Tag: SOE

Healthy Reminder: DC Universe Preorders…


than a bug in a rug...

Those of you who use Steam,  Direct2Drive, shop at Gamestop/Fry’s, etc, will be aware that DC Universe, the upcoming MMO by development-Goliath Sony Online Entertainment, has recently gone on for Preorder and being the impulsive buyer that I am, I have to say my response was…no. I have a fundamental disagreement with DC:U going up for preorder four months before the game releases, partially because I know that Sony is without a doubt in no position that they desperately need to sell units to pay for development, and also because four months is probably enough time that many of us will buy it, have a period where we do a ton of research into the game, and then finally involve ourselves so much that we get sick and tired of the game before we’ve even had a chance to play it.

I’m not saying I won’t be buying DC:U, just at a later date. The collector’s edition offer (Batman figurine plus a comic book plus an art book plus in-game exclusives) would be making my wallet tug itself out of my pant pocket, if my pants weren’t hung up by the door. As someone who doesn’t own a Playstation 3, I can only assume disappointment on the part of the console gamers that they will not have access to the Batman figurine, nor the alternate cover for the comic, as the PS3 version will only come in standard vanilla flavor (Game + in-game item + comic).

Don’t forget, you’re not racing against the clock. Take some time, read the guides when more people get into the open beta, and keep watching websites like Fileplanet, Rock Paper Shotgun, Gamespot, Massively, and other gaming outlets for beta key giveaways.

DC:U comes out this November for Playstation 3 and PC.

Sorry Grandpa: Everquest Server Merges Coming


Teddy bears for all!

So it’s been a bad month or so for MMO servers. We know that Vanguard is on the verge of server mergers, and that Aion is to shut down several servers, and that Everquest 2 may be getting some servers shut down on the horizon. New word comes from Sony that beginning June 20th, Sony will begin consolidating servers. The result are that Everquest will end up with ten servers, the result of twenty being merged on a two to one basis (two servers merged into one, ten times over). There are four servers that are unaffected.

Characters will receive one free transfer for their characters that will only be valid for seven days after the transfer. Characters will be automatically transferred to the merged-server. If you play Everquest, you will want to read up on the information in the above link, as there are a lot of important notices you will need to take heed to, including what characters/items/banks/etc will be kept and what could be lost.

Inactive accounts with characters under level 10 will be purged from the system

It is not all bad news, however. Sony announced that they will be opening up a new server, which players will have the opportunity to name.

I’ve said that server mergers are not always a bad thing, and for a game as old as Everquest I am certain the population will enjoy the increased number of players in various areas (or not, we all hate overcrowding). If the new server is a regular rules server, then we might see some vested new interest in the title by new players, as the lower level areas will be populated for quite some time by players rolling alts.

More on Everquest as it appears.

“Big” Planetside Announcement On The Way?


Somewhere in an MMO Fallout post...

Planetside is hitting its seventh birthday soon, and I still believe that no other MMO has come close to the enormous battles that Planetside has presented since its launch in 2003. In fact, here is a community video recently highlighted on Sony Online Entertainment’s website, highlighting the action of the game. I’ll give you a few minutes.

Back? Being at Planetside’s age, and considering the current state of the game’s population, any “big announcement” is going to be met with a lot of speculation. By speculation, of course, I mean claims that the big announcement is the game shutting down. But can you blame them? Servers have been consolidated down to one, and my understanding from MMO Fallouters in the field is that botters have become quite an issue over the past year or two.

Well, there is a big announcement coming: On the 18th of May to be exact (and not just the season finale of House MD). A countdown timer appeared in the Planetside News section, alongside the above comic. You can follow the countdown in the link, or just wait until early on the 18th.

MMO Fallout will continue to cover any Planetside News as it appears. Could this be an official announcement of the elusive Planetside 2?

"Big" Planetside Announcement On The Way?


Somewhere in an MMO Fallout post...

Planetside is hitting its seventh birthday soon, and I still believe that no other MMO has come close to the enormous battles that Planetside has presented since its launch in 2003. In fact, here is a community video recently highlighted on Sony Online Entertainment’s website, highlighting the action of the game. I’ll give you a few minutes.

