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The Nexus Telegraph Extra: WildStar's deafening silence
How many people are currently playing WildStar? I don't know. You don't know, either, beyond vague guesses based on things like Raptr numbers, which say more about what Raptr users like to play than about actual game popularity. But it seems like the sort of answer that could be used to at least deflect a great deal of criticism, doesn't it? If Carbine Studios is sitting on two million players at a reasonable level of activity, that wouldn't shut down all discussion of the game's myriad problems, but it sure as heck would demand some rethinking. That's precisely what I asked when I, at Carbine's behest, sent the team questions about the health of the game over a week ago. The bad news is that Carbine still hasn't answered my questions, nine days later. But the good news is that in the interim, Carbine was willing to tell another site that WildStar does not have a "player interest" problem, which seems like the sort of waffley question you'd answer if you really didn't want to be specific.
Jonathan Sharp bids farewell to Guild Wars 2
Jonathan Sharp has been involved with Guild Wars 2 for eight years as an important part of the public-facing development team. But all good things must come to an end, and Sharp's time with ArenaNet has done just that. Associate Game Director John Corpening announced on the forums last night that Sharp is moving on to pursue an undisclosed opportunity elsewhere. Sharp included a personal farewell: Hey all. I'm sad to say that I'll be leaving ArenaNet after 8 years with the company, and it's been an amazing ride! I've chatted with many of you on vent, we've debated on State of the game, we've tossed ideas back and forth on the forums, and I've met many of you in person at various cons! It has been my privilege, pleasure and honor to work with such a passionate and intelligent group of fans. You guys have always kept me honest, you've pushed me to better myself, and your ideas have helped to create GW2's success – we couldn't have done it without you. Thank you for your love, passion and communication. I will always look back on my time here with love and gratitude, and much of that is owed to you, our wonderful fans. -Chap Sharp's role on the GW2 PvP team will be filled by PvP designer Hugh Norfolk, already well known to players who follow the game's developer activity with zeal. [Thanks to Dystopiq for the tip!]
Make My MMO: September 28 - October 4, 2014
This week in MMO crowdfunding, some analysts suggested that game development crowdsourcing might not be the wave of the future. Then Star Citizen topped $55 million in crowdfunding, which makes it not only the biggest game-based crowdfunding project of all time but the biggest crowdfunding project of all time, period. Once you're done reconciling those two stories, don't forget to click past the cut for our weekly MMO crowdfunding news roundup.
Analysts suggest video game Kickstarters are in decline
If you're still holding out hope for Kickstarter as the new face of funding video game development, you may want to revise that projection. Analyst group ICO Partners has been tracking Kickstarter through 2014 and has observed a marked drop in successful projects, funds pledged, and overall scale of projects on the site. Based on projections, the group expects a 20% drop in successful projects by the end of the year -- not a collapse, but a definite shrink. The downturn is attributed to a variety of factors, including the lack of several big-name projects to draw people to the service and a number of high-profile failures. ICO Partners analyst Thomas Bidaux also notes that the amount being received by successful projects is diminishing, which he attributes to fans being less willing to drop money on a potential game when some of their already funded games have yet to materialize. The full report has more data and is well worth a read for anyone interested in crowdfunding and its future.
WildStar's Stephan Frost calls it quits
In a new WildStar Nexus Report livestream, Design Producer Stephan Frost stunned listeners by announcing that he would be leaving Carbine Studios. "It really pains me to say this, but this will be my last show and my last week at Carbine," he said on the show. "I'm off to a new adventure; I got an offer that I couldn't turn down and so I'm going to take it. This is super-hard for me. This is one of my proudest achievements. A lot of my heart and soul is in this game." Frost assured fans that it had nothing to do with the game and the community, and he promised that he would still be playing WildStar even after his departure.
Make My MMO: September 21 - 27, 2014
As usual in the Kickstarter corner of the MMO industry, this week saw ups and downs for hopeful MMOs. Trials of Ascension hit its $60,000 crowndfund goal, Star Citizen broke $54,000,000 (count those zeroes, folks!), and Camelot Unchained got a new website. Yay! But TUG laid off half its staff, Pathfinder Online's early enrollment has been delayed until almost Halloween, and Project Gorgon's Kickstarter campaign has fallen short of its $100,000 goal. Boo! Bringing balance to the universe is Shroud of the Avatar, which was successfully Steam greenlit but has resorted to enticing testers with digital hats. Read on for our complete MMO crowdfunding roundup in this week's edition of Make My MMO.
