Trion – MMO Fallout

Trion Worlds Compensates (Again) Players For ArcheAge Downtime (Again)

At some point the news will just revert to posting articles when ArcheAge goes a full month without having any server issues or lengthy downtime. Until then, we will be here to report on every time players are offered their regular stipend of compensation.

ArcheAge’s recent downtime, not to be confused with the downtime last month after the launch of the fresh start servers, has spurred compensation for players who tried to log in between January 6th and January 12th. The statement by Trion Worlds is as follows:

Adventurers, we know many of you were affected by the recent sets of server downtime and errors that prevented you from logging in, and we want to offer you all a pack of compensation items. Our teams continue to work to fix these errors and make your experience as smoothly as possible, and we really appreciate you sticking with us through all of it!

As part of the compensation, all players will receive:

2 Daru Warrior’s Chests
12 Warrior’s Medals
2 Bound Worker’s Compensation: 1000
5 Merit Badges
2 Eternal Hero Potions, worth 500 honor each.
20 Bound Hereafter Stones

(Source: ArcheAge)

MMOrning Shots: Anti-gravity

Today’s MMOrning Shots comes to us from Defiance. I didn’t fully understand why the Volge were constantly attacking E-Rep camps until I came across the above area and realized that they are trying to steal our anti-gravity technology. The hovering truck is one thing, but I’m not sure what the point of the levitating garbage can or sandbags is.

MMOrning Shots shows off interesting games and locales, and can be seen here at MMO Fallout every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. To submit your own MMOrning Shot, send an email to contact@mmofallout.com.

Impressions: Defiance Arkbreaker

I managed to get some time in playing through the Arkbreaker DLC for Defiance, and I came out less disappointed than the Castithan pack DLC. I had a hard time completing the first DLC arenas because the timers were randomly breaking at launch, and I believe still are to this day. The Arkbreaker DLC introduces a laundry list of new content, including stims, spikes, a new mission line, arkfall events, weapons, and more.

There are new consumables added into the game in the form of spikes and stims. The spikes are like totems from other MMOs, you stick them in the ground and they give area of effect buffs to you and your allies. Stims are injected and offer similar buffs. They are consumable and you can only have a maximum of five of each particular type at any given time. What I really like about these items is that Trion has made it so you can only have one of each type in your inventory. If you find any more of the same type, it replenishes your stack, and if you find a higher quality version of the same thing it will replace the lower quality version. So if I get a higher tier ammunition spike, it will replace the one I have on me now. This sounds limiting, and you are limited to ten of each spike, but it makes the inventory less cluttered.

The ability to favorite items and protect them from accidental salvage is a great addition, as is the inclusion of daily contract missions on the main map. The new Arkfalls are enclosed shooting galleries, there isn’t much to them outside of shooting a bunch of Volge and then fighting the Warmaster. The Warmaster itself is difficult, a giant tank with a lot of health. My group filled up the area and still couldn’t bring him down below 25% health before time ran out and he disappeared. Still managed to get a few decent weapons.

I am not impressed by Trion’s decision to make grenades consumable. Had they done this from the start, it probably wouldn’t be an issue, but they run out fast and are a pain to refill. Changing it this far into the game just feels like a step backward. Much like the first pack of DLC, I also can’t help but feel like there isn’t much to justify the price. Most of the content is available regardless of if you actually buy the DLC, and I can’t help but feel that the $40 I spent toward the season pass is going to waste. The world is as tiny as it ever was, even smaller since Trion split the map and threw in a loading screen. The company seems more dedicated to filling an already cramped world with more stuff, rather than taking the logical approach and expanding it as people have been requesting since launch.

As an update, Arkbreaker offers some nice content, but with most of it being given for free, it’s hard to justify spending the ten dollars.

Weapon Bonuses Make Sense In Defiance

Defiance is a game all about shooting guns, which means that making those guns actually fun to shoot is pretty integral. In Defiance, the random nature of weapons dropping with attributes didn’t always work out to the benefit of the user, such as a sniper rifle with melee bonuses, or single shot guns with increased rates of fire. To remedy this, Trion has released patch 1.105.

The new patch alters drops so that weapons will stack bonuses with each tier of rarity, making rare weapons always more powerful than their lower counterparts. It also ensures that weapons don’t have bonuses that are of no use to their play style.

Our previous system had some quirks that led to weapons receiving bonuses that didn’t always make the most sense: single-shot rocket launchers could have bonuses to their rate of fire and sniper rifles could provide chances to light enemies on fire (cool) with melee attacks (uncool). Weapons also sometimes had effects that weren’t satisfying (like a self-revive bonus. We’ve never heard someone exclaim “man, this bonus is great! I can’t wait to die now!”).

The patch applies this effect retroactively, making your current inventory all the more useful. Check out all of the changes at the link below.

