A lot has happened since Wild West Online launched in May. The review score has boosted quite positively toward 61% from 37% overall, although population has dropped to a few dozen concurrent players. 612 Games as an entity has vanished as quickly as it showed up, with its name seemingly being scrubbed from everything related to Wild West Online and no indication that the entity still exists. Oh and DJ2 Entertainment plans on rebooting the game just two months after launch.
As posted on the official forums, Wild West Online is to receive a relaunch of sorts, one that will focus more on the rootn, tootn, shootn, cowboy gameplay that people seem to enjoy. The update will add on to the map, introduce new animal hunting, and drastically increase the number of vendors present in the world.
“What this “relaunch” plan means for you – our existing players ? to be honest it doesn’t really gonna affect you much – it will for sure will bring new players to the game, as well as add more stuff to do in a game, making user experience more in line with it being PVP shooter game.”
When asked about female characters, a feature promised for launch but still undelivered, they were referred to as a cosmetic feature of low priority.
“Female characters are coming, but with all honesty – this is pretty low on our priorities – it’s a cosmetic feature, not something that makes or breaks the game.”
Last month during an investor call, Funcom announced a relaunch of The Secret World, to take place in the first half of the year, with the goal of revamping combat, enhancing the new user experience, and overall making the game more appealing to a wider audience. While The Secret World is fortunate enough to carry a very loyal fanbase, the game never exactly performed to Funcom’s standards and has been criticized for floaty combat, among other issues.
Secret World Legends appears to have dropped the “MMO” part of the equation and is instead billing itself as a shared world RPG. What this means for players and how they interact in the world is yet to be seen, however The Secret World as an MMO has always been on the smaller side. You generally don’t see more than a few people walking around at any given time and perhaps a dozen or so at most in hub areas, so we’ll have to see exactly how this change in branding affects the gameplay.
Funcom is excited to announce that their acclaimed story-driven game The Secret World will be relaunched this spring as Secret World Legends, a shared-world action RPG with completely revamped combat, a newly designed progression system, and updated visuals. The game’s full collection of missions and mysteries will be free to play, with over 100 hours of mature storytelling and surprises.
To the dismay of veteran players who have put hundreds, if not thousands of hours into their characters, this is what we know: This is not an update of The Secret World with a new name and brand, but a completely new spinoff (a relaunch of the content with new mechanics, if you will). While the old version of The Secret World will still be available to play and you can link your account to gain benefits in Legends, your characters will not transfer over.
They’ll continue to live on the old TSW servers, so you’ll still be able to log in and play them. You will not be able to play them on the new Secret World Legends server though. It’s a new experience and fresh start for everyone.
At launch, Secret World Legends will contain the original eight zones, with expansions from Tokyo, Nightmare Dungeons, Raids, etc coming at a later date. While all content will be available for free, you’ll be able to buy Aurum as a premium currency to give yourself extra bonuses:
Aurum is used to purchase a variety of in-game items and services in Secret World Legends. This includes but is not limited to: additional weapon pages, extra inventory space, additional characters, exclusive vanity items, and much more!
While Funcom has promised that your characters on The Secret World are safe, early concerns about plans to quietly sunset the title are quickly popping up. The Secret World is no longer available for purchase on Steam, coinciding with the Steam forums being completely wiped.
If you pay attention to the media, reboots are all the rage this season (this season itself being a reboot of a previous iteration of the universe). In their latest quarterly report, outside of congratulating Conan Exiles for hitting its 12 month sales target within a month, Funcom has a lot to say about its New World Order MMO, The Secret World. Funcom hopes to rekindle interest in the MMO by bringing in new players and ex-players alike, improving the combat system and new player experience.
The Secret World will be relaunched during the first half of 2017. The goal of the relaunch is to broaden the appeal of the game through:
Redesigned new player experience
Major improvements to gameplay including combat.
Introduction of new retention systems such as daily rewards.
Adjustments to the business model, including allowing access to the story content for free.
Relaunch activities for The Secret World are set to start in March with the relaunch to occur in the first half of the year. MMO Fallout will cover the details as they are revealed.
Dungeon Fighter Online is back, and by the time you read this will probably already be up and running. Initially shut down back in 2013, publishing for Dungeon Fighter Online was picked up by Neople and reopened in beta to the public last year. Today marks the game’s official launch on Steam. Servers open at approximately 10:00am PST, or in just under two hours as of this publishing.
If you have fond memories of Dungeon Fighter Online, let us know in the comments section below.
