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Tag: XLGames
Of Course XL Games Has An NFT Game
XLGames Resolving Unspecified Issues Regarding Trion Worlds Buyout
Rev up the rumor mill.
In a surprising bit of news, XLGames has posted an announcement on the ArcheAge forums announcing that the 5.0 update release date is still being decided, and that the company is currently working to resolve some issues that have popped up in the recent acquisition of Trion Worlds by Gamigo. The 5.0 update was slated to launch today, with the announcement coming late yesterday afternoon that it would be delayed.
The full message has been placed below.
Dear ArcheAge players,
You may be aware that there has been a business transaction involving Trion Worlds. XLGAMES is currently resolving issues to ensure that there is no harm done to the users since our ArcheAge fans are of the utmost importance to us.
XLGAMES will do its best to settle any matters with the involved parties in a speedy manner. The release date of the Relics of Hiram 5.0 Update will be decided and notified to you soon.
Thank you for your support.
-XLGAMES Team
Awards and Success Are Not Interchangeable
There is some discussion going around the internet about how ArcheAge has performed and whether or not the game has “failed,” which is most assuredly has by one person’s standards or another. While I don’t know for sure how Archeage is performing following the game’s launch in Japan and Russia, I can tell you that last September we learned that XLGames was laying off staff. We also know that the layoffs and transition to free to play was due to the game’s poor performance as a subscription title and subsequent quickly declining revenue.
A few people are under the impression, and I am paraphrasing here, that ArcheAge can’t possibly be doing poorly. After all, according to their logic, a game that has won so many awards has to be raking in the money. The fact that ArcheAge won a number of awards at last year’s Korea Game Awards means nothing in terms of how many people are playing and, furthermore, investing money. Warhammer Online won nearly twenty awards in 2008, including several “best of 2008,” none of which mattered much when both the servers and staff were gutted shortly thereafter.
The best way to gauge an MMO’s success is to follow its ability to retain players.
XLGames: Goldfarming By Any Other Name
MMORPG.com recently conducted an interview with Yinzi Cheng of XLGames, creators of the MMO ArcheAge. The interview is based entirely around the game’s monetization format, which Cheng believes makes the game impervious to gold farmers. There are three currencies in ArcheAge: Gold, Arcs, and Crystals. Gold is the usual in-game gold, crystals are the real money currency, and Arcs are used to purchase many of the game’s premium goods. Gold and crystals are not tradeable, but arcs are. As Cheng says:
Gold that is earned from game contents is untradeable. Arcs could be earned by purchasing Crystals, by enjoying some contents such as catching boss monsters, or by trading with other users. So ‘gold farmers’ cannot produce gold illegally. Therefore, the ‘gold farmers’ easiest way to earn gold, which is auto playing, will no longer bring them profit.
I don’t think XLGames fully understands how gold farmers work. Don’t believe me? When Jagex introduced trade restrictions to RuneScape, players simply converted to a currency based in junk items, allowing them to bypass the system completely. Materials can be traded between players, so what’s to stop a gold farmer from botting millions of gold worth of materials and trading those materials to the buyer who then sells them to an NPC for gold? Arcs are open season for gold farmers to generate in-game, as they can be mined from bosses.
ArcheAge’s non-tradeable gold idea isn’t new, and XLGames should be aware that the process hasn’t done much to impede gold farming in the other titles, like ArcheAge, where despite a strong insistence that the process isn’t feasible, there is quite a variety of gold farming services with varying methods of delivery. The lesson here is that so long as there is a trade system, people will find a way to farm gold.
(Source: MMORPG.com)
XLGames Prosecuting Staff Leaks
Video games are serious business, serious enough that every once in a while here at MMO Fallout we hear about employees leaking update information to players. Generally this insider information is related to upcoming updates that will cause a rise or drop in the price of certain goods. As for the employees themselves, assuming they are caught, punishment ranges from company to company. Usually they are fired.
In a post on MMO Culture, however, XLGames has promised a very serious reaction. Recently a leak was discovered when several high ranking guilds began hoarding very specific items, with the community taking to the forums to demand action. In response, XLGames has revealed that an internal investigation is going on, with the possibility of criminal prosecution against those held responsible. I assume that the charges would fall under revealing trade secrets. Was it worth it?
(Source: MMO Culture)
MMO Fallout 