Tag: Update

How To Avoid A Lawsuit #1: Fortnite Cheater Edition


Good afternoon, internet.

In honor of my upcoming completely fictional cookbook “A Million Ways To Roast Twitter Users,” I have decided to put out a new column series expanding on the In Plain English brand. The series is titled “How To Avoid a Lawsuit” which you would know if you read the title of this piece. Every so often I am going to talk about ways you, the user, can avoid being hauled into court and be forced to hire me once I graduate from law school. I don’t offer family discounts.

Before we begin, I’d like to insert some disclaimers; (1) I am not yet a lawyer and as such none of this should be taken as legal advice, (2) this column is meant for edutainment purposes only and while it will lower your chances of being hauled into court, it cannot guarantee a 100% success rate. Check your local laws before applying, (3) some of the steps are based on an assumption that you have done something bad. MMO Fallout does not condone whatever these actions are, the suggestions are merely in response to you actually doing them, and (4) most of your problems can be solved by simply following step one.

For the first HTAL, I’m going to discuss Epic Games, Fortnite, and people cheating in Fortnite. Those of you who read MMO Fallout or at least keep up with our In Plain English articles will be aware that Epic has presently hauled at least a dozen Fortnite cheaters into court. None of the cases have actually gone to trial with the rest being voluntarily dismissed with the plaintiffs agreeing to permanent injunctions against the defendant and the threat of deep fines should they violate the terms of the settlement. Still, it provides an answer to every Fortnite cheater who has asked “what’s Epic going to do? Sue me?” Possibly!

So let’s go down the list of how to not get hauled into court, Fortnite Edition.

1. Don’t Cheat At Fortnite

This one is the easiest and essentially acts as patient zero for the rest of the list. You shouldn’t be cheating at competitive multiplayer games anyway because it makes you look like a pathetic rat creature, but given the history and details surrounding Epic’s Scared Straight program with cheaters, you really don’t want to cheat in Fortnite. It’s not good.

Like I said, this is basically patient zero. Epic to my knowledge has never sued anyone for not cheating at Fortnite, but they have for cheating at Fortnite. So if you don’t want to be hauled into court by a company with the kind of money to bribe just about every developer on the planet Earth, don’t cheat at Fortnite.

2. If You Get Banned, Stay Banned

One big connecting trait of Epic’s lawsuit defendants are that they kept returning to the game after being banned for cheating. It’s like insanity but for stupid people. I’m not aware of any Fortnite-related lawsuits where a person was banned once and then Epic immediately launched into court, and of the numerous dockets I have read the defendants in question were banned 20+ times and in one or two cases might have been using automated software to create a new account.

If you for one reason or another decide to cheat at Fortnite and you get caught and Epic bans your account, just take the L. Accept your ban, maybe work on being a better person, and go do something else with your time. You’ll thank me a whole lot more when you are not hauled into court.

3. Do Not Upload Your Cheat Videos To YouTube

This is another major connecting trait between Fortnite lawsuit defendants. If there is one thing that Epic hates more than people cheating in Fortnite, it’s people putting videos on Youtube of themselves cheating at Fortnite, and absolutely people using those videos to advertise where you can get those cheats. The more subscribers and views you have, the more likely these videos will show up on Epic’s radar, the more likely they will haul you into court, and odds are the more they will demand from you in damages.

See this one is actually really important because if you do get sued, this is going to affect what Epic wants out of you. Normally Epic does not actually ask for money with their lawsuits against cheaters. Instead they basically push the lawsuit into a settlement with the defendant agreeing on injunctions. Don’t use Epic products, don’t cheat at Epic products, don’t create or distribute cheats for Epic products. On the other hand, Epic has a habit of assuming that anyone advertising Fortnite cheats has a monetary investment in those Fortnite cheats, and that’s when they start making demands for monetary damages. Trust me, Epic has the resources to wring you dry if they want to, and you are not in the right.

4. Do Not Counterclaim A Copyright Strike

In order to dive into this tip, we must take a moment to talk about fair use. Fair Use allows for the use of copyrighted material in certain purposes such as education, parody, or criticism. Despite what the internet has told you, the Fair Use doctrine is not a “you can’t sue me” button. Think of Fair Use as more akin to a trap card in Yu-Gi-Oh! You have to wait for the opponent to make a move before you can use it. Fair Use comes up at the lawsuit and is actually an admission of copyright infringement. What you are saying is that while you did infringe on the entity’s copyright, the extent is legal. There are no definite measures on what is fair use, just past rulings that can be used as a metric, that is up to the court to decide on a case by case basis.

