Suffer, mortals, as your pathetic mod betrays you! Come patch 3.3.5, Blizzard is disabling the functionality of the ultra-useful Augmented Virtual Reality (AVR) addon. The popular mod allows three-dimensional images to be shared between party members in real time to aid in raid strategy and positioning. It is perhaps best known for making the Sindragosa encounter a snap during the ice blocking phase (and, of course, for sharing crudely drawn pictures of genitalia).
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Catalans MMOPRG News
There’s an understandable problem with selling game currency in subscription games, where it’s generally considered verboten for good reason. While some subscription games will sell you things in addition to the monthly fee, there’s a general sense that you should earn your advantages. But in free-to-play games that have a cash shop allowing players to purchase items directly… well, the very idea of gold selling seems kind of silly. But it can happen, and Runes of Magic has experienced a bit of a problem of late with the trade of Diamonds (their cash shop currency) for gold.
The game has traditionally treated the currencies as interchangeable insofar as players with lots of Diamonds and not enough gold could sell their excess to other players. Unfortunately, the current spate of RMT activities have called for draconian measures: they’ve taken away the ability to trade Diamonds for gold. They’ve also temporarily removed the ability to send gold through the mail. The official announcement stresses that this is a temporary measure to combat unacceptable behavior. While less gold spam is a good thing, fewer features are a negative, so this new is a mixed bag for Runes of Magic players.
Castille MMOPRG News
Outspark plans to enter the second closed beta phase of their free-to-play MMORPG known as Erebus: Travia Reborn on April 14. The isometric Diablo-style action game will add a dueling system, three PvP maps, three new instanced dungeons, and an increased level cap (50) starting tomorrow.
Additionally the Outspark team has added guild versus guild warfare, a new tutorial, and many tweaks to both the leveling curve and the skill system. Many changes were made based on feedback from the initial closed beta phase that wrapped in March.
“The first Closed Beta was a big success. We kept it mostly in the Outspark community, but we still had thousands of people sign up to play, and the feedback they provided was invaluable. I think people who participated in the first beta are really going to like the changes we made and the new features being added for Closed Beta 2,” said Ben Berens, Erebus Associate Producer.
Castres MMOPRG News
This week’s edition of the MMO Report hits the highlights of a busy week around the MMOsphere, and host Casey Schreiner is in fine form, particularly when he gives a shout out to Massively and our sister site WoW.com.
After those two show-stopping highlights, you’ll find news and commentary on Free Realms’ first birthday bash, tidbits about Sony’s The Agency, race and clan information for Square-Enix’s forthcoming Final Fantasy XIV, and a dose of reader humor courtesy of Uncle Casey’s Mailbag. Oh and don’t forget the mention of NCSoft’s City of Heroes II (or is it 2)?
gmaxwell MMOPRG News
If you’re one of the Massively readers planning on joining for Massively’s Nights of Eberron in Dungeons and Dragons Online on Wednesday nights, you’ll be happy to hear that there’s an extra treat in store for that new character you rolled.
To celebrate the release of Update 4 and the new Adventure Pack (we’re telling ourselves that they are also celebrating the beginning of Nights of Eberron), Turbine is offering a 10% XP bonus for quests, which will give a nice boost to all players who are still leveling characters. If you’ve got some Experience Elixirs lying around, be sure you grab those, because they stack with this bonus. If you don’t, they’re of course available in the DDO store in single packs and “Super Stacks”, discounted packages of five.
The event is going on now and will last until April 18th, so you’ve got plenty of time to take advantage!
Castillans MMOPRG News
Publisher NHN Corporation is poised to release the new free-to-play MMORPG Karos Online in Europe and the US on April 9th, following an extensive beta testing period. The game will launch with two public server shards and a brand new cash shop to give players a freely customizable experience. The Karos servers will be brought down on April 5th to prepare for the launch, along with a planned website outage. The website will be brought back up prior to the launch to run daily contests in order to win in-game prizes on launch day.
