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TERA publisher En Masse hit with layoffs [Updated]
En Masse Entertainment community manager Evan "Scapes" Berman has tweeted that layoffs are underway at the publisher responsible for bringing TERA to the western market. "Layoffs have occurred at En Masse. I was hit," Berman wrote. TERA launched on May 1st in North America and May 3rd in Europe after an extensive "westernization" development cycle that tweaked the native Korean client. Massively has contacted En Masse for an official statement and we'll keep you posted as this story develops. [Update: En Masse has responded to our comment request with a statement from publishing vice president Chris Lee. We've placed the statement behind the break.]
TERA shows off new skills for Lancers and Warriors
Are you a Lancer in TERA who's tired of standing in place while Warriors gracefully dance about? Are you a Warrior in TERA who's tired of dodging everything when some attacks are just easier to block through? Are you just a person who likes to watch videos of new class abilities? All three groups will be happy with the newest TERA video, which shows off the two new Lancer abilities and three new Warrior abilities debuting in the game's next major patch. Lancers gain Backstep, which does more or less exactly what it sounds like, and Wallop, which hits the ground hard and knocks over your enemy. Warriors gain Cross Parry, which functions as a block; Smoke Flanker, which teleports the Warrior behind the enemy and hits back; and Reaping Slash, a spiraling attack that knocks down your target. Click on past the break to see all of the skills in action in this short video.
The Daily Grind: Have you ever bought a sparkle pony?
Two years ago, a marketing firm produced a study showing that 75% of gamers partake of microtransactions in their online games. Not long after that study was published, World of Warcraft enraged opponents of "double-dipping" by kicking off the sale of a $25 luxury mount that gamers pseudo-affectionately dubbed the sparkle pony. And then EverQuest II released a mount for a similar fee. And then TERA. And then RIFT. For all the hatred these high-end cash-shop mounts provoke, people are buying them -- enough people to make it a model worth copying. Some of these subscription games will sell sparkle anything. I'll fess up first: I bought myself a sparkle pony when Blizzard put the mount on sale for 10 bucks a while back, and I love it (it reminds me of celestial gear and creatures in Guild Wars, so I was weak!). But I still feel a little guilty. What about you? Have you ever bought an overpriced mount for cash in an MMO? Why did you do it, and do you feel the pang of guilt I do about supporting a double-dipping subscription game? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
En Masse suiting up for TERA summer event
Is your High Elf looking a little pale? Want to show off those washboard abs on your Baraka? You're in luck because En Masse is gearing up for a TERA summer event sure to put a smile on the face of beach lovers and bikini collectors of any race. The fun starts August 3rd and runs through August 13th. You'll need to defeat monsters in TERA's coastal zones to collect special event boxes. Inside you'll find fireworks, rare crystals, consumables, and 30-day swimsuits (yes, they are temporary). There are also a few new achievements on tap, so head to the official TERA website for further details.
SWTOR dominates GDC Online Awards nominations
The nominations for the Third Annual GDC Online Awards are up, and Star Wars: The Old Republic is represented across the board. BioWare's sci-fi MMO netted six nominations, including one for Online Innovation. That's not to say that SWTOR is the only MMO in the running; quite the contrary. Glitch is up for Best Online Game Design, World of Warcraft has a shot at Best Community Relations, RIFT is a strong contender for Best Live Game, and TERA might snag Best Online Visual Arts -- and that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's also a broader Audience Award that encompasses an even wider field. 2012's Game Developers Conference Online is taking place from October 9th through 11th and will be keynoted by John Smedley.
Subscribe to TERA's newsletter, get free stuff for the game
The people at En Masse Entertainment want you to read the TERA newsletter. But they're not going to spend a whole lot of time boring you with its virtues. No, they're just going to straight-up bribe you with the promise of free character goodies. All subscribers to the newsletter with an active TERA subscription will receive a code for a free Black Bandit Mask as long as they've signed up to receive the newsletter by 2:59 a.m. EDT on July 26th. If you aren't currently signed up to receive the letter and have a burning need to cover your face, you can sign up under Account Management on the official site. The codes for the masks will be distributed along with the next newsletter, which will include instructions on how to redeem them. It's a neat little promotion to ensure that players are kept in the loop about the game's development with just a little extra bribery.
One Shots: A big white blur
Conventional wisdom holds that snow zones in games and movies make for a featureless, monochrome eyesore that bores onlookers, and yet both Star Wars Galaxies and Star Wars: The Old Republic couldn't resist the allure of Hoth. Today's One Shots from reader Brooks reveals his character resting above an imposing crevasse on the notorious ice planet as depicted in SWTOR: Surrounded by the harsh beauty of ice and stone, Jedi Knight Omiko Kell takes a meditative moment to reflect on the weight of her responsibility to the native people and Republic forces struggling for freedom and survival on the desolate and unforgiving planet of Hoth. Does she sway from her primary mission set forth by her Order and help others, or will she let them stand alone in their fight against the Empire, pirates, and mercenaries while she focuses on her Masters' directive? Whichever one gives you the most legacy points, of course. Brooks' full screenshot and a few others are beyond the cut!
