Can You Keep A Secret? Doesn't Look Like Funcom Can.

You know that feeling, when when someone tells you there's something you can't do and even though you didn't want to do it, weren't even thinking of doing it, now you know you can't do it, you really want to? Yeah, I bet you do. Well, I had it today, when I read this news item at MassivelyOP.

It's a long time since I last thought about logging into Secret World Legends. No, actually, that's not entirely true. I thought about it yesterday, funnily enough, although not because I wanted to play. 

It was while I was running through Great Cleave in New World, looking at the dirty snow and wondering if it was the most convincing winterscape I'd seen in an mmorpg. I've always been something of an afficionado of imaginary snow. One of the first articles I ever wrote for a comics fanzine was called "Good Snow Art". 

There generally isn't all that much "good snow art" in mmorpgs. Rift wasn't too bad, particularly when it came to blizzard conditions and whiteouts, but even there everything was absolutely pristine, as it is in most games. 

Snow zones tend to share a certain unreality with lava zones. Make everything the same color and then add some glare so it hurts to look at, that seems to be the general principle. Even the Guild Wars 2 art department, otherwise exemplary, seems to throw up its hands at the thought of grading fifty shades of white. 

New World has some very odd ideas about representing weather but the art team has done a pretty good job with snow. The covering in Great Cleave is scrappy, trodden down with the dirt showing through along the tracks and not too much lying on the exposed rocks. It feels cold and bleak and wintry without the slightest hint of wonderland.

It's good but it's not as good as the snow zones in Secret World, Carpathian Fangs especially. At least, I don't think it is. It's been a while since I was there. Maybe I'm remembering it as better (or more realistic) than it was.

So, yes, I was thinking about logging into SWL just to go check. Probably wouldn't have done anything about it. Even if I'd wanted to do a post comparing the two, I could just have flicked through the hundreds of screenshots I've already taken there. No need to go to the trouble of patching up, logging in, finding the right portal in The Agartha and running halfway across the map to get a photo.

And I doubt I'd have done the post, anyway. I've posted about my feelings for snow before. I don't have anything new to say (Although when has that ever stopped me?)

It's likely nothing would have come of it, if it hadn't been for that news item, telling me I couldn't log in so I shouldn't bother trying. I tried to ignore it all day but by teatime I couldn't resist checking to see if the issue had been fixed. 

According to the update at MOP, Funcom was "looking into it". At least that suggested it wasn't intentional. They hadn't just shut the game down and hoped no-one would notice. 

I found my login details and clicked on the icon on my desktop. The patcher went through its usual four-stage routine, downloaded a few files, then handed me on to the authentication server and thence to the login server... and that was as far as I got. 

I could have left it at that. I'm sure Funcom will get things sorted eventually. They'll give us some notice before they sunset the game. They're that professional, at least.

In a way, it might be for the best if they did close the servers and call it a day. I would lay good odds that The Secret World and/or Secret World Legends would be back in emulated form in short order and I'd also bet that whoever set that up would do a better job of curating the IP than Funcom have.

For now, though, Secret World Legends is still there, even if no-one can log in. And so is the original game. I'd forgotten about that but the MOP article confirms "the original Secret World server is still up and operating", unaffected by whatever's troubling the newer version of the game.

I'm sure everyone can guess what's coming next...

 

It really wasn't that difficult. I found this post on the forums which explains the process in five very straightforward steps. I added a sixth, almost certainly unecessary, step of my own by copying the entire SWL directory and making my changes there. It was 50GB so I wouldn't recommend it. I'll be deleting mine when I'm done.

Once I'd gotten the config file sorted all there was to do was run the patcher again. There was a gig and a half of data to download, which went very slowly. I wrote most of this post while I was waiting. Other than that, the whole process was perfectly smooth.

It's been many years since I last saw my TSW character. I tried to remake her as closely as possible in SWL but I can see now that I didn't come all that close. My SWL character's something of a show-off. The original's more introverted, less flashy, a little bleak.

The other character on the account, who I remember making but not playing, seems to have suffered some kind of identitiy crisis in the long lay-off. Whoever they were, all that remains is a string of numbers and a blank space.

Once in game I spent an inordinate amount of time fiddling with the settings, trying to get the controls to work. Unfortunately, the Nvidia GeForce Experience overlay, which I didn't ask for and can't seem to switch off, overwrites TSW's native controls. That's why the screenshots in this post aren't very good. 

