Those who've been following this for a long while may remember that Reakktor's previous ownder, 10Tacle Studios AG declared insolvency. KK quickly explained that they hoped to survivie this while all the other stuios owned by 10Tacle were closed down. Today, several german gaming sites are reporting having recieved a press release from Reakktor stating that the insolvency is offically over. You can read some (very good) google translations here and here. They also state that Black Prophecy will be released in 2010 - a 2009 release having been looking less and less likley as the months go on of course. We'll be poking Reakktor for more information tomorrow. One has to wonder if this means free Neocron will be coming to an end any time soon.
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.
"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.
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.
Due to the previous technical issues with our account server, some users may receive the error message "Account not found. Please check your SP".
We ask all affected users to contact our Support Team (
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
) via e-mail by providing the subject "Neocron 2 account issues" and the following information:
1. Neocron 2 account name 2. E-mail address that was used for the account registration 3. Payment Provider (PayPal, Click2Pay or PaybyCash) 4. Full name and address
We will recover the affected accounts as quickly as possible then.
I ask for your patience and understanding as it will take a while to filter through all of the incoming requests.
17 Nov - 14:37 GMT - Since Sunday 16th November at about 19:20GMT, the NC servers appeared to be unreachable. Nidhogg posted a quick update saying there appeared to be a Network issue of some sort, however nearly 20 hours later, the latest news is from Snowcrash at 11:17GMT saying there is no ETA for a fix.
Any more news we hear, it will be posted here. In the mean time, you can chat about the servers being down here on the THN or on the official forums.
Update: 16:20 - By Delphi - Lastest news was an update from Snowcrash that the server will be up in the next couple of hours, posted at 15:26GMT.
Update 23:36 - By Brammers - Not so good news. The launcher page is back, but you can't connect. And here is the last statement from Snowcrash, which was released earlier.
"In contrary to the previous statement that the launcher and the account management will be available again within the next hours, we are experiencing ongoing technical issues with the affected server hardware.
Therefore we are currently not able to give an estimate when the launcher and the account management will be avaible again."
18 Nov 10:40 GMT - By Brammers - Are we nearly there yet...Another update from Snowcrash
"Most of the issues have been resolved but we are still encountering a problem with the login server. Our tech department is still working on it and I am not able to give you an ETA yet."
18 Nov 17:10 GMT - By StevenJ - People are once again logging into Neocron, however some people are reporting that their account information is not found.
Snowcrash just posted this little post to clarify the current payment provider issues.
"In course of the issues we are encountering due to the insolvency, we have explained that all Neocron 2 accounts have been enabled for free play. This explanation has obviously led to some confusion which we would like to clarify.
Currently it is not possible to renew or create accounts by using PayPal as payment provider. This is related to issues at Paypal that are beyond our sphere of influence. To compensate this, we have decided to put game points on all accounts to allow players, who are using PayPal, to continue playing until the issues have been fixed. All other accounts using PaybyCash and Click2Pay are being billed as normal with 5 Euro per month subscription fee.
Under the current circumstances we see no other option to address these issues as we do not want to lock out players using PayPal as payment method. In order to compensate our customers who are using different payment methods but still pay for some of their accounts, we have enabled the previous mentioned game points to reactivate all expired accounts. This means that you can access any of your additional accounts that are currently expired regardless what kind of payment method you use without getting charged until further notice. Accounts that are in the regular payment cycle are getting billed as usual.
As we have already explained, Reakktor will continue its business but there are still issues to address which make things a bit more complicating. We can only ask you for your understanding and would like to thank those who are standing loyally at our side during this difficult times."
Neocron Game News 