Choose My Adventure: At the end of TERA
All good things must come to an end, including my run of Choose My Adventure. There have been high points and low points, good parts and bad, but there's only so much time to cover the game. And so I leave TERA, confident that while I may have missed points, at least I have a broad sense of the game. That's certainly less... straightforward than previous installments of this column have been for me. My impressions of TERA have really been all over the map. There are things I absolutely love about the game, but a lot of them are minor touches. There's one part that I think is absolutely brilliant, and a lot that's absolutely juvenile. The game has a lot of systems that are essentially filling space without adding anything. And as a result, it's really hard to classify the whole game as being good or bad or neutral.
TERA chronoscrolls to be made available via Amazon
Game developers are always looking for new and exciting ways for you to give them your money. To that end, En Masse has partnered up with Amazon.com to sell TERA chronoscrolls, which are redeemable for a month of game time or for cold, hard gold from in-game brokers. Chronoscroll purchases through Amazon don't come with a clunky ol' code that has to be entered in anywhere. Instead, sweetening the deal, chronoscrolls will appear automagically in your in-game Item Claim window. Need more convincing? Customers who integrate their En Masse and Amazon accounts in the next 30 days will get free stuff! The federation field kit, full of in-game goodies, will be available for free from Amazon. Check out the official news post for full details and the TERA + Amazon support page if this sounds like your kind of thing.
Choose My Adventure: A last round of TERA dungeons with Higiri
Some things are really just acquired tastes. At first they seem lackluster or even outright bad, but that's mostly because you need to adjust a bit more. If you give it some time and practice, all of the difficulties fade away. As it turns out, what seemed unpleasant at first becomes enjoyable, and what you mistook as irritation was really just confusion. And so you can tell others that even if this seems a bit bad at first, stick with it because it gets better. TERA's dungeons apparently do not fall under that category. This week was another week with Higiri, exploring the depths of TERA's dungeons, trying my hand at more tanking, and seeing whether I warmed up a little more to the experience now that I knew something of what to expect. And I definitely had a better picture of what was going on in the dungeon from start to finish, so that was excellent. Unfortunately, it didn't really win me over.
TERA guild farms itself for political gain, playerbase outraged
So there's a bit of an uproar ongoing in the lands of Arborea at the moment. No, it has nothing to do with skimpy armor, Elin, or whether or not "action" combat is in fact new to MMOs. TERA's endgame political system features something called a Vanarch, which is basically a player-elected representative. Vanarchs can impose taxes, toggle PvP on or off, and generally meddle in the affairs of other players in ways that are strictly off-limits in most themepark MMOs. En Masse recently adjusted the system to allow Vanarchs to rise to power through guild-vs.-guild combat. In doing so, it cleared the way for mega-guilds to split in two and farm their way to political office. As you might expect, players on the outside of said guilds are none too happy about it and are allegedly receiving conflicting information from the support staff as to whether or not taking advantage of this game mechanic is considered an exploit. We'll keep you updated in case the company takes a more official position on the matter, but for now, you can head to the official forums for all the fallout. [Thanks to everyone who tipped us!]
Choose My Adventure: Chasing TERA's BAMs with Rielene
Higiri will be delving further into the depths, seeking that fundamental alchemy that separates a generic implementation of mechanics from a standout one. I wish her luck, but this week doesn't focus on her adventures. No, it's time for Rielene to once more take center stage, complete with her twin blades and her dangerous game. Rielene's destiny was to hunt the great beasts of TERA, the monsters whose colossal stature relegates them to assault by groups or fearless individuals. I speak, of course, of BAMs. OK, for the epic names that could have been chosen for these creatures, that's probably not one of the better ones. But they're still pretty distinctive. They're these roaming monsters that don't just wing you a bit if they connect with a hit; they shred you to pieces. They're bosses that roam around, daring you to try and take them on alone. And I did just that, and I emerged victorious, and it was undeniably worth the price of admission.
Sony invests in cloud-streaming with purchase of Gaikai
The gaming cloud company Gaikai, which partnered with Warner Bros. Interactive last March to stream an hour of gameplay in two different AAA games and more recently was in the news for partnering with En Masse to offer an instant streaming version of TERA's demo, was just acquired by Sony for the sum of $380 million. What does this mean for the company with numerous games across different platforms? Sony Computer Entertainment President Andrew House explains that the company "will deliver a world-class cloud-streaming service that allows users to instantly enjoy a broad array of content ranging from immersive core games with rich graphics to casual content anytime, anywhere on a variety of internet-connected devices." For more insight into the realm of cloud-streaming MMOs, check out Massively's look at Gaikai and browser-based gaming.
MMO Blender: Eliot's self-made legend
I like games that make your characters feel legendary, but sometimes I think they've gotten the whole formula wrong. The problem is that the only thing important about your character is what he or she has done, not what he or she is. World of Warcraft has a lot of quests and raids that seem to imply your character is a big deal, but how big a deal can you really be if you're learning all of your tricks at the local trainer? What about a game where your personal history has as much to do with your future development as anything else? A game where your accomplishments aren't just backstory but an integral part of your character's abilities? A game where every new encounter is a chance for your character to learn something unique? I'd love to see a game where your accomplishments are not a list of things that you've killed but a clear litany of skills learned and scars accumulated -- a game where the path to power isn't necessarily clearly marked.
