Sony Online Entertainment – Page 5

Everquest Mac Shutting Down For Real This Time

Some of you may remember that Sony Online Entertainment originally slated Everquest Mac to shut down in 2012, but decided against it due to passionate feedback from the community. Well passion can only get you so far, and in a letter posted to the community, John Smedley has announced that Everquest’s Mac iteration will be shutting down effective November 18th.

We said this before and now we really have to do it – we’re sunsetting EQ Mac. As a passionate Mac player, I’m disappointed to have to share this news. We decided to keep the game running after receiving your feedback when we originally announced the sunset plans early last year, but with all of our development aligned towards our upcoming slate of games, we simply cannot justify the resources required to continue to support this version of the game.

Everquest on the PC will not be affected by any of these changes, and it is unlikely that players will be able to move their characters over due to the massive difference in versions. EQMac was never updated past Planes of Power, the fourth expansion released in 2002.

(Source: Announcement)

MMOrning Shots: Here Sheepy

I’m in the middle of taking a look at Dragon’s Prophet, and I want to impart a lesson upon Runewaker: First impressions are everything, and that means making sure your opening quests actually work. There is a particularly annoying quest at level five where you have to let this woman spray you with a vanilla mist in order to entice the sheep into following you back to the pen. Problem: Only one of the sheep actually works. The others just ignore you no matter how much you run around them, there is no button to press that will force them to follow you, and you only have 60 seconds until the spray runs out and you have to go back and get another. So what should have been an easy quest turned into fifteen minutes of finding the one sheep that would respond, bringing it back to the pen, waiting for it to respawn, getting sprayed, and repeating.

On the plus side, I won’t need sleeping pills when I go to bed tonight, since I’ve been counting sheep.

SOE Expands On Bans For Abusive Players

SOE’s Linda Carlson spoke at this year’s GDC Europe about policing an online community and dealing with the small population of very vocal trolls. Carlson believes that community management should be tailored to each game with some standards set across the field. Carlson discusses how Sony Online Entertainment deals with the more vile members of the community, both in-game and out.

“It’s all a matter of perspective. The size of the problem changes depending on who you are, so you have to take all of these views seriously, even if you can’t change something [back].”

You can check out the sizable article at the link below.

(Source: GamesIndustry.biz)

MMOrning Shots: Sons of Trigon

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes from Sony Online Entertainment with Sons of Trigon, the latest DLC for DC Universe Online. Sons of Trigon is available now for PC and PS3 and introduces a new power, new alerts, new gear, new toons, and more. Premium players have access to Sons of Trigon for free, while free players will be required to pay $9.99 for access.

Sony Online Entertainment Layoffs

Sony Online Entertainment has confirmed that the developer has laid off an unknown number of staff from an unknown variety of divisions. SOE’s Linda Carlson posted on several of the official game boards that the reduction aims to reduce costs and focus efforts on the current slate of games.

As a company, our goal is to focus on our core expertise of MMO games and as part of these efforts, we had to make the difficult decision to eliminate positions to help reduce costs, streamline our employee base and strategically align resources towards our current portfolio of games and upcoming slate of MMOs, including EverQuest Next Landmark and EverQuest Next.

Although the developer refused to comment on the number of staff laid off, a representative told Gamasutra that the reduction has affected the San Diego and Austin offices. MMO Fallout hopes the best for those finding themselves unemployed as of today.

(Source: Gamasutra)

MMOrning Shots: Son of a Trigon

Today’s screenshot comes to us from Sony Online Entertainment, on DC Universe’s upcoming DLC release: Sons of Trigon. Releasing later this fall, Sons of Trigon marks the eighth DLC expansion to the super hero/villain MMO since release, as well as the 11th power: Celestial. Players will take on Trigon alongside either Wonder Woman or Circe, in a battle for either power or peace.

Sons of Trigon DLC picks up where the Sins of the Father storyline left off. Through blood ritual, Trigon escaped his dimension and was preparing to attack the Earth. However, he became trapped in a nightmare version of Gotham City, a wasteland filled with sin. In this new DLC, Heroes and Villains will explore these wastelands as they race to confront Trigon and his sinful sons.

The Matrix Online Had Less Than 500 Players

It’s been four years since The Matrix Online was shut down, it is time to move on Omali! That’s what you think. Gamescom is up and running, and that means commentary by Sony Online Entertainment on past games. Linda “Brasse” Carlson, Director of Global Community Relations at Sony Online Entertainment commented on the old and mostly forgotten MMO at Gamescom, noting that the game had fewer than five hundred players at the time it was shut down. The cost to maintain the game, Colson says, became too great and the servers had to be shut down regardless of the “close and tight knit” community that still played.

Now tell us how many players Star Wars Galaxies had when it shut down.

(Source: Polygon)

MMOrning Shots: Dragon Prophet

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes from Sony Online Entertainment and Dragon’s Prophet. If you didn’t see it in the screenshot, this is an exact recreation of the village that I grew up in back in the old country, until I out-leveled the area and moved into a place with electricity and a working sanitation system. Dragon’s Prophet releases September 18th, but you can check out the open beta going on right now.

Planetside 2: Cross Platform And Character Transfers

PC and PlayStation 4 will not be taking each other head on in Planetside 2, however if you own both platforms you may be able to transfer your character between them. In an interview with Eurogamer, Matt Higby explained that due to the extra steps required in getting a patch approved and launched in the PlayStation Network, it is impossible to keep the two versions of Planetside 2 in sync.

“They might be a week behind in terms of patching, or a day behind or whatever it ends up being, and we can’t really have that.”

While cross-platform play seems impossible at least for the time being, Higby notes that the technology for transferring characters between platforms is entirely possible.

“But we’re also talking about having character portability, so a PC character, you could transfer it to PlayStation 4, and then back. The character format’s the same on both, it’s just purely a matter of the server updates.”

Check out the entire article below, where Higby goes on to talk about optimization, the PS4, and further updates to the game.

(Source: Eurogamer)

MMOrning Shots: My Nose Itches!

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Sony Online Entertainment with Everquest Next. With the voxel engine making everything destructible, naturally that Kerran should be able to chop those flowers down, throw them in a nice ceramic vase, and then throw the vase over the side of that cliff and watch it smash against the ground. Right? I consider myself to be a rather sensible gamer, but if Everquest Next doesn’t contain the flower pot cliff smashing, you can count me out as a buyer.

Oh, it’s free to play? That’s preposterous, I still won’t pay it.

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