It also took me the best part of half an hour to find the right portal in the Agartha to get to Carpathian Fangs so I could get a few pictures of snow. When I got there, winter seemed nowhere near as well-rendered as I remembered but there were a lot of werewolves wandering around so I was a little on edge. I may not have been appreciating the finer details.

All in all it was an interesting little expedition. It was very nice to reacquaint myself with my original character but somewhat to my surprise what that did was demonstrate that, emotionally, I've moved on. She didn't feel like my "real" character. I could sense an absence. She didn't seem to be quite there in the way my SWL character is.

That might all change if I were to play her regularly but there's precious little chance of that. It's good to know that I can drop in for a visit if I feel the urge, all the same. 

And who knows? One day it may be the only Secret World game left. I wonder which has the more players these days? There were several people in the Agartha as I was bumbling around and there was some activity in general chat. I'd log into SWL to compare but, oh, wait, that's right! I can't.

Let's hope Funcom get that fixed and soon.

Everybody Has To Sleep Sometime

As Tremayne was kind enough to explain in the comments to Friday's post, you can already sit in chairs and sleep in beds in New World. Look, there I am up above, doing it. The animation is really neat. too (Says Gidget.). My character swings up, rolls over and drapes her arm across her eyes. And her head aligns exactly with the pillow. Worth making a bed for. 

Keen readers with sharp memories may remember me mentioning long ago that I'd taken the non-binary option at character creation and chosen the pronoun "they". And so I did. So why am I now calling my character "she" and "her"? Because the choice I made didn't seem to carry over into the game in any meaningful sense and I absent-mindedly forgot about it and now I'm kinda used to thinking of her as she. Not very good of me or Amazon, really. Must try harder.

Since I'm really pushed for time today, in celebration of being able to lie down, here's a small selection of songs about beds and sleeping, all pulled from my own collection, plus a few pretty scenes from the game for those that don't share my tastes in music, probably a wide demographic, I'm betting

Anyway, here we go..

That was Trementina with the extremely apposite Fall Into Your Bed. I think they're from Chile. Definitely South America.

Next up, Boyskout with Back To Bed. Back? I haven't even gotten up yet! They're from California, if it matters. Now I suppose I'm going to have to say where everyone's from.

 

Lucy Rose knows the best place to be be. Middle of the Bed. This is from 2011, when there used to be a lot of this kind of thing going on. Probably still is. I hope so. She's from England, by the way. I wish I'd never mentioned where Trementina were from now. I'm going to stop. You can guess the rest. Or look them up like I had to, the ones I didn't already know.

Wow, that's a bright part of the forest! Okay, time for one of my favorite bands of the last decade, back when they were known as Peggy Sue and the Pirates rather than just Peggy Sue and when there were just two of them rather than three. I cannot explain why none of their albums, all of which I bought on release, made it into my Pitchfork 25 list. Some things are just ineffable, like this performance.

They told you what that one was right at the start but in case you weren't listening it was "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" aka "In The Pines" by Leadbelly.

That was a cover and so is this. Rod Stewart had a penchant for peculiar story songs. I always liked the way the lyrics of some of them seemed to undermine his image. He never seemed to care. Young Turks was one of those. Here it is in a mildly jazzy version by the charmingly-named Caroline Smith and the Good Night Sleeps.

 

And to close, who better than Suzanne Vega, telling us she's Tired of Sleeping.  

Thanks, Suzanne. I can take a hint.

You Say You Need It But You Don't

Over the years I've heard a lot about gaming backlogs and Buyer's Regret. The two phenomena could be seen as twisted mirror images of each other, one reflecting gluttony, the other its inevitable corollary, indigestion. Not sure how a mirror would reflect indigestion and frankly I don't want to try. Let's move on.

As I was reading Asmiroth's post on the misleading nature of sales and remembering Azuriel's analysis of the even more duplicitous pricing of expansion tiers, I couldn't help noticing both were describing problems quite different from those I have, when trying to decide whether or what to buy. I rarely get to the point of considering the comparative value of games or expansions. Mostly I get stuck on the existential question of need versus desire.

The easiest choice, by far, is whether or not to buy expansions for games I'm already playing. Why wouldn't you? Well, as it happens, Syp makes quite a good case for why you might not. You may already be so far behind the curve that expansion content won't be relevant or even accessible. You might not want to jump straight past a whole load of stuff you haven't seen, even if the expansion does come with a boost designed to let you do just that.

