Tag: Sandbox

ArchAge Publisher In West Is…Trion Worlds


archeage

There’s been a lot of speculation about who might be publishing the notorious sandbox MMO ArchAge in the west, and we finally have an answer: Trion Worlds. So breathe a sigh of relief, gamers, it wasn’t who you thought it was going to be.

Leading online games company Trion Worlds and renowned South Korea-based game developer XLGAMES have entered into a strategic agreement for Trion to exclusively publish and operate ArcheAge® in the West. Created by Jake Song, best known for his hit game Lineage, the highly anticipated ArcheAge is poised to be the most polished massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) coming out of Asia. Trion will host the game on its Red Door platform in North America, Europe, Turkey, Australia and New Zealand.

There is currently no information regarding beta or launch dates.

(Source: Press Release)

Earthrise Closer To Alpha Launch, Accepting Registration


Earthrise_Logo

Earthrise: The game some of you may not have heard of, is back! Well, not at the moment anyway. If you haven’t been paying attention to this or other MMO news sites, Earthrise is a sci-fi sandbox MMO that launched in February 2011 by Bulgarian developer Masthead Studios. Earthrise was panned rather widely in the reviews, and fizzled out pretty quickly in terms of population. Over time, Masthead Studios attempted to convert the game into a free to play model, only to run out of funds partway through. In a post released in early 2012, Masthead Studios announced that Earthrise would shut down in February.

Long story short, the game was picked up by Silent Future, who are converting it into a free to play game. The first alpha testing stage has started, and players are encouraged to sign up at the link below to test it out.

(Source: Earthrise Website)

Eve Online Makes Accidental Crime More Difficult


Don’t you hate it when all you’re trying to do is navigate a crowded system, and all of a sudden you fire on an unsuspecting player? And then your keyboard and mouse inexplicably lock up, and you continue firing until the combination of NPC protection and players gun you down, destroy your pod, and come over to your house to crap in your cereal. Luckily, CCP is here with the new system safety system. With the upcoming update, players will be able to set themselves to one of three modes: enable, partial, and disabled safety.

On enabled safety, you won’t be able to do anything that is against the law. Think of it as Paladin mode. On partial safety, you will be able to perform actions that raise you into “suspect” status, but not criminal. Disabled safety is free reign to do whatever you want. The option is only for player convenience, although there will surely be some heated discussion over the update.

(Source: Eve Online Website)

Falling Out #18: Freedom of Bankruptcy


True fact: Whenever a hardcore indie FFA PvP sandbox MMO shuts down, Blizzard releases a commemorative cash shop pet. Think about it.

Everquest Next Will Be The Largest Sandbox MMO Ever


It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything substantial about Everquest Next, and Sony’s reasons are pretty solid: They’ve blown up the game. At Sony Live 2012, John Smedley took to the stage and talked about how the industry needs to end the current system of launch and decline, and follow strategies laid out by games like League of Legends, who launch and continue to grow. This, Smedley explains, can only be done by adding more emergent gameplay, something the company hopes to do with its current and future MMO titles. As a result of this thinking, Everquest Next has been redesigned as a sandbox MMO:

What we are building is something that we will be very proud to call EverQuest. It will be the largest sandbox-style MMO ever designed. The same exciting content delivered in a new way. Something you’ve never seen before. The MMO world has never seen before. We didn’t want more kill 10 rats quests. We didn’t want more of the same. If you look at the MMOs out there, they’re delivering the same content over and over again. So are we. We need to change that. When we released EverQuest, we changed the world. We want to do that again with a different type of game.

Expect plenty more to come in the future on Everquest Next.

(Source: EQ2 Wire)

Xsyon Trial Server Now Open


Hey folks, remember Xsyon? Yes, it is still up and running and doing just fine. Up until now if you wanted to try Xsyon you had to buy the game and pay the subscription fee. The rules are simple: You can play as long as you want, and do pretty much whatever you want. The limitation is that the server will be reset every Monday, so if you want your progress to be saved, you’ll have to buy the game.

All players old and new that are signed up on our forums now have access to the Trial Server. Instructions on Trial Server access are available on your account page after signing up.

(Source: Xsyon)

Earthrise Posts New HTML5 GUI


Let’s talk about the dead coming back to life. Some of you may recall a long time ago in a galaxy not so far away, that Earthrise shut down due to a lack of funds to fully bring the game over to a free to play platform. If you don’t remember, just re-read that last sentence until it sticks. Got it? Good. While Earthrise had a great PR department selling the game before it launched, the product that shipped barely made a dent in its pre-release hype. In fact, it barely made a dent in anything. After Earthrise released, it virtually vanished off of the face of the MMO press, showing up every now and then to let everyone know that the servers were barren and so were the coffers at Masthead Studios. Major problems from lag, disconnection issues, crashes to desktop, and the actual content of the game kept Earthrise from reaching its potential, and finally the game choked to death on a pretzel with the sound statement that one day, a generous necromancer known as SilentFuture would raise it from the dead.

