Category Archives: Acclaim

Acclaim has shut down most of its client-based online games on August 26, and is offering a reimbursement of it’s virtual currency Acclaim Coins to customers made in the last 30-days.

The shutdown comes on the heels of a buyout by Playdom in May, which in turn was purchased by Disney for $563 million a couple months later.

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It’s that time again. The MMO news round-up post full of links, and other goodies for the online crowd.

This week, loads of games are having annual summer events full of festivities, fireworks and other shenanigans. Some also got level cap increases, are nerfing classes, launching new servers, going bankrupt, and one has even reminded us it’s still in development.

What a week. Hit the page fold for the rest.

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E3 is almost upon us so there is bound to be some new MMO announced or a bit of decent enough MMO news coming out of the event by this time next week, so expect this post to either be thicker – or thinner. Depends on how huge the news was to begin with when it hits.

This week, there is more of the usual. Screens, dev diaries, class changes, new quests being added. World of Warcraft had the most bit of news though, and even if it wasn’t earth-shattering, it was still a bunch.

Read on after the break for your fix.

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Not much this week for MMOs, sorry to say. Most are just giving players an “extra experience weekend” to lull them into playing on the PC instead of being outside grilling burgers and getting bent on beer.

Well, if you are an American that is expected of you this weekend. Most of us just do that anyway.

However, despite all that, we have dug through the mire once more to bring you something in the way of MMO news that didn’t hit the front page.

It’s all after the break, if you like.

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Loads of goings on in the world of MMOs, as usual. Let us make sense of it for you.

This week was filled with birthday celebrations for four different MMOs: Lineage II, LOTRO, City of Heroes, and Guild Wars. Good job guys.

Other stuff happened too ya know, and it’s all broken down for you after the break.
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Acclaim will be allowing players into the closed beta for The Chronicles of Spellborn today, individuals “hand-picked” from chats, David Perry’s Twitter and a beta tester list.

Tomorrow, another 1,000 accounts will be let in every 12 hours until servers have reached full capacity. Watch for email notifications or notices on your Acclaim account page.

Loads of people have been wanting to try this out, so now’s your chance.

Thanks, Kotaku.

MMORPG The Chronicles of Spellborn will release in North America in January, Acclaim said today.

A closed beta will launch in the US on November 27, which coincides with the game’s European release date.

The beta will be free, and allows play up until fame level eight, apparently.

Full release below.

By Mike Bowden

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Speaking after collecting an honourary doctorate in Belfast, Dave Perry has claimed that piracy can be beaten through making games free.

“The next big thing will be free games,” he said, citing Asian success for the model.

“They had so much piracy that they decided to stop charging for the games. Instead, there’ll be a charge for things you might want to use in the game,” he said.

“Your character might have a plain white T-shirt. If you wanted a nicer one you could have it for a dollar. Or perhaps you could buy a magic sword for a knight for a dollar.”

Perry added: “It’s going to turn our industry on its head and I want to see the same thing happening in the USA and Europe.”

More on the BBC.

Acclaim has announced that Michael “Doran” Zummo is the winner of its Project “Top Secret” competition and therefore will be offered the directorship of an upcoming game, working with David Perry as executive producer. Every man’s dream.

“I think we’ve proven that this is a great way to find super passionate people, by creating an incredibly difficult task, unleashing it on a massive amount of people who live for games, using the latest internet technologies, and hiring the ones that rose to the top,” said super David Perry.

“It’s a win-win and you can be sure we will be doing more of it in the future.”

Thanks GI.

By Mike Bowden

Acclaim’s David Perry is about to announced the winner of Project Top Secret, a program that allowed a gamer to design a professional title from scratch.

More than 60,000 people signed up for the project.

“There was no book we could follow on how to do this. In fact, the books out there seemed to think it was impossible! Could so many non-professional developers come up with new game designs never seen before? Of course they can, and they did,” said Perry.

According to a press release, Project Top Secret “is about to reach an historic landmark when one lucky contributor is chosen as the winner this month, and then their dream comes true.”

Full thing after the link.

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David Perry, previously of Matrix-developer Shiny and now of the reborn Acclaim, has told videogaming247 that he believes the MMO space is led by an “extremely nerdy” game in World of Warcraft and that an attitude shift is needed for the genre to break out into the mainstream proper.

“I believe there’s a 70 million player MMO idea and no one’s done it yet because we haven’t got anyone that’s thinking down the Will Wright path,” he said. “There’s people that get close. There’s people that do Club Penguin, or Maple Story, games that are more simple to play, and people like Disney buy them for $500-$600 million and no one bats an eyelid and everyone goes off and makes another Bioshock.

“I know this year at GDC there’s going to be a lot of discussion on this stuff, and I’m expecting that by GDC next year there are going to be a lot more people thinking that way. We need to grow our market.”

Perry, currently working on free-to-play licensed MMOs from Asia, such as 2Moons and Dance Online, believes that World of Warcraft’s growth is hamstrung by its setting.

“It’s extremely nerdy, World of Warcraft,” he said. “You have to be really into fantasy. I’m great friends with the creative director of the game and they’ve done a great job. They’re making more money than you can imagine. It’s silly at this point.

“They’ve grown the understanding of how MMO games work, and the whole idea of levelling up is a concept that’s definitely out there. There are 9 million people who are paying to go and do it, and I’m sure there are another 9 million that aren’t willing to pay but would love to do it. If you were to release World of Warcraft free-to-play it would not be 9 million people playing. It would be more like 25 million people playing.

“So going free-to-play would be a way to get their market bigger, but they’re always going to saturate based on how many ‘fantasy people’ there are in the world.”

Perry added that 2Moons, a free-to-play MMO using the Asian model of micro-payments for items as its main revenue stream, is working well for the new Acclaim and that cash gathered from the project and Acclaim’s other games will now be pushed back into unique development.

“Absolutely,” he said, when asked if 2Moons was making money. “Absolutely. No problem whatsoever. We didn’t do a single bit of marketing… and we had 150,000 people sign up to help test it. And now we’re at 5 million, so we now have 5 million signed up people at Acclaim. Probably more than now, actually. So, do people want free-to-play? Ask the 5 million that have already signed up.”

He added: “We’re making a whole slew of new games. Acclaim is basically going to be a full publisher as you know it, making and licensing games. And it’s from the ashes, too, because remember the old Acclaim is dead and gone. This is Acclaim 2.0.”

According to this, Dave Perry – long-standing developer of dozens of games, including the Matrix titles – was more than a little shocked that Microsoft recently decided to bin Cryptic’s Marvel MMO.

“That is stunning to me, absolutely stunning to me,” he said. “Marvel, as a property, is more mass-market than World of Warcraft.”

He continued: “World of Warcraft sells because Blizzard made it, and Blizzard is a fantastic company, right? The talent at Blizzard is just phenomenal. If you can get a team that’s got the same quality and you have that licence, I’ll take the Marvel licence every time over Warcraft.”

Perry is currently working on free-to-play MMOs at Acclaim, among other projects.