MMO Fallout has partnered with Suba Games to give away beta keys to the upcoming relaunch of Luna Online. Dubbed Luna Online: Reborn, the revival includes numerous improvements and additions over the original launch in order to attract a more nostalgic crowd of gamers. Suba Games is relaunching the title in response to overwhelming demands by its community after the servers were shut down by gPotato.
New to Luna Online: Reborn is a revamped progression system, the removal of race restrictions on classes, new housing options and guild halls, and more.
Download and install the game client. Closed beta starts on March 30th, 2016 (7pm EDT)
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In addition, Luna Online: Reborn is currently running a Kickstarter campaign in order to assist in advertising the relaunch.
About Luna Online: Reborn
Luna Online: Reborn is an anime themed MMORPG set in the cute fantasy world of Blueland. The game is a remake of the popular Luna Online, now published by Suba Games. It provides adjustments to original content that remove any negative experience gamers reported about Luna Plus.
Furthermore, we’ve added in new Realm vs Realm & Real Time Ranking Systems that are certain to provide a new meaning to gaining dominance over Luna castle.
Features:
The beautiful and vibrant world of Blueland is yours to explore!
Experience over 500 skills and 116 classes as well as 50 000 items.
Quake Live launched in 2010 and has run as a free to play title with optional subscription, at least until this week. With apparently no warning, iD Software released an update integrating the game with Steam functionality, including friends, chat, lobbies, achievements, anti-cheat, workshop, and more. Additionally, both the free to play model and optional subscription have been retired, locking the game out to anyone who hadn’t previously owned it.
Today marks a new beginning for Quake Live. Last year we expanded our platform to Steam, and today we have retired our old launcher and services in favor of integrating a robust array of Steamworks alternatives. We are now fully utilizing Steam for Friends, Chat, Lobbies, Voice Chat, Server Browser, Statistics, Achievements, Anti-cheat, Trading Cards, and Workshop.
The game is available on Steam for $10, or free if you had previously played the game via Steam. Those who paid for pro and did not use the Steam client can contact Quake Live customer support to be given a key.
Lego Minifigures Online graces PC and mobile platforms today as its relaunch marks one of the few games to transition from free to play to buy to play. Starting today, you’ll be able to get your hands on the Steam version for $29.99 as well as the first world on iOS and Android for $4.99. While iOS players will be able to buy additional worlds immediately, they will not be available on Android until later this summer.
“LEGO® Minifigures Online is designed for LEGO fans of all ages; for those who love online games, and those who have never played one before,” says Funcom CEO Rui Casais. “To make it even easier for friends to play together, the game is playable seamlessly on a large number of platforms and devices, and everyone plays together in the same online world. No matter whether you are playing on a smartphone, tablet or desktop, you will all be playing the same game – together.”
Originally launched with microtransactions and an optional membership, Funcom and Lego decided to alter the monetization platform in response to the game consistently underperforming in sales. The unfortunate side effect of this transition is that some players will lose access until they purchase the game.
Lego Minifigures Online will be relaunching as a buy to play game, after a reveal by Funcom that the free to play aspect had a “detrimental effect on gameplay and kids’ enjoyment of the game.” The news comes alongside the announcement that Lego will see a launch on PC, iOS, Android, Mac, and Linux.
During an initial run as a free-to-play game on the PC, Funcom has been gathering valuable player feedback and have been able to review in detail how various components of the game’s content, gameplay and business model have played out.
Anyone who has previously purchased something in Lego Minifigures Online will be upgraded to the full version once it goes buy to play, with refunds offered where requested. Players who haven’t spent anything will need to buy the game to continue playing.
Good news, Darkfall players! On November 15th, Darkfall will shut down for good. What’s so good about that? Starting on October 17th, Aventurine is inviting all players, past and present, to play the current iteration of Darkfall completely free of charge until the servers shut down in November. Players will simply be able to log into the servers starting the 17th (not necessarily right at midnight), and send the original version off in style. Following, Darkfall Unholy Wars is set for release five days later, November 20th.
Although the two games share the same brand name, Aventurine has stressed that Darkfall: Unholy Wars is a different game. While some aspects remain the same, the world has been completely rebuilt from the ground up, and just about every aspect of the game from the UI to the skill system, combat, and more have been completely revamped. While players characters are not making the transition, accounts that already owned Darkfall will not be forced to purchase Unholy Wars.
As a result, the Darkfall as we know it is considered defunct as of November 15th, and Darkfall: Unholy Wars will launch as something of a direct sequel shortly after.
Aventurine has dumped a bunch of screenshots for Unholy War, the upcoming relaunch of the hardcore sandbox MMO. You can check them out in the gallery above.
MMO Fallout 