Massively^™

[Via Curse]

At 3:50PM SLT (US Pacific time) today with 52,370 users online in Second Life, the Second Life grid suffered a second major networking failure for the day. Approximately 7,000 users were disconnected immediately, some regions became inaccessible and the login servers were affected (as were teleportation and sim-border crossings).

The fault has been traced back to one of Linden Lab's ISPs. We're not sure if that ISP is Level 3 (who are a primary data carrier between the San Francisco and Texas colocation facilities), or some other provider whom we are unware of. Grid functions were restored at 5:15PM SLT, and logins seem to be proceeding normally again.

At 1:25AM SLT (US Pacific time) with 26,285 users online in Second Life, we have reports that a network problem took out 1,100 simulators in the virtual world. We have second hand reports of information from Linden Lab's Concierge-level support service, but little direct verification other than a sudden observed drop in the number of users online, and a sudden increase in packet-loss to many users.

The glitch appears to have been relatively shortlived with services apparently being restored 15 minutes later at 1:40AM SLT. As yet there is no public word from Linden Lab about the outage.

[Update: 1:57AM SLT - Linden Lab has acknowledged the outage and is investigating. The cause is given as an infrastructure failure at the San Francisco colocation facility]

Warhammer Alliance have gotten their hands on the October State of the Game for Warhammer Online, and it contains some news that you may have suspected, but didn't want to believe would come true. Yes, the game has been pushed back, and is now expected in the second quarter of 2008.

Okay, so that's really not too bad if we're being honest. If EA Mythic want to take a little extra time to make sure that the game lives up to people's enormous expectations, then that's fine with us. Mark Jacobs, VP and general manager of EA Mythic, said that they could either release the game with fewer than planned features, or push back the release and complete development to their satisfaction.

There's also confirmation in the State of the Game that the beta will be reinstated in December, with new content for testers to experience. They are hoping to introduce more people to the test too, so if you haven't signed up yet -- go now!

As a whole, it's probably fair to say that MMO players are a tolerant lot. We're generally willing to put up with bugs, unbalanced players classes, and sparse content when we jump into an MMO for the first time. Usually the excitement of being part of a new world overrides the feeling that we're paying money for an unfinished product. What is likely to irk us however, is when we purchase a game, install it, and go to put in our subscription information and ... oops, the subscription system is bugged! Sadly, such is the case with Hellgate: London, with Flagship Studios announcing, " Subscriptions are temporarily unavailable due to technical issues."

Now, as we understand it, that doesn't mean that players can't play the game, it just means that nobody yet has access to the subscriber content yet, which is supposed to be such a big feature for hardcore fans. Though I guess if you really look at what the subscriber content is (bells and whistles like new items, character classes, themed events, and the like), it's supposed to be the icing to the rest of the game's cake, and it's highly unlikely that players have already dug through all that cake in the span of a single day. Still, we'll keep you posted on the status of this subscriber bug. Hopefully it doesn't scuttle the launch completely.

Disney's Pirates of the Carribbean Online has launched.

For those of you who don't know, it is a MMO that uses your browser and is based on the Pirates of the Carribbean movie franchise. It is free to play for limited access and unlimited access is $9.95 a month.

If you are interested in checking it out, http://www.piratesonline.com will redirect you to either the news site or the Play Now site.

The game still has some issues such as frozen black screens, but it does seem more robust than the last time I played in the beta.

The character creation is fun and the in-game Poker playing is a blast, so I do recommend at least trying the free-to-play portion.

See you in Port Royal!

Monolithic super-developer Blizzard has put out a casting call on their company website for a Lead 3D Character Artist and a Lead 3D Environment Artist to work on a "next-gen MMO." Is it World of Starcraft? Is it a Diablo MMO? Is it a completely new IP? Is it the mythical Hydra (which could be any one of the above)? We don't know.

Even though details are hidden behind the curtain, these job postings give outside observers a sense of the progress Blizzard has made on the mysterious project. This is probably the same project for which they hired a Lead Engine Programmer back in April or May, and it's safe to assume that they're about to move into the next phase of development -- building the game world (or worlds) and its inhabitants.