This takes us back to our discussion. With people who post Fortnite cheat videos to Youtube, Epic has predicated lawsuits by issuing copyright strikes taking down the person’s cheating videos. When the person files a counterclaim, that is when Epic sues. When you counterclaim a copyright strike, what you are essentially saying is “I am in the right, and I will see you in court.” After that, the copyright holder’s only option to further their claim is to file a lawsuit. Which is exactly what Epic has been doing.

5. Don’t Cheat At Fortnite

Don’t cheat at Fortnite. Do all of these things and you are probably guaranteed to not get hauled into court by Epic Games for cheating at Fortnite.

MapleStory Adds Pathfinder Class Today


The Pathfinder is here! Nexon has announced the release of the much anticipated bowman class to Maplestory and now you too can finally log in create one of your own. The Pathfinder joins the ongoing fire leveling event offering 3x leveling speed for new characters, as well as the Adventure Island activities.

More information is available at the official website and in the preview trailer above.

Source:

[Video] Shai Character Class Comes To Black Desert


Pearl Abyss today announced that the latest character class Shai is now available in Black Desert on the Xbox One. Shai wields a florang (boomerang) and a Vitclari, a powerful ornament that heals and protects her allies. Shai is an expert in gathering and alchemy and is the first class to be able to create a bonfire to heal allies, as well as the first class to be able to tame and ride donkeys.

Notable Shai skills include:

  • One-Two-Three — Shai throws the Florang up to three times, knocking back all enemies that are hit.
  • Eat This! — Shai powerfully throws her Florang in a long-range attack.
  • Over Here! — Shai creates a shielded area that can protect her allies from enemy attacks.
  • Come Out, Come Out! — Shai reveals hidden enemies using her Vitclari.
  • Play Dead —  Shai can ‘play dead’ and trick other players, but it may not work against monsters…

Pearl Abyss also noted in today’s update that the Shai pre-creation event was a massive success with 80% of players participating. Players with the Game Pass can give the standard Black Desert edition a go with no additional purchase necessary.

Source: Pearl Abyss Press Release

Beta Impressions: MapleStory Rolls Out the Pathfinder


I played a bit of MapleStory this week.

It probably comes as little surprise to my readers that I still have an active MapleStory account, and even less so that Nexon invited me over to check out the upcoming Pathfinder class release for the game.

The Pathfinder is sort of an oddity as a character class, as the story revolving around this character is that she has been blighted with an ancient curse. What this translates to is that your character starts out with reduced stats. Thankfully it doesn’t stick with the player very long, even by MapleStory standards, and by skill level four the curse has been weakened out and removed from your system.

If you haven’t quite figured it out, the Pathfinder class is the latest hero added into a game with a heck of a lot of classes. I enjoyed the time that I had to play with the Pathfinder not just because I tend to play the archer class more in MMOs but because the character is just sort of an all-around bad ass. The Pathfinder is a bow-wielding class, of course, but the focus appears to be more geared toward crowd control. Many of the attacks and especially those that you receive toward the start of the game are geared toward just inflicting mass damage against anything stupid enough to come too close.

I should also note about the curse dampening that the class doesn’t start out gimped by any measure. Your character is effectively slightly less powerful in an area of the game that comprises of the tutorial locations. I assume there is some effect of some stats starting out with a 20% debuff, but considering how low your stats will already be starting out, the Pathfinder isn’t exactly going to be the Dark Souls of MapleStory classes. I’m sorry for having written that, but I had to get the joke in.

As you level up even further, the curse becomes more of a blessing as you not only overcome the stat debuffs but then utilize that ancient curse on your foes in the form of an offensive debuff attack. You also gain the ability to call forth a shadow raven with associated skills later on to improve that mechanic. The shadow raven hangs around for a while and attacks your enemies.

During my time with the Pathfinder, I also checked out the Secret Forest of Elodin theme dungeon which was as adorable as I have come to expect from MapleStory content. I won’t spoil the story for you, but it has to do with nightmares, hearing scary voices in the woods, and making sure that the good and decent folks are safe and sound. This mission, to the best of my knowledge, was already made available in the live game on June 12 (my birthday of course) and is available to all players at least level 30.