In the original notice, Earthrise 2.0 was planned for a quarter four 2012 launch. It is probably safe to say that we’ll be looking at a 2013 launch, but just to keep the players satiated for the time being, the above screenshot was posted in an announcement that Earthrise will be using an HTML5 user interface, rather than Flash. Not necessarily the best update possible, but a positive sign that the folks at Silent Future haven’t fallen into the same black void of development that has devoured, say, the guys working on Earth Eternal’s reboot.

Then again, one could say that any news on Earthrise is good news at this point.

Working Out A Bounty System


A bounty system is to sandbox MMOs like peanut butter to fluff on a sandwich perhaps with a glass of cold milk on the side (soy or almond if you prefer). While the sandbox purists will say that developers should just allow players to run their own bounty system, because risk is just part of the experience, having some infrastructure in-game can be very helpful without restricting freedoms. Ensuring the person claiming the bounty actually made the kill, and that the bounty holder must pay up.

But it feels like the developers are just setting themselves up for abuse with current bounty systems, so I’d like to offer a few of my own thoughts on a bounty system. They are just my thoughts, they could be wrong.

1. Money In, Money Out.

I think most players will agree that a bounty system is specifically a player to player affair. I hate you because you kill me a lot, you talk crap in chat, or perhaps you just crossed an angry person with a lot of expendable cash. So I’m not entirely sure why some MMOs don’t have a 1:1 input to output ratio on bounty levels.

As a gamer, I take issue with government subsidized murder to deal with personal squabbles. If xXx Leg0la$ xXx wants me dead because I stuck my sword in his head and stole all forty of his apple pies, he can do so without asking companies like Aventurine to help him buy a bounty hunter, ie: my friend who kills me and splits the reward. Even more importantly, removing the glut will prevent people from using the bounty system to get rich, with the money coming from nowhere.

Ultimately, a bounty system should be a transfer of wealth, not a generator of it. It should act as an arbiter, essentially, to prove the kill and distribute the reward.

2. The Bounty System Will Be Gamed, Regardless.

How do you keep someone like myself from gaming your bounty system? Simple: You can’t. And that is something that developers will need to understand going forward if you’re going to make this an enjoyable system and not a convoluted, overreaching and unenjoyable mess. A bounty system is a social system, and you’re up against geniuses in social engineering.

But even on a 1:1 ratio as mentioned above, you won’t stop the system from being gamed. When a player has a bounty on their heads, they will simply allow themselves to be killed by a clan member and split the profits. Prevent their clan from gathering the reward? They will set up a mule, outside of the clan, to get the kill. Allow only trusted/known people to gather the reward? Well then you’ve just negated the point in making the system official, if the person is known well enough that they could just as well be trusted on the honor system.

And enough on gaming the bounty poster, what about the bounty pursuant? Set up a clan member as a trap by throwing a massive bounty on his head, and when lone hunters show up to kill him, the group jumps out and just thrashes him. In RuneScape they do something like this by having everyone stand on one square, giving the illusion that there is only one person.

So your system is going to be gamed, one way or another, but at least in the world I’ve created it isn’t being abused to generate wealth out of nowhere.

3. Have Some Fun With It.

Here is my ideal bounty system for a game like Mortal Online or Darkfall. Players naturally drop something identifying when they die, let’s say their head or a finger. Whatever the object is, it decays and disappears after a short period of time, let’s say 24 hours from the time of death, to prevent players from gathering them in large quantities and simply hoarding them until the appropriate bounty is posted.

I, as the bounty poster, give my bounty notice and reward to the broker, we’ll call him that creepy guy in the back alley on the edge of town. You, as the hunter, go to him to see who is on the menu. When you kill your target, gather his head/finger as proof, and bring it to the creep, he pays you the reward. And naturally you are free to keep the loot from the person you killed as an extra reward.

Simple, minimalist. An NPC to act as an arbiter and nothing more.

Darkfall: Unholy Wars Announced


Tasos Flambouras has gone to Youtube to announce Darkfall: Unholy Wars. In the video, Flambouras talks about how the job of fixing the current Darkfall was too great, and as a result Aventurine has decided to relaunch as a separate game entirely. In the video, Flambouras praises the community for its extensive feedback, and notes that Unholy Wars is in internal testing and is gearing up to roll out.

Unholy Wars features a massive art change, as well as an entirely new map, new races, new environments, a new GUI, and more.

Quite exciting news. Check out the video trailer below.

Funcom Former CEO Under Investigation, Insider Trading


I’m happy to see that I am not the only person who was baffled when Funcom’s CEO Trond Arne Aas suddenly up and flew the coup before the launch of The Secret World. As many of you already know, Funcom’s stock tumbled following the launch of The Secret World, from $17 to $2.23. Luckily, and perhaps in a well timed move, Trond was able to sell off 650,000 shares, possibly with the knowledge that The Secret World would fail to meet even Funcom’s lowest expectation of sales.

And if you are thinking, “gee, Omali. That sounds a lot like insider trading,” you would be correct. According to an insider at Funcom, reported to The Escapist, Trond Arne Aas is under investigation by Norway’s Financial Services Authority and OSE. Aas is claiming that, as he had stepped down as CEO, he had no access to sales figures until Funcom posted its latest financial details.

The source states that he would not be surprised if Aas ultimately winds up in jail.

(Source: The Escapist)