Tag: Update

Destiny 2: Vex Offensive Final Assault Closes Out Season


The Season of the Undying ends in just a couple of weeks and Bungie has dropped what should be the final bit of content progression as of today.

This season’s story focus has been mainly on the Vex, a skeevy group of time-traveling terminators hell bent on merging all realities into one singular timeline where the Vex rule all and there is no light or darkness. The Guardians (players) of Destiny’s story have repeatedly thwarted the plots of the Vex, culminating in the Curse of Osiris expansion where Guardians rescued Osiris from the Vex and virtually crippled their forces.

As of the start of the season Guardians had opened a portal to the Black Garden, birthplace to the Vex, and killed two very important pieces of the Vex hive mind. Kicking off the season in response, the Vex launched a mass invasion of the moon. Over the course of the season, Guardians have been working with Ikora Rey to handle the Vex invasion on two fronts; shutting down gate portals as they appear on the moon itself, and running raids on the Black Garden in order to put a stop to it once and for all. The raids on the Black Garden led players to the Undying Mind, and thus where the story is today.

Being creature that exist on multiple timelines and realities, the Undying Mind can’t just be destroyed once, it must be destroyed in all of the timelines that it exists. Therefore players must act as a community and kill the Undying Mind over, and over, and over again. The final offensive is virtually identical to the prior version except slightly more difficult. You go through the same motions of defeating two areas of Vex while simultaneously grinding Ikora’s daily missions, and instead of another giant Vex creature you have to bring the shields down on before you can kill him you get a different giant Vex you need to do the same on.

Regardless, it appears that the conclusion of this season will somehow lead into or become the catalyst for the next season that Bungie has planned. What could it be? Maybe the Drifter will become corrupted by the darkness he harnesses and end up going evil (as seems to be common with people who wield darkness in Destiny’s universe).

Only time will tell.

RuneScape: Yak Tracks, Premier Club, Double Experience


RuneScape; it’s a game where you scape runes. There’s a bunch of stuff coming to RuneScape in the next week or so and MMO Fallout is here to detail them on another website.

First up is an update on activity pets. At the end of October Jagex launched a poll asking people for their opinions on which activity pets (pets obtained through activities) they would like to see added into the game. The verdict? People would rather not see them at all.

“While these opinions aren’t necessarily shared by everyone, we were still surprised about the number of negative posts.”

While not cancelled entirely, the number of activity pets has been reduced from six to three plus a Runescore (achievement score) pet.

Second up on the docket is the Yak Track. Yak Track is another rendition of the season pass formula and appears to be exclusive to the Premier Club membership. The Yak Track launched on November 25 and will task players with completing a variety of tasks in return for cosmetic rewards.

“We’re really confident that we’ve packed a huge amount of value into Yak Track. In fact, if you’re a Premier Club member and you make your way along the whole track, you’ll receive a whopping 33 cosmetics including four pets, three outfits, six animation overrides and 15 weapons!”

And speaking of Premier Club, it’s back! The top tier of the Premier Club runs for $89.99 this year and includes a year’s membership, 150,000 loyalty points, 1 additional key daily, 3 Premier Club tokens, 50% discount on Runemetrics, the premier artifact, and more. For more information, check out the official website.

And finally, another double experience weekend kicks off this week. Instead of cramming you into a two or three day window, Jagex is giving players 36 hours of double experience spread out to your leisure over the course of ten days.

“Double XP Weekend: Extended is designed to be a lot more relaxing than before. This time you’re all going to be able to maximise every one of the precious Double XP hours but without the worry of cramming it all into a single weekend. Instead, Double XP Weekend: Extended will offer 36 hours of Double XP goodness but spread over the course of 10 days! That’s seven extra days!”

Simply log in after November 22 and you can use your 36 hours at your convenience, as long as it’s within ten days.

Old School RuneScape Launches Twisted League


Get those peppercorns out, because it’s time to grind.

Jagex today has released the latest game mode for Old School RuneScape in the form of the Twisted League. Twisted League is a temporary game mode that throws players on an ironman character and locks them to the land of Kourend and Kebos (main world not accessible). Ironman of course means no trading, no picking up others drops, and no auction house. To assist players in this temporary league, base experience is increased by 5x and shops will carry more items and restock at an accelerated rate.

So what is the point of the League? As you complete tasks you gain points that can be used to unlock powerful buffs from a relic such as infinite run energy. Cosmetic items can be unlocked in the main game based on your performance in the league, and future leagues will have exclusive worlds that can be visited based on your performance in prior leagues. Otherwise, it’s all about the prestige.

