GotMMOG?

Kotaku and Gamasutra are reporting that Nexon is shutting down its Humanature Studios dev studio based in Vancouver, BC.

Not that I’m a fan of cartoony free-to-play MMOs from Korea but given how well Nexon’s been doing, it’s a sign of the times. It looks like we’re going to see a lot of MMOs that were on the brink shut down. Could be a good thing but it could also be bad…think the movie industry where they squeeze out shit that sells (cookie-cutter films and sequels) and you have to rely on some hardy souls at the bottom end to churn out something more substantial on the indie scene.

Here’s hoping they don’t shut down anything good this year…

g afk

Ok mmo fans as an avid player of WAR – Go ORDER – I can’t WAIT for the next fucking patch notes to come out, I’m wondering what the BIG secret they are going to announce is going to be.

My guess is that with some bug fixes they will be bringing out the Slayer MDPS class (that’s Melee Damage Per Second noob) and probably buffing destro again….damn Mythic.

In wondering what the new patch notes would be like I stumbled upon a supposed leak of Warhammer Online 1.2 Patch notes (a work in progress). While these look somewhat legit they could also be 100% bullshit – I’m kinda leaning towards bullshit.

We don’t know so I thought it would be a great idea to post them and let you guys leave comments about what you think; good, bad, or what-the-fuck-ever.

Warhammer Online 1.2 Patch Notes

So, Linden Labs decided to enter the virtual goods fray by buying two sites that hawk their wares. Time and again, virtual world and MMO publishers have avoided the potential profits from virtual goods, instead sticking to lobbing their EULA grenades around. I’ve said it time and again, what better way to control game balance AND make some money (Second Life’s aftermarket generated $360 million? Drop your virtual linen and start your grinnin’) than to offer up a venue for virtual goods commerce?

Think about it. Players are already doing it. Why not take a rake and make it “legal”? Better yet, you can even control it a bit. Don’t want epic items accumulating on a single shard or world? Fine, set a limit? Tag an item as available for certain worlds.

WoW and others have been offering up more and more character transfers (though it’s been a bumpy ride.). They charge a fee so why not let someone sell their level 60 hunter they’re bored with, charge them a larger fee if they want to transfer it to another world and take your cut. Will players gripe at first at that “service fee” you tagged to their item? Sure, but if it’s not huge (you’ve to 11 million subscribers you’re already making huge money on, don’t gouge…leave that to rogues), they’ll get used to it. Especially if you make it 100x easier to do the transaction. Selling a sword? CC clears and BAM it’s in someone’s in-game mail in hours. Gold? Even easier…it’s just a number.

Funny thing is, you might even up your PR and make your players happier.

So, to all those publishers gripping the purse strings so tight they’re losing gold left and right, take the cork out and relax. Money’s out there to be made…gold in thar virtual hills.

grieger afk

Here’s another brilliant move from the minds at EA corporate. Gamasutra’s reporting that EA’s planning on including Mythic in it’s layoff plans.This doesn’t bode well for those remaining DAoC fans and puts a big non-quest-giver question mark over WAR’s prospects. As usual, the first to go look to be QA and Customer Service people…the very people you need to ensure customer retention and who are paid the least in the organization. While we’re not fans of layoffs in general, I never get why the first to go are the ones most critical to maintaining your games’ playability and your customers happiness. Which do you think is better? A buggier game with customer service requests that aren’t answered (EA’s already got a terrible track record on customer service with us, and now they’re spreading the love through their studios) but with expansions on track (maybe) to come one ASAP…or would you rather forgo the major expansion for another year if it meant you could get cleaner patches and have someone who’s gonna unstuck you or fix a billing issue in a good amount of time?

Meanwhile, did anyone notice how AoC required you to update your DirectX install to a November 2008 update in order to PLAY the damned thing? Here’s a strategy: you’re hit hard by the economic meltdown, your game isn’t getting as much play as you’d like, and you decide to push an update that blocks anyone from playing unless you update DirectX, which could interfere with other games you’re playing on your machine. WTF? It’d be one thing if they made it a recommendation for certain features or something but to REQUIRE it? Maybe it’s the Euro game dev thing where customer service is the last thing on the list to do after taking a month’s vacation after releasing a buggy game or patch to your loyal but pissed off fans. Gamers always seem to get the short end of the stick when it comes to these publishers. Maybe it’s time to take that stick back?

UPDATE: Mythic’s Mark Jacobs spoke out on the layoffs at his company. Seems the bullshit is flying but an interesting pick-up is the number of current subscribers for WAR: 300k. Something tells me they’re peaking…

g

Star Trek Online….

This started out as a Perpetual Studios game and might have been a flop were the title not handed over to Cryptic Studios. And by handed over I mean SOLD in early 2008, yea that long ago.

Nothing against Perpetual but when you have people posting that your community manager has banned testers for….posting bug reports….and your devs dont seem to be able to get much of anything working….well its time to sell the License/IP. But enough of that….if you’re like me then you are looking forward to at least 2 things.

1) The Star Trek franchise reboot in theaters soon…

2) An MMO where you, and your friends, can boldly go where no man has gone before. Fucking YEA Star Trek Online….

The game takes place in 2049 which is 30 years after Star Trek Nemesis.There will be Open PVP, but no PVP specific servers – what did you expect they made City of Heroes!

So far it looks good the first game play trailer has been release, you can see that here.

Playable races include Human, Vulcan, Andorian, Klingon, Orion, Gorn, with some others to be announced. While everyone will be a captain by default, there will be a few career paths for you to select from for your base skills and abilities. Those classes include: Engineer, Tactical Officer, Doctor, Science Officer and others.

The early talks of key features are, of course, Deep Space ship-to-ship combat, On Ship Quests/Adventures and surface avatar based combat. That’s right you the medical npc and Red Shirt guy can beam down to the surface and take on some NPC’s.

Not much more to say about this but our concerns going forward are that most games that try to do too much end up looking and playing that way. Either ship combat is awesome and avatar combat sucks balls or both suck and everything is really good looking.

Good luck Cryptic…we’ll be watching you.

Alas MMO fans it has been awhile but I promise we are back and in force….here is some aged but useful MMO news.

Not too long back there was this little company called Napster that got sued and the music sharing world as we know it changed. Could this be the fate also of the MMO World? Well Worlds.com, thats right that company from the 90’s, is sueing NcSoft for patent infringement…for what you ask? Maybe for copying some super secret mob killing technology or something like awesome npc aggro algorythms? Fuck No! For the obvious they patented the method of allowing players to interact with others in a virtual space……ummmm WTF patent office do you not have any ability to see 5 feet down the road? This is almost as bad as the guy who patented E-Commerce!

NcSoft is being hit for the following titles: City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dungeon Runners, Exteel, Guild Wars, Lineage, Lineage II, and Tablula Rasa….the sad part is at least one of these titles was Free To Play and at least one didnt make hardly any money…is there no justice!

Well while I side with NcSoft the question becomes if this suit succeeds could it be even more difficult for non-major companies to launch an MMO as Worlds.com will then have the right to force the company to pay out for rights to make a fucking MMO – I’m sorry a virtual space.

If you would like to read the actual complaint it is located here…

SEE I fucking told you it was real..

This may be a little old but it’s fucking hilarious.

The Onion put out this news report on a new expansion from Blizzard. Gotta love the keyboard short cut to scroll through the EULA we all love so much.

grieger afk