Today’s video comes to us from H1Z1 on PS4, where Daybreak Game Company recently launched a new map. I take a dive in (literally) and see what it’s all about.
Tag: Update
[Column] Champions of Titan, or, Schrödinger’s MMO
What is an MMO? A miserable pile of microtransactions.
Today I’d like to talk about Champions of Titan, or my preferred title; Schrödinger’s MMO. You may recognize Champions of Titan by its previous namesake Wild Buster. Wild Buster along with Guardians of Ember and a few other titles were removed from the Steam store where it was hosted under publisher Insel Games after it came to light that the CEO was manipulating reviews in order to gin up more sales. Insel Games has since gone on to exist in a mostly vegetative state, while its published games were either shut down or spun off to new companies.
Case in point being today’s topic. Wild Buster was spun off to IDC Games whose name does not, as it turns out, stand for “I Don’t Care.” It might, since a quick browse through the forums of many games that IDC publishes comes up with two major topics: The server performance is terrible and customer support is virtually nonexistent, and more than one of the forums just flat out wouldn’t load when I tried to boot them up.
Champions of Titan is alive and well, in a theoretical sense. In a practical sense, it doesn’t seem like the game has been properly functioning in quite some time. People are logging in to find that the game client no longer works, what with there being no character selection screen.
Now comes the hard part: How long exactly has the game been broken and is it broken for everyone? The answer to the second question is evidently no, as the earliest complaint that I found on the forums discussing the above issue dates back to October 21, however another player posted a first impressions piece on December 13. There are multiple threads discussing the fact that the game doesn’t work going through the end of July with sporadic comments from staff asking players to contact customer support.
It seems to be the case that nobody is really trying to play the game so the number of people getting rejected from the client not working is virtually none with even less willing to go on the forums and complain about it. I got a response from the IDC people after submitting a ticket that they are aware of the situation, and you would imagine that the game just being wholly inaccessible would be a major priority to be fixed right away, but after a week since my report and ten months since the earliest report, it’s apparently not the case.
But that’s just my opinion on the whole thing.
Maplestory 2 Introduces Dungeon Helper
If you could name one improvement for MapleStory 2, what would it be? That’s right, a dungeon helper system.
Starting with the latest update, players level 50 and above will be considered a dungeon helper when queuing for dungeons below level 50. By completing lower level dungeons and thus helping out the newer players, it is possible to receive up to 10 dungeon coins per day (1 per dungeon). Coins can be used in the shop to buy furnishings, outfits, mounts, and more.
In order to better ease new players into higher level dungeons, Nexon has also instituted an across the map nerf of dungeon enemies. Finally, the benefits of house assistants are no longer locked behind merets and can now be bought with mesos.
Source: MapleStory2
P.S.: Keep an eye out for Lucky August events.
IPE Update: Amro Elansari Files Appeal In RuneScape Lawsuit
Maplestory Adds New Party Quest With Squadron of Heroes Update
MapleStory’s latest update goes live this week as Squadron of Heroes continues on from the major Pathfinder update earlier this summer.
In the Squadron of Heroes update, players level 61 and up can take part in a new Ancient Ruins Party Quest for rewards, as well as partying up in cross world party quests that reward currency that can be used to purchase items from the party point merchant shop. In addition to working with other players, one can also create a party of characters across their account to take on the Immortal Gorgons for daily and weekly rewards.
A new theme dungeon called Partem Ruins will be available for players level 135+ with new mini-games and adventure tiers being added to the Adventure Islands.
And finally this wouldn’t be a MapleStory event without another burning event. If one burning character just isn’t enough, this time around Nexon is offering two burning characters who from level 10 to 150 will gain two additional levels.
More information available at the official website.
Whatever Happened To: RedBedlam Ltd.
As I delve deep into the “whatever happened to those people” part of our ten year anniversary, one game caught my memory like a flash of lightning in a bowl of chocolate pudding. Whatever happened to that game The Missing Ink?
Actually that answer is obvious: It was shut down. The Missing Ink shut down its servers way back in January 2014 without much of a blurb from the press at the time. The closure was not meant to be permanent as developer Redbedlam announced that they would be retooling the game and keeping the two dimensional paper cutout characters while expanding on the three dimensional world and the things that it offered. That never happened, The Missing Ink never relaunched and for that matter it doesn’t look like Redbedlam ever acknowledged the game’s existence after January 2014.
So what the hell happened to RedBedlam? Thankfully for us, the company is a UK business and as such its records are on public display over at Companies House. A few months after this announcement, RedBedlam posted its fiscal results for the year ending May 31 showing net assets of £136,838. In October 2015, RedBedlam would release the game Bedlam, a first person shooter with a rather odd art style. The game would peak at 315 concurrent users on Steam but not until 2018.
By 2016 these total assets would plummet to £21,385, which appears to be where the company starts circling the drain. Bedlam receives its last patch on November 4, 2015. Fast forward another year and the assets drop to £3,072. By this point the company is running as a shell corporation, as the fiscal reports show that there is only one employee hired, down from five in 2016.
Companies House later filed to strike RedBedlam off of the official record. Apparently someone was around to contest this, as the proposal was removed with cause shortly thereafter. By the end of the 2018 fiscal year, RedBedlam was a dry husk; its fiscal earnings showing a net negative in assets and zero employees still on record.