Back? Being at Planetside’s age, and considering the current state of the game’s population, any “big announcement” is going to be met with a lot of speculation. By speculation, of course, I mean claims that the big announcement is the game shutting down. But can you blame them? Servers have been consolidated down to one, and my understanding from MMO Fallouters in the field is that botters have become quite an issue over the past year or two.

Well, there is a big announcement coming: On the 18th of May to be exact (and not just the season finale of House MD). A countdown timer appeared in the Planetside News section, alongside the above comic. You can follow the countdown in the link, or just wait until early on the 18th.

MMO Fallout will continue to cover any Planetside News as it appears. Could this be an official announcement of the elusive Planetside 2?

Buy Sentinel’s Fate on Steam: Free Stuff!


Good Stuff Free

I say, the tone of MMO Fallout has been quite negative this past week. You know what we need? Free stuff. If you wanted to get into the early head start for Everquest II’s latest expansion, Sentinel’s Fate, you’re a little late: The expansion has already launched. If you have not purchased the expansion yet, and would like to get in on an exclusive item, then you’re just in time!

Continuing the natural bandwagon of offering exclusive items per retailer, Sony has an offer to make through Steam you won’t be able to refuse. Players who purchase through Steam will receive access to the Guarding of the Learned Armor. For $40 USD, current players will be able to enjoy all that Everquest II has to offer, while new players will receive the whole experience, plus thirty days free time.

One important thing to note: Unless Sony has changed anything, you will need a valid form of payment if you are a new customer, in order to get the thirty days.

Buy Sentinel's Fate on Steam: Free Stuff!


Good Stuff Free

I say, the tone of MMO Fallout has been quite negative this past week. You know what we need? Free stuff. If you wanted to get into the early head start for Everquest II’s latest expansion, Sentinel’s Fate, you’re a little late: The expansion has already launched. If you have not purchased the expansion yet, and would like to get in on an exclusive item, then you’re just in time!

Continuing the natural bandwagon of offering exclusive items per retailer, Sony has an offer to make through Steam you won’t be able to refuse. Players who purchase through Steam will receive access to the Guarding of the Learned Armor. For $40 USD, current players will be able to enjoy all that Everquest II has to offer, while new players will receive the whole experience, plus thirty days free time.

One important thing to note: Unless Sony has changed anything, you will need a valid form of payment if you are a new customer, in order to get the thirty days.

8 Million Registered: Bigger Number, Still Meaningless


Join us, traveler.

Free Realms is a browser based MMO aimed primarily at the tween market, a relatively small niche also occupied by Cartoon Network’s Fusion Fall (which you may remember is set to go free to play this year). What Free Realms does for its market is take the usual MMO grind, and throw it out the door. Yes, the game does have grind out the wazoo, but Sony did their best to make the grind as least apparent as possible. Each “job” has its own goals and methods of reaching said goals, that varies so widely that you are unlikely to not find a class in Free Realms that doesn’t suit your tastes. Cook’s gather cooking ingredients and cook, all in its own mini-game, and all of the other jobs function as you would expect them to (racer’s race, soccer players play soccer, etc).

So I give a lot of praise on MMO Fallout for Sony’s games, which judging by Sony leading the “Company I’ll Never Buy From” poll, not to mention the feedback I get on such praise, a vocal community disagrees with. One thing I have hit Sony for in the past is their ability to lie like a Senator: What they say isn’t technically a lie, but can’t be reputed through normal means, like “the freshest produce in the West!” or “Fair and Balanced.”

