First, it looks like Acclaim has responsibility for a much larger swath of Europe than we’d thought before, which can’t be making many people back in the Old World happy:
First, the countries Acclaim has publishing rights to. North America, South America, United Kingdom, Albania, Andorra, Australia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia & Montenegro, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey.
A new fan-run community site, The Deadspell, has opened, and has a lot of threads by people who are allowed to play, but also an interesting conversation between a player and Spellborn customer service types about circumventing the IP restrictions to play on EU servers on the other side of the line of demarcation:
As some of you may be aware some of my threads over on the Acclaim site were locked and edited and I was accused of breaking the rules. In the thread I asked how it was breaking the rules to circumnavigate the IP ban and play on the EU server if you were within the Acclaim territory. After the threads were locked, I took the matter up with the main moderator of the site.
Here’s another thread by people skirting the IP ban to play the game outside Frogster’s countries. The IP ban, btw, is possibly only in place when you register, not when you play, so once you have your game account, you don’t need to play tricks any longer.
I skipped around the block because I wasn’t able to get into the original beta. I wanted to know what the game was like and if I was wasting my time actively waiting for the NA release. Having played on the EU servers, I can safely say that my time isn’t being wasted. I won’t pay for a sub on the EU server, however, as I don’t want to play there. I’m just using this time to try out the different classes on the FtP area.
And, though we outside the EU area can only wait with no word from Acclaim on when we’ll be able to play, the EU game has gotten its first patch:
1. General
– Fixed a serious memory leak that lead to extremely long loading times or crashes after a couple of hours of play
– Fixed an issue where players could gather a resource which was already being harvested
– Fixed a critical issue where the log file would grow excessively large
– Fixed an issue where a player that is in a group couldn’t re-enter the group’s instance
– Fixed an issue where the colored text in the tool tip would wrap incorrectly
– Fixed a critical issue which would result in a client crash, while selling items in the Rune shop
– Fixed a missing top pixel in the game menu
– Fixed a missing top pixel of tab-ctrl tabs
– Fixed an issue where the player died and then crashed (logged out) which resulted in double PeP loss
– Added a minor fix for the PeP levels
– Added a fix so that it’s impossible to break down everything in your inventory (a player must always have at least one melee and one ranged weapon left)
– Added “1360×760” resolution to the list of supported resolutions
– Added automated turning while gathering a resource (the player will always face the resource)
– Added a introduction sequence when a character enters the world for the first time
– The way critters now wander has been changed to favor a more distributed repartition of the critters in a given habitat
– The mouse options: ‘hardware cursor’ and ‘smooth mouse’ have been removed
– Introduced moving doors and level elements that now open/close
– The on screen health bar now blinks when damage is done to enemies
They added the other countries to Acclaim territory maybe 3 weeks ago I think. They could not get into the running Frogster/Mindscape version anyway, only 11 countries are “allowed”. And of those 11 countires there are I think at least 4 countries were the game cannot be bought in the stores.
Assuming Acclaim gets its act together and open up the game for play there will potentially be more players that can access those servers given the number of countries that Acclaim is responsible for.
It may end up with people from the original 11 countries here in Europe trying to bypass the IP block to get to Acclaim servers, if that is were most English-speaking people will be. I will certainly consider that when the time comes.
But preferably I would see that they get rid of that stupid IP block entirely.
—–
As for the patch:
The intro movie sequence is neat: when you create a new character where you fly in from the shard ship docks in Hawksmounth, through the forests and into the city, stopping at your character at the town square.
Some of the fixes here were certainly welcome; I have been hit with the double PeP loss although I did not even die before it crashed.
Hmmm…I am sorry..
What game is this? Never heard of it..is it running in the US?
Oh…nvm
(Stupid Acclaim!)
It hurts so much!
It’s actually a cracking little game, with good skillful fast combat and a good gear/ skill design philosophy. I also personally love the art style… Very atmospheric and immersive to me, which is helped by a great score. Worth a go, considering the download is free and you get to play until L7. Bugs me I havent been able to progress further tho due to the fact I am playing on EU servers via proxy (I am in Accliam land) as a pre launch trial and don’t wanna buy a full account. Definitly worth a go though.
I don’t see Ireland on the list. I hope they didn’t get our rights when they bought the UK rights (which weirdly some companys succeed in getting).
@merrua Just out of curiosity, why would you rather play with mainland Europeans than people in the UK?