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Future of Mythos beta uncertain
Mythos beta testers are experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions as they await official word on what will happen to Mythos. The bad news struck Friday, July 11th. It was confirmed that the ranks were culled as layoffs (over 30 confirmed at VE3D's count) occurred at Flagship Studios, developers of Hellgate: London and Mythos. Staff at PingO, an online services subsidiary felt the impact too. To help shed some new light there is a response from Travis Baldree, Lead developer on Mythos. In a post entitled, "A Fond Farewell" Baldree espouses gratitude to the Mythos beta community, the close relationship between employees, and does not disclose any specific details on the future of Mythos. Baldree is also unsure of how long Mythos in its current beta form will remain operational, but claims he will inform the community when possible. While Baldree did hint at reopening beta testing in the future, the question regarding on who owns the intellectual property and rights is probably going to be decided in a legal battle. Other developers that worked on Mythos also posted their farewells and appreciation to the beta community in the same thread. (We have copied Baldree's post after the jump in case the forums shutdown.)[Via Warcry]
Fallen Earth dev update reveals new info on loot drops and more
The year is 2156, and the Grand Canyon is one of the last inhabitable places on Earth. It's all due to the Shiva plague that wiped out ninety percent of the world's population and left a mutated mess in its wake. There is no corporation or government control as we know today and six factions remain competing in a tug-of-war. All that really matters is that you have enough ammo to blow away your next enemy. That's Fallen Earth, a post apocalyptic MMOG from Icarus Studios, and there are some recent developments that stem from this necro-bump on the alpha milestone announcement but this time it comes packaged with new before and after shots. The real news comes in the latest round of questions and answers on the official Fallen Earth forums by Lead Developer, Lee Hammock. Seven questions in all are answered. Regarding realistic loot drops depending on equipment and NPC type, in Fallen Earth if you kill an NPC that is wearing advanced armor, Kevlar or titanium components will drop. Most MMOGs eschew realistic looting rules; everyone has killed an NPC decked out in a full suit of blazing bad ass weaponry only to loot moldy cheese from its well dressed corpse. Completed items will drop as well, but components will be the common drop. The other big revelation is that in two months Fallen Earth will be nearing content completion as work on polish is underway. [Via, Warcry]
Dynamedion contributes soundtrack to Runes of Magic
What would a high fantasy MMO be without an accompanying orchestral soundtrack? The themes to EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot and so on bring weight and importance to the adventure, and nobody can listen to the theme to the game they loved without having all the memories of close calls and fun times immediately come to mind.Runes of Magic publisher Frogster has asked renowned German soundtrack composers Dynamedion to compose just such a soundtrack for their upcoming free-to-play fantasy MMO. Managing Director Pierre Langer (pictured) says about the soundtrack, "We see Runes of Magic as an amazing challenge. It is [...] our first Fantasy-MMO, one of our preferred genres." Dynamedion has contributed music to games such as Spellforce, John Woo's Stranglehold, Anno 1701, Drakensang and Die Siedler V & VI, and movies such as 10.000 B.C. and The Bourne Ultimatum.We've set the pictures from yesterday's peek into the starting zone, to some of the newly-composed music to Runes of Magic, after the break.
Kiwi Heroes MMOG for kids announced
A company called Massively Me (no relation to ourselves) which describes itself as 'a software development company that's building super-top-secret products for the Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming industry' has lifted its veil of secrecy for a moment, to announce a new MMOG. Called Kiwi Heroes, it's specially themed for 'kids and young teens'. Public beta is on the verge of starting, and the game will be launched later this year. Kiwi Heroes has a strong ethical message, intending to teach kids 'valuable life lessons' and show them what it really means to be a hero. The game's themes include wildlife preservation and the fate of the environment. Furthermore, there will be a charitable enterprise launched at the same time as the game:
Running down Warhammer Online's open beta with WAAAGH!
There's MMOs to play, plenty of activities and events are happening in World of Warcraft, EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Guild Wars. Even the space cases in EVE Online are tearing each other up in the Empyrean Age expansion. But there isn't always something for everyone, many of us yearn for a new creation not touched before, and the million boxes Age of Conan shipped attests to that. Right now Warhammer: Age of Reckoning is looking like the only real new option on the dinner table, and it may be time to be taking a leap into Warhammer's open beta. Over on the Warhammer Online blog WAAAGH! Syp has gathered and laid out all the facts and the rumors regarding the open beta. If you didn't know you can pre-order the Warhammer Online Collector's edition to guarantee a spot in the beta to beat the launch pandemonium. As for an estimate on when the open beta will start the latest WAR newsletter revealed that the guild beta will be starting in early July. This phase of testing will at least last for a month and it will be the last closed beta phase. Making it more than likely that WAR's open beta phase at the very least wont start until mid-August, if that, making the rest of summer pretty bleak MMO wise if you aren't planning on playing anything until WAR comes out.
