Welcome to this week in MMORPG news. Where
I curate the more popular updates and announcements
from within the genre and put them all in
a short video format. This is the third week
of October and let's get started.
Oath Drama
Now for anyone who missed it, Oath is a game
that was put up for funding on Kickstarter
a few months ago, the first time I saw the
game was on TheLazyPeon's channel I think,
since then pretty much every mmorpg channel
has done some kind of content on the game.
Besides me of course, I think this is the
first time I've mentioned the game at all
on the channel. Well the reason I'm bringing
it up today is that if you've not been following
the recent news, you might not be aware that
there has been a pretty large drama brewing
between three different parties involved in
this game.
Basically to summarize, Readyupstudios, north
american based studio that are behind Oath,
hired UK based independent studio Oceanspark
to make original art for their game. Oceanspark
contacted the youtuber Cryy, with a large
document outlining how Readyup was basically
a scam, they wasn't paying Oceanspark the
money they were owed, they only had Oceanspark
working on the art of the game and therefor
after cutting ties with them would have no
further work being done on the game. There
were a lot of things mentioned in this document,
which has screenshots of conversations included
and some of the things said in these were
pretty sketchy to be honest. Cryy released
a video which was about 50 minutes long, which
included his overview of the situation and
a conversation between himself and two members
of Oceanspark, which went over in detail the
whole situation from their perspective. A
few days after this, Readyupstudios released
a press statement on their website showing
their side of the story and detailing their
intentions to pursue legal action against
Cryy for the video he published. I will say
from a personal perspective, a lot of the
things outlined in the Oceanspark document
were never addressed by Readyup in this release
and they have provably been purging anyone
with a dissenting opinion from their discord.
Now I can't really say who is in the right
here, between Oceanspark and Readyup, because
there's a famous saying that goes a little
something like this, there's three sides to
a story, your side, my side and the truth.
This is actually probably very complex as
a situation and some of what was said on both
sides makes sense. I encourage anyone interested
to do their own research and look through
the documents both sides released. Either
way you look at it, it's not a good situation
and reflects poorly on Readyupstudios even
if what they're claiming is true which we
will eventually find out. I'll be following
this story closely and as soon as we have
more evidence either way or I find the time
to put together a thorough detailing of the
events that won't inflame the situation for
any parties involved, I'll make a dedicated
video because I find this extremely interesting
and important as it impacts on a large part
of our genre in big ways to do with crowdfunding
and content creation. I typically don't want
to insert myself into any drama because it's
not my cup of tea but when it has a large
impact like I believe this particular situation
does , I definitely feel the need to keep
up with it and let people know it's happening
in case they missed it.
Black Desert Online
I talked about this a little bit last week
and I'll mention it again because I know for
me this is a big deal and could be for others.
Black Desert Online, the game with one of
the most immersive and beautiful game worlds
we've ever seen, is releasing an update this
week, I believe on October 23rd, that expands
upon the ocean content of the game in a big
way. Adding in new trade mechanics to participate
in which involves bartering materials and
transporting them across to different islands,
new ships which look absolutely massive, npcs
that you can hire and use on your ships to
perform certain tasks, new mechanics involved
in actually navigating and travelling via
ship which should add an extra layer of depth
and actual game mechanics to the ocean content
that was previously neglected. This update
looks at least in my opinion to be the biggest
one for the ocean content that we've had before,
I know the Magoria sea expansion was pretty
big but for me it didn't interest me at all,
it was just a big ocean and a town that I've
still yet to ever travel to because it just
didn't seem fun at all. I really hope this
update which is titled the great expedition
turns out to be a mainstay in gameplay and
not just another forgotten mechanic 2 weeks
after release like what tends to happen with
a lot of things they put time into developing
that just don't really fit into the game the
way you would hope. I'll definitely be taking
some time to check this out as soon as I can,
so long as I don't have to grind for 6 months
to upgrade my boat....But who are we kidding,
that will most likely be the case.
Archeage Unchained
I'm sure pretty much everyone watching this
right now will already be aware but archeage
unchained did successfully launch almost a
week ago now, on the 15th of October. I guess
you have to amend that statement and say they
had a moderately successful launch depending
on what you value. The game is stable, for
some. The steam launch was delayed 2 days
until the 17th, there have been some massive
bugs, first with labor not regenerating until
you make a cash store purchase or manage to
get their extremely poorly developed website
to redeem the pack you purchased, second being
an exploit involving people who rushed to
level 55 getting constant massive gold rewards
from killing world bosses and thus destabilising
the economy massively for a select number
of players. This has been addressed by gamigo
and said they will be taking action to anyone
exploiting this, there are differing opinions
how big of a deal this is that totally depends
on who you ask. Me, I'll take the good old
wait and see approach. Hopefully it's not
a big deal and gets rectified, if not, then
we can riot. Then comes the inevitable and
yet frustating constant long queues for most
servers during prime times, the population
control of not being able to create characters
of certain factions on certain servers, which
I can't really call a bad thing because they're
in my opinion entirely neccisary and logically
expected if you've been in the genre long
enough to have an understanding of how games
work. Personally I think the launch has been...Good.
