No Plan Survives Contact With The Marketing Department

Do you ever get the feeling the universe exists just to make you look foolish? In the afternoon I wrote a post about going back to EverQuest II, in which I made the following confident assertion:

"... none of the other upcoming games I'm interested in are running tests right now, so it seemed like a good time to get back to what I was doing a couple of months ago - playing EQII."

Later, Mrs. Bhagpuss and I took Beryl for a walk. We had tea and watched The Chase. Then we watched half of that show about a dog rescue center in Australia before the live stream broke up and we stopped. Rain was forecast, so I took Beryl for her evening walk an hour early. 

When I got back I finished editing the post, added the tags, thought of a title and hit Publish. Then I started going through my feeds to see what had happened since I last looked and what did I find?

This. That's what.

Two questions came immediately to mind, the first being how come I didn't get an email or something? I know it's all done through Discord these days but even so, just about every other MMORPG I've ever registered an interest with sends me email every time they put a new pair of mittens in the cash shop. 

Apparently this beta was meant to start on 28 March before it got bumped to 3 April. I knew nothing about it. You'd think a beta might merit some kind of heads-up. Then again, it's entirely possible they did tell me and I've forgotten. Wouldn't be the first time.

The second question was whether I'd be able to get into the test. The instructions are a little confusing. The announcement on Twitter states 

"Please kindly note, after you pre-register, make sure to create your character before April 4, 2024, at 19:00 PDT! If you haven't created a character by then, you won't be able to participate in the test. After April 4, 2024, at 19:00 PDT, players who have not created a character need to use an activation code to enter the server."

Steam, however, says

"All returning players from the previous beta will automatically have access to the upcoming test using their existing login accounts."

That seems to be true because when I booted up my old patcher from the last test it updated itself then began downloading the new client. By the time I had to go to bed, though, the servers still hadn't opened up so the question of whether I also needed to make that character to nail down my place or whether I could just carry on with the one I had remained moot.

It was still moot on Thursday morning, when the beta ought to have been up and running. After breakfast I went to log in and instead of a "Play" button I found a notice saying "Coming on 4th April". Which is today. So, later today, I guess. At time of writing I still can't log in so the clock may be ticking. Or it may not. Who knows? *** See Footnote 1

I could do with some time to think about how I want to approach the opportunity anyway. I stopped playing the last Once Human beta a couple of weeks before it ended. These are hefty tests. The last one started in November and ran well into January. This one is scheduled to last six weeks. 

In all honesty, six weeks is longer than my total playtime in some MMORPGs where I would consider I'd had a long and successful run. The main reason I backed off from playing last time wasn't that I'd had enough of the game. It was the exact opposite. I was enjoying it so much and becoming so invested, I was concerned I'd feel I'd done everything I wanted to do in the game before it even launched.

Those concerns remain, meaning I'm excited about the prospect of playing again but also apprehensive. Based on a long experience with pre-launch builds, it's impossible to know whether these betas represent my chance to see the game at its best or if it won't all come together until it goes Live. I've seen it happen both ways.

Rift remains the poster child for better in beta but two of my favorite MMORPGs of all time struggled badly in late testing. Vanguard then was almost unplayable for me due to technical issues but because of what I learned in those tests I was able to make some changes to my set-up, so that, when the game launched, I was able to play it with very few of the problems that made it such a nightmare for others. 

EverQuest II, conversely, suffered from so much lag throughout late beta we all thought it would be unplayable at launch. The devs kept promising there would be a final patch that would sort all of that out but we'd all heard other developers claim a "miracle patch" would fix everything at launch and it had never happened so we were more then skeptical. 

As it turned out, this time there was a miracle patch. At launch, EQII still had plenty of problems with its design choices and gameplay but the lag that had made the final few weeks of beta more of a test of patience than anything else was completely gone.

While we're on the subject of the early days of EQII, I'll just shoehorn in a mention of the latest Producer's Letter, in which Jenn Chan reveals the new Time Limited Expansion server coming in May will be more of a Time Capsule, taking us all back to the heady days of 2006. I'll probably post about the letter and this server separately but I'll say now that it looks very interesting indeed. 

As Wilhelm and I commented in the thread following the story on MassivelyOP, the 2006 start puts the proposed cut-off date squarely in the post-Hartsman revamp era, when most of the really egregious design choices from the first few months had been swept away. That was EQII's real Golden Age for many, although I'm sure there will still be the usual rose-tinted, glass-half-full, sand-diving ostriches claiming it was better before.

Getting back to Once Human, though, having read a little around the current state of the game and the beta that's about to begin, I'm not sure how many of my reservations apply any more. The new build apparently includes a large number of changes from the one I played and indeed the entire structure of the game seems different from what I imagined it would be.

Among other things, the upcoming test introduces something called Eternaland. It's a permanent, instanced area in which players can free-build their own bases, hold parties, run events and so forth. So far, so good.

What's disturbing me is the reason such a zone needs to exist.

We’re hoping to offer all sorts of seasonal content and mechanics, as well as close the gap between players so more can team up and play together. So far, we’ve received lots of helpful feedback about the seasonal gameplay, such as how entering a new season could result in major item loss, how some felt disappointed when homes they’d built got destroyed, or how some felt it was too abrupt to go straight from one season to the next.  

Uh... yeah? I'd feel a darn sight more than "disappointed" if I logged in one day and found the house I'd spent the last couple of months working on had been razed to the ground! Or that all the gear I'd worked on upgrading had vanished into the void.

I was aware that Once Human is marketing itself as an MMOFPS not an MMORPG and I vaguely understand that's a genre with different practices and expectations. I'm also familiar with the concept of Seasons that reset progress, putting everyone back on a level playing field to start over.

What I hadn't realized was the anyone was suggesting the entire game would keep re-setting. That makes it sound more like the failed experiment that was Crowfall than something like Destiny, which morphed into Destiny 2 after a couple of years and made everyone begin over again. A hard restart on a schedule measured in years is probably manageable. One that happens every few months would be a lot more problematic.

The Eternalands concept looks like a decent compromise. It'd mean putting all the real effort into base building there and just living in minimal accomodation in the open world, which I can see having issues of its own, but it's certainly better than being wiped out entirely every few weeks.

The good part is that these are clearly real beta tests in which substantive changes based on both metrics and player feedback can and will be made. I'm quite excited to get in and start poking around to see what's changed since last time. I hear it's a lot.

Despite my keen curiosity, some of the same concerns over spoiling my future fun remain. I'm going to have to be careful not to go at it too hard, not only because of what over-exposure might do to my future prospects with the game but also because I would very much like to keep my seat on the EverQuest II train now I've caught up with it again.

All I need now is for the Once Human beta to finally open the doors and let me in.

I think I'll take Beryl for a walk and see if it's up when I get back.

Footnote #1 

From Discord:

1. The PC test server will go live on Friday April 5, 2024 3am.

2. The 150,000 character creation cap is removed for the first 24 hours after the server goes live. However, if this cap is exceeded on the first day, access keys will be required for new players starting from Saturday April 6, 2024 3am. This change does not affect returning players from the previous CBT2, who can access CBT3 at any time, but it does limit the total number of character creations to 150,000.

Times given are GMT, I think...