I didn’t have as much time as I wanted to play through the Adventure Island, but the even is running in the live game until August 27 and is looking to offer a ton of very cool rewards. The gist of the event should be familiar to MMO players. Players at level 61 can start earning adventure points to convert into adventure coins by killing monsters within 20 levels of their character. You can also make use of AFK items to obtain experience and coins. As the event goes on, higher ranks are being rolled out with better items, better tasks, and better passive stat boosts.

I can’t wait for the Pathfinder to hit the live server, which it will on June 26. It was a fair amount of fun for the time I had playing on the test server and I think that MapleStory players are going to enjoy it along with the various events ongoing that will make leveling another alt a bit lighter of a load.

Stay tuned to MMO Fallout for more MapleStory talk, or just head over to the official website and take a dive in for yourself. Big thanks to a number of people for bringing MMO Fallout on board to check out the class.

Neverwinter: Undermountain Arrives On Consoles


Perfect World Entertainment announced today that the latest expansion Undermountain is available on Playstation 4 and Xbox One. The expansion is accompanied by five new adventure zones, endgame dungeons, feat overhauls, a level cap of 80, class overhauls, a revamped loot system, and more.

To celebrate the game’s anniversary, players can take part in the Protector’s Jubilee from June 20-27. Take part in limited activities and obtain unique rewards only available during the festivities.

For more information, check out the official website and take a gander at the launch trailer below.

Blizzard Opens WoW Classic Beta To All Subscribers


Good news, everyone!

World of Warcraft Classic is gearing up for another beta test to run from June 19 to the 21, and you don’t even have to worry about signing up and praying to be selected for testing. All you need is a computer and an active subscription to World of Warcraft. Oh, and you’ll need to be living in the North America and Oceanic regions. Community manager Kaivax has asked players to play as much as possible during the first three hours, presumably to simulate the game’s opening hours when the servers finally go live.

For this stress test, all races and classes will be available for creation, and the maximum character level will be capped at 15. In addition to the open world, there will be instanced content available at that level. This will include Warsong Gulch for PvP as well as Ragefire Chasm, Wailing Caverns, and Deadmines. Of course, Deadmines will be a challenge for players to complete at this level. Please focus as much play as possible during the first three hours of the stress test. During this time, we’ll be looking for more issues to address under initial launch conditions. The stress test realm will remain available for 48 hours.

The client should be available today (June 18) for pre-load.

Source: Battle.net

PSA: How To Get Early Access To Steam New User Interface


The big UI overhaul is coming to Steam in the next few weeks, but if you are just too excited and don’t want to wait, you are in luck. As it turns out, the new interface is already publicly available thanks to some assets dropped in the Chinese Counter Strike: Global Offensive launcher.

You can get your hands on an early version of the launcher by following the steps below. Keep in mind that the interface is going to look a bit ugly right now as many developers have not yet uploaded assets to fit in with the new box design on the library page. On the other hand, it appears that the new interface has dumped the random Rock Paper Shotgun articles that you all loved seeing spammed in your game news feeds.

MMO Fallout can confirm that this works, the images included in this article were from my own test.

Knights Chronicle Celebrates Anniversary With Events


After a year of what has been described as enthusiastic fan support, mobile RPG Knights Chronicle is celebrating its 1-year anniversary with a slew of content. Starting today, players can enjoy new labyrinth dungeons. Choose your heroes carefully though, as you won’t be able to re-join in on other labyrinths until they are refreshed.

Events surrounding the update include:

  • New Awakenings for Electra and Edwin – Both Electra and Edwin can now be awoken by using growth materials and a six? version of either hero to achieve increased statistics, a new Awakened Passive skill upon reaching max Awakening level, and a new in-game appearance.
  • First-Year Anniversary Event – By playing the newly added ‘Blizzaria’ Advent Dungeon, players can acquire ‘1 Year Anniversary Summon Tickets’, which can be used to summon individual Heroes.

Knights Chronicle features classic turn-based role-playing gameplay, a beautiful Japanese animation-inspired art style and a compelling story showing the same standard of quality as console and PC RPGs. The game also sports standout features, including real-time party play where fans can form parties of up to five members to challenge multiplayer dungeons, explosive 3D-animated skills that demonstrate the game’s flashy and gorgeously detailed visuals, and over 100 heroes for players to choose from.

Source: Knights Chronicle

[Column] I Came Back To Call Daybreak A Dead Husk


Hey folks,

You may have heard comments down the grapevine that MMO Fallout is planning on a comeback of sorts, but right now I’d like to pick up the mantle to talk about how Daybreak Game Company is a dead company with a bare bones, barely functioning development team. They just don’t care anymore folks. How do I know they don’t care? Whoever wrote the patch notes couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the spell check and left numerous obvious errors in the final publication.

