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Mythic developers discuss the swan song of Wrath of Heroes
Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes is shutting down near the end of the month, but it turns out that the developers have a few last hurrahs for the game. A recent fansite interview sheds some light on the new heroes that are coming out during the game's final month of operation, with 17-18 heroes being fast-tracked for release. The game's main currency, Gold, will be able to purchase everything in the cash shop including Gold Boost items, intentionally creating plenty of money for players to enjoy the last bits of the game. What's not coming? Most anything else that was in development, including some heroes that the developers just didn't have enough time to finish. There were also Scenarios in development that aren't close enough to completed to be functional; while pushing out heroes quickly is a priority, a half-finished Scenario is fun for no one. Fans looking for fine details on exactly which traditional Warhammer factions will be represented in the last month can look at the full interview.
The Mog Log: It's the end of Eorzea as we know it
It's not really a Final Fantasy game without a good apocalypse, and Final Fantasy XIV is getting just that. We've been watching the slow roll of the end of the world for months now, and as the last few days tick down before the shutdown, it's becoming amply clear just how bad the world is going to get. Everything will burn, everything will fall, and it's down to the last few defenders to fight for the ashes of Eorzea. And, well, it'll all get put back a couple of days later. But that's not the point. While the game has been flirting with the apocalyptic prophecies circling around the Seventh Umbral Era since launch, the announcement of A Realm Reborn and subsequent changes set the stage, and since then the game has quite happily pushed the idea that the end is nigh. Speaking as someone who was quite disappointed when similar changes just skipped from "everything's fine" to "after the end" in other games, I was curious to see what Final Fantasy XIV's implementation would look like. And while it's not quite over, I've seen enough to call it -- not perfectly, but very close.
SOE gears up for Star Wars Galaxies' closing events
A long time ago, in a game industry far, far away, there was an MMORPG called Star Wars Galaxies. It made a lot of people happy (and sad), hung around for eight plus years, and is now being forced into an early retirement by the next big thing. Before it rides off into the twin sunset, SWG is holding a series of farewell events. According to the patch notes for today's update, the Galactic Civil War score will be frozen on Wednesday, December 14th at midnight EST, at which time Jabba's event kicks off near the Sarlacc Pit in the deeps of the Tatooine desert Three more events will begin at server restart on Thursday, December 15th, sometime around 7:00 a.m. EST: one near the Research Outpost on Endor, one in the Nub Shanda zone of Coronet, Corellia, and one in the city of Theed on the planet Naboo. Massively's Karen Bryan and the rest of the SWG-fans among the Massively staff will be livestreaming the final countdown on the Starsider server on Thursday, starting at 11 p.m. EST. Join us as we reminisce about and salute this groundbreaking sandbox.
The Soapbox: Be here now
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Games die. It's an unpleasant reality but a reality just the same, with the highest-profile death on the horizon being Star Wars Galaxies. Business decisions get made, and unfortunately, sometimes those decisions boil down to "this game is no longer worth the money to keep it running." If you're lucky, the announcement comes with a great deal of time for you to wrap up what you've always wanted to do in the game; if you're unlucky, you might have a couple of weeks before the servers go dark. So what do you do as a player? How do you cope with the fact that the game is shutting down? There are a lot of approaches, but I think it's unfortunate that most of the reactions seem to center around some last-ditch effort to save the game from oblivion. It's entirely missing the point to try and pull the game back from the brink of death, and it does a disservice to both the game and the players when you spend your last days desperately fighting a foregone conclusion.
NCsoft shutting down Lineage in North America
Before Aion, before Guild Wars, before anything else for NCsoft, there was Lineage. Not the sequel (which actually takes place significantly before the first title) but the original game, released not too long after Ultima Online came on to the scene. While the game is old, it's long maintained a viable community within North America... but apparently not quite viable enough. Today, NCsoft announced that as of June 29th, the game's servers will be shutting down for good in North America. Players who had registered previously have had their accounts reactivated in good standing, and all recurring billing has been cancelled from this date onward. The community team for the game is also promising some live events to help memorialize the game and let it go out with a bang rather than a whimper. We can also expect to see a few new live server rule pushes. Still, it's a sad day for Lineage fans, who are well advised to look at the official announcement and the refund policy to see how the plans for the remaining time will affect them.
