RF Online

With the holiday shopping season upon us, gamers are hot for great deals and cheap entertainment. As my wife's logic goes, if something is 80% off, you buy it, even if you didn't really want it in the first place. It's the principle of the thing, an automatic 80% dose of smug satisfaction at being a savvy shopper!

Not every deal should be pursued, however. Although most video games are playable for years and decades after release, not so with MMOs that have had their service shuttered. It's recently come to my attention that even though these games are completely unplayable -- rendered nothing more than a few cents' worth of a DVD and cardboard packaging -- online retailers haven't kept up with the times and keep these products on the virtual shelves long past their expiration dates.

That's not to say you should avoid these products at all cost, because studies show that a large percentage of Massively readers have a sick and twisted sense of humor. What would make a better gift this Christmas than a multi-million-dollar-budget MMO that died a horrible death years before?

So don't be the typical gifter who settles for a Blu-ray player or an iPod -- give a package of misery, disillusionment and broken dreams! Hit the jump for 10 items that absolutely belong in your shopping cart if you wish to be feared!

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If you're a fan of RF Online, you may be saddened to hear that Codemasters Online will be closing down operations of the sci-fi MMO on November 10th of this year. This closing will affect both North America and Europe. According to the official website, the game's license is set to expire shortly, and Codemasters and Korean developer CCR could not agree on any terms to keep the game alive.

This game, while not wildly popular, did make history as one of the first Eastern-style MMOs to make it to the Western market. It's also the first MMO serviced by Codemasters, who has since gone on to publish such hits as Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online in Europe. For more information on the closing of RF Online, check out the game's official Closing FAQ.

RF Online in the Philippines recently had serious issues with dupe hacks, prompting an unannounced rollback of the servers. PlayNoEvil writes that the operator of RF Online for the Philippines, Level Up Games, discovered a dupe exploit and tried to purge it from the servers as well as those who used it. However due to time constraints with unraveling the intricacies of the exploit, the company decided to roll back the game to a point before the exploit was used.

Level Up Games issued a statement on the problem: Based on DB evidence, numbers as well as feedback from the community, the GMs, the Vanguards and also from our field agents, there was an oversupply of in-game currency and gold - as high as 500 %. GMTristan of RF Online Philippines clarified the situation further on his blog:

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Codemasters Online are the European distributors of quite a number of MMOs, including Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, RF Online, and ArchLord. These games and more will feature at a brand new community event hosted by Codemasters in the UK called "Connect 2008", as revealed on LotRO's European site today.

The event will span 2 days, from the 14th to the 15th of March this year, and there will be 400 networked PCs to play Codemasters' current and future games, including some that they say are as-of-yet unannounced. There will of course be some gaming swag for attendees, and the chance to talk with some of the people behind the games -- not to mention meeting other people from your game's community.

You will be required to purchase a ticket for the event (although they aren't on sale yet) and there is apparently going to be a fairly limited supply. If a trip to England sounds like your cup of tea, then you'll want to keep checking the official Connect 2008 website for updated ticketing info -- or simply to watch the giant countdown clock -- and you can also sign up to a newsletter to stay on top of the latest word. Or, if you want to get really involved, they have even set up Myspace and Facebook profiles.

Free. Everyone likes things that are free. Well, except when it involves a free kick to the twig and berries. These days, free things are often accompanied by plenty of small-type that make it anything but free. Requiring you to sever a limb or to sign over half of your first born does not constitute free. However, there has been a glut of free-to-play MMOs emerging on the market. Some of these have been around for a while that somehow lost the desire to charge people and others have come out of the gate with no fees like a naked hippy at an outdoor music festival.

What I'd like to do this week is take a look at some free-to-play games and see what they have to offer in the realm of game design and development. If you're looking for a review or a first-impression on any of these games, you're in the wrong place. There are far more capable people than I who can do just that. So put the wallet away, we're about to go free ... just keep the clothes on.

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Warcry has posted a nice interview with Chris Dye and Kyle Rowley, Community Officer and Manager for RF Online, an MMO that sits in an interesting place-- it originally started out as a hardcore Korean MMO, and has now warped here in North America into a Westernized, free-to-play offshoot of the original. It's an interesting strategy, and only one that MMOs can pull off-- if your players don't like the game you release, just update it into a completely different one.

One very interesting change they made was to up loot drops-- apparently Western players felt they weren't getting rewarded the way they want to, so Codemasters (who publishes the game here) doubled the drop rates, not once but twice. On the other side of this, they've gone RMT to make the game free to play-- players can play real cash for ingame money used to buy ingame items. For some reason, that's flown in the Eastern MMO market, but not here so far-- it'll be interesting to see how RF Online players get into it (or don't).

Unfortunately, none of the interview actually focuses on whether RFO is any more fun to play. Then again, it is free now-- you could do worse than to go grab the download and check it out for yourself.

Codemasters Online has opened a new world server for RF Online called Solus. It seems that ever since the game has gone free to play, the popularity of the game has overpopulated the other two worlds, Novus and Lumen. Lumen was also opened within the last 30 days, so they are trying to respond to the increased popularity of the game as quickly as possible.

The game is gorgeous and fun, particularly for a free game. I have yet to play very long, however, because their European downtimes have unfortunately coincided with my U.S. available playtimes.

If you are interested in trying RF Online, you can sign up for and download your free copy here. Codemasters highly recommends starting new characters on Solus in order to avoid any population related issues.

Now, if I can just figure out how to turn off that song in the launcher...

It sounds like I am repeating myself, but honestly I'm not. No sooner did we post about the Fileplanet promotion connected to RF Online and their free game keys then the game went and changed its mind. I guess they realized that people like free games, particularly ones this pretty, and decided to give everyone a chance to experience their game, not just those with Fileplanet accounts.

Armed with this knowledge, I proceeded to spend more time that I should have this weekend playing the game for the first time. I rolled a spiritualist since all my friends wanted to play DPS (I guess it happens in every game) or tanks. Interestingly enough I seemed to be the only one who rolled a spiritualist of the dozens of recent players on Sunday, so I guess I can make an assumption that people find it more fun to slash things with an incredibly huge sword than to heal others slashing things with incredibly huge swords.

So far I like the game, apart from the slaughter of the Flems, an incredibly adorable race of telepathic bunny creatures that beg for you to stop hurting them. Exactly how much harm can they be doing to the area, really? I haven't seen much in the way of storyline, but like I said I was only in the game during this past weekend. One tip though, when you create your character, do yourself a favor and skip the tutorial. This tutorial assumes you do not know how to open an options menu, and will teach you how to walk in every direction, and you and I both know this is something you already know.