Karos Online is the product of developer Galaxy Gate, makers of other free-to-play games such as Last Chaos and Laghaim (known as Savage Eden in the West). Karos offers players a free-to-play experience including an economic system involving indepth crafting skills and a consignment market for player trading. Galaxy Gate promises a wide variety of classes and skills and a dynamic dungeon system with shifting passages. It also touts an elaborate PvP system, with guild-based objective-oriented gameplay including castle sieges and control point captures.
Karos Online also features impressive visual effects, particularly given its relatively low system requirements. Gameplay videos have been released, showcasing the visuals as well as various gameplay aspects.
You can download the client now and try out the game while it’s still in open beta. Check it out — and make sure to visit their website daily for free contests and prizes on the countdown to launch!
MMOvalue MMOPRG News
No — that’s not a typo in the title. We didn’t get attacked by a swarm of ninjas who knocked us out on the “0″ button or anything like that. Nexon has announced that Dungeon Fighter Online has hit a worldwide total of 197 million registered players since launching in South Korea in 2005. To put it another way, put a penny in your hand and then imagine 196,999,999 more of them. That’s a lot.
The amazing thing is that DFO hasn’t technically launched yet in North America, which should push this number far higher. What’s a few million between gamers? The 2.5D game — which is a crossbreed of a side-scroller beat-em-up and an RPG — has grown by leaps and bounds in the NA beta, as Nexon has adjusted the level curve and added new content in preparation for the June launch.
Nexon had a few other impressive numbers to sling about as well. Up to this point, players have killed more than 1.6 billion monsters, invaded over 25 million dungeons and engaged in PvP arena combat over 28 million times. Does this make DFO one of the world’s most populated games? If you want to see the evidence for yourself, head over to DFO’s site, sign up for the beta (there’s no wipe going from beta to launch) and add to their hefty statistics.
gmaxwell MMOPRG News
Usually when we fall in love with a new MMO, the first thing we do is start telling our friends how great it is. Global Agenda, one of the most recent additions to the MMO market, may be one of those games for you. If you’ve been encouraging your friends to pick it up, Hi-Rez Studios just made the package a lot more attractive.
This weekend only, you can start filling up your shiny new Global Agenda friends list thanks to special discounted pricing. The discount for a single game is pretty generous, but gets even better if you purchase more. It’s a great incentive for several friends to purchase the game together: it’s always better when you can start a new game with friends, and even better if doing so gets you a great deal on the game. You can order it here, and remember, the deal ends March 8th.
Castiglione MMOPRG News
Hot on the heels of the announcement about the upcoming World of Tanks MMO comes the first interview about the game. MMORPGItalia chatted with producer Victor Kislyi yesterday to get the scoop on how exactly this new game is going to work.
The site asked a broad range of questions, cutting straight to the chase right at the beginning: “…why should I play your game instead of another one?” It gave Kislyi a good chance to tell fans exactly why he thinks this game will fill a gap in the MMO market. The game is PvP only (”We do not intend to make a PvE mode…”) and players have the opportunity to participate in large scale PvP battles.
The full interview is very informative, particularly considering we’ve not heard much about World of Tanks otherwise. It’s worth a look, so head over to MMORPGItalia to see the whole thing.
gmaxwell MMOPRG News
Do you like getting sneak peeks at new weapons in Fallen Earth? We hope so, because we’ve got one for you today in the form of the Slug Thrower, a new gun coming to the game tomorrow.
No, it’s not what you think. Sadly.
However, it is replacing the previous starting weapon for new players. Before, you were given a slow-firing crossbow. Now? You get the Slug Thrower, a faster rifle-type firearm that uses the zip gun ammo, shared by pistols as well. As the type of players who enjoy getting fancy weapons early on in our character’s life, this is a change we can fully support. Now, if only they’d make a gun that actually shot gastropod molluscs.
gmaxwell MMOPRG News
We recently brought you the news that the closed beta for Battle of the Immortals has been delayed until mid-April. Several reasons were cited, including details such as Windows 7 support, revising the item shop and the AI behavior, and so on. The Perfect World Entertainment team took some time to expand on those reasons for us this week.
