Discontinued Achievements Issue 6 - Ascend, Karaoke, Gunpowder, Toy Soldiers.

Hello readers,

I have been a little behind on my updates lately. I was away and busy so I didn't get a chance to keep up so I will put everything into this post. I am going to start updating delisted games as well. I will write the first delisted games post in the next couple of days.

It was announced a few days ago that Ascend Hand of Kul will be closing its servers on November 18 2014. This will render every achievement in the game discontinued as the game requires you to be connected to the servers at all times while playing.

Karaoke which was announced to close on August 15 is still online in some countries. I have heard, but not tested, that the game is no longer playable in Canada and Belgium and is still playable in the United States, and some European countries. Along with the servers still being online the free songs are still changing about once every week so all of the achievements are still obtainable if you live in a country that still has functioning servers. The ability to purchase new Karaoke passes is still disabled, however.

Gunpowder unexpectedly gained some discontinued achievements recently. The game was removed from the Windows 8 marketplace in the beginning of July but up until what appears to be only a few weeks ago the Lost Levels DLC was still available for purchase. The DLC, which is now unavailable for purchase, has been disabled in game, even for those that had previously purchased it. Since there is now no legitimate way to access the DLC pack all of the achievements related to it are now discontinued.

Something similar has happened to Toy Soldiers Cold War (Win 8). The Windows 8 version, unlike the Xbox 360 version, included the content that was released as DLC on the Xbox 360 in the base game. Or so it appeared. The content has now gone missing from a number of people's games causing four achievements to become partly discontinued. Those achievements are "The Might of the Red Army", "Counting Stacks", "The End Of An Odyssey", and "In Memoriam". A couple of people on the Game Info Team at TrueAchievements.com have been testing the game and it appears that the levels only disappear on devices running Windows 8.1 and it has nothing to do with the game's servers or version. I am currently installing Windows 8.0 on my computer to check for myself and see if I am able to play the DLC. However, for right now I recommend those of you that have the Napalm and Eliv Empire DLC still available should get the related achievements as soon as possible.

-Randy2727

Discontinued Achievements Issue 5 - Rock Band 3, Monsters Love Candy, Ubisoft Server Closures

Unfortunately there have been more discontinued achievements brought to my attention in the last few days.

Recently Harmonix transitioned Rockband.com to Harmonixmusic.com and a few things were lonst along the way including the ability to link your Rock Band 3 band with Rockband.com. This renders the "Well Connected" achievement discontinued. This now leaves Rock Band 3 with one discontinued achievement and one partially discontinued achievement.

All items from the Monsters Love Candy store have now been pulled causing the "Rainbow Eyes" achievement to now become discontinued. There has been no announcement from the developer regarding the items being pulled from the store, so there is a possibility that they could come back, however, I wouldn't hold my breath. This now leaves Monsters Love Candy with two discontinued achievements.

Ubisoft announced today that servers will be closing for a number of their games on August 8, 2014, however, this will not discontinue achievements in all of the games. Below is the complete list of games with some kind of online functionality going down. Following the title is the number of discontinued achievements prior to the shutdown in parentheses and the number of achievements affected by the shutdown in brackets. An asterisk indicates that it was possible to earn the achievement online but is also possible to earn the achievement in either offline game modes such as single player or system link. These numbers are based on flags from Trueachievements.com and my knowledge of these games. The post from Ubisoft is available here.

• America's Army True Soldiers - (1), [30]
• Avatar, James Cameron's - (0), [8]
• EndWar, Tom Clancy's - (20 + 1 unobtainable), [25*]
• Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, Tom Clancy's - (0), [39*]
• Motionsports Adrenaline - (0), [11]
• PowerUp Heroes - (0), [8*, 1]
• Shaun White Snowboarding - (0), [?] I don't know enough about this game to get an accurate number. It appears that some will be affected. 
• Splinter Cell Double Agent, Tom Clancy's - (0), [17*] 

I am not going to go into detail on each individual game except for Motionsports. Unless you have challenges in progress it will not be possible to earn the online required, challenge related achievements because they take a week to finish.

Discontinued achievements issue 4 - Gears of War 2

Today I noticed that the "Photojournalist" achievement in Gears of War 2 has become discontinued. Based on the recent unlocks, it appears that the sever went down around the beginning of July and has been down since. The server has gone down once before, some time ago. The server was taken down for a period of time and then brought back online. I will post any updates in a new blog post when or if I find anything else out about the server.

