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Defiance Might Not Hit Steam Tiers

Those of you who read Flying Ostrich Media are aware that over there I have covered Steam’s new system of pre-purchase reward tiers from time to time. If you aren’t familiar with the system, it works pretty simply: The more people pre-purchase through Steam, the higher the percentage and more rewards are unlocked. Bioshock Infinite, for instance, offered a free copy of XCOM for the ultimate reward. Trion’s upcoming shooter Defiance is offering everything from exclusive vehicles to weapons, titles and xp boosters all in return for more people pre-purchasing through Steam on the PC.

The system also works to gauge interest in the game, and unfortunately Defiance’s progress does not give great first impressions. With two weeks to go until the title launches and the deadline to pre-purchase is passed, Defiance has still not hit its first milestone. At 33%, it isn’t even close. Now obviously using this to gauge the game’s overall success is virtually meaningless. We have no way of knowing how many people have pre-purchased through alternate sources from Steam, or how many have purchased the game on the PS3 or Xbox360. We also have no way of knowing how many orders are required to hit each milestone.

So why isn’t Defiance skyrocketing to unlock all three tiers of rewards (at least not yet)? It’d take a day and a half to go over all of the variables, from releases on other platforms to Steam not opening up pre-purchases until after the game had been available at other outlets, to the game launching on consoles, etc. On the other hand, players are still able to grab rewards regardless of their system of choice, or whether or not Steam hits its targets, by submitting a lot of Arkfall codes as they are discovered. The number of codes discovered is approaching ninety at the time of this publishing, out of one hundred twenty total, and the more codes you enter, the better stuff you get out of it including permanent skill bonuses, weapons, titles, and more.

Defiance comes out April 2nd on PC, 360, and PS3, and operates on a buy to play model supported by DLC content.

(Source: Steam)

TERA Can’t Escape Licencing, IP Blocks Coming

Back when Bluehole announced that TERA would have no region restrictions whatsoever, I was admittedly skeptical. An MMO without regional restrictions generally spawns from one of a few circumstances: The same company is publishing it in all regions ala City of Heroes, or there is only one worldwide server ala Eve Online and Mortal Online. In the case of TERA, back in 2010 Bluehole announced that while the clients are region specific, there was nothing stopping someone in Europe from purchasing a North American client and playing on those servers.

Not the case. If Bluehole truly wanted cross-oceanic play, this idea was met with a dead “negative” by the game’s publishers. Bluehole did make this statement to Massively:

We had to change our stance on IP restrictions due to licensing and security issues. While we can’t go into the reasons in detail, we would like to say that although these restrictions are not a panacea for preventing hacking, they are highly effective, and produce more positive results than might be expected.

So licencing reasons. Restricting IP addresses will not accomplish much in preventing gold farmers in Russia or China from accessing North American and European services or stolen accounts, considering ease of use in a proxy. Unfortunately, these IP restrictions also mean that certain regions aren’t able to play the game until a publisher picks up the title in that region. In many cases, the game just never releases in those regions.

Still, this is another example of what happens when you let the developers make announcements about decisions that should be handled by corporate. If TERA had announced from the start that there would be region restrictions (or had they not waited a year and change to go back on that statement) than this wouldn’t even be an issue (save for the regions that can’t play at all).

TERA launches in May for North America and Europe and is being published by En Masse Entertainment (North America) and Frogster Interactive (Europe). Read up on Bluehole Studios’ lawsuit with NCSoft here.

TERA Can't Escape Licencing, IP Blocks Coming

Not the case. If Bluehole truly wanted cross-oceanic play, this idea was met with a dead “negative” by the game’s publishers. Bluehole did make this statement to Massively:

We had to change our stance on IP restrictions due to licensing and security issues. While we can’t go into the reasons in detail, we would like to say that although these restrictions are not a panacea for preventing hacking, they are highly effective, and produce more positive results than might be expected.

TERA Release Date: May 1st, 2012

Good news, everyone! After a long period of awaiting information from En Masse Entertainment, the publisher has finally announced today that TERA will launch in North America on May 1st this year. Players will be able to order a standard and collector’s edition from various retailers, as well as no doubt a digital version on Steam and other outlets.

The Exiled Realm of Arborea, or TERA for short, is an action MMO based on the Unreal 3 engine, that was released in June of last year in Korea. The servers in Korea merged following reports that the game was not meeting financial expectations, a response by players to a noted lack of end-game content and an overwhelming presence of bots.

Bioware Caves: Offers 48 Hour Grace Period

I hate to use the term “caved,” because it implies that Bioware is conceding to a less than favorable position. MMO launches are great in that when you preorder the game itself, you generally receive a preorder key which allows you access to the head start, and occasionally the beta. This key also tells the developer that you intend, or have, already purchased the game. The problem with ordering your boxed copy online, as people do, is that you can’t always be ensured that your copy will arrive in time for the game’s release. In response, many developers offer grace periods after the head start where players are able to play without requiring their final registration key.

Up until now, the official word from Electronic Arts has been no grace period, at all. Thanks in part to a very fanatical outcry from fans, Bioware announced on the forums that they have reversed their decision and will be allowing a two day grace period for players to enter their details.

While we’ve worked closely with our retailers in the launch territories to ensure copies of Star Wars: The Old Republic are available from our launch date of December 20th, we understand that for those of you who’ve pre-ordered, there may be a concern about getting your copy on time. We’ve heard you want a ‘grace period’ where you can continue to play without having to enter a final product registration code (AKA ‘game code’).

Your 30 days are not affected by this grace period, so technically you could submit your code at the last possible minute and enjoy 32 days instead of the prescribed 30. Now everyone say grace…period.

(Source: The Old Republic forums)

Craig Morrison: F2P Age of Conan A Possibility

With Age of Conan entering the Korean markets came the announcement that the title would follow the normal Korean model: Free to play with cash shop, leading some to speculate as to whether or not Funcom would transition the model over to the Western hemisphere. Over on the Funcom forums, Producer Craig Morrison chimed in to tell players that the free to play model is not planned to come over to the west, but that Funcom is not saying no forever (I’ve heard this phrase too many times this month).

“That isn’t a ‘yes, it will happen’ or a ‘No, it will never happen’ it’s a ‘We will always keep our options open and be open minded to business models that will most benefit the project.’…being close minded one way or another is rarely a good thing.”

He is correct. The Korean market is vastly different from the American and European markets, and subscription based games die fast. Even World of Warcraft runs in China on a pay-per-hour system.

“That is why we have different versions of the game. They are different markets, work in different ways, with different traditions and expectations and we will always endeavour to try and ensure the right decisions are made for the game in each specific territory, and for those decisions to be different as appropriate.”

So, for the time being, there will be no free to play Age of Conan in the west. More on Age of Conan as it appears.

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