Trion Worlds – Page 9

Defiance Previews Expeditions

Trion Worlds has posted an article detailing expeditions, a new mini-game coming alongside the Alcatraz update. Expeditions are a series of challenges players can complete, with rewards and difficulty increasing the further the player gets.

In addition to Tiers, a new “Round” tracker shows how many Expeditions you’ve completed in a row. After completing an Expedition, you will be transported back to Alcatraz to rearm, regroup, and purchase gear.

The news post details the kind of enemies you’ll face and how the tier system works.

(Source: Defiance)

ArcheAge Lifts Prohibition On AFK Players

ARCHEAGE 2014-10-10 12-02-23-78

AFK players are the scourge of ArcheAge, or at least they were up until this week’s update. Today’s scheduled downtime brought with it the removal of ArcheAge’s AFK timer. Now players can log in and sit still to their heart’s content.

We decided to perform this week’s scheduled downtime earlier rather than later to deliver improvements like the removal of the in-game AFK kick time and a couple adjustments to further discourage in-game spam.

An AFK timer isn’t at all uncommon for MMOs, although ArcheAge saw some controversy at launch with Trion Worlds providing contradicting statements about their policy on circumventing the mechanic.

(Source: ArcheAge)

ArcheAge Details 2015 Updates

Merv Lee Kwai over at Trion Worlds today posted a producer’s letter detailing ArcheAge’s plans for 2015. Foremost, Kwai promises to be more transparent with the community in the months to come, providing more insight on what is to come.

The letter also discusses changes to certain aspects of the game, such as tweaking siege mechanics and altering drops to react to the economy.

A main focus for the future of the product is improving the daily quality of life for ArcheAge players. We are shifting priorities to deliver game mechanics that some of the veteran players will recognize like the PvP Arena and Fishing Tournaments. We have a challenge here to ensure that the rewards for these systems are congruent with the way the game has evolved, but that obstacle should be solved in the near term and we will deliver these events as soon as they’re finalized.

You can find the entire producer’s letter at the link below.

(Source: ArcheAge)

2014 In Review: Best Moments Of The Year

Let’s look at the year with rose tinted glasses, or perhaps a glass of hard liquor. As with any year, we had a lot of bad and a lot of good, so let’s take a minute to focus on the good stuff.

1. Goodbye Mythic Entertainment

This one is a bit cruel, but perhaps the best trend of 2014 was that those business practices that so many of us revile, in a lot of cases, didn’t work. In a world where many of these anti-consumer decisions are smashing successes, in the sense that they make enough money in the short term for the developer/publisher to simply not care about the long term ramifications or damages to their public image, the idea that so many of these blew up does a lot for consumers and sets a precedent for 2015 and beyond.

Just to name a few examples, Mythic Entertainment’s attempt to revive two classic games with the clear impression that free to play mobile was easy access to a lot of money, that being Ultima IV and Dungeon Runners, went down in flames and took the developer with it, along with what remaining goodwill the Mythic community had left.

Trion Worlds has been hit hard over their handling of Defiance as well as the launch and continued mishaps of ArcheAge, and at the beginning of the year cancelled its End of Nations MOBA. Wildstar advertised itself as a hardcore MMO for hardcore raiders, and subsequently only brought in the hardcore raiders. The game hasn’t been doing so well, with layoffs at Carbine Studios, delaying content and seeing a heavy drop in revenue in its second quarter.

Then there are the hundreds of cookie cutter free to play MMOs imported from Korea and China that shut down without any of us knowing that they existed.

There are a lot more examples to throw up, but I think I’ve made my point. It was good to see that, in 2014, the good guys actually made out pretty well while the ones with underhanded intentions just ended up stepping on rakes and getting hit in the face.

2. The Offloading and Revival Of MMOs

While we’re talking about the death of Mythic Entertainment, I’d like to take a moment to thank Electronic Arts personally for offloading Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot onto Broadsword Entertainment rather than allowing the classics to go down with the self-sinking ship. Asheron’s Call and Asheron’s Call 2 (which was also revived years after its death) dropped their subscription fees and will eventually be spun off with players allowed to operate their own servers.

