation Vita being capable of supporting MMO platforms, and it appears that Square Enix is the first company to step up to the plate and give consideration to the concept. Siliconera is reporting that Square Enix has a vested interest in porting Final Fantasy XI over to the Playstation Vita with no timetable on anything. The plans themselves are not complete, and there is no guarantee this will actually work, come to fruition, or be viable over the Vita.
There are no plans for a PS3 port of Final Fantasy XI, however, as the process is a lot more complicated and Square is likely hard at work on keeping what will be the release version of Final Fantasy XIV on the PS3 up to date with the PC development.
Still, this is an interesting concept. If some MMOs appear on the Vita, it might just give me an incentive to buy the thing. You know what I’m thinking…Hello Kitty Online: Vita.
Those of you who play DC Universe on the PS3, of whom are planning on coming back to the game once it comes online, may be interested to hear the details of Sony’s “Welcome back” package. Announced on Sony’s Facebook page, the plan includes:
30 days free game time.
Plus one free day for every day the service was interrupted.
And the mask you see above.
I hear if you play your cards right, Shigeru Miyamoto will come to your house and play Super Smash Bros. (but only the N64 version) with you. Actually, I’m being told Shigeru Miyamoto is from Nintendo. My apologies for the mistake. I’ve been tracking down the Free Realms and Massive Action Game, although the Free Realms guys have not released any compensation details, and the Massive Action Game guys haven’t talked about the downtime at all, as far as I can see.
And finally, a Playstation Network update. According to an article on CSMonitor, a Sony rep has announced that the Playstation Network will not be back up and running “this week.” There has not been an official announcement on the Sony blog, despite the article being published yesterday, so take the news as credible at your own risk.
At this rate, players will receive almost two months of free DC Universe game time on the PS3, with PC SOE users reportedly receiving 30 days free game time plus one day for every day the service is offline. There is still no information as to when the Sony Station service will be returned.
This is a tough article for me to write, because it goes against virtually all of my established ethics for MMO Fallout, foremost the ultimate disapproval: Recommending that people not only do not buy, but unsubscribe to a game. Since last week’s Playstation Network outage, I’ve had a number of people emailing me to ask a simple question: Should I cancel my DC Universe subscription (on the PS3)? And after long deliberation, my short answer is…yes.
Sony is rebuilding the Playstation Network, so if your account is about to run out, simply save yourself the money and do not resubscribe until everything is clear. That is, assuming you still trust Sony with your personal information after the news that data, possibly including credit card information, was stolen in the security breach. Sony maintains that data from Sony Online Entertainment was not affected, and only the Playstation Network experience an intrusion.
There is still no concrete date on when the PSN service will be back up, so if you have any subscriptions to DC Universe or Massive Action Game, you’re better off just cancelling now, and resubscribing when the service is back online.
That’s actually a picture of what’s going on inside the PSN servers. First off, some backstory for those of you who don’t own a Playstation 3, or don’t read Kotaku (or a number of other websites). The Playstation Network is offline after a few days of sporadic service, and Sony has no idea what is causing it (at least if they do, they aren’t publicizing it). Going by recent events, however, it isn’t exactly a far reach to assume that hackers are behind the service outage, either from Anonymous or some other group.
Of course, this means that DC: Universe is temporarily shuttered on the PS3, as players have to sign in via the Playstation Network, and thus you see the problem. The DC:U team has been strangely silent, last I checked the PS3 forums, there a quick check of the developer tracker will show no posts since the 16th, well before the service went offline on the 20th. So far, the team has only offered the following, on the DCU Facebook page:
Just a small update: We are aware that PS3 players are unable to access the game due to PSN downtime.
According to Sony (SCEA, not SOE), the service could be off for another day or two. Hopefully we’ll have some better information before then.
Pending litigation that I received for the sake of this joke, I am unable to quote a certain Arkmay Acobsjay, and his comment about servers being added after launch being somewhat related to the success of the product itself. Just last week, we saw the addition of one server on the PC and one on the PS3, adding in new player vs player servers. I did note that the addition of two servers shouldn’t be seen as a runaway success, as Aion did the exact same thing post launch, and you may recall the monstrous merger that the game went through a few months ago.
This week, on the other hand, even more servers are being added to mitigate load. The PS3 is receiving three new servers, and the PC is receiving one new server.
PS3:
Relentless (PvE) US
Justice For All (PvE) EU
Absolute Power (PvP) EU
PC:
Last Laugh (PvE) US
Reaction to DC Universe has been pretty positive, even on the MMORPG.com forums. Will this be one of the few MMOs whose population doesn’t crash one month after launch? I’m not holding my breath, but let’s hope for the best.
I’m not a fan of cross-platform games as the more systems that are added to the fray, the higher the odds for delays due to unforeseen problems on one system. The end result is that, in an attempt to please everyone in the crowd, the developer delays all of the titles in order to ensure a simultaneous release, even if it means a delay of up to a year or more. MMOs, thankfully, have not had this issue. Given their release dates, the rest of us can breath a sigh of relief that Funcom never decided to delay Age of Conan for the never-released 360 port, or Champions Online with the also-never-released 360 port, and now Star Trek Online for its now-canned 360 port. In the case of Champions Online, the 360 version was fairly close to release, shutting down due to issues with Microsoft.
So bully to PC and tough luck for PS3 as Square Enix decided that they will release the PC version of Final Fantasy XIV this September, while the PS3 version will be delayed until March 2011 (at least). The PC version will hit at the end of September, and not much has been said specifically what caused the PS3 version to be delayed.
Even more interesting was the announcement of pricing structure. Players will be given one player and one ‘retainer’ character. The retainer character essentially acts as an official mule, managing the player’s sales and storage. Creating alts is possible, up to 8, but each one will tack on an additional three dollars, a month, to your subscription. Given the versatility of the player (able to level up all jobs), and the possibility of Final Fantasy XI’s grind making its way to XIV, an alt is unnecessary.
More on Final Fantasy XIV as it appears. Hopefully we won’t see any 20+ hour Pandemonium Wardens.
MMO Fallout 