I thought at first it was great, then a few
of these things I just talked about crawled
out of the wood works and I changed from great
to good. I'd still recommend buying the game
because I'm playing every single day regardless
of any issues aand haaving a great time, a
lot of the issues have simple work arounds
or you can just ignore social media and not
even know they existed such as the gold exploit,
I didn't even know about it until I actively
looked into it. That being said I'd be remiss
if I didn't give you the rough with the smooth
so to speak. Some people have been disconnecting,
some people, myself included have been crashing
and of course with no grace period, it means
you're just right back to living that queue
life which at times has been up to 2 hours
on my server at prime time. So there's archeage
unchained and the launch, I'm still having
a ton of fun playing though, 6 days in and
still enjoying it immensely, even more than
I thought actually.
The Yellow King
This is a game that I honestly have no clue
what it actually is. You can google the game,
the studio, there's really not a lot of information
out there. It's apparently an MMO, inspired
by the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, someone
who was responsible for many iconic horror
works and you'll most likely have seen something
of his creation in any form of media today
because it's everywhere. Games, music, movies,
tv shows, other books... His work has influenced
a decent chunk of media today. Well this supposed
MMO will be releasing into early access on
November 21st 2019 and it artistically actually
looks pretty appealing to me. Though this
style definitely won't be everyone's cup of
tea. They're claiming there's over 30 weapons,
thousands of vanity options, one infinite
dungeon with bosses, traps and treasure and
can support thousands of concurrent players
on the same server, with hundreds of other
people in the same actual instance...Which
is a bold claim from a company that has released
to my knowledge 4 games, three on steam which
have mixed reviews and a game on mobile. We'll
keep an eye on this one and see what happens
but new mmorpgs are new mmorpgs.
Fractured
This is a game i've personally been following
for quite a while now and while it's small
in reach, it's definitely big in vision. There's
not a whole lot of people talking about or
making content about Fractured, mostly because
it's early in development, a niche game and
not something that will get people a alot
of clicks. I've done a few videos on the game
up until now, I'm personally extremely interested
in the game and it's one of the few mmorpgs
that really pique my interest with their design
goals. The game sounds great, I've tested
the game out over the course of a few hours
during their alpha 1 a few months ago which
of course is extremely early and the foundations
are there for a game that excite me and should
excite anyone who is interested in either
ARPG games with an actual MMORPG world or
people that are sandbox fans as this is one
of the more fleshed out and logical of these
games I've seen. The news here is of course
very soon they'll be pushing an aalpha 2 test
, I believe scheduled for November which should
bring in a bunch of new features and tech
that they've been working on since that test
which was in mid July. Personally can't wait
to see what they're adding in and you'll be
sure to see me trying it out in November hopefully.
Chronicles of Elyria
While I meme about Chronicles of Elyria quite
a bit, I am actually more interested in this
project than most of the other crowdfunded
ones just because it fits into my wheelhouse
much more. The whole idea is great, the crowdfunding
video they showed and pre-alpha footage with
the world having entirely interactable objects
and a realistic, unique design...It just tickles
my fancy. The reality is of course that the
project is has been pretty mired in issues
and as with most crowdfunded projects, has
a lot of people very divided. You have the
hardcore fanboys who will start frothing at
the mouth at the mere mention of any dissenting
opinion even if it's perfectly reasonable,
well thought out, promoting discussion or
otherwise has merit. Then you have the opposite
end of the spectrum, just a whole lot of people
who want to be able to tell everyone they
told them so, they're stupid for investing
in crowdfunded games and that they deserve
to be scammed, all crowdfunding or kickstarter
projects are stupid and we should all feel
inferior to their intellect. Yeah that was
a bit of an off topic rant because I see this
shit in my comments constantly but here we
go. Chronicles of Elyria released another
video at the start of the week, in their enviroment
they're calling prelyria, which is a creative
title actually, kudos to them on that. It
doesn't really show us a lot of anything we
didn't already know, they actually have some
sembelence of a game , so it's not as bad
as people maake it out to be. It is of course
in a state where they're using totally placeholder
assets which are low poly and there for testing
purposes only. Just to say, they're still
releasing something to show backers that they're
putting the money to work...Whether or not
it's enough or it aactually turns into a game
they described, we'll see.
Dark Age of Camelot
DAOC is one of those games that to me, you
really had to play to appreciate and is still
revered by many genre veterans to this day.
The game was one of those games that always
comes up in contention for people's most beloved
mmorpg even to this day. While I personally
played very briefly and can't call myself
one of these people, I definitely see the
appeal. The news here is that they've been
teasing a free to play version titled Endless
Conquest for over a year now it feels like.
This haas been pushed back and is now scheduled
for the end of October...Which as you know
is very soon. Whether or not I've missed the
news that they've delayed it again and whether
or not the actual free to play content is
worth playing or if it's worth trying out
as a person new to the game totally remains
to be seen. I know I've read some stories
from people who aren't big on the idea and
say the game isn't worth playing anymore but
you never know what the situation is and what
caused them to say that. I just know I'll
probably check it out if I have time and make
my own mind up, while letting you guys in
on what I experience as always so let's hope
it doesn't get delayed.
That's it for this week guys, I know I'll
have missed a lot of stuff as always but that's
my week of news and I hope you enjoyed.
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next one, PEACE!