(Source: Defiance)

Rift Server Merger Incoming

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Trion Worlds has announced an upcoming server merge to the MMO Rift. Previously Trion would sneak around the need to merge their shards by switching them into “trial” mode and forcing players to transfer off of them anyway. This time around the company is going for a good old fashioned merger, shutting down three North American and four European shards on October 23rd and 24th for each region respectively. According to the announcement, the company hopes that one day the server architecture will allow them to run multiple languages on the same servers.

Players with names already taken on the server they are merged into will have to change theirs, and guilds with conflicting names will be marked with a ! and will be able to change their name via customer support. This only affects the players on the shards that are shutting down, not the players on the destination shards.

(Source: Rift)

Trion Worlds Closes Guildford Office

As part of the developer’s ongoing realignment, Trion Worlds’ European publishing office in Guildford will be closed down.

“European localised versions of Trion’s live and upcoming games will not be affected as all regional game development and support continues from Redwood City, CA.”

The news comes on the heels of Trion closing down its San Diego branch and the return of Scott Hartsman as Chief Executive Officer.

(Source: Gamesindustry.biz)

Trion: Hartsman Returns, Branch Closed

It is Christmas time, right? Trion has welcomed back Scott Hartsman as CEO. Some of you may remember back in January that Hartsman resigned from his position as Executive Producer on Rift, which some speculated had to do with disagreements over the then-rumored plans to make Rift free-to-play. If the move was to try and secure a higher position at Trion, then it was a success.

With all good news comes bad, however. Trion has also confirmed to Massively that the company has shut down its San Diego branch, moving operations to the Redwood City Studio. Many of the staff from the San Diego studio are expected to make the transition over to Redwood City.

“As part of this transition, we are working hard to ensure that a number of great people will be making the move from San Diego to the Bay Area and continue their work at Trion,”

Now about ArcheAge…

(Source: Massively)

MMOments In Gaming: This Vehicle Is Broken

The manufacturers of this hover car had the right idea when designing a vehicle that could still be driven even if flipped over.

Rift Compensates For Shard Transfers

Going free to play has a habit of causing disruption, especially when it comes to the more popular servers. In the case of Icewatch and Akala, two European shards, the already popular servers became overloaded thanks to the influx of new players ready to give free to play a try, as well as the returning players who had already called the server home. As a result, Trion was forced to alleviate the load by converting the shards into “trial status,” forcing players to move their characters elsewhere using the game’s free server change tool.

What is trial status, you ask? When a server is put on trial status, only the starting cities of Meridian and Sanctum are available. Characters are fully accessible and do not lose any equipment, but must be transferred off of the server in order to play in areas beyond the starting zone. Transferring is free and does not carry any of the normal restrictions of how much platinum your character may have on them. A guild master may transfer his guild over to a new server, in which case each member will be notified on their next log in and be given the opportunity to follow.

Since players are understandably angry at this move, Trion is compensating refugees from Icewatch and Akala with exclusive titles, an exclusive wardrobe set, and +1000 loyalty.

(Source: Rift)

Defiance And Rift Raptr Rewards

Here at MMO Fallout, we love Raptr for the fact that it is like an Xfire client that tracks game time, and gives us free stuff just for playing games. No surveys, no advertisements, no subscriptions, no deals, none of that stupid crap you get from other clients. It’s just a game developer looking for publicity, so they go to Raptr and say “hey, we want to give some stuff away.” That stuff can be anything from full games to in-game items, and is usually in-game items. The catch? To obtain most of the rewards, you have to have played a certain amount of game time with the Raptr client running. The Raptr client runs in the background, out of sight and out of mind, ticking your play hours.

Trion has a number of items available for Rift players, including a Tartagon mount, a two headed tortoise for players who reach hardcore status, a pet modeled after the Raptr mascot, and a helmet. For Defiance, the rewards aren’t going to be unlocked until July 3rd and include a starter pack (boosts and a lockbox), elite drifter pack (outfit), a Raptr-themed vehicle. Players can grab a 30% off coupon for Defiance starting the 20th if they are ranked dedicated or above in one of the following titles:

Assassin’s Creed III (PC)
BioShock Infinite (PC)
Blacklight Retribution (PC)
Borderlands 2 (PC)
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition (PC)
Diablo III (PC)
Firefall (PC)
Guild Wars 2 (PC)
PlanetSide 2 (PC)
Rift (PC)
Star Wars: The Old Republic (PC)
Warframe (PC)
World of Warcraft (PC)

There is only a limited amount of these rewards (five thousand for the Defiance and three thousand for the Rift rewards) so nab them while you can. As always, MMO Fallout will try to get our hands on some codes which we will place on our Twitter feed. Follow @mmofallout for updates and codes.

(Source: Raptr)

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