For more information on Twisted League, check out the official website.

Icebrood Saga Comes To Guild Wars 2 Next Week


Guild Wars 2 is set to release the first episode in the Icebrood Saga on November 19. The episode is titled Whisper in the Dark and introduces new gameplay systems and activities for players to cut their teeth on.

  • A new map, the Bjora Marches
  • Four new multi-tier Mastery tracks fueled by norn spirit magic: Essence Manipulation and Raven Attunement
  • Three new Strike Mission bosses, including the grim and sinister Boneskinner, that rotate weekly and provide unique rewards for players who defeat them
  • A new two-tier upgradable Ancient Boreal weapon set
  • A new Raven-inspired exotic scepter skin
  • A campfire s’mores roasting kit

Check out the trailer below.

2019 Developer Report Cards: Bethesda Softworks


There should be no surprises in this report card.

Bethesda’s performance in 2019 indicates a company that has become wholly incompetent and is either incapable of or unwilling to fix its flaws, but instead has chosen time and time again to double down on everything that it does wrong and throw consequence into the wind. Let’s look at Bethesda’s 2019 release record:

  1. Fallout 76 – I could spend hours writing about how Fallout 76 continued its uncontrolled blaze in 2019. Of the numerous screw ups in 2019, perhaps the most insulting comes in the form of Bethesda delaying the Wastelanders update, that big content dump that was supposed to add in the human NPCs and do…something. Instead Bethesda shat out a paid service for which the services people paid for straight up didn’t work. I have long since given up on the people still spending money on Fallout 76. If you get fleeced by Bethesda, you have no one to blame but yourself.
  2. The Elder Scrolls: Blades – It doesn’t surprise me at all that Elder Scrolls Blades is a commercial success considering in the mobile sphere you could feed people the video game equivalent of asbestos and they will happily throw tons of money at you and ask for more. At the end of the day it is still a low quality, low effort facsimile of an Elder Scrolls game that punishes you for playing it and always has its hands out for another tenner.
  3. Rage 2 – Does anyone even remember that Rage 2 released in 2019? Rage 2 peaked at 13 thousand players on Steam and in one month more than 85% of those people dropped off and went to play something else. Reviews point to Rage 2 being boring, repetitive, and short. Rage 2 also implements a ridiculously convoluted system to buy DLC expansion. You can’t buy the expansion outright, you have to buy bundles of Rage Coins and use those. The first expansion costs 1,500 Rage Coins ($15) but you can’t buy 1500 Rage Coins, you have to buy the 500 RC pack and 1,100 RC pack which is $15 anyway and leaves you with 100 RC left over.
  4. Wolfenstein Youngblood – On the subject of things nobody asked for, Wolfenstein Youngblood comes hot on the heels of The New Colossus dividing Wolfenstein fans. Youngblood released at half the cost of Rage 2, which doesn’t quite explain how the game managed to hit less than half the peak number of players. Youngblood was a smattering of bad ideas; Obnoxious protagonists? Check. Forced coop with awful AI? Check. Obtuse RPG mechanics in a shooter? Check. Microtransactions? Of course.
  5. Wolfenstein Cyberpilot – And speaking of things nobody asked for, how about a game that nobody purchased? Cyberpilot is a VR spinoff that peaked on Steam at 24 users. That’s not a mistake, twenty four user peak at launch for a game that costs $20 and so far could only convince 92 people to leave a review. And this was a collaboration between Machine Games and Arkane Studios! Not enough players at peak to fill up a Battlefield server and only 36% approval.
  6. Commander Keen – As of this writing (November 13), there has not been hide nor hair of the mobile Commander Keen game since it was unveiled at E3, but I am going to talk about it because it is germaine to the conversation. Nobody wants Commander Keen on mobile, and Bethesda’s embarrassing announcement trailer was unlisted because of the dislike ratio. None of the Keen social media accounts have been updated at all since the announcement. If Commander Keen the mobile game was silently killed off, it would do less damage to the franchise than releasing it.

Bethesda (and its subsidiaries) shoveled out more unwanted garbage in 2019 than any company with its size, franchises, and experience ever should. The Fallout 76 team has shown nothing but incompetence over the entire year, not to mention a complete lack of caring for systematic and repeated lies made to the public. Their releases in many cases not only floundered, but may have done long term damage to their associated brands. In the case of Rage 2, you have the most disappointing awaited sequel since Dambuster messed up Homefront. For Cyberpilot, a low-effort attempt at cashing in on a trend. In Commander Keen? The shameless skinning of a beloved old IP.

