Opportunities abound!

Well readers, I'm just making a brief post to give you an update about a great opportunity to take advantage of!

Mythic Entertainment, the force behind Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer online appears to have reactivated all accounts for two weeks. If you're a potential player or former player of these games you may have found your golden opportunity to try before you buy! You can bet this is what I'll be doing for the next two weeks.

Play to your hearts content with the "Return of Legends!"

• Warhammer: Age of Reckoning details.
• Dark Age of Camelot details
• Ultima Online details
  

Of Beasts and Bullies

Nintendo has been busy lately, apparently bullying websites into removing their images from the latest Pokemon game. Below is a copy of the letter that was sent to Pokébeach and was subsequently posted on their site:

Dear Sir or Madam:

We are legal counsel to Nintendo of America Inc. (referred to here, with its parent and affiliated

companies, as “Nintendo”). As you are no doubt well aware, Nintendo is one of the world’s

leading developers and distributors of video game products. The Pokémon franchise is one of

Nintendo’s most popular game series, and the upcoming release of the Pokémon Black and

Pokémon White video games has garnered significant media attention. The intellectual property

associated with the games, including the copyright in the underlying software code, visual

depictions of the games, and characters found within the games, is the subject of copyright

protection in the United States and abroad.

We recently learned that you have posted screenshots and other protected content from the

Pokémon Black and Pokémon White games to your website at http://pokebeach.com. While

Nintendo appreciates your interest in and support of the Pokémon game series, your publication

of this content infringes Nintendo’s copyrights in violation of federal law. Your activity also and

has the potential to cause substantial damage to Nintendo, and leaves Nintendo with no choice

but to take steps to protect its intellectual property rights.

We have accordingly submitted a copyright infringement notice to your domain registrar under

the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and anticipate that your website will be taken down shortly.

We encourage you to immediately remove from your website all graphics, screenshots, and

other protected content taken from the Pokémon Black and Pokémon White games. Going

forward, you must also refrain from posting any screenshots, videos, or other content that

infringes Nintendo’s rights in the Pokémon series or any other game.

Your full and immediate compliance with the foregoing should render further action on

Nintendo’s part unnecessary. It is essential that we receive your written response confirming

that you have taken these necessary actions by Sunday, September 19, 12:00 p.m. PDT,

however, or Nintendo will have no choice but to consider its alternative legal remedies.

PokeBeach.com

September 18, 2010

Page Two

Please contact me if you would like to discuss this matter in further detail. Nothing stated herein

shall constitute a waiver of any rights or remedies of Nintendo of America Inc., its parent or

affiliated companies, all of which are expressly reserved.

Very truly yours,

X

You may be wondering what it was that all these websites did to arise the ire of Nintendo. They simply posted pictures of Pokemon Black & White. This strikes a nerve with me because as a journalist I always like to have images to illustrate my points. When someone tries to put restrictions on the reviews of their game after it's been released it feels like trying to suppress information. This suppression of imagery feels the same way.

What really baffles my mind is that these websites are blatantly advertising their game for free. There's been speculation that the memos were sent out because the websites used emulators to get high quality images of the game since they can just screen capture. This idea doesn't make sense to me, taking a picture of the DS screen doesn't come out well. Case in point take a look at this picture I took of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on my D S of a character I made to look like Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist.

As a result, Nintendo has a lot of negative PR now amongst the hardcore fans. So much so that I'm actually having second thoughts about whether or not I want to buy the game. In fact I'm actually hesitant to write about Monster Hunter Tri because Nintendo could come after me.

A dirge for the fallen

At the time of writing this, I have learned that All Points Bulletin is being shut down, and find myself unable to connect to the server. I am assuming the worst, as they said it would be within 24 hours, making this the fastest failing MMO at 80 days.

This is one of the few things in the game industry that actually makes me physically angry. Shutting down APB in it's entirety is like taking good book with grammatical errors and burning it rather than fixing it. During beta APB had some glaring issues that doomed it from the start, issues that would have been hard to fix but were still very fixable.

If I were a developer for APB, here is a list of what I would have done:

1. Free to Play. It was failing, they knew it was failing, they could have converted the game to free to play by making the billboards all around the city have actual ads to generate revenue until the game got to a point where people would want to pay for it. A classic postponing tactic that can save a game.
2. Communicate your issues. Acknowledge your community and what's wrong with the game, players can give you great suggestions. If you want an example on how to do this properly, look at Global Agenda. They send out polls to all their players and former players, great way to find what your player base wants.
   
3. Delete all the upgrades. This was seriously the most infuriating part of APB. Upgrades made way too much of a difference, they essentially removed the element of player skill. The SHAW loaded with Savage 3 (A damage upgrade) and Spray and Pray 3 (A firing rate upgrade) allowed you to essentially destroy any car in less than two seconds.
4. Remove the grind. There was no reason to have a grind for weapons, cosmetic stuff I don't mind, but rewarding players for time played and not skill is not a good model for a game that is first and foremost a shooter.
5. New matchmaking. Four vs Four battles were alright, but when the matches got bigger it was a lot more fun. This is assuming of course that you didn't get a mission that was impossible for a large team.

In summary, APB was a MMOTPS that borrowed all the wrong features from MMOs. Many of us looked upon it as Grand Theft Auto IV in MMO form. The sad truth was that GTA was a far better game.

GTA IV did not have the grind in multiplayer to unlock new weapons, the battles were larger than 8 people if you wanted them to be and all the players were on equal footing. APB should have been GTA in a persistent world but obviously with a different system for weapons. The locker system they had in place would still work great in the new model.

The comparison to GTA is what doomed APB. GTA doesn't charge you a fee to play online, and as my comparison shows had better game play. What APB would need to keep would be it's cosmetic customization, it's array of vehicles, and persistent world.

And so we say goodbye to something that really could have been amazing but instead fell flat on it's face in a puddle of the disappointment of those who had followed it for years. We can only hope some necromancer amongst studios somehow acquires the rights to APB, fixes it and gets it to the glorious vision we all had in mind.