Mostly, though, if you've been playing an mmorpg for a while, you'll probably be ready for an infusion of new content. Ponying up for the latest expansion is a pretty straightforward decision. Which version of the expansion to get, though? That can be more of a poser.

Like Azuriel, under normal circumstances the base expansion is all I need. I don't generally play cutting-edge content. I don't raid or do Mythic/Heroic/Big Trouser dungeons. It's a safe bet that I won't need the pay-to-win bonuses some companies roll into their higher price tiers. 

As for the cosmetics, do me a favor! When I find a look I like, I stick with it for years. I'm not that target market. And anyway, like I'm going to pay real money for imaginary hats! Pshaw!

That's the "Need" part of my brain kicking in there, by the way. It talks like that, miserable bastard that it is. The "Desire" part is jumping up and down, squealing "Oooh! Shiny!" Sometimes it's hard to ignore but I manage.

Once in a while the extras in a deluxe expansion pack will come so close to having genuine, practical applications I'll teeter on the edge. Value for money is a nebulous concept at the best of times, slipperier still when what you're thinking of buying is intangible but things like character slots, inventory space and cash shop money at least make a direct comparison between cost and uitility feasible.

And yet, to date, I have never succumbed. I have never bought anything other than the base expansion for any mmorpg and I can't say I regret it. Is there anything I could have had, the lack of which has made me unhappy? Nope. Nothing. I obviously can't even remember what any of the things I didn't buy were. Who could? Money well unspent.

So, with the glossy brochure firmly folded to the page that says "Cheapskate Edition", the baseline for the decision on whether to buy an expansion would seem to be "Am I going to play it right away?". That's a very easy question to answer. If I'm already playing the game at least a few times each week then yes, of course I am.

Around this point I probably ought to talk about pre-orders but I'm not gonna. Different topic altogether. Let's leave it at "Whether?" and "What?" and forget about "When?" For our purposes "when" means "at launch".

There is one more wrinkle to straighten out before we move on from expansions to whole games. The account issue. For a lot of people it won't be relevant but for all kinds of half-assed reasons I frequently find myself with more than one account for a game and what's worse I play them, too. 

I have seven Daybreak accounts for example, three Guild Wars 2 accounts, two Lord of the Rings Online accounts (Might be three...), three Battlenet/World of Warcraft accounts... I have, quite literally, more mmorpg accounts than I could hope to remember.

Usually I would only want to expand one of them for each game but there have been exceptions. Two of my three GW2 accounts have Heart of Thorns for the very good reason that I liked it so much I wanted a second go. Only one has Path of Fire because even once was one time too many.

Even with all that mental clutter, it's clearly not a difficult choice. In the end I buy the expansion and play it. Then I either like it or I don't but it's done and I accept it. For given values of  both "Need" and Desire" the scales are balanced. It's over. We move on.

What about those sales, then? Didn't come into the picture for expansions, did they? Expansions never go on sale until the next one's in sight, looming over the horizon, casting an ominous shadow. De facto, by that point I've either bought it long ago or I've lost all interest.

New games, though, that's different. Every one is a unique opportunity to start over. Each purchase is a discrete and separate process. God, the thinking! It hurts my head!

Here's the thing: I always want new games, just like everyone else. I'm not an android. No, really, I took the test and passed. (I failed this one, though, so who really knows? Who ever really knows? Eh? EH??)

Ahem. Yes, I read about games and think "That looks like it might be fun. I'd play that." Sometimes I go so far as to put those games on a wishlist. And then I don't buy them.

Why don't I buy them? It's simple. Games do not come with an allotment of extra hours with which to play them. If it says a game takes on average thirty hours then you have to supply all thirty of them from your own stock. And you probably already had plans.

I do, anyway. The key time for me to buy a new game is when I've run out of old ones. That sometimes happens but not really all that often because mmorpgs are stretchy. However much time you have they tend to expand to fill it. It's why they're so very good for people with more time than they have things to do, that being the genre's core demographic.

I have more time than I have things to do, being semi-retired, but it still doesn't mean I want to spend all of it playing games. For a start I have this blog to write. It doesn't write itself, you know, though I'm sure it often seems like it must. And having bloated out to a post every day means even less time for playing games.

