MMO News Wrap Up

If you think this past week has been a quiet spell for MMOs, just like I did before sitting down to write this article, you'll be pleasantly surprised when I go over exactly what did happen during the last seven days. There's been no big releases, but we've certainly heard some huge news about upcoming and existing games, such as Warhammer Online, Age of Conan and The Secret World, World of Warcraft, Fallen Earth, Aion, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Mortal Online.

A couple of weeks ago, our MMO Weekly writer Jeff Hollis spoke about the state of Warhammer Online, and quoted Mythic's Jeff Hickman on what he thought were the main problems with the game. Hickman believes that the current game is too easy at the start and doesn't encourage players to work together. Well, yesterday saw the release of the v1.3.2 patch notes for WAR, and fans will be pleased to see that the issues raised by Hickman are being addressed. Some of the massive changes include a shared starting area for all careers of each realm, automatic invitation to a 'new player guild' when a character first enters the game, and a global 'advice channel'. A voice-over tutorial is also being introduced and the in-game help manual has been re-written.

Another big change to WAR is the Apprentice System. This allows two players of any rank to play together; if the lower rank character apprentices the higher one, the rank of the higher character is scaled down and any high level skills they possess are temporarily unavailable. Alternatively, the higher rank char can apprentice the lower one, increasing their rank. Skills, stats and gear will all scale according to rank.

The patch also includes a massive list of career changes, along with some bug and performance fixes.

Finally, Mythic announced that the Mac client for WAR is going live this autumn. Many players have been eagerly awaiting this news, so it will be interesting to see the result of this addition.

Leaving one struggling MMO and on to another; Age of Conan's Craig Morrison gave details of the long-awaited Veteran System that will soon arrive in the game. Players will get access to cosmetic and convenience items, based on how long they have been subscribers. A little bit of info on the upcoming instance, The Iron Tower, was also given, revealing that it will contain four bosses and five mini bosses, with a chance of a rare boss to spawn on each visit.

AoC players also have the expansion, The Rise of the Godslayer, to look forward to. However, the expansion's arrival date was called into question earlier this week when it emerged that Funcom will be slashing 20% of its workforce to 'adjust to the market situation'. AoC has been in the headlines several times over the last year regarding its performance and the lack of subscribers. Funcom went all out to get people playing AoC again with its re-evaluation period and new content, but it appears the number of subscribers is still on a downward trend.

Funcom's director of communications, Erling Ellingsen, assured us that it's unlikely AoC will be affected by the cuts. However, he did confirm that Funcom's other upcoming MMO, The Secret World, will be delayed by “months”. That's sad news for many gamers; with so many fantasy MMOs out there, The Secret World looks to be a breath of fresh air, mixing horror and myth with modern-day society and culture. But the game hasn't been cancelled, in fact Funcom's new studio inMontreal is all geared up to develop the game, we'll just have to wait a little bit longer.

On a positive note, many MMOs are doing very well indeed, and Aion is one of them. As you saw by my review last week, I think it's an awesome game so far, so good that i scored it a 9.1/10, and apparently I'm not alone in appreciating the heavenly MMO. The server queues I mentioned last week are a testament to the fact that the game is bringing in a few more players than the developers expected. After ensuring the rush of players wasn't a temporary thing, NCsoft added two new European servers and one for the US west coast. An east coast server is also on the way.

Unsurprisingly, Aion grabbed the top two spots on the download charts for both Steam and Direct2Drive during its release week, closely followed by Fallen Earth, which had the unfortunate luck of launching in the same week. Despite that, the post apocalyptic MMO seems to be doing well, and has received a positive reaction from press and public. If you'd like to know more about Fallen Earth, be sure to swing by last week's MMO Weekly, which gives you our first impressions of the game. Still not convinced? Take a look at the guys who developed it – if that doesn't make you curious, I don't know what will.