TERA goes free to play on February 5th, and you can still pick up a copy of the game on Amazon for $10. Why buy a copy of a game that will be free to play by this time tomorrow? If you haven’t been paying attention (and if you have to ask, you haven’t), TERA’s free to play model segregates players into free, subscriber, and founder. Founder status players are those who have a serial code attached to their account, through purchasing a boxed or digital copy of the game. As I pointed out, founder status players have a number of advantages granted to them that a new account will never have access to, even if they subscribe, including a monumentally increased bank storage.
Now here’s the catch: Starting February 5th (tomorrow), En Masse Entertainment will be discontinuing the sale of digital copies of TERA, making founder’s status impossible to obtain unless you happen to come across one of the remaining out-of-print box copies. So if you’re going to be playing TERA, you live in the United States (important), and don’t mind dropping $10, having founder status is ultimately a better deal than running with a standard free account.
And founder status is just an alternative to the free account. You don’t pay a subscription to keep it.
Things haven’t been all sunshine and lollipops for Gala Net. In fact, the company has been operating at a notable, and growing, loss for the past four quarters straight. In the most recently released quarterly report, Gala announced an operating profit in the red at -167,145 (thousand JPY). On the heels of this news, MMO Culture has learned that Gala Net’s operations in North American and Europe, as well as Brazil, will be sold off to Webzen. The deal was struck just a few hours ago, and the transaction will take place on February 15th, 2013.
Webzen appears to have picked up Gala Net on the cheap, to boot. According to Reuters, Gala Net was sold for $17.5 million. Gala Net is best known for its publishing of Allods Online, Uncharted Waters, Continent of the Ninth, and more. Webzen has been covered here at MMO Fallout over their publishing of Archlord after Codemasters dropped the title back in 2009. We will have to sit back and see how the two services change as a result of this acquisition, although all likelihood points to gPotato’s games being assimilated into Webzen’s library.
It’s been over a month since NCSoft announced that City of Heroes would be shutting down, and since then the community has thrown virtually every theory out there as to why there hasn’t been any news from the talks with Paragon Studios. Â The question that lays on everyone’s mind is: If NCSoft isn’t willing to keep the game running, why didn’t they try selling the studio/game? As it turns out, they did try. In an announcement on the City of Heroes website, NCSoft offers a small bit of detail on what went down.
We’ve exhausted all options including the selling of the studio and the rights to the City of Heroes intellectual property, but in the end, efforts to do so were not successful. City of Heroes has a special place in all of our hearts, and we want to ensure its reputation and the memories we share for the game end on a high note.
So there is some kind of reassurance that NCSoft at least made an attempt to save City of Heroes. It may not be the answer that they want to hear, but it is an answer nonetheless.
What is better than one copy of TERA? Endless shrimp at Red Lobster is not a valid response. The answer is TWO copies of TERA for the price of one. Moving along from the shellfish, Amazon is currently running a deal on the digital version of TERA:
Until September 22nd, you can pick up TERA for $9.99 USD (an 80% discount). With it, you will receive a promotional credit for $9.99 which can only be redeemed on TERA. The credit is good until October 15th, but you will have to actually buy TERA before September 22nd. An unusual, and rather unnecessarily complicated method of delivering the key, but what can you do?
The moves comes on the forefront of TERA’s server merger in North America, bringing the number of servers from eleven to three. En Masse is also introducing a new protection on accounts: deleting characters now requires a seven day wait if that character is above level five. The cool down timer for joining guilds is also being increased to two weeks.
Good news, potential Rifters! For the next 24 hours, you can get Rift standard and digital editions for 50% off. This sale ends soon, so if you’re going to buy, do it now. Amazon is also having this sale for the standard and digital collector’s editions.
If you make use of the Ascend-a-Friend program, you can also obtain 7 free days, and an exclusive title. So if you’re planning on buying Rift, you can always buy the code before the sale expires tomorrow, then sign up with the above link, and use your code at the end of the seven days.
Who could say no to free money? I can, but then again, I’m not willing to buy five packages of cereal at three dollars apiece in order to save two dollars with the coupon that printed out for me at Target. That’s just me, I won’t judge the people who change their whole diet on the grounds of what comes in the coupon booklet each month. That being said, I do enjoy a real deal when it comes my way.