With all of that considered, I have to give Bethesda in 2019 the grade of:

Google Finally Announces Stadia Launch Titles, There Are Twelve


No need to hold your breaths any longer, as Google has finally unveiled the launch titles for Google Stadia and a whole week before the service launches.

Google Stadia goes live on November 19, but you can feast your eyes on the games that will be available on launch day right now. All twelve of them in fact. The launch slate is a pretty recent list of games with a bunch of titles from 2019 and a lot of Tomb Raider in case you’ve been really slow on keeping up with that trilogy.

  • Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (2018)
  • Destiny 2: The Collection (2017)
  • Gylt (2019)
  • Just Dance 2020 (2019)
  • Kine (2019)
  • Mortal Kombat 11 (2019)
  • Red Dead Redemption 2 (2019)
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015)
  • Samurai Shodown (2019)
  • Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition (2018)
  • Thumper (2016)
  • Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition (2013)

Also releasing before the end of 2019:

  • Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle
  • Borderlands 3
  • Darksiders Genesis
  • Dragonball Xenoverse 2
  • Farming Simulator 19
  • Final Fantasy 15
  • Football Manager 2020
  • Ghost Recon Breakpoint
  • Grid
  • Metro Exodus
  • NBA 2K20
  • Rage 2
  • Trials Rising
  • Wolfenstein Youngblood

All of this is of course meaningless if you do not live in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United States, or the United Kingdom, because those are the only countries that Stadia is launching in this month. Sorry! Also, you might want to hold off on pre-ordering if you were going to wait until the last minute since Google has announced that late orders likely won’t get their unit on day one.

Also you will need to buy the games on top of the founder’s pre-order and subscription.

2019 Developer Report Cards: Ubisoft Edition


Oh Ubisoft! What can I say about Ubisoft that hasn’t already been said about Flint’s water supply?

Ubisoft confuses me as a gamer and as a guy who writes about games. On one hand, they are constantly pulling maneuvers that make you wonder what chucklehead is driving the vehicle. On the other hand, they’re competent enough to put out some actually good games and fix what they screw up. Let’s look at Ubisoft’s 2019 releases.

  1. Trials Rising: It came out, it sold copies. Honestly don’t have much to say about this one.
  2. Far Cry: New Dawn – If you enjoyed Far Cry 5, New Dawn was basically an expansion pack’s worth of content at an expansion pack’s price of $40. If you enjoyed Far Cry 5 and wanted to see what happened following the rather crazy ending, well you pretty much got what you wanted. As far as Far Cry plots go, the story was fine. Just fine. It allegedly sold worse than Far Cry’s prior spinoffs including Primal so perhaps it would have been better off as a cheaper DLC release for Far Cry 5 instead of a standalone title.
  3. Anno 1800: Anno 1800 marks the first of Ubisoft’s titles this year to go to the Epic Store for exclusivity on PC. It sparked quite a controversy since the title had already been available for pre-order on Steam before Ubisoft summarily yanked it. Not willing to let that controversy hold it back, Anno 1800 evidently went on to become the fastest selling Anno game. It also seems to be very well received by those who bought it, looking at Steam reviews.
  4. The Division 2: And here is where Ubisoft first pooped the bed. By all means The Division 2 was exactly what a game sequel should be. It implemented a lot of lessons from its predecessor and actually fixed them instead of ignoring/exacerbating them. It wasn’t perfect, The Division 2 launched with some issues surrounding loot and the first raid was kinda crap because console players literally couldn’t handle it. And Ubisoft fixed most of those problems and has been supporting the game with some good content. Unfortunately for them the appetite of the general consumer base just wasn’t looking for another open world sequel and The Division 2 hasn’t quite lived up to expectations in terms of sales.
  5. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint – If there is one positive thing that can be said about Breakpoint, it’s that it beat the sense back into Ubisoft (hopefully). Breakpoint is a dumpster fire that should have never been acceptable within Ubisoft and its failure not only snapped their stock price over its knee, it led to a restructuring of how Ubisoft approves games. Riddled with major game-breaking bugs, obviously half-assed systems, and drowning in microtransactions, Breakpoint shouldn’t have been this broken given how close it is to Wildlands. It serves as a reminder that Ubisoft’s titles are quickly hitting the singularity, becoming so blandly similar that they are hard to tell apart.
  6. Just Dance 2020: I’m sure it will do just fine.

