Tag: relaunch

Final Fantasy XIV Shutting Down In Preparation For Realm Reborn


Consider this your first heads up, FFXIV players: At some point in the future Final Fantasy XIV will shut down, but only temporarily. At Gamescom, Square Enix announced that instead of simply updating FFXIV when the game’s 2.0 relaunch goes live, the servers will need to be shut down for an indeterminate amount of time. Naoki Yoshida, director/producer, stated that the shut down will occur at some day in the near future, and is required in order to transition all of the character files over to the new game.

“Basically what’s going to happen is that the current story is still continuing now, but some day in the near future — and we’ll make sure we tell the players what day that is — something is going to happen in the story, and at that time, the servers are going to shut down,”

Players will have plenty of notice ahead of time as to when the servers will shut down. A Realm Reborn is set for launch on PC and PS3.

(Source: Massively.com)

Earthrise Is Back: SilentFuture Takes Over


Looks like we haven’t seen the last of Earthrise. SilentFuture announced today that they are taking over the MMO, giving the game a fresh coat of paint and a new skeletal structure, and gearing it up for launch late this year. Interestingly enough, Earthrise will no longer be a post-apocalyptic game, but rather set during the apocalypse itself. The game will release as the free to play format Masthead Studios wanted but did not have the money to achieve.

Wuppertal-based development studio SilentFuture has taken over the online science-fiction roll-paying game “Earthrise”, and is already working on an overhaul. Shut down by developer Masthead in February of 2012, the sandbox MMORPG is receiving a new background story from SilentFuture with the corresponding facelift as well as essential improvements in both gameplay and technology. The relaunch is planned for the fourth quarter of 2012.

More to come.

(Source: Earthrise Website)

Mythos Will Not Die: Coming Back In December


Stupid Omali, why did you delete the Mythos category? Frogster might be finished with Mythos, but that isn’t stopping Hanbitsoft from completing its collection of dead Flagship Studios projects by scooping up the title and announcing the first closed beta test of Mythos Global. Set to begin December 1st, Hanbitsoft wants you to know that this is not the same Mythos that crashed in Europe, but a better Mythos.

More information to come.

Darkfall Suicidal: Character Wipes Not Off The Table


One week ago, I put my money on the table that Darkfall 2.0, a relaunch of the game, would bring free to play to the game. There is still no information as to whether or not the game will indeed go free to play, so let’s focus on another avenue of the Darkfall 2.0 launch: Character wipes. As far as MMOs have it, the topic of character wipes is akin to playing that five finger game where you move a knife around your hand stabbing without hitting your fingers. In this case, however, it’s a chainsaw instead of a knife.

How badly do communities respond to character wipes, especially two years out of launch? As ZTZ on Massively put it, it would make the Galaxies NGE look like a set of patch notes. In the Darkfall Epic Blog, Tasos Flambouras (potentially soon to be renamed John Smedley Junior) toyed with the idea of a character wipe, noting that such an implementation would not be necessary, but indeed a possibility depending on how Aventurine sees the update:

This is a topic we’ll open up for discussion after we’ve given you more information on the new version of the game, so you can understand all the parameters involved.

Tasos refers to this update several times as the end of a chapter, and the beginning of chapter 2, and for the record my money is still on some sort of free to play, or buy to play, coming with this update.

I’ve seen a few people liken this to Shadowbane. Some of you may remember that Shadowbane was shut down in 2008 (five years after launch) to reboot the title, during which all characters were wiped. The game stayed up a good year after that, before shutting down. We’ll need more information on the specifics of Darkfall’s relaunch before making any comparisons between the two titles, however.

Dungeons and Dragons Online Returning To Europe


Just replace September with March.

It’s been a surprisingly long time since I’ve had an opportunity to write about Dungeons and Dragons Online (since last June, actually). Those of you who play or follow Dungeons and Dragons Online may remember Turbine’s announcement last year that they would be taking back Dungeons and Dragons from Codemasters. Codemasters, who was operating the MMO in Europe, was still operating under the subscription system. Due to contractual issues, Turbine ended up canning the game’s operation in Europe altogether, and players were instead transferred over to US based servers.

Luckily, however, Turbine is bringing the game back to Europe, with support for German and French language. The current estimate is “2011,” for release. MMO Fallout will bring you more information as it appears. Players who transferred over to the North American service can likely expect their accounts to be transferable to the European service when it does launch.

Earth Eternal Buyer Likely Time Warner


Huzzah?

“I’m pretty happy this company won the bidding, as I think they have the resources and the pre-existing audience to help make EE a success.”

One of our last messages from Sparkplay CEO Matt Mihaly before the Earth Eternal servers and website shut down in what feels like a year ago. Speculation has been high since Earth Eternal shut its doors and announced that, although they did find a buyer at auction, the buyer could not be named and there was absolutely no inkling to when the game would be coming back.

The Earth Eternal fans have been diligent, admittedly more diligent than myself, in sleuthing and unearthing just who purchased Earth Eternal, and the answer is? Time Warner, which most of you figured out from the title. Of course, this isn’t a concrete announcement, but Earth Eternal’s silent Facebook page has a fourth administrator, Jac Ky. Jac Ky’s profile lists his likes as Cartoon Network India, Cartoon Network Australia, and his few wall posts include the Ben10 Omniverse game.

Again, this isn’t concrete, but it does coincide with the fact that Earth Eternal was recently moved to a new host, on the same servers as Cartoon Network’s website. Undoubtedly Time Warner has some deep pockets, and if the speculation is true may be putting some major upgrades into Earth Eternal to get it ready for relaunch.

Of course, we may see Duke Nukem Forever before we see Earth Eternal relaunch, so whoever purchased it is moot at this point. Big thanks to Rhinok over in the MMORPG.com forums for finding this information.