Bugs

According to several tipsters and many, many pages on TERA's forums, something's gone badly wrong with En Masse's account system. The studio admits that some players have been billed immediately upon selecting a subscription plan instead of being billed after the 30 days. Other players have reported not being able to log in at all, as the game cannot find their subscriptions or free time and delivers an "expired account" error.

En Masse posted that it is aware of the situation and is working to resolve it. The studio says that players who purchased a physical copy of the game and signed up for a subscription before entering their game code triggered this problem. However, we've also had reports of players who have encountered this error when dealing with digital copies.

Affected players should now be able to log in to TERA while En Masse works on fixing the error.

[Thanks to Andrew, Schippie, and Alex for the tip!]

[Update: En Masse has contacted us to note that the 2000 players have been affected by the "insufficient remaining subscription time" issue, not the "immediate billing" error. En Masse says that these are two separate issues that the studio is actively working to resolve as fast as possible. We've updated this article accordingly.]

Once again, Droid Gamers sent me a sweet tip regarding yet another Android-based MMO. This time around, it's Iruna Online, a real and actual MMO complete with open worlds, "millions" of other players, quests, equipment and monsters. In fact, the game reminds me in some ways of Final Fantasy XI. Iruna Online is not the first mobile MMO that has felt like the Square-Enix favorite, perhaps because they all share a similar art style. As I played, it struck me that the newer smartphones have enough power to run a game that looks as good as Final Fantasy XI, albeit with some graphics options turned down or off.

The similarities basically end there, however. Iruna Online is one of the newer stock of mobile MMOs that show mobile massively multiplayer gaming is really here. It should not be shocking or surprising anymore. Just as in the PC market, we are going to see many titles stream from the Eastern market. Many of them will be duds, but many will also be very, very cool.

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I recently threw out a prediction that within five years, most of our MMO content will be coming through our browsers. To be more specific, I think that most players in the United States will be enjoying their favorite MMOs within a browser. That can mean several things but does not refer to games like Free Realms, a client-based game that is only signed-into at the browser level. As with any discussion about genres, mechanics or styles in the MMO world, I have to be very specific.

It's pretty likely that a very large percentage of the US playerbase is already playing browser-based games. Look at the American market for games like RuneScape, Battlestar Galactica Online, Club Penguin, Drakensang Online, Evony, and Ministry of War and you might just find millions of players.

Next we need to consider that there are more games coming into the browser market. This new batch is essentially a group of standard, client-based MMOs that are porting themselves to the browser. I tend to be a little skeptical about some of these in the short-term, for several reasons.

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Trion's End of Nations MMORTS features two playable factions. One of them is the heroic Liberation Front, which is featured in the company's latest video release. The Front boasts two classes: the hard-hitting Spartan, who drives tanks and "other infantry units with high defenses and high damage output," and the Patriot, who specializes in multi-role support units.

Both classes, as well as a number of selectable (and customizable) units, are highlighted in the new trailer, so take a look past the break and get a leg up on building your battle-ready company.

End of Nations is a free-to-play strategy title that is currently in alpha testing.

[Source: Trion press release]

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So you accidentally missed your favorite MassivelyTV livestream featuring your favorite Massively personality or writer? Don't worry; we'll forgive you as long as you promise to bookmark our MassivelyTV guide and check back on this weekly recap. That way you are sure not to miss another stream, and you wouldn't need to come back to us, begging for a link. You could also follow Massively on Twitter, one of the best ways to be alerted to new things.

This week we featured a Tboo Thursday, one of our most popular livestreams, which stars resident APB: Reloaded expert Taryn. We also had some more World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria action from Richie, a bit of newbie content in EverQuest II with MJ at the helm, a quick introduction to skybox building in Second Life hosted by me, Mike's return to EVE Online in his shiny new Drake, and Adventure Mike's leap back into Final Fantasy XIV. Pretty exciting stuff if you're into giant rats, explosions, beautiful sunsets, and piles of bullets.

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This week, I decided to download and install Aion. I haven't played it since beta. Although I was not impressed with it at the time, my favorite Aion columnist has been covering the game in such a way that I knew some good things had happened to the game. And after all, it's free now. Right?

I was nervous from the moment I installed the game. NCsoft hosts a notoriously odd account management system. Sure, once you break the code and understand how to make an account for your master account that signs into your game account (or something like that), it might seem elementary. Until that moment, though, the system makes you feel like an idiot. It makes you feel as though the publisher literally doesn't want you to play the game.

I had a week filled with such moments. The frustration I felt led me to today's topic.

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According to the official Star Wars: The Old Republic Twitter feed, all servers will be offline until about 7 p.m. EDT following an emergency maintenance.

Yesterday, Update 1.2: Legacy dropped to live servers with next to no hiccups. But this morning, BioWare brought down the servers for a very minor patch. In fact, the patch notes contain only two lines. However, several players began claiming that they were unable to access their characters when the servers were restored at about 9 a.m. EDT. Other players reported quest givers and even the new guild bank were missing. At approximately 10:30 a.m. EDT, BioWare shut down the servers for emergency maintenance, explaining the situation on the forums as follows:

During last night's maintenance, some areas of the game were reverted to pre-Game Update 1.2 status. Some areas were 'missing' and characters that were in those areas would be unavailable. We took the live servers offline at approx 9:30AM CDT (Austin time).

Our server and deployment teams are now working to rebuild assets for the live servers, but this is unfortunately not a quick process. We currently estimate that our downtime could be up to eight hours, but that time may be extended.

Look for updates on this article if the maintenance time happens to be extended or if more information surfaces.

[Update: BioWare has informed us that it will compensate everyone with a day of game time because of these issues.]