2019 also brought us changes in Ubisoft’s business plan, primarily the announcement and launch of Uplay+. This may come as a surprise, but I honestly don’t have much of a problem with Uplay+ from a consumer standpoint. As with any service, it’s a value proposition. If you want to keep buying your games and “own” them, whatever that means in a world where games as a service ties your playability to servers remaining online, you can still buy the game. If you want to spend $15 to binge some Ubisoft games for a month and then cancel, you can do that too. If you think that long term subscriptions in exchange for having the best versions of Ubisoft’s titles is worth it, go ahead. It’s as valuable as you think it is, and obviously Ubisoft knows this because it’s not mandatory in any sense.

I’d like to give Ubisoft a higher score for having their come to Jesus moment during the last gasp of 2019. Unfortunately their moment of lucidity was not due to personal reflection but due to the potential for financial ruin brought upon by the insane failure of Ghost Recon and the potential that their upcoming titles could perform worse, a game that they were all too happy to release in its state and with all of its microtransactions. At the same time, the company is not completely incompetent and has shown that it is somewhat capable of learning from mistakes. Ghost Recon has received a couple of patches since launch and they have promised more coming.

At the same time, this is a company that supports its products. Ultimately I have to give Ubisoft a B- for 2019. Let’s hope the failure of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint teaches them a lesson. Let’s also hope that I get around to making more of these report cards.

Striker/Tamer Out Now On Black Desert (PS4)


Today marks the launch of two new classes in Black Desert on the Playstation 4; the Striker and Tamer.

The Striker class is a melee fighting class that specializes in hand-to-hand attacks to bring down his enemies. The Tamer as you might expect is joined by her animal companion and utilizes powerful area of effect attacks while evading counterattacks. In addition to the two classes, Black Desert on Playstation 4 sees the addition of a new world boss in the form of Karanda The Queen of Harpies. Karanda has a chance of dropping the dandelion weapon box which contains the most powerful awakening weapon in Black Desert.

Information on the classes can be found here with Karanda and a new world boss schedule here. Black Desert is currently 25% off on the Playstation Store and 50% off for plus members as part of the ongoing Double Discount sale.

Vicious Circle Goes Free To Play, Refunds Everyone


Back in September we reported on the failed launch of Vicious Circle, the latest title from Rooster Teeth Games. In that time, the crew has been working behind the scenes and at the start of the month announced that not only would Vicious Circle be going free to play, but that those who bought founders packs would be refunded.

“Why is Vicious Circle going Free to Play? In short, the game didn’t succeed. We came together on a super creative ambitious new project, put our hearts into it, did our best to support it, and it didn’t work out, and that’s okay. Not every idea we have will be a success. We have to fail to find success. Servers will remain up because we made a game and we want the community to still have a chance to play it. We don’t want price to get in the way. We remain proud of the work that was put into the game and want as many people to have the chance to experience it as possible.”

Don’t get too excited about that free to play, though. While the game is going free to play, Rooster Teeth has no intention of supporting the title outside of some bug fixes.

Source: Steam

Jagex Will Discuss RuneScape Monetization On November 5 Stream


RuneScape. Financially the game is in a fantastic position; back in May we discussed how Jagex had posted a 9.3% increase in overall revenue with subscription numbers at their highest ever in the game’s history thanks to the launch of Old School mobile.

But all has not been great on the western front. MMO Fallout has reported for several years on how RuneScape’s monetization efforts have been very successful, but also very polarizing in the community. Every couple of years, Jagex reaches out to try to pull on the brakes of the game’s heavy microtransactions and it looks like it’s time for another heart to heart. Community animosity has been high ever since a UK parliamentary report from September specifically called out the developer when discussing egregious microtransactions, pointing to one player who had spent more than $62,000 USD.

On November 5, several Jagex staff will host a stream discussing the future of microtransactions in RuneScape. Those of you placing bets should keep in mind that Jagex receives one third of its revenue from these microtransactions.

“Tune in at 5PM GMT on November 5th for a very important livestream. Mods Osborne, Warden and MIC will be on the couch discussing plans for the future of MTX in RuneScape.

Ask your questions in the Discord room, on the forums, or in the dedicated Reddit thread – or email Mod Warden directly at AskModWarden@jagex.com. Your opinion is important to us, especially when it comes to controversial topics like this one – so let us hear your thoughts!”

Source: RuneScape