Fallen Earth: Back To The Apocalypse

It wasn’t exactly an auspicious return to Fallen Earth.

Now that Fallen Earth has gone free to play, I figured it might be a good time to see what has changed and how the game was handling the whole going free thing.

After spending a while patching the game to the latest version, I logged in and created a new character, and was immediately popped into the tutorial. So far so good. I did the tutorial missions without any problems, and then was given the option of choosing the starter town. This is where things fell apart. I dropped from the game, and then upon logging in found myself stuck at the character select.

It turns out that the servers couldn’t handle the huge number of players coming back to the game, or the new people attracted by the change to F2P. The devs did some quick magic to lower the number of players allowed in, and that got the servers back up an hour or so later.

The next problem I had was that once logged in, I couldn’t get out of the town chooser area. The first time this happened, a GM ported a bunch of us out to the towns we wanted. In my case that port worked, but I couldn’t get any quests. Turns out that some new characters were bugged, and needed to be deleted and recreated. I ended doing this twice until I got a playable character.

The other odd thing that the stuck players reported was a game dropout that put them in a long canyon. This happened a couple of times to me too.

I did finally later in the evening manage to login and start playing. I also spent a few hours today playing an old character. I’m looking forward to spending time in Fallen Earth again.

Still, it seems the change to free to play isn’t quite as straight-forward as the devs would have hoped.

Yes Virginia, There Is A Fallen Earth Trial

Sigh.

Don’t ya hate it when you make a prediction, and less than a week later you get proven wrong?

Obviously the Fallen Earth folks listened to the plaintive cries of would-be Fallen Earth players, desperate for a free trial before they shelled out their hard earned bucks for a chance to wander the wastelands of the Grand Canyon province.

However, this is a limited trial offer that will give prospective players a fifteen day period to try out Fallen Earth during the Days of the Dead Halloween event. This Days of the Dead trial will only be available for Halloween, and the game will revert to a no trial status at least until the next major holiday event.

Still, it’s a great opportunity for those who are leaning towards subscribing to Fallen Earth to give the game a try. There’s also the benefit of being able to retain any of the special items won from participating in the Days of the Dead events.

So, if you’ve been hanging back from Fallen Earth, there’s now no excuse to drop in and have a look see.

Is There A Fallen Earth Trial?

This is a question I’ve seen asked around quite a bit lately. I’ve seen it both on the official Fallen Earth forums, and in the search engine phrases that people have used to find their way to this blog.

The quick answer to the question is: No. There is currently no free trial period for Fallen Earth.

The slightly longer answer is that this is to be expected. I’m not even sure that I need one finger to count the number of games that have given a free trial period at the launch of their brand new game. While that’s certainly the case with the AAA MMORPGs that have been released, there maybe a few free to play or indie games that have offered a trial.

As for when a trial period will be available for Fallen Earth?

No idea. Since Fallen Earth is still in its first month of release, and is doing well with the sales showing that people are willing to buy it without a trial, it could be a while before a free trial period is offered. It certainly won’t be this month, and my guess is that a trial will only be offered once sales slow down and Fallen Earth, LLC want to kick start sales again. Give it at least six months.

However, if the game continues it’s success at sales, you could be waiting a lot longer for a free trial.

It’s up to you.

Fallen Earth And The FTC

I quite like Fallen Earth, despite the rough around the edges release.

But with the new FTC rules,  I suppose now that I have to tell you that I have not received a free copy of Fallen Earth, nor is my subscription being provided gratis. And Fallen Earth LLC doesn’t pay my Internet, phone, or electricity bill. The company doesn’t pay for my petrol, bus fare, or other groceries, and I paid for my car myself. I cut my own hair (nice and short with a clipper) so the Fallen Earth devs don’t pay for my haircuts either.

I wonder if that’s enough disclosure for the FTC?

Seriously though. So far no game publisher yet has sent me any gifts or given me free games or time. I didn’t even get any of those cool teasers that Mythic sent out for Warhammer. (Perhaps I stopped blogging about WAR too early!)

But I’m here MMOG devs. If you need an address to send anything free, just send me an email.

Please?

And you don’t have to worry about the disclosure stuff. If I get any freebies, I’ll be so happy, I’ll have to post about it. Just try and stop me!

Fallen Earth: The New White Meat

Dibs on  the drumstick!

