SHROUD OF THE AVATAR ROLLS OUT R45, IN SPITE OF LOSING A WEEK OF WORK DUE TO A SOFTWARE BUG

http://massivelyop.com/2017/09/04/shroud-of-the-avatar-rolls-out-r45-in-spite-of-losing-a-week-of-work-due-to-a-software-bug/

Shroud of the Avatar rolled out another release on Thursday, imbuing the game’s 45th updatewith what it’s calling a huge amount of work on worldbuilding, including The Sword of Midras town Etceter. Testers should also expect an interface pass, improved performance, and updates to player housing. What you won’t see? Highvale Outskirts, the quest resert, and the single-player offline combat balance, all of which were delayed until next month. “While we were able to adjust the upper end of gameplay with higher end creatures (sub-bosses and bosses) we were unable to implement some of the other features we were hoping to like stronger companions,” explains the studio – that’s because a bug in the game’s source control software set everyone back a full week.

Portalarium is currently promoting its next mini-telethon for this coming Wednesday, when it will deliver a postmortem of the patch under the banner of Oktoberfest. Yes, there will be beer steins.

The newsletter also boasts a peek at the upcoming North Shattered Hills scene and the in-progress do-over for the Arches National Park-inspired The Crags map, although I’ve been to Arches and I can assure you that it has neither satyr looters nor an undead horde. Pics of both are in the gallery below!

CAMELOT UNCHAINED DESIGNS BETA SIEGE BATTLES

http://massivelyop.com/2017/09/02/camelot-unchained-designs-beta-siege-battles/

It’s not hard to imagine the Camelot Unchained fan as a curious and excitable prairie dog popping up whenever the word “beta” is mentioned. The wait has been long, the promises many, and the development of this RvR MMO seemingly never fast enough for both the fans and the devs.

But could the Beta 1 test actually be nearer than we think? There are certainly a lot of mentions of the test itself in this week’s newsletter, including a revised Beta 1 document on the official site. The team also discussed how it’s drafting up designs for siege battles to take place during the test and provide an important stepping stone to the future: “These battles are being designed primarily to be fun, and importantly, to test our work in Beta 1 and beyond.”

It saddens us to report that Camelot Unchained has killed Superman. Well, the “Superman” bug, that is. Apparently there was a glitch that kept player characters stuck in a falling/flying pose while moving around, but now that’s a funny memory rather than an awesome reality.

ARK SURVIVAL EVOLVED SUFFERS LAUNCH-DAY OVERCROWDING, OPTIMIZATION ISSUES.

http://massivelyop.com/2017/08/31/ark-survival-evolved-suffers-launch-day-overcrowding-optimization-issues/

Along with approximately 80 million other games, ARK: Survival Evolved launched this week, putting an end to mockery about the game’s eternal test phase. Or did it? Dun dun dunnnn! Yeah, probably not, especially when the game’s suffering from what is apparently severe overcrowdingon the official servers.

Yesterday, Studio Wildcard apologized for the issues, promising work on new servers as of last night and noting the team is “looking into whether [it needs] to increase [its] numbers based on player activity,” though “the process is still going to be a long one, as it will have to be a manual setup as opposed to what [the studio] normally [does].” According to Wildcard’s Jatheish, that process takes extra long in part because of necessary security measures. He further identified problems with the update that came online with the launch yesterday, including the PS4 crash bug.

“I know the launch has been a little rough, and we’re very grateful to all of you,” Jatheish says. “As we get further into it, things will smoothen out and the experience will be much better. Thank you for hanging in there.”

Massively OP’s MJ Guthrie, who runs a custom server for our friends and readers, streamed the game yesterday to check out the post-launch state and noted that it’s still suffering lag and optimization problems, but at least “nothing blew up.”

STEAM HAMMER IS HALF-OFF, PROMISES AN UPDATE SOON

http://massivelyop.com/2017/08/29/steam-hammer-is-half-off-promises-an-update-soon/

It has been a rather quiet summer for the survival sandbox Steam Hammer. There haven’t been any patches since early June, and even those were rather small affairs. Some players on Steam have even taken to calling it “abandonware” and urging the developers to sell or release the code to a studio that could do something with it. The forums look equally abandoned and do not indicate an active and involved development team.

However, we are starting to see some traction for this steampunk title. First of all, the game’s currently 50% off on Steam, allowing interested fans to pick up this early access title for $10.

Second, the team issued a short statement on Twitter Monday promising that there would be an update for the game on August 31st. So is it premature to call this game dead and cooked? Let’s hope not for its sake.

Source: Twitter