Changes at Gazillion, Makers of Marvel Heroes

Tags

EQ2, Marvel Heroes, potbs, Star Trek Online

CEO David Brevik of Gazillion is leaving the company, prompting much angst and worry among forum posters.    Brevik is represented somewhere in the game, apparently by a cow on the cow level, was very involved in many aspects of the game among its small team, and was previously the head of Blizzard North.    Seems this guy is the real deal.   Good luck to him and hopefully greener pastures in the future (see what I did there?  I amuse myself).

I am also amused at the posters angst, worrying about games being shut down.   Some of these guys must be 20 years old and playing their first games.   But….. That did start me thinking.   What MMO’s have I played that are still around, and which ones are gone ?

Vanguard – Closed during Summer 2014, I remember promising myself I would resubscribe just to be around when the servers went dark.   I’ve never had that experience.   Of course, I forgot all about it after returning from summer vacation, and the game is now closed.

A quick Google search reveals……. something I don’t understand, a Steam community page for the game.   A search of the Steam Store does not reveal this title, so maybe it was up for a short time and then closed.   I was years out of playing the game, though, once it had closed.

Pirates of the Burning Sea – Closed down at the end of 2012 apparently.   I attempted to get it running again via the SOE launcher at some point and was unsuccessful, nor did I find it in existence via Google Search.    Seems I was misled – the game is in fact still running.    It would be fun to reinstall this one, the visuals always were awesome and the ship combat fun and balanced.   The economic portions of the game were awful.

I wasn’t the only one saying the economy sucked.   They apparently revamped it during 2014.    But my original characters seem to be GONE !

Everquest – My first MMO is still going strong, with no end in sight, despite the many changes over the years.    But I have no desire to go back, it was always too hard core and too social for a hermit like myself.

Everquest 2 – Still going, the MMO I’ve probably invested the most in and which you can read far too much about (it’s past) on this blog.    I’ve tried to jump back in, but when I did, most of my gear was not able to transition with me in free-to-play, and I had to go through a huge song-and-dance to get my account re-enabled after billing issues.

Not playing, because no more monthly subscriptions for me.   And Free-to-play doesn’t really work if I can’t continue with my main character.

Champions Online, and Star Trek Online, are available via Arc Games.    I really thought Champions was gone for good, but it seems to have gotten a new lease on life.   The more recent Mechwarrior Online is still running, although I didn’t enjoy the game very much.    I’m sure I needn’t mention the various Armored games I’ve played in the last couple of years.

The Secret World is an interesting parallel – it’s still available.    Shortly after its release the CEO left the company, but the game has lived on.   Perhaps that’s all that needs to be said about losing All-Father Brevik.

Old MMO’s rarely die, as evidenced by both this list and any reading of TAGN‘s blog, but people hyperventilate that such things will happen.

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Banned – Final Chapter

Tags

Everquest 2, Oracle, potbs

During the week I’ve been after SOE to get my account unbanned.    You’d think after buying a game code it would be solved, but no such luck.    I purchased a 90-day game card to pay off the balance, and  then tried to get into the game.

“You have encountered an error”

I ask support, and they seem to have a hard time figuring out what is wrong.     Eventually, we determine it’s the station launcher.   Now supposedly, this has not been supported for months or years, but it’s what I was using back in May to access the gameworld.

It certainly doesn’t hurt to find out “Free To Play” is being launched during the same week.    I missed it since real life is interrupting my trolling through forums.

OK – so what do I do ?   I am trying to get two games working, POTBS, and EQ2.    If the station launcher doesn’t work, what will ?    I asked support, but they were taking a bit to update the ticket, so I started messing around.

The SOE forums talked about a “Launchpad”.    The CSR told me the new launcher was maroon with a gold border.   My station launcher (downloaded on 12/6) was blue.    Nobody on the launcher forum had posted a clear “Click here” kind of thing.    Something is totally wrong and I figured I had better just experiment.

So I open up the games folders and run something called launcher inside of them.   No dice – EQ2 says the game version is different and refuses to run.    POTBS crashed.    OK, let’s try something else.

I ran the game executables.   Neither of these worked either, one complains that you must run the launcher (Which no longer works, natch) and one didn’t do anything at all.

At this point, I figured I’m hosed.    I’m going to have to go with a clean install.    So i deleted the games and downloaded the installers from this address.

But the problem is, I failed to read carefully enough.   See this screenshot ?

Seems like I better click on one of those.

But it turns out that for a returning player…. you need to scroll the webpage down farther.   Argh !    That’s a 20GB of data and hours of downloading mistake.

Argh. This is a better one to click on.

One of the things that’s been done is to make the process of getting the game downloaded and running quicker, and to that end they’ve created some super-automated method of downloading the game and installing it.    I ran it and for the life of me could not figure out where it was installing or what it was doing.

In a browser. Auto downloads and installs. Note the broken "secure" connection. Oh, and all those links displayed give an error.

I am far too much the computer dork to accept that.   You will not download and install the game in some secret corner of my hard drive, thank you.  But after downloading the correct installers, 20GB of data (which I had previously deleted), I finally got both games to work.   Banination is over.

And I have to say I am pleased with the support staff from SOE who did a lot to get things up and running.   All I have to think about is the miserable support from Oracle corporation and these people look like saints.

Play ?   Who’s got time for that ?   Hopefully during the week or whenever I can get around to it.