Yet more Neocron related news?

Too Right.

Following on from the general statement of operations given to the Black Prophecy community yesterday, some more news has arrived relating to Neocron.

Kirk, ReaKKtor CEO, has once again personally dropped by the Neocron Community Forums, with some fantastic news. Now that KK are operating under their own steam again, this has granted them more freedom in their development choices - meaning none other than a Neocron Patch.

Patch 169 is finally on the cards.

A particularly exciting ectracts reads as follows:

"To enable a long-term future for Neocron, but also to lay foundation for a possible Neocron 3, we consider these measures as necessary. We assume to be able to provide the reactivation of the payment options and the deployment of said patches within the next three months."

I'm sure you will agree this is utterly fantastic news and personally this has me grinning like an idiot. Hit up this link  to read Kirk's full community address.

"Some weeks have gone by since the last Stellarvox Community Bulletin and it is time again to provide you with some fresh information about Black Prophecy.

This time we have quite pleasant news for you. The responsible District Court in Hannover has abrogated the current insolvency proceeding of Reakktor Media GmbH’s assets. This means that we are finally out of the insolvency and again fully operational. With this huge obstacle out of the way, we are now in a far better situation for the negotiations with potential publishers. Having the insolvency sitting in our neck made things far more difficult and we are convinced that we’ll be able to provide you with more good news within the next weeks."

The THN admin team recentnly did a mass email on how to play Neocron for free. For those who do not have a THN account, here is a copy of the email sent. Click on read more to find out more.

In what can only be described as totally out of the blue, Kirk Lenke, CEO of Reakktor Media has directly replied to a response to his recent letter regarding Reakktor's situation, Neocron's future and the effect of Black Prophecy.

In the new response Kirk states as the company's CEO he will not give up on Neocron and goes on to say a number of avenues for Neocron's continuation have been discussed in house at Hannover. The only barrier for those plans however is KK's current financial status. Black Prophecy's sucessful release and a sound publishing deal should sort that one.

Hi John,

first of all NC will not be thrown to a wastebasket. Not by me - no way. Period.

In these days (during the last 15 months) the focus on BP is the only chance for KK to survive. We are in this insolvency procedure now for nearly one year amd the hectic has started earlier. So I am far away from being a happy camper at all.

Thanks for the compliment above regarding the great piece of work. I know that people only get mad when they like something.

Regarding NC and BP and the comparison of these two games. NC was/is a game completely funded by KK from scratch till live date. BP is game which is funded by a fund. So we have to deliver a product to these people and they also have impact on the developement. So you cannot compare both games completely at all.

And our last goal is to create a WoW playerbase. It would be nice but hey!? Trying to compete with WoW in regard of their success etc. is one of the major faults independent studios can go for before they start a new product or using an existing IP like NC. It would be nice but to get there you will need tons of money etc. Trust me, when you approach VC for example the first thing they mention is a sentence like "Will it be like WoW? Or as successful as WoW?".

We have already evaluated certain possibilities on how we can proceed in regard of technical and content support for NC. When the time is right more infos will come.

Cheers and take care
Kirk

You can read the response in it's original location, including the original letter, here !

Kirk Lenke, the current acting CEO of Reakktor has published a short little letter on the offical forums.

The Mercury situation
We are aware that the situation with the server “Mercury”, which is unavailable for several weeks now, is far from being satisfying. Due to operational circumstances we were not able to yet resolve the technical issues with that server being down. Even though Reakktor Media has been saved as a company, we are still within the insolvency procedure which makes things more complicated. I will look after this personally and strive to get the rectification of the technical issues under way as quick as possible.

Neocron and the state of play
I am not going to beat around the bush with regards to the general situation of Neocron. Because of the previous insolvency we were forced to freeze the development of Neocron and fully focus on the new project. This was inevitable in order to preserve the company and its 40 employees. That Neocron was neglected in the course of this bothers us in the same way as it does you. Neocron and everything connected to it is and always will be a part of us. After we succeeded in saving the company and putting it back on solid ground, I again have confidence in the future of Neocron. It will not be possible to make a complete overhaul, but we will take all action to keep Neocron alive as long as possible. I am not able to go into details at this time, but we will keep you posted on that matter.

Until then, we will support you and Neocron as effectively as possible, be it with the Gamemaster team or our e-mail support, and continue to provide it for the same low expense as before.

Thank you for your time and the confidence you place in us

Kirk

Feel free to comment on the official forums in this thread.

Snowcrash has posted this news about a period of extended server downtime .

"We have just received notice that our data center provider is going to make several adjustments to their hardware infrastructure which will result in an extended downtime of the Neocron 2 servers. Due to an internal communication issue at our data center provider, we have not been informed about this action early enough.

The servers will be therefore taken down at 10:30 AM CET. We expect them to be back online on Friday morning latest.

We apologise for this inconvenience and ask you for your understanding."

So to be clear, the servers are down now until the morning of Friday 27th March, we will post an update when the servers are back up and running, so you all can go and find Secret again.

This just in from Snowcrash on the official forums about a German DJ and producer called Akira Sun, who is using sound samples from the game.

"Rapidly launching into 2009 with his brand new single "Neocron", the German DJ and producer Akira Sun presents his next dance floor hit in cooperation with Reakktor Media.

Inspired by the Massively Multiplayer Roleplay Game "Neocron" by the Hannoverian game developer Reakktor Media, Akira Sun merges familiar Electro Beats and aggressive Synths with a good portion of Dark Future Cyberpunk.

In addition to the original version by Akira Sun, Liquid Cosmo, Mellow Reflector and André F. are contributing several phat remixes.

Learn more about Akira Sun on the official web site or on his MySpace profile!"

Make sure you check out the samples on the MySpace page link, and talk about it here on the forums.

Today fresh from the Christmas break at Reakktor Media, Community Manager SnowCrash has published a new annoucement based on some recent community activity.

As of today you can now legally add some bloom to the world of Neocron, bringing new life to the Neocron graphics engine.

With regards to the forum thread "Bloom for Neocron" about the privately developed graphics filter that enables the bloom effect for Neocron 2, we permit the use of this filter for enhancing the graphic quality of your Neocron 2 installation.

We explicitly point out that the use of this special graphics filter happens on your own risk and Reakktor Media cannot be made liable for any harm made to your computer system due to download and use of this graphics filter. Also Reakktor Media does not offer any support for problems occurring from the use of this graphics filter.

 If you'd like to comment on the announcement head on over to this thread, if you'd like instructions for installing the bloom modification the original thread resides here with some screenshots showing the difference bloom makes.

All in all a very nice new addition to your Neocron 2.2 game client

Update: You can download the filter from here on the THN.