So what brings me back briefly from my vacation early to talk about a game that I specifically said that I would never talk about again? The launch of Season 4, or the last season that I expect Daybreak will launch for H1Z1. Let’s talk about the elephant in the room to really get you excited for what Daybreak has to offer this season: The company has gone and slashed the price of the season pass by 50% over last season. That’s right, for around the cost of a two cheeseburger value meal (#9) at your local McDonald’s, you can feel disappointed and ripped off.

That’s a joke, folks, McDonald’s value meals are far less disappointing.

And what do you get for your money? Jack-freaking-squat. Season 3 annoyed me into quitting H1Z1 because the challenges were stupid and mostly broken, as was free for all, but ultimately I stuck around to complete the season pass because it didn’t take long and there were a hell of a lot of cosmetics to be unlocked. By comparison, Season 4 offers one outfit split up over the course of the season as well as accompanying AK-47, M17, and crossbow skins to match. Eleven items total. The rest of the pass are coins (2,600 total) and experience boosts. Enough coins to buy one and a half rare skins.

  • Scrub M17 (Level 1)
  • Scrub Jacket (Level 1)
  • Scrub Skirt (Level 18)
  • Scrub Pants (Level 40)
  • Scrub Backpack (Level 55)
  • Scrub Offroader (Level 60)
  • Scrub Shoes (Level 65)
  • Scrub Armor (Level 80)
  • Scrub Crossbow (Level 90)
  • Scrub AK-47 (Level 100)
  • Scrub Watch (Level 100)

Eleven bleeding items total. Stamp missions have been completely removed from the game, as have daily login rewards. You do now have the privilege of occasionally finding locked chests that you can pay a discount in order to unlock (ala Team Fortress 2) and you’re in luck because there are now six rotating arcade modes.

Six rotating arcade modes for a game that can barely get people into its standard modes. I played a few rounds of arcade mode on launch day and found that Daybreak can just about break 40/100 players at peak hours on a week night. The arcade modes are all based around ideas that probably took a good half hour to program into the game, such as headshot damage only, faster run speed, ATVs only, and pistols/explosives only. And this update was delayed by a week! And the season only runs for 36 days this time around for reasons I can’t honestly comprehend.

As far as game updates go, H1Z1 Season 4 is the That 70’s Show Season 8 of video games. Topher Grace is gone and so is Ashton Kutcher. Instead we get Randy, a guy so hated by the audience that he doesn’t even show up on the cover of the season DVD set. At this point, I can only assume that Daybreak is in need of a big success like say DC Universe Online becoming a smash hit on the Switch, and by smash hit I of course mean the game releasing and making a lot of money as opposed to just getting a lot of people to download, notice that the game has major performance problems, and uninstalling before investing anything in the title.

Now it’s time to go back into my hole and read legal documents. Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.

MapleStory 2 Sums Up Project New Leaf


Who needs the old leaf? This week Nexon America announced the conclusion of improvement updates to MapleStory 2’s Project New Leaf. As stated by CEO Jungsoo Lee, Project New Leaf is just the beginning and will lead the way to further improvement for the game. The update precedes an upcoming major expansion set to launch in the summer, and the team at Nexon hopes that the updates can revive the game and make it feel as packed as it was on day one.

The massive list of updates includes:

  • Removed Fairfight from all Adventure Dungeons
  • Reduced World Boss HP by ~60%
  • Added Trader’s Ribbons to allow you to trade top-tier equipment that you don’t need to those that could use it
  • Added the Fragment inventory tab to help you reduce the clutter of the Misc tab
  • Improved Notifications to better protect Legendary Gear with Epic Bonus Stats
  • Improved the Available Quest Window
  • Increased penalties for illegally buying mesos
  • Added the Meso Market to improve the mobility of mesos
  • Made Epic Pets much more likely to drop
  • Greatly reduced the meso cost for changing Legendary Gear attributes
  • Greatly reduced the meso cost of fusing Accessory Fragments
  • Made Accessory Socket openings guaranteed and cheaper on average
  • Made Upgrading Gemstones guaranteed and much cheaper on average
  • Made Extracting Gemstones trivially inexpensive
  • Greatly reduced the cost of enchanting via Peachy, creating a competitive guaranteed path towards +15 equipment
  • Replaced Daily Missions with a Weekly Prestige Rank system that encourages you to play MapleStory 2 however you want
  • And more!

Source: Nexon