M3: My Morning Musings – Tera Gets Popular, Wii U Gets Old Games, More Dumb Xbox Rumors, & More

The relaunch of Tera: Rising has been a big hit with the legions of PC gamers who have logged back on to the formerly vacated En Masse Entertainment servers. The game now has over 1.4 million registered users since the Free to Play relaunch. This is an impressive feat in only 30 days after the change in business models. CEO of En Masse Entertainment, Chris Lee, said this:
“We’ve been blown away by the waves of players logging into Tera, and we’re seeing amazing growth in both registrations and daily users. It’s always great to eclipse the one-million-player mark, and at our current rate, it won’t be long before we hit two million.”

To celebrate the success, there is a five day event called Dracoloths Rising where players can hunt big monsters and get epic loot. Hurry, the event ends on March 24.

After watching John Riccitiello guide EA from share prices of around 62 dollars down to under 20, the board has relieved him of his CEO duties effective March 30, 2013. Riccitiello says that he is ultimately responsible for the company missing projections. In fact, EA will miss their next projected quarter numbers. Don’t feel sorry for Riccitiello as he will get a package of around 4.7 million dollars. I wish I could lead my company to failure and get rich for it…

Waiting in the wings to be the next CEO looks to be Peter Moore… Now if someone could fix Sim City…

Tomb Raider players on the Xbox 360 have seen their first DLC released. However, if you were hoping for more single player content, it isn’t here and, sadly, won’t be coming at all. Creative Director, at Crystal Dynamics, Noah Hughes said: 
“Currently there are no plans regarding single-player DLC. Now that Lara is more experienced, we are excited to take her on new adventures that challenge her new strength and confidence. It is important that even as Lara grows as a character, so do the challenges she must face.”

To make things crystal clear, Karl Stewart, of Square Enix, stated:”There are currently no plans in place for any Single Player expansions. All of our DLC is based around the Multiplayer experience for now.”

Okay, lets get Tomb Raider 2 going if you aren’t going to give us single player DLC. But I still don’t know why you won’t take our money for what we want…

Do you like playing ports of games that came out years ago? If so, the Wii U may just be the console for you with the newly announced Deus Ex Human Revolution. The new Director’s Cut of the title will feature revamped Boss encounters, Missing Link and Tong’s Rescue DLC, and new features utilizing the Wii U controller. Want better AI? It is here.  Want brand new content? Sorry, you won’t found anything here but one of the best games from two years ago.

Still, Deus Ex is a great game that can be picked up for around ten bucks on the PC. If you haven’t played it and have a Wii U, you might as well give it a try when it is released on May 7, 2013. I do hope Nintendo can manage to get games, for their consoles, a bit quicker in the future.

Speaking of remakes, Final Fantasy X is getting a HD remake for PlayStation 3 and Vita. Now the title is rumored to also include a remake of Final Fantasy X-2. The PlayStation 3 version will ship with both titles on the same disk but will be sold as separate titles on the PS Vita. For Final Fantasy fans, this will be the first time the International Version of FFX will be seen on North American shores with more story to bridge the X and X-2 together. 

There is no word on a release date but we should learn more from Square-Enix at this years E3. 

In stupid news, did you know that RPG creator Richard Garriott, also known as Lord British, thinks that everyone is a terrible Game Designer? Well almost everyone. He says:
“I think there’s really very few great game designers. I think Chris Roberts is one of them, Will Wright’s another, Peter Molyneux is another. They clearly exist, but on the whole, I think that the design talent in our industry is dramatically lower than we need, as an industry. It’s a very hard skill to learn.I’m not saying that because I think I’m so brilliant. What I’m saying is, I think most game designers really just suck, and I think there’s a reason why. It’s really hard to go to school to be a good designer.”

Of course, Ken Levine comes to mind as someone who has put out amazing stuff in his career. Why doesn’t he make your list Lord British? Also, how about you cut off that stupid rat tail?

In further stupid news, the rumor machine is cranking out more on Microsoft’s plans for the Xbox 720–codenamed Durango. Every new Xbox console will have the ability to hold a “large number of games.” Players will be required to install these games to their hard drive as playing from a disk will not be supported. 

The information also states that no used games will be allowed and an always-online Internet connection will be required. Surely Microsoft isn’t stupid enough to go ahead with these plans. Right?