This isn't a news blog. Is there any such thing? Still, sometimes a bunch of stories turn up in the news cycle all at once with at least some relevance to what I do here. And sometimes they turn up when I'm short of time and happy to link a few press releases and embed a few promos and call it a post.
Am I selling this? Yeah, maybe not...
So, anyway, let's start with the most relevant piece of news, which is that we have a date for the new EverQuest II expansion Rage of Cthurath. It's December 10, 2025.
Obviously it's 2025. A bit pedantic of them even to mention it, isn't it? I mean, it really would be news if it was December 10, 2026, I guess. It's not like Darkpaw is Rockstar or something. (I've never actually played a Grand Theft Auto game, by the way. Maybe I should do something about that sometime...)
As part of the promotional push for the expansion. Darkpaw did a Livestream on their YouTube channel yesterday. It's pretty long. Nearly two and a half hours. Does anyone have time for that? If so, knock yourselves out. Here it is.
I certainly don't. I watched about fifteen minutes at the start, where they're flying through the new zones (Which look gorgeous, by the way.) until the swooping camera started to make me motion-sick. After that I skipped through to see what else was in there and didn't find much of interest. I guess I watched maybe half an hour altogether.
There's a full transcript on YouTube that I also flicked through. As far as I could see they don't really go into anything that affects me - a lot of stuff about group and raid dungeons and the new Public Quests, for example. I won't be doing the first two and PQs I always figure out as I get to them.
Other than that, mostly just confirmation that the outdoor zones are big and have record amounts of verticality. That makes sense when you consider the creatures that live there can all fly. Of course, we won't be able to fly, not until we've explored the whole place on foot, but I'm sure we're all used to that by now.
It all looks very impressive, visually. Solo content sounds solid. There are three overland zones and the Signature questline wraps up at the end of the second, leaving the third, I'm betting, for sopping up enough extra xp to hit the cap. If it's anything like the last two expansions, leveling will be slow going. I'm looking forward to it, although I'm not promising I'll get all that far this side of the New Year. Bad timing for me, these December releases.
Next up, something that got a mention in the comments of Tuesday's post, namely Soulframe. In case you either didn't know or had forgotten, which would be easy to do since it barely seems to get a mention in anything I read, Soulframe is the in-development MMORPG from Digital Extremes, makers of the very sucessful and also rarely mentioned around here Warframe.
Warframe is SciFi. Soulframe is fantasy. I tried Warframe a few years back, didn't hate it but didn't much like it either. It was the setting as much as anything that put me off. The gameplay seemed okay.
On that basis, I'm mildly interested to see what the same game looks like with a fantasy skin and I'll be able to satisfy that curiosity very soon because in just five days DE is going to start selling "Founders Packs" giving access to what they're calling "Preludes".
Preludes is DE's name for pre-alpha so this is a buy-in pre-alpha. Are we really desperate enough for those now? Ohh, yes!
How it works is a bit confusing but there's a video. It's only about seven minutes long. I watched it and didn't learn much. Here, you try.
There's also an hour-long livestream video that I haven't watched. Maybe that tells you more. I wouldn't know. I got all I needed from the FAQ,which I read in about a minute. That seemed way more efficient.
I am definitely not interested enough in Soulframe to buy into a pre-alpha. I mean, not unless it costs, like, five dollars or something. I don't think they've announced the pricing structure yet but I'm sure it won't be that.
And finally, something for free! Always my favorite price point.
Of course, it's only free for people who already own the base product, which in this case is the original Guild Wars. They are lowering the box price for those who don't, though.
I do own Guild Wars, as it happens. All of it. The game plus all the expansions/DLC/whatever they're called.
This is relevant to the blog in a couple of ways, the first being that it's a game I have played and written about before but second and more important because Guild Wars has been in maintenance mode for more than a decade and look! People still play it! It still gets good service from the developers. You might almost say it has a future.
When Maintenance Mode gets mentioned, I can immediately think of two games that have been almost thriving under the regime: Guild Wars and Final Fantasy XI. What they have in common is that they're both under the protection of game developers who genuinely care about them, even though they each have newer, much more successful MMORPGs on their books.
New World (That's where I'm going with this but I'm sure you were ahead of me.) had a development team that cared for and valued it but I don't think many people believe it was beloved of the company that owned it. Maybe the comparison isn't valid. Or perhaps, since ArenaNet is a part of the much bigger and generally hard-hearted NCSoft, it might be.
I can think of another example, too: Rift. Rift also wasn't well looked after by the company that owned it, or at least not in the end. Trion sold Rift to Gamigo, who gave it a bit of attention for a while and then effectively put it out to pasture.
No-one generally has a good word to say about either NCSoft or Gamigo but in a face-off with Amazon, I suspect both would coming out looking like the good guys by default. At least they've kept the servers up and even Gamigo manages to keep some events recycling in Rift to give the illusion someone cares. The game is currently experiencing a bit of a dead cat bounce thanks to a player-led initiative. It's not a lot but it does at least show that maintenance mode doesn't mean the end.
For Guild Wars, Reforging might even be the end of maintenance mode. There's yet another video. It's thirty seconds long. It went up on YouTube two days ago and it has nearly two hundred thousand views already.
For comparison, the EQII video I linked has a tad under two thousand views. The Soulframe one has eight thousand. A lot of people are interested in a version of classic Guild Wars with updated graphics and Steam Deck compatibility, apparently.
Given a response like that, it's hardly surprising ArenaNet are hinting there could be new content, too. We'll see, I guess. I haven't played through all the old content yet. I was planning on it either but if there's a shiny, new version I'm going to get for nothing, I might change my plans.
At the moment, though, I'm enjoying New World. It's a really good game. I always knew it was, seeing as how it's my second most-played game on Steam at over 250 hours. And counting.
I just hope someone at Amazon notices what other companies do with their old MMOs and at least doesn't want to make things look even worse than they already do by closing the whole thing down at the earliest opportunity. I'm not counting on it, though. I doubt we'll ever get to see New World Reforged.
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You know, I hadn't thought to ask my friends who work at DE why they were so damn busy right now. I'd just assumed they were preparing for the Winter content drop that all F2P titles invariably have during December, but the imminent launch of Soulframe into pre-alpha would do it. Here's hoping it goes well, if for no other reason than because I'd prefer it if they all remained employed.
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