SOE Press, on behalf of its Free Realms title, published an announcement that the fledgling MMO had hit eight million registered users. Eight million sounds great, until you factor several questions:

  1. How many actually played the game? Before Dungeon Runners shut down, its small development team noted that somewhere around thirty percent of the people who registered an account for the game quit before they even downloaded it.
  2. How many are paying? For every account in a freemium or item mall title that pays, there are countless more that do not. For games that are force free players to watch advertisements, those ads generally make up less than 10% of the title’s final income.
  3. How vocal are they? I’ve seen games with small communities that fill up their forums with all forms of discussion. Likewise, one simply has to take a look at Second Life, whose forums are shutting down because, out of the millions of players, about 700 know the forums even exist.
  4. Most importantly, how many of those accounts are active? Reports like this are akin to the sign outside of Mcdonald’s that says “Over X Billion Served.” The sign isn’t referring to today, or this week, this year, or even this decade, but how many people have enjoyed a delicious sawdust sandwich over many years.

So eight million, when you break it down, is meaningless when put in the terms of Sony’s aim: talking about how many people play their game. Although it doesn’t tell us much, what it does tell us is enough to run wild with and speculate with. Someone might ask, why don’t they just announce the number of active accounts rather than an inflated number?

That is an easy question: Because the number of active accounts is nowhere near eight million. This isn’t to say Free Realms is low quality, but that they simply need to accept the fundamental rule of any MMO: You can expect a good retention rate to be around half. Even if Free Realms has just about two million accounts active, Sony is still likely floating around the top of the free play MMO genre.

Everquest II: Leveling To Be Made Easier


New Expansion, New Level Cap

The typical MMO Expansion rules include new zones, occasionally a new class or two, perhaps a new race, and increasing the level cap. Of course, this eventually presents the problem that once you raise the level cap several times, it becomes a very long process for newer players to jump into the game and knock their way up to end-game, compared to those who had been in the game long enough to level with it.

So naturally, every now and then you have to increase the speed that players level. World of Warcraft did this by increasing the experience gained by quests in some levels and reducing the experience needed in other levels. Everquest 2 started with a level 50 cap, and now features a level cap of 80.

In response, Sony is releasing a patch to make the leveling smoother. Levels 1 to 65 have not been made shorter, but the experience has been mixed around to make the process much smoother. Levels 65 to 75 require less experience, and quests in this range will give more experience to adventurers. This is a good move, especially considering that several times during Everquest 2, there were levels that required more experience than further levels, an issue that will be fixed with this patch.

More on Everquest 2 and its leveling process as it appears. Sentinel’s Fate hits next month.

Everquest: Happy MLK Day, Have Some Bonus EXP


Everquest 2’s latest expansion, Sentinel’s Fate, is right around the corner. Being set in February, the expansion pack is right in the middle of a myriad of holiday events: Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Martin Luther King Junior Day, the whole kibosh. Yes, I said Martin Luther King Jr. Day. On the other side, Everquest players are currently throwing their way through the new zones brought in by Underfoot, the latest expansion.

In order to commemorate the weekend leading up to Monday’s day of celebration of civil rights and those who helped expand them, players will be encased in a magical experience increase that will gift them a bonus 50% of experience throughout the weekend. The bonus has already begun as of thsi writing, and will last until Tuesday, approximately 1pm eastern.

I think that ol’ MLK would be proud to see nerds of all race, creed, and archetype, be they human, elf, dwarf, or even halfling, come together under his name to slay the dragons of Norrath while /pizza’ing until their bellies are nice and full.

More on the not-so-mainstream and questionably exploitative Martin Luther King Junior MMO events as they appear.

Get It All: Star Wars Galaxies $10



Is that Kyle Katarn?

 

I often try to keep people informed of various sales for MMOs they may be on the edge of purchasing, as I did with Direct 2 Drive’s small selection of MMOs during their 5th year anniversary sale (You will remember Age of Conan, Planetside, and Eve Online were five dollars for approximately a week).

Star Wars Galaxies is on sale for $10 on Steam this week, and includes every expansion pack for the game: Empire Divided, Jump to Lightspeed, Rage of the Wookies, and Trials of Obiwan. Even so, you will receive the Star Wars Trading Card Game, a digital trading card game, some of which can be redeemed in game for free items. Players in good standing will also receive a free booster pack each month with their Star Wars Galaxies subscription.

Desperate cry for help? Perhaps. I can’t say no to ten dollars.

The sale can be found here, and is available until November 26th. The free month is only for new accounts, and is not a cheap method to obtain play time.