Now if only they'd clue us in on whether or not those inhabitants are Terran, Zerg and Protoss.

This Halloween is full of treats, but if you can tear yourself away from the festivities in all the other online games, you can now roam post-apocalyptic London in search of weapon upgrades and experience points. Hellgate: London's public servers have gone live and are awaiting demon-slaying heroes and heroines.

Flagship Studios' Bill Roper posted a launch announcement on the game's official website, and took the opportunity to thank the community, the publishers, and the friends and families of the development team for their support over the past four years.

The single-player and multi-player 3D action RPG comes from a studio that includes some of the same developers who gave us Diablo way back in the day. If you haven't bought the game yet, you might want to check out our demo impressions or download the demo to check it out for yourself, but beware of possible in-game advertising if that sort of thing irks you.

No, you're not taking crazy pills - that headline says "without official forums." In a moment of inspiration, blogger noisyparker thought to write down Tabula Rasa's community model, as it was described in their now-defunct beta forums. Most of it is fairly standard fare. A blog with an RSS feed to chronicle press releases, community news, the usual.

Conspicuously absent though are official forums. The reason? The TR crew feels that official forums aren't conducive to a community atmosphere, because people's posting habits tend towards the dogmatic when they think there's a developer listening. Most people have had to endure the pain and self-loathing involved in browsing official forums before, so we know the behavior they're talking about. Still, it seems like a questionable decision to eliminate what is typically the primary conduit for communication between developers and players. Guess we'll just have to wait and see how it works out.

If you're anticipating Hellgate: London amidst its recent controversy, and want to find out more about the game, why not just ask the developers? 1UP.com has posted news that Xfire is hosting a live chat with a team from Hellgate developer Flagship Studios. Listed on the Xfire site, the developers participating in the event will be:

• Bill Roper, CEO Flagship Studios
• Aletheia Simonson, Art Producer
• Bill Manegold, Game Programmer
• Amir Ebrahimi, Graphics Programmer
• Guy Somberg, Audio and Gameplay Programmer

To be in with a chance to talk to them, visit Xfire's website and enter your email address. If you're lucky enough to be selected, you'll receive an email from Xfire giving you the details of the chat. It is scheduled for 6pm EDT on October 31st, which as 1UP notes, is the actual release date of Hellgate: London, so chances are if you're a die-hard fan, you will have already been playing the game all day. Oh, and I guess October 31st is Halloween too.

Following Book 11's update and the addition of player housing, the allure of one's own Hobbit-hole or sturdy Dwarven lodging has brought droves of people to the brokers -- so much so, in fact, that Turbine has made a post on their official Lord of the Rings Online forums to say that there will be a few more brokers on the way.

The extra auctioneers will be showing up to assist their overburdened co-workers in Bree-land, The Shire, and both the Dwarven and Elvish regions of Ered Luin homesteads. However, take note that these guys are temps -- the post states that they "may depart at any time" -- so it is likely that once demand dies down, they will be out of a job. Click below to read Turbine's post and find out the exact locations for the brokers.

Pirates of the Burning Sea is coming out in January. That's good.

The preorder was supposed to happen this week, but it got delayed. That's bad.

SOE couldn't get it done in time, and they feel really sorry about it. That's good.

They couldn't get it done because they were running from the fires in California. That's bad.

Unfortunately, Flying Lab can't tell us where we can preorder, when preordering will happen online, or anything else about it besides that it will show up on November 13th. That's bad.

But they can tell us that answers are coming soon, and they even were nice enough to let us download four exclusive tracks from the preorder CD, four mp3s of the port music for each of the various nations. That's good!

Stay tuned for more info about the preorder. Hopefully SOE's employees will be able to get back to their homes safe and sound, and soon enough you'll be able to pick up the preorder box at a game store near you.

Can I go now?

[ via Tobold, with apologies to this obscure show ]

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.