Black Prophecy going live - North America

After months of beta testing, Black Prophecy can finally be enjoyed by all North American players with its official launch tomorrow, Wednesday the 13rd of July 2011! With the launch comes a huge content add-on titled “Inferno in Tulima”, giving beta players many new elements to explore while increasing the breadth of the new user experience!

We would like to thank all of the North American beta testers for their incredible support and feedback. Your participation has helped us stabilize the dedicated U.S. servers, and your voices have shaped and will continue to shape the gameplay experience.

Black Prophecy enters into open beta

That future is now for North American fans of Black Prophecy, and today marks the beginning of open beta for the title that launched in Europe last March.

Black Prophecy patch 1.0.1

MISSIONS
Following new missions were implemented:

• "Cash for clunkers", Comadrome, Level 7, Tyi
• "Valuable freight", Caldeena Tyi Hub, Level 34, Tyi
• "Boosting morale", Caldeena Tyi Hub, Level 35, Tyi
• "The prototype", Col Esera, Level 14, Genide
• "Lost in the Badlands", Elysion, Level 18, Tyi + Genide
• "No response from Station FG-31", Elysion, Level 18, Tyi + Genide
• "Escort", Gyoda, Level 30, Tyi
• "Security loopholes", Gyoda, Level 30, Genide
• "There's always something waiting...", Geneera, Level 27, Tyi
• "Crafting Session", Apo Kata, Level 4, Sapiens

GENERAL

• General performance improvements in all sectors.
• Removed exploit possibility that allowed players to collect unlimited colors in "Paint Job".
• Fixed issues with performance and missing NPCs in Bara Kaitos sectors.
• Fixed ship health display inconsistencies.
• Damage distribution changed slightly: Damage is distributed evenly among active ship items, proportional to the items' durability percentage in relation to the entire ship. The item that is directly hit (unless it's the cockpit) receives slightly more percental damage than the other items.
• Repair kit durability is distributed evenly among all active ship items, proportional to the items' durability percentage in relation to the entire ship.
• Increased the amounts repaired by the higher level repair kits.
• Fixed heavy alien fighter item values. It can turn at decent speeds now.
• Implemented better spawn point variation for weapon transporters in the Nimbus, to prevent spawn point camping.
• Fixed a bug in the mission "Energy Reserves".
• Fixed an AI bug that caused NPCs to have steering problems when switching to sniper weapons.
• Fixed an AI bug that caused NPCs to not move when they should try to hide.
• Fixed an AI bug that caused NPCs to have steering problems when breaking off from a formation.
• Fixed an AI bug that caused NPCs to ignore new threats when purposefully attacking enemies.
• Fixed an AI bug that caused NPCs to ignore turrets on capital ships.
• Fixed an AI bug that caused NPCs to randomly experience steering problems during fights.

HUD

• Quickplay/instance button and sector/station name info no longer disappear when docked to a station and activating mouse mode.
• Premium items can no longer be moved to the ship inventory while a trade with a player or NPC is already active.
• Fixed kill-assist game messages if the player is killed by an NPC, but was damaged by other players before.
• Quickplay is now correctly being disabled when the client disconnects.
• More detailed information is now displayed when a player wants to request a clan sector.
• Removed warning message when players cancel their pending mission.
• Fixed a case where players could receive an error message "mission already starting" even after logging out and logging back in.
• Reserved names filter has been updated to allow some popular, previously blocked character names.

GFX

• Fixed colony ship texture flickering.
• Fixed engine exhaust effects for Tyi fighters.
• Fixed weapon attachment alignment for Tyi fighter wing module.
• Enhanced areas influenced by player color for Tyi fighter modules.
• Correct interior scene is now shown in the Gyoda Nebula for Tyi players.

The state of Black Prophecy

I recently picked up a closed beta key for upcoming sci-fi MMO, Black Prophecy. I haven't had the chance to play it yet, but here is a quick update on the game.

By Patrick Streppel, member of the executive board at gamigo AG

"Three weeks have gone by since the release of Black Prophecy in Europe and we would like to present a brief update as well as some insight into what you can expect from Black Prophecy in the future.

The current state
For an MMOG of Black Prophecy’s scale, the European launch went down very smoothly; no severe technical issues occurred and the servers were, and continue to be, stable. We were also able to start North American closed beta testing and are looking forward to giving the green light for release very soon (the current performance issues are hardware-related and solving them should not take long). The translation into French has begun and further language versions such as Spanish, Russian and even Chinese are already in discussion.

But, as with any MMOG, there can be difficulties with the performance of the starting sectors (the Open World Sectors), especially so soon after the game’s launch when many new players populate the same areas for the first time. These sectors have already been optimized during beta testing and the development team will continue to improve performance as time goes by. Please stay with us on this.

Upon the announcement of the game’s launch, certain voices in the community suggested that the game was not yet “finished” and that more development time was required. We take these concerns very seriously and are happy to discuss with you what you think is missing but ask you to keep the feedback constructive. I might be getting ahead of myself here but a lot of mission content, PvP elements and other features are already on the way to fulfill the promises we made.

Some have compared Black Prophecy with an unpolished diamond. This comparison gets closer to the heart of it. The decision to release Black Prophecy at this point in time was agreed upon by both Reakktor Media and gamigo. Many obstacles have been overcome in the past few years to get this far and we are extremely happy and proud of the result. No MMOG sees the light of day completely polished and perfectly working, but be assured that all involved parties are 100% dedicated not only to perfecting the current game but to bringing so much more to it."