TERA rolls out the Chronoscroll system and an upcoming event
Maybe you're a poor college student with plenty of time to play TERA but not a lot of cash to spend out of the game. Or maybe you're a man of means with plenty of cash to spend but little time to farm gold. Whichever category is closer to you, you'll find something to like in TERA's new Chronoscrolls system, which allows players to buy scrolls of subscription time and trade them for in-game gold. The system works fairly transparently: Chronoscrolls can be purchased for real-world cash and then placed on the auction block, and a scroll thus purchased can be redeemed for extra subscription time. That means that players with piles of in-game gold can get plenty of free time to play the game. And if you're wondering why you'd like to spend that money, there is an event taking place starting on Friday, June 29th, in which players will hunt down reptilian egg thieves for special rewards. So you've got some motivation. [Thanks to Dengar for the tips!]
Choose My Adventure: Exploring dungeons with Higiri
Rielene's poll last week pushes her toward BAMs, but for now we're moving on to focus on our other adventurer in TERA. Higiri is not venturing across sunlit fields and enjoying the open air; no, she was bound for the darkest realms, places where monsters gather and plot the destruction of joy in private. But in order to get her into dungeons, I had to get her through a fair bit of leveling first, enough to enter the first dungeon of the game. I spent a lot of time questing with Higiri this past week, since that's easily the most efficient way to level, and as a result I had some further insights into the nature of questing in the game that build off of my insights last week. But running the dungeon was the centerpiece, and my runs through were... memorable, yes, but probably for the wrong reasons. And no, not in the "crazy, horrible party" sense.
Pony up $25 for TERA's new Night Mare mount
Remember when everyone was a lot of gamers were outraged that Blizzard dared to charge 25 bucks for a cash shop item in a subscription game? Well, times have changed, folks, because now such behavior is generally expected. Sony Online Entertainment jumped on the bandwagon shortly after the sparkle pony tipping point, Funcom followed suit, and dozens of other companies have done the same in recent years. The newest member of the double-dippers club is En Masse, which is offering up a fiery-hooved TERA Night Mare steed for $24.99. Frugal players can take solace in the fact that their half-the-price-of-the-whole-game mount is available to all the characters on their account, and you can read further details about the beast at the official TERA website.
Choose My Adventure: TERA questing with Rielene
Last week's polls sent Higiri off to handle horrible dungeons, while Rielene continued to quest across the land. Much as in a certain famous fantasy trilogy that may have won our first bonus poll, this means that there are two distinct paths now being following by our intrepid TERA protagonists, and that means more time to focus on each. So I'm starting off with Rielene and her quest into the depths of Arcadia, beginning with the unexpectedly tumultuous Fey Forest. The opening explanation behind the quests here is fairly well handled, and it actually gives a reason that adventurers are being sent off into the depths of danger when an army would seem more suitable. Put simply, the Valkyon Federation's armed forces are primarily focused against the invading Argon, and that means that the rest of the world has kind of gotten messy. Adventurers aren't meant to represent some strange amalgam of soldiers and free operators; they're the last-ditch reinforcements for a home front that's deteriorating rapidly.
Brian Knox discusses the future of TERA
En Masse Entertainment's action-packed title TERA has been out for just over a month now, and the game's really beginning to pick up steam. The title recently unveiled its much-awaited political system, which led to some pretty exciting activity in the campaign for Vanarchy. Still, many players are now looking toward the future. Do you wonder what En Masse has up its sleeve now that TERA is up and running? Then you're in luck because the game's Senior Producer, Brian Knox, sat down to answer a few questions for the folks at DualShockers. It's a pretty interesting interview that covers a range of topics, such as the relationship between En Masse and Bluehole Studio and plans for expansion of TERA's endgame. Roleplayers get a couple of shout-outs as well, which is a refreshing change. Heck, Knox even comments on the game's ridiculous MMO-Fo ad campaign. For all of the delicious interview details, click below to read the full piece.
TERA Vanarchy candidate Oloh on the political game within the game
For some time now, meaningful in-game politics have been the domain of sandbox golden-children like EVE Online, but En Masse Entertainment's action-oriented TERA aims to break that monopoly. The studio recently introduced its much-touted Vanarchy system, which allows players to run for political office and has resulted in a rush of guilds vying for the coveted positions. The Basilisk Crag server's Nagafen is one such guild. The guild, headed by founder and Vanarchy candidate Don Shelkey (in-game alias Oloh), is in the midst of a large campaign for control of the province of Ostgarath, and the group means business. Shelkey even went so far as to rent ad-space on the front page of TERA's ZAM network database site, TeraTome, bringing the in-game campaign into the real-world of hundreds of TERA players. We had the chance to have a little tête-à-tête with Shelkey himself to talk a bit about the socio-political climate of TERA and its implications on the real world. OK, not really. But we did talk to him about the joys of playing politics in a virtual world and what it takes to run for a Vanarchy in TERA, so head on past the cut and check it out!