Shredding the galaxy in Project Powder
The year is 2146. Global warming has long since made ice and snow only a distant memory, something seen in the history books but not really understood. That all changed with the discovery of the Warp Gate, that opened up the galaxy to exploration. And everywhere we went, there was snow. And where there was snow, there was Project Powder to shred it.Project Powder, developed by free casual MMO portal Outspark, isn't the first extreme sports MMO we've seen, but it's the coolest. Combat? Duel against other players on the slopes! Crafting? Make snowballs! Exploration? There's a whole world out there ready to be explored -- and shredded. Okay, maybe it's not the deepest MMO out there, but if you just want to get together with your friends, form a team, level up and compete against the top 'boarders in the galaxy, Project Powder may be just the game for you. Closed beta begins June 24th, and you can sign up on the Project Powder home page. Get to level 5 in closed beta, and you get a special hoodie that you can wear in open beta that shows just how cool the open beta newbies will never be.Check out the video after the break, courtesy of GameTrailers.
Dreamlords: The Reawakening now in public beta
Dreamlords: The Reawakening has been in closed beta since April, and according to a new press release has entered "public beta". At the time of this writing, the official website has not been updated with any information relating to this update. Do we dare assume that "public beta" means "open beta"? While at the site, however, notice the latest news regarding the server move on the 9th of June to "prepare for launch". So, we might be in open beta right now, and we might be seeing a full launch of the game fairly soon. We can't take this tension! When we know anything for sure, we'll let you know.[Thanks, Marcus!]
Mono coming soon. Very soon.
Depending on how the new code travels through the QA process, Mono could come to the main Second Life grid within the next four weeks, says Linden Lab. Mono (an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET) is to be deployed as an additional, faster script runtime engine that should greatly speed many common scripting operations, increase stability and reduce load. Linden Lab says that it is unlikely that we'll see Mono deployed within two weeks, but within four is certainly not out of the ballpark. Currently Mono is available for testing on the Beta grid, and scripters should take the opportunity to test their scripts there and get bug-reports filed sooner, rather than later. The new script runtime engine does not add (and is not presently intended to add) support for any languages other than the already existing LSL.
Half of a restart, Friday
Between 5AM and 10AM SLT (US Pacific time) on Friday, 16 May, Linden Lab is planning to restart approximately half of the Second Life grid simulators, in order to connect those simulators to a backup asset system. Why only half? Well, the other half got the treatment in this-morning's rolling restart. The asset system, as you may have noticed, has been plagued with issues since November 2007, and the recent vendor-provided fixes have not improved matters. In fact, there's indications that there may be increased instability as a result.
Viewer 1.20RC7, Simulator 1.22 expected to see light next week
Bridie Linden has updated the development roadmap (actually, it's not a roadmap so much, as a set of directions, but bear with us) for upcoming releases. The release cycle for the 1.20 viewer is going to be longer than usual, expecting to end in June. The map is a bit tangled, with a commingling of server-side and viewer-side changes kind of munged together, but there's a new feature in the long, long list of bugfixes and bughunting tweaks: New feature: VWR-4794: Basic voice lipsync for voice visualization. Now that's going to be interesting. Viewer 1.20RC7 and Simulator 1.22 are both expected to see the light next week. Nothing much new in SLS1.22, except work to further ease load on the asset servers (if some of you are winding up at infohubs and welcome-areas instead of at home, or getting teleport routing failure messages, those are a part of this work), and code to help identify possible failure points in other systems.
Out with the old (Land Store) and in with the new
Linden Lab seem to have finally gotten the new land store together and up-and-running, albeit as a limited beta at the present time. The old land store has been switched off, so no more orders through the old system. Some people will have access to the beta Land Store at present. If you don't, and you want to access it, you'll need to fill out a Support Ticket (Land and Region Issues > LandStore Beta Access). This process takes about a day. If you've got positive or negative experiences with the new land store, let us know.
CoX Issue 12: Midnight Hour enters Open Beta!
As of yesterday, all City of Heroes players can access the twelfth expansion, Midnight Hour, on the Test Server. For an issue that was originally touted as a fairly small one, it's extremely impressive. The main features are, of course, the Villain Epic Archetypes, Powerset Proliferation and the new Cimerora and Midnighters Club content, but the Quality of Life changes have left many players open-mouthed. These are literally what the players have been asking for. Several of them appear to have come directly from the Suggestions and Ideas forum. The patch notes are now available to read.We're especially impressed by the 'Inspiration upon levelling up' concept, which will even bring you back to life if you should happen to level up while defeated, and by the Zone Event Alerts channel. From now on, if Lusca surfaces in Independence Port or the Arachnos Flyer leaves its roost in Grandville, players who have added these channels will know about it. Every zone event is covered, with one exception; the reclusive lake monster, Sally.Read on for a few more off-the-cuff impressions.