Battle of the Immortals is the first game to be published out of Perfect World Entertainment’s new Shangai studio. With a different studio, graphics engine, and design, players can expect a game with a completely different feel than previous PWE offerings. While this can mean great things — such as a revised tutorial system that offers brief flash videos rather than plain text and an auto-navigation feature to guide you to the current monster you’re hunting for a quest — it can also introduce some complications.
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gmaxwell MMOPRG News
A literal bang, actually. Not only has Planet Calypso updated to version 2010|01 (their new system uses the year and update number, rather than version number) but they’ve also had a small volcanic eruption that’s changed part of the map. Blizzard, eat your cataclysmic heart out.
While the newly re-terraformed area of Cyclops has been visually improved by the team and patched in under the ‘guise of a volcanic explosion, the version update also brings the anticipated mission system to Calypso.
The mission system, which is in a public beta, more or less, is only currently offering 5 tutorial missions to newbies landing on Calypso for the first time. Once you complete those five missions, be sure to offer your feedback in the survey that pops up at the end. That information will be used to make more missions for higher level players, so don’t be stingy!
Also, there’s fish. Remember those fish we showed last time? Yeah, those fish. If you value your ankles, you’ll watch where you swim.
gmaxwell MMOPRG News
Zodiac Online, the free-to-play offering from Ingle Games, entered closed beta early last November. Since then the folks at Ingle Games have been hard at work refining things, fixing bugs, and just generally preparing to move to the next phase.
That next phase will arrive in just a few short days: open beta begins February tenth. The game predictably revolves around the Chinese zodiac, challenging you to assist the twelve creatures of the zodiac to defeat the forces of evil.
If you fall in the “make love, not war” camp, never fear. There is another side to Zodiac Online that says “give fate a chance and let it turn into a romance.” This game has a fate system based on astrology that will give you a heads up when a player is nearby that you are particularly compatible with — or particularly incompatible with — so you can follow up if you’re so inclined.
Castille MMOPRG News
They may have been burned by Blizzard when they lost World of Warcraft to their rival, NetEase, but The9 isn’t out of the fight yet. Especially not when they’ve just recently backed the troubled Red 5 and Chinese developer Fire Rain with a substantial sum of money.
Gamasutra is reporting that The9 has invested 100 million RMB (14.67 million USD) into Fire Rain, however the number is unconfirmed and neither The9 or Fire Rain are confirming the exact terms of the investment. However, if these reports are accurate, The9 would now have a large majority stake in the company or may have bought the developer outright.
As to the US based Red 5 Studios, having The9 as a new backer may be keeping the studio alive. Last week, we reported that approximately 30 people had been laid off from the studio, and Kotaku has reported that the studio may have even been close to closing their doors.
Red 5 has since “re-evaluated” their position and may be pursuing a game aimed at the Chinese market.
Update: Red 5’s community manager, Matt DeWald, has gotten in contact with us to say that Red 5 is not pursing a game aimed solely at the Chinese market. Red 5’s MMO will be aimed at the worldwide market.
gmaxwell MMOPRG News
Linden Lab is in the throes of closing the official Second Life forums and is creating alternative discussion spaces in its Clearspace blog/forum hybrid.
According to previous figures from Linden Lab staff, fewer than 700 of 18.1 million registered Second Life accounts ever participated in the official forums provided by the Lab. The partial closure of many of the most heavily trafficked areas of those forums when Lab announcements were migrated back out to the blog in 2006 did little to boost participation in the official forums.
The official vbulletin-based forums “did not scale” according to Linden Lab and were difficult to maintain, even for such modest usage levels as they experienced.
The old forums will remain available for viewing by anyone, including search-engines – at least in theory – as the software has been having problems for some several days. The formerly free classifieds forum will not be recreated in the new discussion spaces, as the Lab feels that it provides numerous, non-free advertising options to choose from. That’s kind of sad, as it provided some quite interesting content.
Some other forum spaces are being axed in the migration, but it is not yet clear which. “The forums have become jammed with cruft over the years, and we’ll be paring down to a smaller number of top-level forums to make it easier to find the conversations you’re looking for.”
All these changes are to be finalized by Tuesday, February 9th. We can’t help but wonder just how many people will be affected, as many Second Life users still remain unaware that the about-to-be-closed forums even exist.
Castillans MMOPRG News