Postcards From The Wasteland

Greetings from the barren wasteland!

I’ve been spending most, well, all actually, of my gaming time in Fallen Earth lately and thoroughly enjoying the atmosphere of the game. So, I thought I post up a couple of pictures from my time.

Both of these, just by coincidence, are taken in Depot 66. Depot 66 is a small settlement with two factions devoted to the performing arts. The conflict here happens because one side wants to stage Julius Caesar, while the other want to perform Macbeth.

Oh! What a twisted web we weave!

Here I am, astride my trusty mount. This is the Wasteland Runner which is the bonus item with the Direct2Drive preorder.

It’s amazing the difference that a mount makes in Fallen Earth. It does take a long time to get anywhere on foot. A mount cuts that time down substantially, and has made the couple of times that I forgot something and had to go back somewhere far less annoying than on foot.

I waited a while to use the item key, because I’d heard that the bonus item was only available on one char per account and I didn’t want to waste it on a character I might not keep. But I’m definitely enjoying the pistoleer template so I bit the bit and picked up the horse. Nice looking beast too!

New games often have a few bugs. Sometimes they’re frustrating, sometimes easy to live with, and sometimes just plain weird.

Like these outdoor theatre goers (or are they the actors?) at Depot 66 floating above the ground. That must be some show to get them this high!

I call this bug, Zen and the Art of Outdoor Theatre Watching.

Soylent Grien Beats People

I had a moment of whimsy.

Fallen Earth Is Steamed

Fallen Earth LLC has just announced that Fallen Earth is now available for preorder on Steam.

Here’s the press release thingy. Fallen Earth on Steam.

If you pre-order through Steam you’ll get a special t-shirt which adds some bonuses to your harvesting skills, as well as giving a bonus to the social skill. That will help with getting some discounts by NPC merchants.

If you want this bonus, or any of the others for that matter, you’d better hurry. The game officially releases in just 2 days and a half days and the preorder is then gone.

For a list of all the ways to buy and preorder Fallen Earth and all the bonuses you can get, see here:  Buy Fallen Earth.

BTW, just for disclosure, none of these links are of the affiliate kind if you’re wondering.

My Fallen Earth Open Beta Thoughts

A couple of weeks ago I decided to download the Fallen Earth Open Beta and have a look at the game. I was pretty late in doing so, and ended up trying out several characters over the Friday night, Saturday and Sunday of the final weekend.

Fallen Earth is not a game for fast leveling. I managed to get three of my characters to level 3, and one to level 6 before I stopped  early Sunday evening. (I’m not exactly a fast leveler at the best of times anyway.) So, fair warning, this post isn’t a review, or even a preview, it’s more of my first impressions on the final days of the open beta.

Fallen Earth has since gone into pre-release too, and there have been a couple of patches, so some of the things I say might have been changed in the meantime.

I reckon it’s also fair to say, at the start, that this game will not be for everyone. It’s definitely targeting the niche market, and it is not World of Warcraft or Everquest 2 or Champions Online in a post-apocalyptic setting. The developers, Fallen Earth LLC, have only set up for one server for release, so it’s probably fair to say they weren’t intending to create a WoW-Killer.

First, I’ll list a few things that I like about Fallen Earth.

1. The music is awesome. I’m not much of a music person in games. I’ll leave it on (I have friends who turn off music as the first thing they do in a game.) but generally lower the volume, and I tend not to actively notice it and it can become repetitive. The music in Fallen Earth struck me the moment it came on. It’s very atmospheric and completely appropriate to the genre and setting.
2. The setting in and around the Grand Canyon. It’s an interesting setting that I didn’t think much of when I first heard about it. But it’s completely appropriate to the way the games feels. The game feels a bit like a Western at times with a bit of that Mad Max 2 and 3 vibe (without Tina Turner thankfully.) It also allows a lot of growth for the game. The Grand Canyon covers a huge area. A lot can happen here.
3. The combat system. There’s no target locking and auto attack here. You have to actively aim and make sure the opponent is in your cross-hairs. This was a bit frustrating at times, I was sure I had the NPC in my sights and still missed, but that might be more lag related on my end. I’m not the twitch gamer I used to be, being a krusty old fart, but I still appreciate the style and quite liked having to line my enemies up.
4. Crafting, while not really what I’d like to see in a crafting system, is well implemented. It’s easy to set a crafting process in motion and go do something else — either log off and read a book, or go out and explore the canyon. If a developer is going to implement a crafting system where it’s a case of hitting the craft button and wait, then it’s preferable to be able to do something and not sit staring at a progress bar.
5. The post-apocalyptic setting. Finally, it seems that the SciFi drought is breaking for the humble MMORPG. There is Eve Online of course, but Fallen Earth looks to be the first of the new batch of MMORPGs that aren’t going the tried and true (or should that be tired and true?) route.
6. There are a few more lesser points, but I’ll post about them later, this is becoming a huge article.