Perfect Ten: What Titan's death means for the industry and you
Blizzard's fans are in mourning this weekend and its competition is no doubt rejoicing after the World of Warcraft developer finally cancelled its seven-years-in-the-making Titan MMO. Word on the street is that Titan was a little too similar to what Bungie came up with in Destiny, although all the studio itself will say is that it ultimately wasn't fun. So Titan joins Starcraft Ghost and Warcraft Adventures in the Blizzard graveyard. It's a loss for those who were hoping to see what Blizz could do outside of World of Warcraft in the MMO space. But what does this cancellation mean for Blizzard, the industry, and us as MMO gamers? I have a few thoughts, although I'll pre-empt them by predicting that your life will most likely go on just the same it did before this momentous announcement.
TUG cuts its staff in half to keep moving forward
There are certain announcements that never inspire confidence, like saying that you've had to remove half of the team working on a project. That's the announcement that TUG's developers recently dropped on the community. An investor that the team had been counting on provided terms that would have meant losing control of the project, so Nerd Kingdom chose to decline the funding. This might have been a great choice from a moral stance perspective, but it also meant that the team had to be pruned to keep the project financially viable. For fans, the immediate downside is that the game will be running a bit later with its Kickstarter rollouts than previously scheduled. The game is still humming along in development, though, and this reduction should be enough to keep the lights on. You can read the full update on the Kickstarter page, which also details a few potential unnamed spots of hope on the horizon.
Star Citizen hits $54 million with a letter from Chris Roberts
Star Citizen's ongoing funding drive has put the game up to $54 million now, and that means another feature off of the stretch goal page and into the full game. Chris Roberts addressed the community in a letter following this most recent landmark and explained that this level of funding will allow the game to launch with advanced AI behavior from NPCs in planetside environments. He also showed off a new video highlighting the Retaliator bomber, demonstrating the level of detail inside the ship that players can anticipate. Roberts went on to detail the cannon that will be awarded to every backer who joins before the game hits $55 million and offered another poll for players to determine what rewards they'd prefer for the next million-dollar increment. You can check out the Retaliator video just past the break. [Thanks to Oliver for the tip!]
E-thugs target Destiny with DDoS attacks
Destiny has been made the target of a round of DDoS attacks, coming from the same group that previously took credit for executing a similar attack against Sony Online Entertainment and a bomb threat on John Smedley's plane (among other harassment). Players were told that the game was facing issues with logging in and matchmaking across the board, but Bungie declined to elaborate further at the time; the tweet on the matter has since been deleted. Our sister site Joystiq reports that the servers are up again. Hacker group Lizard Squad has taken credit for taking parts of the game offline, an attack which also affected Call of Duty: Ghosts. Congratulations are in order for Destiny, since nothing says you've arrived like people taking down your servers as part of a petty show of power.
Make My MMO: September 14 - 20, 2014
This week in MMO crowdfunding news, Pumpkin Online achieved its Kickstarter goal and Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen's Facebook page was updated with a few more screens from the fledgling Brad McQuaid-designed title. Apart from the that, it was pretty slim pickings, so you'll forgive us if we once again call your attention to Project Gorgon's Kickstarter. It has a week left to go, and it's worthy of your support if your into full-featured MMORPGs that tread well off the beaten grindpark path. The rest of this week's crowdfunding roundup lies just beyond the cut.
Is Turbine developing an MMO for mobile devices?
No. Yes. Maybe? We're going to level with you, dear readers: We frequently have no idea what Turbine Entertainment is doing. We had no idea the studio was going to bring back Asheron's Call 2, for example, and our bets about Infinite Crisis were way off. So when we say that the company might be developing an MMO, well, it's a shot in the dark, but there's reason to suspect this might be happening. The studio is looking for both a Senior Mobile Engineer (that is, an engineer experienced with mobile engineering, not an engineer who is both a senior and mobile) and a new Art Director, both of which seem to imply that the studio is developing something completely new rather than a mobile port. Or maybe it's baseless speculation. Who knows?
Make My MMO: September 7 - 13, 2014
This week in MMO crowdfunding news, Elite: Dangerous released information about launch pricing and an optional pre-order pack. Star Citizen released its long-awaited racing mode, and Piranha released a whole bunch of internet rage by revealing a crowdfunded sci-fi MMO called Transverse. Which used to be called Wing Commander Online, funnily enough. Oh, and the Seldon Crisis Kickstarter officially kicked off. Click past the cut for the rest of our weekly crowdfunding roundup.