Of RedBedlam’s eight officers, only one remains: Kerry John Fraser-Robinson, who is presumably keeping the company up and running in name only to pull in what few sales Bedlam is offering and to make phone calls in hopes of getting some investors on board. Otherwise it looks like this is the end for RedBedlam.
Kickstarted MMO Edengrad Is Returning Thanks To Share Sales
Everyone’s favorite crowdfunded MMO Edengrad is coming back! Or at least that’s the plan.
For those of you not familiar with the game Edengrad, this game was Kickstarted to the tune of £41k by developer Huckleberry Games who released the title into Early Access on Steam in April 2017 and promptly stopped actively supporting it in December of the same year due to an apparent lack of funding. The servers have continued running for that time period but no active updates have been deployed in over a year and a half now.
The folks at Huckleberry Games posted a very cryptic message back in December 2018 that they were coming back, but nothing emerged until this June when Wyborcza posted some news about the company. It looks like Huckleberry has sold 1.5 million Zloty in shares, approximately $395,000 US Dollars. That money, according to the article, will go toward continuing development on Edengard as well as new titles.
“The F series issue was a very important step in the company’s history, thanks to which the company will be able to continue working on our flagship product, Edengrad, and support the development of new promising projects. companies, they believed in it and together with us they want to develop it, and in return we will provide them with new, better quality, “said president Patryk Borowski, quoted in the communiqué.
Developer Huckleberry Games has been promising updates via the Steam forums for several months now, only time will tell if they can actually come through on those statements.
A Tale in the Desert: Tale 8 Ends August 2019
A Tale in the Desert has announced the end of Tale 8 and the beginning of Tale 9, both set to commence on August 30, 2019. Unlike other MMOs, A Tale in the Desert resets its players every tale, in this case after 18 months. Players begin a new world with new characters and changes requested by the players or added in by the developer Desert Nomad Studios.
“It’s been a fantastic 18 months and the great news is that Tale 9 will soon be upon us. For the first time, the end of a Tale and the start of the next will be on the same day! Tale 8 Amnesty will take place on the 24th and 25th of August, with an AMA with the developers across both days in game and on discord. We can’t wait to share with you some great secrets from the Tale that have been missed! See you then”
A Tale in the Desert launched in 2003 and has retained a small but sustainable number of subscribers. Set in ancient Egypt, ATITD features no combat but sets players up with various tests that they must overcome in order to progress. Tests involve various activities such as breeding scarabs, creating art for others to vote on, building puzzles, and convincing other players to elect you.
Source: A Tale in the Desert
[NM] Bethesda Introduces More Non-Cosmetic Cash Shop Items
It’s a new day, and that means another opportunity for Bethesda to remind us that the company can’t be trusted. The latest update that hit live servers just yesterday (July 16) introduces a new item to the Fallout 76 cash shop: Scrap kits.
Yes, scrap kits. Another instance of Bethesda selling items for real money in order to fix an inconvenience that they purposely added into the game in order to set up the player base to later spend real money. As the official website states:
“Scrap Kits are new one-time use items that you can use to scrap all the junk you’re currently carrying and immediately deliver the resulting components to your Stash. They can be used anytime, anywhere, without needing to visit a workbench or your Stash. You can unlock Scrap Kits in the Atomic Shop using the Atoms you’ve purchased or those you’ve earned by completing in-game Challenges. Upon purchasing Scrap Kits, you will be able to select which of your characters you’d like to receive them. Any Kits you own will appear under the Misc. tab in your Pip-Boy and can be activated there. Upon using a Scrap Kit, it will be consumed.”
And just to remind everyone, I have included a link to the Gamestop article where Pete Hines states that the Fallout atomic shop would be cosmetic stuff.
“All the content we ever put out for Fallout 76–all the DLC, all the post-launch stuff–is going to be free. That’s important. And to say, the Atomic shop is cosmetic stuff. To make sure folks understand–look there’s a line. There are people who have crossed it, but we’re going to stay on the right side of it in terms of the things you can spend money on and how this stuff works and what you’re getting for your $60,” Hines said. “That you know, when they put out new content or features or whatever, I’m getting that stuff for free. That feels right.”
The update comes alongside the addition of a greenhouse building that players can purchase and plop down, one that does not actually allow you to grow plants inside of it.
More Fallout coverage as it appears.
Apex Legends To Target High Risk Regions, Matchmake Cheaters
Cheating in Apex Legends is for ratfinks, and if Respawn has anything to say about it cheaters will be thrown into a pit where their only company will be other ratfink cheaters. In the latest community update, Respawn gave a list of plans on how it will deal with the cheating that has been going on. Plans include automatic detection and bans of cheaters, as well as matchmaking detected cheaters and spammers together.
- Using machine learning to create behavior models that detect and auto ban cheaters.
- Requiring TFA in certain regions on high risk accounts.
- Improving detection that identifies and bans new spam accounts before they are used.
- Ongoing work to adapt to new cheats.
- Matchmaking that matches detected cheaters and spammers together.
- Investigating how people party up for matches. Even if you are not specifically using a cheat, partying up with cheaters is still cheating.
- Increasing resources whether that be people or tech.
Don’t cheat in Apex Legends, or any competitive multiplayer game for that matter.
Source: Reddit
MMO Fallout 