Discontinued achievements issue 3 - Dawn of War 2

Just a quick update. It has been confirmed by a post by Relic on the Steam forums that Dawn of War 2 will be losing GFWL when the transition to Steamworks goes live. You can read the post by relic here.

Discontinued achievements issue 2 - Lips, Dawn of War 2

It was brought to my attention today that the Lips servers closed on July 8 2014. It was confirmed by a forum post on the Xbox forums. No warning or reason was given for the server closure. I was ver disappointed these servers went down. I actually had planned on doing all of the online achievements for the game tomorrow. I think it is pretty bad to see a game published by Microsoft Studios go down without any warning at all. I started a thread on the forums asking to bring the servers back. It's probably pretty unlikely that anything will happen, but I though I would give it a shot. I would appreciate that if any of you that want the servers back would make a brief post in the forum voicing your support. The Link is below.

http://forums.xbox.com/xbox_forums/xbox_360_games/l_o/lips_games/f/1846/t/1790538.aspx

After yesterday's blog post, TBreit pointed out to me that Steam currently has an opt in beta for the Steamworks version of Dawn of War 2. I checked and confirmed this morning that it is still there. It looks like the Steamworks patch is closer than I thought so I would finish off the game as soon as possible if you intend on grabbing all of the achievements.

Discontinued achievements update issue 1 - WSoP Full House Pro, Monsters Love Candy, Dawn of War 2, Dance Central 3

It was confirmed by Microsoft that there will be no more events taking place in WSoP Full House Pro which renders the "It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere" and the "Big Game Hunter" achievements discontinued on both Xbox 360 and Windows 8. 

Monsters Love Candy new has one discontinued achievement. The "Sweet Tooth" achievement. The store no longer has boost purchases available so it is no longer possible to get this achievement. If you have not unlocked the "Rainbow Eyes" achievement, I recommend getting it as soon as possible because if more of the store is taken down this achievement will also become discontinued. 

Nothing official has been announced yet, however, Steam achievements have been sort of released for Dawn of War 2. I can't find any information on anything official so I don't know when it is going to move to Steamworks but when it does it will likely render all of the online achievements for the game discontinued. 

In addition to the bad news there is some good news. The Dance Central 3 achievements related to sharing photos on Facebook have been fixed. The "Worth a Thousand Words" and "We're Friends Right?" achievements are once again obtainable. 

Keys are up and working and posting my content backlog.

I have been working on this post and a large number of updates and uploads over the last couple of week or so, so I hope I haven't missed anything.

I finally got around to posting the keys stuff. I posted a big chunk of songs that cover all of the pro keys achievements other than the trainers, listed below. They are located in the directory found here. Keys work exactly the same as drums so just switch your pro adapter over to the "K" position and play away.

25 or 6 to 4, Antibodies, Cross Town Traffic, Foolin, Get Up Stand Up, Heart of Glass, I Love Rock N Roll, Imagine, In a Big Country, Just Like Heaven, Killing Loneliness, Last Dance, Llama, Midlife Crisis, Oye Mi Amor, Rainbow in the Dark, Rehab, Rock Lobster, Smoke on the Lobster, Space Oddity, Werewolves of London, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

I have a file for the pro keys trainers that works but still needs to be tidied up. I haven't posted it yet but that is on the top of my PBaE to do list so I hope to get it up pretty soon.

I am not going to list them all because there are too many, however if you requested it, it is probably there. All of the drum specific achievements that ripped MIDI files are available for should now be uploaded to the directory. Most of the files were submitted by anonymous contributors, but those that wished to be credited have been credited in the directory. Thank you all for your submissions. This would not have been possible without the community. I am going to have a community announcement in the next couple of weeks also.

There is also a project by PedroMontano that has been submitted to me that I put up. Pedro has come up with a method for playing guitar and bass on Rock Band 3 with the MIDI pro adapter. He has submitted instructions and a number of files that I have added to the Guitar and Bass directory. This method only works with Rock Band 3.

Now there are so many directories available that I have made a directory directory. I replaced the link to the drums directory in the sidebar with the directory directory.

I am going to try and have my first post for my new fun project up soon. It is almost finished I am just putting it all together so I hope you will all like that. I also plan on integrating some Google+ stuff into the site to make following posts and notification type things a bit easier. I would prefer to keep it Blogger only but it seems like that has been taken away and replaced with G+. If it still exists it is unfortunately too complicated for me to do, unless I am missing something.