“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.
When Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment was still filing bankruptcy while claiming that they never had the resources to complete Stargate Worlds, we were treated to Stargate Resistance, a lobby based shooter more akin to a four-classed Team Fortress than the MMO we were all anticipating. Stargate Resistance was supposed to be the cash cow to bring in some moolah for SGW. When Cheyenne routed the game over to Fresh Start Studios, I think many of us anticipated that the game would be shielded Cheyenne’s imminent full collapse. It wasn’t.
Earlier today, Stargate Resistance was fully pulled from all digital distribution websites, and is no longer for sale. A note on the Stargate website reads:
On November 16, 2010, the License Agreement between Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, Inc. and MGM Interactive, Inc. expired. As a result, Cheyenne will no longer be able to offer Stargate Resistance for sale to new customers. However, in the best interests of our customers, game play will be provided for a period of 60 days (until January 15, 2011) to customers who purchased Stargate Resistance prior to November 16, 2010. Look for more information as it becomes available.
The January shut down will mark 11 months as Stargate Resistance’s lifespan which, as user Night_Chrono puts it:
We beat APB so thats what matters at the end of the day.
More on the continuing Stargate saga as it appears.
Rev up the Wikipedia, because All Points Bulletin has a buyer…well, it always had a buyer, but now we know who that buyer is: K2 Networks. To save some of you the work, K2 Networks is the gaming company behind the Western localizations of Knight Online, WarRock, 9Dragons, among others. Given that K2 operates solely on Asian f2p grinders, the likelihood that All Points Bulletin will follow the free to play cash shop model are very high.
An official statement is coming next week. You can read the full story on Eurogamer, and I guess it’s time to stick All Points Bulletin in the Upcoming category. Bet you never thought you’d see that. But today the Realtime Worlds APB saga comes to an end.
See? This is what I get for going to school. Several hours ago, Realtime Worlds announced that All Points Bulletin will be shutting down within the next 24 hours. It feels like just last week we were reporting on Realtime Worlds heading into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, selling off MyWorld, and desperately trying to find a new bidder for All Points Bulletin. At the time, Realtime Worlds expressed that the game was still lively, holding 130,000 active players. In a post on the APB forums, Brett Bateman had this to say;
“APB has been a fantastic journey, but unfortunately that journey has come to a premature end. Today we are sad to announce that despite everyone’s best efforts to keep the service running; APB is coming to a close.”
According to Eurogamer, a source close to Realtime Worlds disclosed that the game will be pulled within 24 hours, as the company could not find a buyer.
“Despite all the talk, no buyer has been found so it looks like the plug is about to be pulled. We’ve heard that it could go tomorrow”.
Our thoughts and hopes go out to the now ex-employees of Realtime Worlds. It appears as though All Points Bulletin is already offline, as neither the forums nor the game itself are working currently.
I’ll be updating as more information appears, but this for all intent and purpose, this is the end of APB.
The Chronicles of Spellborn closes down shop on the 25th, and many of you likely know me as a pretty nostalgic guy. So I got a package in the mail today I think a few of you will like.
Granted, I don’t have any place to put this game. The package it came in was basically a mail sleeve envelope. Luckily, I know just the place Chronicles of Spellborn can go where it will be loved and cherished forever.
Right here in the old nostalgia shelf. I could go for a good read.
No, not that one, although most of those are from 2003-2004.
It feels like ages ago that Chronicles of Spellborn went quiet. Not only did the new developers (Acclaim) stop talking to us, but eventually the downloader and client for the game didn’t even work! Absolutely nothing came into or out of the company, and we were left with nothing more than a long-aged reminder that “we’re still working on stuff guys!” Ask anyone who does MMO news (like myself) and they’ll likely tell you the same thing: Chronicles of Spellborn was an absolutely baffling experience. It was quite a decent game, one that sat through its developers going bankrupt and the new publishers attempting (and obviously failing) to pull a free to play conversion.