Similarly, we learned that there are deals in the works to bring back City of Heroes as a legacy server with the possibility that the IP might get a sequel or other spinoffs. Pirates of the Caribbean Online is being revived by a dedicated community. Dungeon Fighter Online is returning in English. Also Glitch has multiple projects to bring the game back with new servers and new content.

3. Free To Play Gets Slammed

Speaking of schadenfreude, free to play took a big blow this year in the form of several rulings against mobile publishers Apple and Google. Over in the UK, Google was forced to remove an ad for Dungeon Keeper on the grounds that calling it free was misleading. Apple settled with the FTC back in January and agreed to refund $32.5 million for inadvertent purchases made by children, while Google followed in September with $19 million.

Both companies have altered their stores to require a password always by default when downloading apps or making in-app purchases, and no longer label games as “free” if they have in-app purchases. Korea blanket-banned all Facebook games until they could be individually approved to ensure that they were complying with gambling laws.

We’ve been waiting for a few years now to get some results on what many consider to be predatory tactics, and it looks like our wish has been granted.

4. Classic Servers

Nostalgia is a great thing. If you’ve read MMO Fallout, you know about my fascination with the Old School RuneScape servers, and how Jagex managed to not only revive a great era from RuneScape’s past, but actually develop it in a direction away from RuneScape 3, based entirely off of player polls, with a dedicated team and community. Old School RuneScape continues to go strong, raising the possibility that other developers will take notice.

Lineage II is in the process of testing out a classic server, one that will hopefully come westward, and there has been some talk behind the scenes of other MMOs following.

5. MMOs On Consoles

2014 saw the announcement and release of multiple MMOs coming to the Xbox One and Playstation 4. Over on the Sony side, the PS4 added Final Fantasy XIV, Blacklight Retribution, and DC Universe Online, with the upcoming releases of Planetside 2, H1Z1, and Everquest Next. Xbox One saw the launch of State of Decay, with Neverwinter and SMITE coming eventually.

Both consoles can or will eventually be able to enjoy The Crew, The Division, Warframe, The Elder Scrolls Online, Warhammer 40k: Eternal Crusade, All Points Bulletin, and more. If you’ve been spending the past few years waiting to play an MMO on your console that isn’t Final Fantasy, you’re in luck.

2014 In Review: “Needed To Happen” Moments

Let’s look at the year with rose tinted glasses, or perhaps a rose-tinted glass of hard liquor. As with any year, we had a lot of bad and a lot of good, but whether good or bad some of these just had to happen for the good of us all.

1. Goodbye Mythic Entertainment

This one is a bit cruel, but one of the best trends of 2014 was that those business practices that so many of us revile, in a lot of cases, didn’t work. In a world where many of these anti-consumer decisions are smashing successes, at least in the short term, the notion that this year saw a lot of those practices crash and burn says a lot about the evolution of consumer common sense.

And I can hardly come up with a better example than the final closure of Mythic Entertainment, a company that spent the last years of its life burning whatever remaining bridges it hadn’t yet touched. Yes, this is where I bring up that time Mythic referred to MMO mechanics as “boring crap” while happily revealing that assets from the poorly-launched, severely downsized, and rather quickly abandoned MMO Warhammer Online, had been lifted and used for the developer’s expensive and ultimately failed MOBA Wrath of Heroes.

Add in two mobile games that attempted to exploit classic games to draw in franchise fans only to repulse them with exploitative cash shops, and this is where Mythic is today. Warhammer Online is dead, Wrath of Heroes is dead, Ultima Forever is dead, Dungeon Keeper has fallen in the mobile charts, was critically panned and called a “shame” by EA, and even saw an ad banned for false advertising.

2. The Offloading and Revival Of MMOs

3. Free To Play Gets Slammed

We’ve been waiting for a few years now to get some results on what many consider to be predatory tactics, and it looks like our wish has been granted.