A couple of things I’m not sold on:

1. Only four character slots. For an alt-a-holic like me this could be either a blessing or a curse. It may force me to stick with just a few characters, or I might find myself deleting lower level toons in order to try something new. However, the saving grace might be something else that I’m not sure is a good thing. See the next point…
2. A minute number of combat skills. There are in fact only three real combat skills. (I’m not counting the whole mutations set because I didn’t touch that in the beta.) These are Melee, Pistols, and Rifles. So in fact three alts could cover the entire combat repertoire. I guess I was hoping for more of the range that Fallout provides, Energy Weapons, Heavy Weapons, Demolitions in addition.
3. No fast travel. I’m not a big fan of having mechanisms in games to draw out the time needed to do things without having a reason for the mechanism in the first place. A good reason for long travel (for me) might be to implement a trading system where goods have to be shipped from one place to another. A not so good reason is to have a mechanism simply because it was once considered hardcore. So far, I haven’t seen a good reason to have slow travel in Fallen Earth, and in fact it makes it far harder for guilds to actually do anything together. Who wants to leave a quest and travel for half an hour just to help a guildmate with a ten minute activity, and then have to do the return trip?

Before I popped into the Fallen Earth open beta I had heard the criticisms, and that’s been the case since. However, it seems to me that most of the criticisms are more about expectations and gamer choices, fast versus slow travel for example, and that not of the criticisms are particularly deal breaking for me.

Perhaps the biggest criticism is that the game is still a bit rough around the edges. I’m in two minds about this. I’ve been somewhat vocal when MMORPGs have been released in an unpolished and unfinished state, but those have been developed by companies with the funding, resources, and knowledge to do better. Fallen Earth LLC is an indie developer without all that backing so I’m more inclined to give them a bit of slack.

From what I’ve seen on the official forums (which don’t seem to be a wretched hive of scum and villainy but a more friendly place at least at this stage) the developers are fairly prompt in getting bugs fixed. I don’t doubt that once they start making some real profits from Fallen Earth, the polishing will be kicked up a notch or two.

So the outcome?

I like the game, and I think it has a bright future. I’d also recommend buying a copy, if for no other reason than to support the developers. It might not be your cup of tea, and if you hate SciFi/Post Apoc by all means stay away, but on the other hand you might find yourself pleasantly surprised by a very different game.

In fact, when I logged off on the Sunday evening, I was a hair’s breadth away from hitting up the preorder page but didn’t.

What stopped me?

Firstly, I wanted to sleep on it for a week or so to see if I felt the same way after a bit of time had passed. In some ways, I feel more confident about Fallen Earth now than I did on that Sunday night.

I also wanted to give Champions Online a go and ended up buying the six month preorder for that one before I committed to Fallen Earth.

Well, (there’s a first thoughts post coming for Champions btw) I’m glad I did buy Champions Online, it certainly is a lot of fun, especially the character creator, but last night I did buy Fallen Earth. It’s a game with a lot to like, and the good points certainly outweigh the bad.

Overall, a upcoming great game. I reckon that Fallen Earth is going to be the surprise hit of 2009/10.

Downloading Fallen Earth Beta

Okay. Who said resistance was futile?

I blame Werit and his excellent series of videos.

Even though the game still looks a little rough, and from all I’ve heard perhaps might do with some more developmental polish, I find myself intrigued at the almost Anarchy Online look of the game. That’s only an external perception through the videos and screenshots I’ve seen, and might change once I get some time in the game. As I type this the download still has 6 hours to go. Werit on the other hand compares Fallen Earth to Star Wars Galaxies pre-NGE, especially the crafting.

All in all, I hope this game does well.