After a few years of war between hunters and vampiric creatures of the night, Square Enix have announced today that they are ceasing development on their game Nosgoth.

In a post published on the site by Oghamsmith, the news of the end was announced and while the game will remain online for a little while yet, the game will go offline on May 31st 2016 and the forum on June 14th 2016. The reason for closure was that the game just hadn’t grown large enough to make continued operations sustainable apparently, and the team thanked everyone in the community for their “feedback, support and dedication to the game during the closed and open beta phases” of the game.

In a linked FAQ about the end, the team say that they will offer refunds to anyone who had made a purchase in the game since March 1st 2016, and that all eligible refunds will be processed within the next 14 days. Definitive Pack sales on the Steam Store will be processed from the week commencing April 18th 2016. Runestones and Gold are also no longer purchasable although Gold can still be earned in-game through completed public matches.

There will be no more planned updates or league seasons for Nosgoth, although the Nosgoth Open Beta Cup Series will continue to run in April as usual. As for any future game in the Legacy of Kain franchise, the FAQ says that they will be judged “independently of Nosgoth and on the merits of the proposals alone.”

It’s a sad end to a game that was promising, and a lot of fun when I tried it at an Insomnia event a year and a half back.

If you want more information, visit the site post here or the FAQ here.

MMOs. The very term can make some people wary. There’s  a huge time investment involved. Questing, looting, raiding, experiencing the story, getting killed by a half naked guy who’s 8000 levels higher than you….it’s a lot to take in. Good news for you then that the staff here at Sanitarium.FM love MMOs. And we play a ton of different ones. So if you’re looking to jump into an MMO read on. We’re going to breakdown our five favorites and why you should give them a try.

World of Warcraft – k1ng0fspades

After a decade long lifespan, WoW is still the most subscribed MMORPG in the world.  In many ways it sets the gold standard for its genre and many MMOs still live in its shadow.  It’s gone through many iterations over the years, constantly evolving and improving and altering the formula to respond to the ever-changing needs of its playerbase.  I began playing in early vanilla when reaching level 60 and earning enough money for an epic mount was the ultimate achievement, and despite a few hiatuses during content drought, I’ve remained a loyal citizen of the world of Azeroth.

In classic WoW, the world of Azeroth was simply the lands of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, and traversing this world was a magical experience that captured my young imagination and created a life-long love for this universe.  Each expansion made this already staggeringly huge world even larger, more immersive, more interesting.  Each expansion added new features to every class, new classes, new races, new collectibles, new challenges to surmount, which created a hunger in the playerbase to explore every facet of the universe, conquer every obstacle, earn every reward.

Blizzard’s customer service is second to none.  Ask any player about any exchange they’ve ever have had with a Game Master and they’ll tell you, the agents are constantly friendly and sincerely invested in providing the quickest and most effective service they can.  If there’s one thing that creates loyalty to a game, it’s customer service that cares and understands the perspective of the consumer and Blizzard embodies this mentality.

Legion is highly anticipated as a return to the glory days of WoW, with the release of the demon hunter class and presumably the final conflict with the eponymous Burning Legion, one of the most iconic enemies of the Warcraft universe.  Despite years of declining subscribers, the game is still going strong and still remains on top, and there it shall likely remain.

Get it here: https://us.battle.net/account/creation/wow/signup/

WildStar – Digmbot

WildStar has had it’s ups and downs. Now a free to play game, it seems to have found some new life. A game that relies heavily on mobility in combat, Wildstar uses a telegraph system to make sure that you always know where your attacks are going and where enemy attacks are coming from. This doesn’t mean it’s easy to dodge everything- Wildstar’s bosses have some fiendish patterns that make your average Japanese bullet hell shooter look like a walk in the park.

Combine this with a charming and unique wild west meets outer space aesthetic, a wicked sense of humor and a truly insane cast of characters, and you have a recipe for a fun, fast and colorful MMO. Quests can be turned in from pretty much anywhere, so this game is light on backtracking to quest givers. There are multiple crafting systems, and you can make some truly meaningful decisions about how you specialize your characters trade and crafting skills. Oh, and we haven’t even mentioned the character classes.

WildStar is unique in that every character class can perform two roles. The medic is capable of putting out a staggering amount of DPS. The stealthy assassin-like Stalker can also tank. And the Engineer…the engineer has a bigass mechsuit, badass robot pets and a gun the size of a small city bus. Keeping players from feeling locked into traditional MMO roles gives you a sense of freedom in the game, and lets you tailor a party of friends to your needs without having to rely on locked in rolls.

With a free to play model, fair micro transactions that prevent buying power and a ridiculously fun style of play, WildStar is the perfect MMO if you want a little more action in your playstyle and also love goofy, wacky and sometimes creepily insane characters.