CoX Issue 12: Journey to Cimerora
City of Heroes Issue 12: Midnight Hour has finally reached Open Beta, and in the first of our articles covering the new issue content, we're delighted to bring you a scenic tour of the Cimerora zone.The Midnight Squad, researchers into the arcane, have acquired a time-travel crystal. Those who have gained access to the Midnighters Club, their secret stronghold connected to both Paragon and the Rogue Isles, can reach it; but access to Cimerora is limited to characters of levels 35-50.A co-operative zone where Heroes and Villains work together (each for their own ends) Cimerora is small but beautiful, containing one introductory arc, a contact who gives out repeating missions, and one extraordinary Task Force that testers have called the best in the game so far. %Gallery-22221% Face down the forces of evil! Give good a quick jab to the jaw! Massively has all the CoX Issue 12 news you can handle. Make sure to check it out!
Hello Kitty Online enters closed beta on the 23rd of April
Thy doom draws nearer, O Learned Readers, for with each passing day, Hello Kitty Online becomes more and more a reality! The latest information is that those of you fortunate enough to have gotten access to the closed beta will finally find out what it will be like to inhabit the world of Sanrio. The test runs from the 23rd of April to the 7th of May, and interestingly enough, testers will have a DVD of content sent to them, which will include at least a folder of video tutorials, though nothing else has been confirmed at this time.This MMO has excited a ton of interest in age ranges well beyond the pre-pubescent that one might expect -- expect a First Impressions before too long!
HiPiHi reopens beta
Chinese virtual world HiPiHi has reopened registration for beta accounts. If you want to give this a spin, you will be pleased to know that you can now perform account registration in English. Unfortunately, it seems that you'll still need to either read a few words of Chinese or have a fine-mastery of educated guesswork to handle the user-interface. We spent a few minutes in HiPiHi today. Within our first couple of minutes, we got our leg humped by some kind of transforming robot, and then someone tried to push us into the sea. Technology is awesome. If you're feeling brave and would like to have a look at this virtual world in beta, give the signup a whirl. Be warned - the viewer download is at least 20 times longer than the download for Second Life, so find something else to do while that is happening.
1.20: Changing your mind about avatar lag
One of the things that the new Second Life 1.20 release candidate viewer sports is a nifty new feature that busts some serious myths about avatar related lag. In short, by enabling the option, every avatar gets a number displayed over their heads showing how much work your PC needs to go through to render the avatar. This is the avatar rendering cost. So far we have seen green numbers (low numbers, which are good), and red ones (high numbers, which are not so good). The amount of work that goes into rendering an avatar (now that we can easily measure it) isn't quite affected by things the way we thought it was.
New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.19.1(RC4)
Linden Lab has released a new 1.19.1 Second Life release candidate viewer, 1.19.1(RC4), fifth in the 1.19.1 series (release candidates start counting from zero, rather than from one). Released on a Saturday. We know. Looks like someone's pushing for an official release early next week. In fact, Linden Lab says they're hoping this is the last release candidate for this series.
New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.19.1(RC3)
Linden Lab has released a new 1.19.1 Second Life release candidate viewer, 1.19.1(RC3), fourth in the 1.19.1 series (release candidates start counting from zero, rather than from one). Almost all the changes for this release-candidate are essentially cosmetic items. Either those are the low-hanging fruit, or we're getting very close to 1.19.1 (and Windlight) rolling out as the official viewer. With our prognosticating hats on, we predict an official release of 1.19.1/Windlight on Monday or Tuesday (though we're prepared to be wrong, we think it is likely).
New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.19.1(RC2)
Linden Lab has released a new 1.19.1 Second Life release candidate viewer, 1.19.1(RC2), third in the 1.19.1 series (release candidates start counting from zero, rather than from one). Changes this time include alterations in the length of search terms (user names can be searched for with as few as two characters, and place names with only one); some notecard crashes; fixes to SVG-on-a-prim; crash bugs, build and installer glitches and more.
New Second Life release candidate viewer: 1.19.1(RC1)
Linden Lab has released a new 1.19.1 Second Life release candidate viewer, 1.19.1(RC1), second in the 1.19.1 series (release candidates start counting from zero, rather than from one). According to the new Linden Lab crash reporter, 1.19.1 is expected "to be the most stable viewer so far". This release fixes attachments ignoring users telling them where to go, boosts defective particle systems, makes the new search honor the user's selected language, removes the mess with sculptie previews, and builds strong bodies five ways. Specifics are after the fold.