Destiny has already raked in $500 million in sales
Destiny's alleged big budget didn't end up being a big risk after all, as the title has become the highest-selling day-one digital console game release in history. From a combination of pre-orders, digital sales, and retail sales, Destiny has crossed the $500 million sales mark and doesn't look to be slowing any time soon. CEO of Activision Publishing Eric Hirshberg considers this massive validation for the project: "Since the beginning, we've been confident that our investment and belief in Destiny would pay off. But not many people believed we'd be able to say it did so on day one. We have more confidence than ever that Destiny will become one of the iconic franchises of this generation and Activision's next billion-dollar brand." However, if you're attempting to play Destiny from a college campus, you might be dealing with a frustrating impediment. Polygon notes that a networking error is blocking the game on certain campuises. Bungie said that it is aware of the issue and is working on a solution. [Source: Activision Blizzard press release]
Make My MMO: August 31 - September 6, 2014
Star Citizen dominated crowdfunding news headlines this week, which is nothing new. Pumpkin Online is new, though, and it might be worth checking out the game's Kickstarter if you're interested in a hybridization of Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing in an online context. The rest of our weekly crowdfunding news roundup is just past the cut.
NCsoft might allow players to resurrect the City of Heroes IP
There's good news for City of Heroes fans to celebrate now, even if it's not a finished thing yet. Nate Downes, President of Missing Worlds Media, has posted about a project wholly unrelated to City of Titans and yet entirely tied to it: the quest to resurrect the City of Heroes IP. He explains a story that began in September of last year, starting with a few contacts within NCsoft who led to the ultimate goal of resurrecting the last version of the game as well as licensing out the IP to its spiritual successors. The proposal currently on the table before NCsoft would allow the game's spiritual successors to drop the "spiritual" portion of their title, enable a restoration of the game's servers for the last update (albeit with no saved character data), and create the potential for a "transition" server between the original game and its successors. While it's far from a done deal, it's the best news that the former residents of Paragon City have heard since the lights went dark -- there may be brightness on the horizon.
Firefall gets a Chinese publishing deal
It's been a long road to Firefall's release on its native shores, but the game has more places to go just the same. Red 5 Studios and The9 have entered into an agreement with System Link Limited to publish the game in China for a five-year period. This will result in at least $160 million being paid to The9 for licensing fees and royalties. System Link Limited is itself a joint venture formed by The9 and Qihoo 360 Technology Corp, so it's a fairly dense nest of interrelationships. It can only be hoped that the game's release will be met with open arms in China. [Thanks to SolaRSaphire for the tip!]
Make My MMO: August 24 - August 30, 2014
This week's MMO crowdfunding news was headlined by Project Gorgon's second Kickstarter drive as well as TUG's upcoming "major content and engine updates."' Gorgon is described as having "an unusual, original feel," by creator and former Turbine producer Eric Heimburg. It mixes "ideas from older and newer MMOs with a whole bunch of ideas never before seen in any MMO." TUG, meanwhile, is pretty well documented here on Massively, and fans can get an eyeful of the latest Nerd Kingdom shenanigans via the team's new video releases. The rest of our crowdfunding roundup can be found past the break.
Funcom's revenues decrease in Q2
Funcom has released its second-quarter financial results for the year, and it's not a glowing success story. Revenue dropped roughly $600,000 compared to Q1, a drop attributed to weaker in-game item sales over the quarter. Despite this, the report indicates that the company remains on-track as a whole, with the overall pattern of expenses not significantly changed. All of the major MMOs in the studio's portfolio are stated to be cash-flow positive, which is good news for fans. While the company launched several marketing attempts to draw more players into its titles, The Secret World was the most successful at bringing in more players via its most recent major update. The company projects good results for LEGO Minifigures Online when it releases in October. Interested players can look at the full report, which is less overwhelmingly positive than might be ideal but hardly paints a picture of doom.
WildStar's Jeremy Gaffney steps down as president of Carbine Studios
Jeremy Gaffney, President of Carbine Studios, has announced via the WildStar forums that he will be stepping down from his current role as president of the studio. He's staying on in a consulting and advisory role, but he'll no longer be steering the operation. Why the change? According to Gaffney's post, part of it is a result of both losing several family members to cancer last year and having to receive treatment for skin cancer himself. He's recovering without incident, but he put off the treatment for nine months to keep working through launch. Meanwhile, he also wants to allow the studio's creative team to keep working on improving the game rather than simply listening to his creative vision, something which is more easily accomplished if he steps away from an active role. Gaffney concludes his letter by thanking the fans as well as the studio for making a game that he's proud to have been a part of. [Thanks to Pete for the tip!]