Pilots looking to duck the long arm of the law in high-security space will need to find another way to perform their nefarious deeds, as EVE Online released a patch today fixing the so-called "boomerang exploit."

CCP considered it an official and actionable game exploit to avoid CONCORD retaliation in high-security space by attacking a target right after the aggressor warps away or within the same grid in which the player earned a Global Criminal Countdown. Those who used the exploit prior to the fix could have found themselves dealing with a much scarier force than CONCORD: game masters themselves. Now, any player with a GCC will simply be unable to warp away.

Other than keeping boomerangs in the hands of kangaroos where they belong, Crucible patch 1.6.3 contains a few localization fixes, the ability to add a station as a waypoint or destination through the API, and some pesky client crashing issues.

We announced just last week that popular post-apocalyptic sandbox title Fallen Earth had been released on Steam. Well, opening that can of worms seems to have taken its toll on many of the game's more populated areas, causing performance issues and crashes for some players. Needless to say, GamersFirst is not about to let that fly.

In fact, GamersFirst's Napalm stopped by the game's official forums earlier today in order to notify players of some small tweaks that are being made to the game in order to solve these performance issues. For starters, Embry Crossroads and all starter towns are being moved onto "much, much beefier hardware," which "will have an immediate impact, and should decrease the amount of lag that players are seeing in those areas." Improvements are also being made to server memory management, and the studio is even upgrading to a "more capable branch of the xScape engine" that should hopefully allow the game to handle a higher number of players in any given area. For the full details on the improvements, just click on over to the official announcement below.

While TERA's second closed beta event is in full swing right this very second, plenty of potential testers are raging at the heavens because the online store won't complete pre-order purchases and deliver the codes. Pre-ordering the title was the guaranteed path to beta, so it's understandable that players who had hoped to be giving this title a test drive are disappointed.

En Masse responded with an explanation and solution for the store snafu. According to the studio, the store provider experienced a "massive systems failure" yesterday, which caused the issues with saving purchases to the hard drives. The vendor is attempting to fix it, but there is no ETA on when the task might be completed.

The good news is that En Masse is watching the purchase logs and will be sending out game codes manually every two hours to pre-order customers. The studio assures everyone that his purchase will be recognized when the system is fixed and that if anyone accidentally purchased more than one copy by accident, the additional copies will be fully refunded.

When deciding what I want to talk about on the Hyperspace Beacon every week, I check over the buzz from various news outlets, personal experiences, and columns from the community. An internet community will inevitably steer toward the negative -- that's just the nature of the internet. And one of the most common themes out there is bugs. I am not talking about Killiks; I mean parts of the game that are not working as intended.

When we -- the press and other fansites -- gave our impressions of Star Wars: The Old Republic, we were at conventions or at lower levels in the game. Level 28 was the highest I ever reached in any beta, and conventions set us on a predetermined path. At that time, I was completely impressed with the level of polish the game had received. I still believe that this game has fewer bugs than a good chunk of MMOs; however, there are certainly more bugs in this game than I'd expect from a single-player release.

I could probably spend a whole article just listing unintended issues with the game, but I do like to be the voice of reason as well. On top of that, I want to see SWTOR succeed. Therefore, beyond just talking about bugs, let's deal with the overall issue of why these critters pop up in the first place.

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Non-Force-using healers also have plenty to look forward to as well, as the Q&A reveals that they'll be getting some love in patch 1.2, while Consulars and Inquisitors will have their heals brought back into line so that all healing classes and specs are (theoretically) viable. To get the full details on these subjects and more, just click on through the link below to the community Q&A at SWTOR's official site. Oh, and while we're at it, the game is on sale for $49.99 US on Origin, so if you want to get in the game and see what all the hubbub's about, now's your opportunity to do so while keeping a cool Hamilton to yourself. The sale is only happening for a limited time, though, so be sure to act quickly.

Hey kids, it's time for another Warhammer Online producer's letter (no, it's still not dead, doomsayers). The dev team is currently hard at work on the 1.4.5a patch, and in case you were wondering, that little "a" basically indicates additions to the previous 1.4.5 update. Said additions will take the form of "functionality, messaging, and tweaks to the fortresses and relics," all of which are still being discussed on the official WAR forums.

Next up is the 1.4.6 patch, and Mythic has switched gears to focus on bug fixing instead of the previously planned open RvR tweaks. There are also some additional items of interest on the horizon, including a new live event and some changes to crafting. Head to the WAR Herald to read up on all the details.

[Thanks to Benjamin for the tip!]

As with many of the games I choose for this column, I am a bit lost as to how long the game has been in existence, what sort of time has passed since the game first began to allow players into its world, and what the exact state of the game currently is. With PlaneShift, a game that seems to have existed since I was 12 years old and has remained in some sort of testing or beta phase since then, I am even more unclear. Really, it shouldn't matter, but I can see the importance of knowing whether the game you are about to play is in testing or has even been released yet.

Without those key words, a player can become confused. Is this quest broken, missing parts, or just poorly designed? Is the game world empty because it's midnight or because the testing crowd is on at different times? I've heard from developers who keep their games in a beta state for years and years, and it usually means that they simply want a sort of explanation as to why the game feels incomplete. I say release it already and perhaps you'd attract more players anyway.

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Ever wonder if MMO devs play the MMO they're developing? Apparently the answer is yes in the case of Star Wars: The Old Republic. A new dev blog by BioWare executive producer Rich Vogel minces few words on that particular subject. "Every single one of us on the development team plays the game, and we see the same issues you do and where we need to expand," Vogel writes.

The rest of the wall o' text isn't quite as illuminating. Vogel starts by defining bugs and exploits, and he offers a few generalities in regards to BioWare's ability to quickly respond to both types of issues.

It's worth a read if you're heavily invested in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and you'll find it on the game's official site.