Get it here: http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/freetoplay/

Guild Wars – Lonesamurai

Guild Wars holds a special place for myself and the radio station, we launched the Sanitarium.FM with my weekly Ascension show on a Tuesday night, sat in Lion’s Arch International District 1, sometimes with Gaile and Froggy along for the party and a host of players joining in the conga lines

Guild Wars 1 was, for some, a strange beast, it had no jump button and outside of towns and cities, the area was instanced for your party, whether that party was made of other players or just a team of AI

But that was part of Guild Wars charm and that charm still exists to this day.  This was at a time when World of Warcraft had just released as well, but Guild Wars held it’s own against WoW with a fifth of the player figures WoW had.  It’s clean, easy to follow gameplay and skill system, a pvp system Blizzard would eventually steal from for WoW arenas and an art style that still looks fantastic to this day

Guild Wars 2 may have been a disappointment to all the station team and the guild, but GW1 still makes us feel nostalgic and was totally worth the £180 I spent on it all those years ago!

Get it here: https://www.guildwars.com/en/

Eve Online – Lonesamurai

Nowadays we have Elite and other gorgeous space flight sims that satiate our bloodlust and our joy for the exploration of the final frontier (que Star Trek theme)… Way back when the station first started though, the other MMO we regularly covered was EvE Online, still, in my opinion, one of the best space MMO’s out there, and although Digm and others disagree, I actually loved the 3rd person point of view and even CCP’s lore behind it 😀

Some find EvE Online a straight up excel spreadsheet simulator and some like to play the game that way, sitting in Jita, playing the market, but personally, my fave past time and sometimes I miss this, was sitting in my Amarr Tech 2 Battleship clearing tier 4 zones, then coming back in my Cruiser and salvaging the lot for profits

EvE can be as massive or as small as you want to play it, and unlike Elite, with its closed and personal servers limiting players griefing, Eve is a death threat just ready to slit your throat.  PvP is usually brutal and quick, with gate campers sometimes in groups of two or three, each ship with a role to catch unwary pilots that forgot to check where they were going.

But it’s in the corporation (guild) play that evE gets really exciting, with some guilds of hundreds of players going up against other guilds with similar numbers for some truly epic space battles, the like Elite and others just couldn’t do right now, but maybe in the future.

The first time you see a titan warp in on top of a combined fleet and open up its doomsday weapon is a site to behold, unless you happen to be in the path of that doomsday, then, it’s time to clone jump and set up a new ship!

Blade and Soul – Digmbot

Do you want to be a Kung Fu Winner? Then Blade and Soul is the place for you. A Korean MMO, Blade and Soul places you in the shoes of a student who’s school was destroyed and is out for revenge. Taking inspiration from movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Blade and Soul allows players to run, jump, flip, fly and literally race across the very surface of the water as a kung fu master. With a healthy selection of classes, including a brand new warlock magic wielder, the adorable yet deadly summoner, and the punchy punchy kung fu master himself, there’s a playstyle here that will suit you. Want to teleport around, leave little wooden logs to confuse enemies and then plant bombs at their feet? Assassin is the way to go. And theres more to it than just the classes. Blade and Soul rewards combos. Use your abilities correctly and your menu of combat choices keeps expanding in a glorious and seemingly never ending buffet of destruction and kung fu glory.

The story is engrossing and well voice acted, the locations are gorgeous and inspired by the best of kung fu movie and anime art, and the characters you meet prove to be memorable, even if you only remember them because you can’t wait to stick a sword in their guts. Blade and Soul doesn’t place higher on this list unfortunately, because at it’s heart it is a Korean MMO. The  vast majority of quests are going to boil down to kill this many things and bring back this many items. You must return to most quest givers to hand in quests, making backtracking a huge part of the game. On the plus side, being overwhelmed by gear is rarely an issue, as you feed your gear other gear to level it up in Blade and Soul. This, unfortunately also has a few negatives, as you can find yourself farming the same spot for quite a while to get an item you need to breakthrough to the next level.

At it’s core, Blade and Soul is a fun romp through a mystical kung fu inspired world. Movement and combat are glorious, but the game is dragged down by what becomes a huge grind fest when you get to higher levels. Still, if you want to run on water and glide through the air while being followed by your giant mallet wielding cat familiar, Blade and Soul is the only place to go.

Get it Here: http://www.bladeandsoul.com/en/freetoplay/

ARK: Survival Evolved was a huge overnight hit when it first hit early access last summer. But now, the dinosaur taming survival game could be in serious trouble. Studio Wildcast, the game’s developer has been hit by a lawsuit from Trendy Entertainment, creators of Dungeon Defenders. Kotaku has compiled a rather extensive report on all of the documents and emails passing back and forth, but the major point is that Trendy claims Jeremey Stieglitz, its ex-creative director, is in breach of his previously signed contract. Non-compete clauses are certainly nothing new, and Trendy’s lawyers are alleging that Stieglitz agreed to several conditions when he left Trendy in 2014. Among these was an agreement not to poach staff from the company, and not creating direct copmetition.

Trendy is arguing that Ark is direct competition, and that its development has seen the movement of staff from Trendy to Studio Wildcard. Interestingly, the non-compete clause has been reported to have been just one year, instead of the standard three. In essence, the clause would keep Stieglitz from creating anything which would damage Trendy financially. A video game would certainly fall under this heading, though the clause would have expired in August of 2015. Trendy also alleges that Wildcard used technology and information from Trendy while developing Ark. This is a key point, because Trendy could make a case for Ark being their intellectual property and not Wildcard’s.