So when I say Chronicles of Spellborn is shutting down, I think of it in the sense of putting a very badly hurting title out of its misery. Chronicles of Spellborn was taken over shortly after launch by its publisher, Acclaim, who was in turn acquired by Playdom, who was in turn acquired by Disney, who in turn decided to shutter the title this month.
TCoS will be online until the end of August, when the servers will come down for their final time. It is unknown, and unlikely, as to whether or not the developers are planning some kind of end-of-game event. Playing by the UK release date (November 2008), the game will still have not hit two years old by the time it shuts down.
I’ll be here with a “what happened?” when The Chronicles of Spellborn shuts down this September.
I came upon this decision months ago, but I’ve been sitting on it until someone pointed out my hint, and they did in an email I received:
I see you updated your calendar showing MMO birthdays, but only titles that are five years old and older are displayed. Is there a reason for this? Or do you consider five years to be the point of “success” and none of the others are worth mentioning.
Borderline obsessive-compulsive grammar notations aside, what the reader pointed out is not correct at all. Those of you who have stuck with MMO Fallout since our earlier days are well aware that I refuse to stick labels on to MMOs, and have maintained that what makes up a “successful” title or a “failed” title really depends on what goals the developer set out and what they accomplished in that time frame. As no MMO will live forever, to put an arbitrary time on how long of a lifespan makes up success would be meaningless.
So what is this Turing test, you ask? My test bases itself on population, place, self-awareness, and perception. The date is five years after release. By the time an MMO passes the Turing test, the following has been in stone:
Population: By the time an MMO hits five years old, the stream of incoming players is more akin to a slow drip, and five years is enough to keep the veteran players entrapped with new content, as well as not wanting to leave behind their high level, high-time-invested characters. The company is well in-tune with the size and needs of their player base, and can plan accordingly.
Self-Awareness: The developer knows the limits of their engine, and has likely hit those limits by now. Using this knowledge, they set reasonable goals that are met in a timely fashion, due to decreased time debugging software and experimenting with previously unused techniques.
Place: This is where the developer knows exactly what spot they fill on the MMO spectrum. For example, Dark Age of Camelot is a Realm V Realm game and thus needs more concentrated servers for player vs player. Runescape is more solo-oriented and players spread out to maximize their resource intake. Darkfall is a niche PvP game that focuses on freedom over babying its players.
Perception: By the time an MMO hits five years, they know where they are going. For games like City of Heroes and Lineage, where the population is still thriving, this means regular updates, expansion packs, and major continued support into its old age. For games like Planetside, that face continuing server mergers, slow death. By the time five years comes around, any MMO that can die via short-term mass-exodus already has, such as FURY, or Tabula Rasa.
The important part of my Turing test is that although I call it a test, it is not my judgement of success. Rather, something to be viewed as closer to one’s employment in a business. After you have worked for a single company for so many years, you likely know exactly where your place is, strengths and weaknesses, relations to those around you, and whether you are seeking a promotion, to stay at your current position, or find a new job entirely.
The Turing test is also not exact. “Five years” is not some magical line, and many companies hit their pass/fail on the Turing test over a year earlier than the five-year mark. I decided upon Five years after looking at the MMOs on the market, those that are long gone, with an extra focus on those that are getting along in years. What I found was that most MMOs that are going to “crash and burn” as some put it, do so within three years of release. Asheron’s Call 2 was 3 years, Tabula Rasa was 2 years, Auto Assault was 1 year, FURY was 10 months, and the list goes on. You’ll notice that even World of Warcraft is not immune to the Turing test, as the title has peaked and is now on a downward slope. The more observant of you will note the date of stagnation at around 11.5 million subscribers: 2009, five years after launch.
So if anything, 3 years is around the “do or die” timeline, whereby 5 years the future of the game should be laid out quite plainly.
My interpretation of the Turing test for MMOs is over a year in the making, and doesn’t draw a fine line as much as it does paint a trend. There are still many MMOs that are in their testing phase, and may shape the Turing test in years to come, so expect several followups over the next couple of years.
To those of you who disagree with my perception, I would love to hear your thoughts on a more finely tuned Turing Test.