4. Classic Servers

Lineage II is in the process of testing out a classic server, one that will hopefully come westward, and there has been some talk behind the scenes of other MMOs following.

5. MMOs On Consoles

10% Discount Was Never Advertised, Says Trion Worlds

The ongoing saga of ArcheAge, Trion Worlds, and the fabled 10% discount has reached another bend, as Trion Worlds is now flat out denying that the discount was ever a part of the game’s advertising. A user on the ArcheAge forums submitted a complaint to the San Francisco Bay Area Better Business Bureau, to have his complaint addressed by Trion Worlds. Trion Worlds first pulled out the EULA and pointed to the “we can change whatever we want” clause, before denying that the 10% discount was ever officially promoted.

Trion sincerely regrets any inconvenience experienced by the customer. The 10% Marketplace discount was not officially promoted as a benefit as it was never advertised in the ArcheAge purchase flow.

For the record, here is a screenshot of the 10% discount being advertised on Trion World’s own website. Update 12/16/14: This page has since been deleted. See its archive here.

(Source: BBB)

ArcheAge PLEX Available Again… Again

Trion Worlds has announced the ArcheAge APEX are officially back up and available for purchase.The item, providing a method for players to extend their subscription without paying real money, has been the subject of numerous exploits, resulting in it being pulled from the cash shop for small periods of time.

The following announcement was posted on Twitter yesterday.

Adventurers, APEX is now available again for use and purchase. Thanks for your patience! #ArcheAge

(Source: Twitter)

Trion Worlds Details ArcheAge Downtime Compensation

Trion Worlds has posted a news piece detailing upcoming compensation for ArcheAge players following recent extended periods of downtime and instability with the game’s service. All players who have “ever been a patron” will receive a Patron pack including five days of patron time, 15 Superior Worker’s Compensation potions, 30 loyalty tokens, three Greedy Goblin Gummies (+10% loot drop rate), three Frankenflavor Jawbreakers (+10% exp), and three Marshmallow Sugar Pumpkins (+3% move speed).

We never take your loyalty for granted and any time we don’t meet the high standards we set for ourselves, it’s important to us to make it up to you as generously as possible. We’re currently applying compensation packs to everyone’s account. This does take a while, and it’ll be running through the rest of today.

Non-patrons will receive a package including 10 Superior Worker’s Compensation potions, 15 loyalty tokens, as well as three of the other items listed above. These packages are being distributed via the Glyph account page, with emails being sent out once players can redeem them.

(Source: Trion Worlds)

MMO Rant: Vote of No Confidence In Trion Worlds

I’ve been sitting at my computer trying to come up with a word to describe Trion Worlds, and so far the best that I’ve come up with is “impressed.” Not impressed in a good way, if you’ve noticed that this is a rant, but more impressed in the sense that you’ve walked into your home to find a man with a flashlight and your finest jewelry, and he impressively tries to convince you that he’s actually a jewelry cleaner who does house calls. Actually, the word would probably be audacity. As in, I can’t believe the audacity that Trion Worlds would, once again, lie and assume that nobody would notice or care.

So what am I sitting here fuming about, you’re probably asking. This week saw the release of ArcheAge’s new continent Auroria, and the launch went about as well as you’d expect. Hackers, gold farmers, and big guilds scooped up most of the new land, server problems meant that many players couldn’t even log in until after the land was already taken, and the response from both the developer and publisher on land hoarding has been nothing. Really, there’s too much to talk about with the expansion, dealing with things I don’t fully understand like item consolidation and the usual Trion tactic of nerfing drops and expanding the cash shop, so I will forward you instead to Massively’s “It’s Getting Harder To Like ArcheAge” article to better explain those aspects.

Instead, I am going to focus on the bold faced lie that has been the ever-delayed 10% discount on marketplace purchases for founders and patrons. During its alpha/beta stage, Trion Worlds listed a 10% marketplace (cash shop) discount as a bonus to purchasing patron status. When it was obvious that the feature wouldn’t be ready for launch, due to relying on XL Games to code it in, Trion Worlds quietly slipped an “after launch” into the advertising and, in the first wrong move of this ballad, played it off as the post-launch implementation having been the plan all along. I didn’t cover this discrepancy because, while questionable, the discount was still on its way and we were assured that it would be applied retroactively.