In response, Wildcard has stated that Stieglitz wasn’t a full time part of Ark’s development team. Instead, they have pointed out that Wilcard’s co-founder Jesse Rapczak went to college with Stieglitz and that Stieglitz was a consultant on Ark. There are several other bits of information involved in the case, but the most pertinent point for gamers is that this lawsuit could very well result in Ark being removed from sale on Steam. Wildcard are seeking for the case to be dismissed, but the case still has time before it appears before a judge. We’ll know more on April 28th, but it seems that this could have serious implications for both studios involved.

Seems there might be bad times ahead at Carbine Studios – known for their sci-fi MMO Wildstar. NCSoft announced today that it has reduced the staff at the studio, and it’s not just a few people either. It’s around seventy, which accounts for about 40% of Carbine’s strength. Ouch.

Wildstar of course launched well, but has hit harder times recently. The game was due to come to China as well but that’s been cancelled along with the staff cuts and when it went free-to-play about six months ago it was in a bid to try and attract players to the game. Despite reassurances that the staff losses were just down to ‘restructuring’ we all know that’s the word that studios use when they’ve had to lay off staff because things aren’t performing quite as hoped.

The ‘restructuring’ was announced in a post on the Wildstar forums, in which NCSoft said that the cuts are related “to Wildstar‘s evolution from a product in development to a live title, to the cancellation of work to bring Wildstar to China, and to the overall performance of Wildstar since launch in 2014.” They do say however that they remain “committed to the game” and will be delivering some major updates and community events in coming weeks.

The full statement from NCSoft regarding the layoffs is below:

Earlier this morning, Carbine Studios completed a reorganization of its operating structure. Moving forward, the studio will focus on operating and updating WildStar as a live game in the US and Europe. As part of this change, the studio has canceled its plans to bring WildStar to China.

 

Unfortunately, as a result of these changes, we’ve had to reduce staff. These cuts are directly tied to WildStar’s evolution from a product in development to a live title, to the cancelation of work to bring WildStar to China, and to the overall performance of WildStar since launch in 2014.

 

These kinds of decisions are exceptionally difficult. The talented and passionate professionals who are impacted by these cuts have been valuable team members and respected colleagues. We wish everyone well for the future and will be providing severance and employment search assistance.

 

As for WildStar, we remain committed to the game. Over the next few weeks and months we will deliver a significant update to the game, kick off a variety of community events, and continue our work on new content that we will talk more about in the near future.

Almost three years after its announcement, development has stopped on the next iteration of the long-lived MMO franchise.

Daybreak Studios’ president Russ Shanks announced the news on the game’s official site:

I’m writing today to let you know that, after much review and consideration, Daybreak is discontinuing development of EverQuest Next.

 

For the past 20 years EverQuest has been a labor of love. What started as a deep passion of ours, as game creators, grew into a much larger passion shared by you, millions of players and Daybreakers alike. Watching EverQuest’s ability to entertain and bring people together has inspired and humbled us. It’s shaped our culture and has emboldened us to take aggressive risks with our game ideas and products. When we decided to create the next chapter in the EverQuest journey, we didn’t aim low. We set out to make something revolutionary.

 

For those familiar with the internals of game development, you know that cancellations are a reality we must face from time to time. Inherent to the creative process are dreaming big, pushing hard and being brutally honest with where you land. In the case of EverQuest Next, we accomplished incredible feats that astonished industry insiders. Unfortunately, as we put together the pieces, we found that it wasn’t fun. We know you have high standards when it comes to Norrath and we do too. In final review, we had to face the fact that EverQuest Nextwould not meet the expectations we – and all of you – have for the worlds of Norrath.

 

The future of the EverQuest franchise as a whole is important to us here at Daybreak.  EverQuest in all its forms is near and dear to our hearts.  EverQuest and EverQuest II are going strong.  Rest assured that our passion to grow the world of EverQuest remains undiminished.

EverQuest Next was an ambitious attempt to evolve the franchise. The first phase of that evolution was EverQuest Next Landmark, which was released as a beta in 2013. Landmark was focused on player creation, letting users craft huge structures and then sell the blueprints to each other.

EverQuest Next began development at Sony Online Entertainment, a corporate cousin to the PlayStation brand that was sold off last year to investment firm Columbus Nova and rebranded as Daybreak Studios.

In an interview with MMORPG, Shanks says that EverQuest and EverQuest II are still in active development. He also says that Daybreak will continue to explore ways to modernize EverQuest and notes the company’s current priorities:

The future of the EverQuest franchise is important to our company and you have not seen the last of Norrath by any means. It’s just as engrained in our hearts as it is for our players. We helped usher in the era of MMOs because we loved the idea of bringing gamers together within the game worlds in massive numbers, and we’ve continued to build on that over our 20-year history. The adventures within the worlds of EQ and EQII continue unabated today, and there is plenty of room for more.

 

Right now, we are focused on launching Landmark, advancing H1Z1: Just Survive, bringing DC Universe Online to Xbox One players, and launching H1Z1: King of the Kill on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.