Exteel was something of an experimental move by NCsoft into the free to play cash shop market, and launched back in December 2007 to the fanfare of…something. As far as fanfare goes, Exteel was one of the games I never actually bothered looking up, considering it was developed and published by NCsoft. Not unlike Dungeon Runners, the game hasn’t made much news since its launch, and the announcement of it shutting down just begged the question: Exteel was still running?
That being said, on September 1st, Exteel will shut down because, as it turns out, the robot fighting cash shop MMO is not “financially viable.” In August, players should expect more information as to planned compensation for players, although if past history is anything to look at, players will likely receive keys to City of Heroes, Guild Wars, and Lineage, along with game time for each respective title (I know that is what I received when Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault shut down).
NIDA Online shut down late last night, after approximately eight months in service, so last night I decided to take a plunge into the game and see just why the title fell short of its one year anniversary.
What I found was a game that wasn’t all that terrible, but nothing special. In terms of cookie-cutter MMOs, this cookie was that plate of Christmas cookies you get from relatives and neighbors that eerily look identical. They are home cooked, but have the strong sensation that the person simply unwrapped store bought items, arranged them on a plate, and called them their own.
I created an Artificier, a tech-based character, who did all of his fighting through guns, not unlike my character in Aika Online. My starter pistol was replaced at level ten with a shotgun, and buying ammo was quick and easy (click on a button on the HUD, no need to be in town or at a vendor). At level fifteen, however, I purchased myself a machine gun that tore through enemies like a hail of knives through air.
By the time I logged off for the night (the game shut down at approximately 3am my time), I hit level 20 and felt like I had accomplished absolutely nothing. I had finished a total of five quests, each one having me kill dozens, if not hundreds, of the same two or three mobs for the sake of finding three or five of whatever item they dropped. Sayries, for example, dropped shells that I needed for a level five quest. I leveled from eight to fifteen before I retrieved all five shells, which I turned in to find my next quest? Get three Sayrie shells. These are non-repeatable quests.
I wanted to get the essence of what new players see when coming into the game, and what I found was an uninviting world filled with monsters who, should you partake in the game’s quest system, you will be slaughtering by the hundred until they no longer give you a viable source of exp, only to finish one quest and then be sent right back for the next. It isn’t a test of patience, or tolerance of grind like in most other Asian MMOs, but instead you get to a point while questing where you simply ask yourself “where is the challenge?”
Moving around is a chore, with the WASD system broken, and the point/click system shoddily put together (I had regular moments where clicking yielded no movement). The combat system is a combat system, there isn’t much more to say about it. Nothing special, but nothing horrible about it either.
I’m sure I will be berated for not giving the title more of a chance, but the focus of my play time over the course of the day yesterday was to experience the game as a new player would, and judging by the dearth of posts on the forums pre-shutdown, and the lack of people in-game, I get the feeling I was one of the few remaining who cared to even take a peek.
NIDA Online is a reminder that for all we rag on mainstream Korean MMOs, there is in fact a level of quality that borderlines on comatose, and I for one feel bad that Gamekiss put so much of their own support and funding into a title that the developers obviously couldn’t care less about.
NIDA Online is a Korean free-to-play MMO. For some of you, that is enough to avoid this game like the plague, and for others it is enough to question: Omali why are you bothering reporting on yet another cookie-cutter MMO shutting down. Why is this significant? NIDA Online opened in September 2009, around the same time as Aion, Champions Online, and Fallen Earth. So, from start to finish, NIDA Online lasted slightly less than eight months.
Now I have never played NIDA, so I’ll leave the quips about the game’s quality to another person, but eight months says a lot. Consider, for instance, the fact that two very widely panned MMOs are still going rather strong to this day, after two years of being live (I’ll leave you to fill in what those two MMOs released in 2008 with high preorder numbers are). NIDA’s run even knocks out FURY, the only MMO we are aware of to fire off emails to its ex-players calling them losers. FURY, for reference, had a ten month life span.
Perhaps now Gamekiss can focus on its other riveting titles, such as the Freestyle basketball MMO.
MMO Fallout 