If you subscribe to any Station games via credit card, the time card just got a little more appetizing. Purchase a fifteen dollar Station cash card, and redeem it by the 21st, you will receive ten dollars extra. On the other side, you can use the fifteen dollar card towards a subscription, so a player could extend their subscription and still receive the 1,000 station points.
Station Cash cards are not available in all areas and countries, and this does not apply to online purchases.
Darkfall is one of those games that comes around and defies all authority by, yes, having one of the worst launches in recent history (with the game being unbuyable for a good while post-launch), but taking those startup issues, beating them over the head with a brick, and throwing the dead bodies into a lake. That was two years ago, and Darkfall continues to defy the predictions of trolls by pushing out regular content updates, including an upcoming reshaping of the world.
In celebration of the game’s second anniversary, Aventurine is putting Darkfall on sale for $9 USD and Euro, until April 1st. In addition, the three month subscription is now on sale for $24.95 (Three for the price of one and two thirds). Topping off this sale is the addition of 25,000 meditation points for those who resubscribe in March or create new accounts. The points may be lost if you have too many saved up, so Aventurine is recommending that players use up some of their existing points:
Note: Don’t claim the points if you don’t have room for them, for example, if you already have more than 75 thousand points in your account. If you do, then you should work some off to make room for your free points. Meditation points are non-refundable.
More on Darkfall as it appears. This sale runs through to the end of the month.
As you can see from the top notice, on the 5th of this month, Nexon began a cash shop sale on their game Maplestory in Europe. The details are sketchy, and seem to change slightly depending on who you ask, but it appears that a 90-day double experience card found its way into the same area as the 24-hour double experience cards. Of course, in a world where we are brought up to understand that if a deal feels too good to be true, it probably is, the pricing was a mistake. Nexon fixed the price, and all was alright in the world, right?
Of course not, that would be too easy. After a week, Nexon fixed the cash shop item, and replaced the already purchased cards with 24-hour cards, which sent the forums into an uproar. The opinion appears to be split over whether or not players should be compensated or if they should have been aware that the sale was an “obvious bug” (their words, not mine) in the first place. According to a few members on the forums, this is not the first time Nexon has had such a cash-shop fluke, but apparently this is the first time they had responded by removing the items post-purchase from a user’s account.
Granted, we could yell until our faces are blue about the legality of this change in product, given the many loopholes and issues that would be raised from commerce laws between European countries, to exemptions in place because the product was purchased with Nexon Cash instead of real currency. I see a lot of people using examples of tangible purchases, but the two have separate laws that govern each form of commerce.
Of course, for those of you who did purchase the bugged card, there is still the option of reversing the charges on your credit card, if you are unconcerned with your Nexon account being banned.
The question now, as always, rests in the hands of the Nexon European community. I think it’s safe to say that, despite what the trolls say, players won’t be reeling in fear that their items are going to suddenly start being replaced en masse. You can buy that pack of regularly priced potions without worrying about them being turned into weak potions. I would, however, take great caution when buying something during any sales on the cash shop, as this is not the first time such an error has occurred. Nexon does not appear to be taking as much leniency with those who purchased the bugged item, maliciously or not.
I believe Nexon should have at least refunded the cash shop points back to players, and perhaps next time not take a week to implement a fix that should only take a few minutes.
Back in November, I reported that Target and WalMart had pulled Final Fantasy XIV from store shelves, opting instead to only sell the game on their respective websites. I didn’t want to get into too much speculation at the time, as regular gaming stores (Best Buy, Gamestop, etc) were still stocking the title. Over the following month, I received a few reports from players who spotted the title on their store shelves, but couldn’t make a concrete statement without confirmation from either store’s corporate overlords (if the website reports that the item is not sold in stores, then the item is not sold in stores.).
Luckily, WalMart is reporting that Final Fantasy XIV is back on store shelves. Still no word from Target, who placed the item on sale back in November and subsequently removed the game from shelves, currently only selling the game online.
I have had a few unconfirmed reports that Game over in the UK is pulling Final Fantasy XIV off of shelves, possibly for a planned reboot in 2011 including the magical life-saving patches Square Enix has planned for the game in the coming months. More on Final Fantasy XIV as it appears.
MMO Fallout 