At this point, Trion starting talking about an “equitable” alternative, one that was never mentioned in the game’s advertising. With this week’s update, the company revealed that the 10% discount has been replaced with a 10% bonus to credits purchased in credit packs. And oh, it gets better. Just read the forum post by Scapes:

A few months ago when we first discussed the ArcheAge Patron Program, a 10% discount on Marketplace purchases was mentioned as a perk of being a Patron. While an “after launch” caveat was included in this perk, both XLGAMES and Trion Worlds have determined that the time to develop this perk would be significant, delaying the benefit to our Patrons longer than we’re comfortable with. Instead, we will be implementing an equitable solution that Trion Worlds can execute on its own.

Today, all Patrons who purchased Credit Packs after Head Start began (September 12) will get a 10% bonus of those sums granted to their accounts. This bonus will only apply to accounts that purchased Credit Packs after their Patron Time was purchased, are in good standing (not banned, no chargebacks), and have not had their Patron Time or Credit Pack purchase refunded. It does not apply to the Credits from the Founder’s Pack and Starter Pack packages. The 10% bonus Credits will apply on future Credit Pack purchases by Patrons.

Just so we are crystal clear, let’s go over just who has been stranded out in the wilderness. The 10% bonus applies retroactively to credit packs made after patron time was purchased, after the head start. Those of you who purchased founders to use the 10% discount in conjunction with your credit stipend get nothing. If you spent money on credit packs during alpha and beta, you also get nothing. APEX buyers also receive absolutely nothing. The only way to receive the altered terms of the deal is to have purchased credits, after head start began (September 12th), with active patron.

It’s also hard not to laugh at how this is being spun as pro-consumer, when the new deal just so happens to benefit Trion Worlds most of all while giving founders and those who bought their credits early the middle finger. It also doesn’t acknowledge the fact that if you buy credits from Trion Worlds, you already get at least a 10% bonus regardless of your patron status.

I’ll wrap up by saying this: In one of my previous jobs, a co worker was fired after their cash register came up $150 short for the second time. In his infinite wisdom, the manager declared that this worker was either stealing or dangerously incompetent, but either way he couldn’t be trusted with money and had to be let go. I feel the same can be said about Trion. Whether they meticulously lie and justify it with the idea that by the time customers figure out that they’ve been duped, Trion already has their money, or whether the team is honestly this out of touch that they don’t see the problems with their decisions, it is evident that Trion Worlds cannot be trusted to stick to their word.

Just remember that the next time Trion Worlds is advertising a new game, anything mentioned in the perks is subject to unannounced caveats. Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.

ArcheAge Hackers Strike Back: Arena

Hackers are playing a large role in ArcheAge, like it or not. Presently, and until XL Games figures out a way to fix the numerous glaring holes in their system, they are taking over many aspects of the game. Armies of bots make their way around the game’s world, farming gathering locations and mobs for drops and gold. Other bots teleport around the map, running trade routes instantly to farm large quantities of gold and picking up plots of land as soon as they become available in order to sell to players for gold to sell to other players for cash.

The exploit that is our topic today is being used by regular players. User Sorcerer posted the above screenshot from an arena game which lasted just ten seconds before one team managed to destroy the other team’s crystal. The exploiter in question, Shylo according to the poster, destroyed the crystal in a single shot. The incident took place on the Kyrios server. Scott Hartsman responded earlier today to a Reddit post, noting that while Trion Worlds is limited in their detection tools, the company is working on tools to weed out exploits.

Unlike in the case where its our own game, where we can (and do) add new instrumentation/logging/detection daily until problems get stomped with prejudice, we’re limited here in only being able to act on what the game throws off as outputs to us. We can’t add new ones. That said, this one is the next biggest priority. New theory being worked on right now, will holler if it pans out and we can act on it with confidence.

(Source: ArcheAge)

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