It's awkward. I feel, sometimes, as though I might be neglecting the games I already have. Not like neglecting a puppy. That would be terrible. Games are not puppies. They don't get mopey and fractious and have dull coats if you don't play with them enough. They just sit on your hard drive or in their cases, silent, inert. Looking at you.

I can't not know they're there. (I've stopped talking in the second person, you'll notice. It wasn't fooling anyone.) There's a nagging feeling and it gets uncomfortable, which is how we end up here with posts like this one. 

Luckily, it only takes a quick hour or two and I can happily forget about a game for months. Years, sometimes. Or that's how it goes with mmorpgs. With single-player games that have a beginning, a middle and an end it's more problematic. Those, I feel more of a responsibility towards.

Let's look at those four games up at the top, the ones on my wishlist that went on sale this weekend.

Swords of Legend Online is a an mmorpg I don't particularly want to play and it's quite expensive even at 40% off, considering it's not all that different to any number of Free to Play titles. I certainly don't need it and I don't even want it all that much, either. I'd kind of like to have it installed on my hard drive so I'd know I could play it if I felt like it but I know I wouldn't feel like it so what would be the point?

Wildermyth is the one everyone goes on about how great it is. Terrible syntax there, which I'd have to say is what runs through my mind every time I read a post about Wildermyth and imagine the character dialogue being read out loud. People say how immersive and convincing it is but the screenshots tell another story. 

All of which, ironically, makes me even keener to try it for myself to see what it is that I'm not getting. I really wanted to buy Wildermyth yesterday and the reason I didn't is because if i did I knew I'd start playing it immediately. I'd then either find it was as good as everyone says, in which case I'd be playing nothing else for days, or I'd find it wasn't and I'd feel I'd wasted my money.

Since I neither want to derail my current activities right now nor feel like I've tossed £14.61 down a FOMO drain I've decided to leave Wildermyth where it is, on my wishlist. We'll see what combination of circumstances and price cuts it takes to shunt it onto my hard drive. Pretty sure half price would do it.

Lake I liked when I played the demo but it's quite slow and quite.. I don't know, I want to say "difficult" but that's wrong. It's not easy to play, I think that's what I mean. I found I had to pay attention. If I found it a little draining in a demo, would I want a whole game of it? Not sure. And that discount is pitiful. Why even bother? So, definitely don't need, not even sure I want. Easy skip.

Lastly, Sable. I liked the demo a lot. I liked the look of it, I liked the music, I liked the setting and the characters and the writing. The gameplay was acceptable. Not exactly riveting but didn't need to be. Of the four, this is definitely the the one I want most.

A third off is a substantial discount, too. Substantial but not sufficient. I can tell you from decades in retail that at a third off you're pushing people who were definitely going to buy to buy now but you aren't pushing people who were maybe going to buy to buy at all. I was maybe going to buy. I still am. At 50% off I might be nudged. At 33% I'll stick, thanks.

On the last paragraph, I think we may as well define "people who were definitely going to buy" as people who've decided they need. Obviously they don't. No-one needs a video game. (Although maybe we should avoid absolutes. You might not think anyone needs Walkers oven-baked sea salt flavor crisps but you would be mistaken.)

My problem is that I'm perhaps too good at knowing what I need. Or maybe I'm too precise. Too specific. Too hardline. Or maybe I'm just too weird about it.

I mean, apparently I needed to spend two hours writing this when I could have been playing New World or even Wildermyth, had I bought it, because look, here's some time I could have borrowed that would never have been missed. Clearly I have my priorities entirely straight, no doubt about that, none at all.

Anyway, I'm glad we could have this talk. It's cleared a lot of things up for me. (It hasn't.) Let's do it again sometime soon. (Let's not. Really, let's not.)

Roll on the Boxing Day sales!

Home, At Last

When I decided to take a tour of the housing options across Aeternum, back at the begining of October, I'd already spent some time raising my standing in Everfall, the town where I originally planned on living. Once I'd seen the rest of the options I decided on a change of location. Mourningdale was the place for me. I never thought it would be six weeks before I'd be ready to move in.

At the time I was level 26 with five and a half thousand coin in the bank (Or in my pockets. There is no banking system in New World.) This morning, just about to ding fifty-three, I finally reached my goal, Admired in Mourningdale, Standing 20. The Mourningdale Residents Association had passed me fit to buy a Tier 3 house in their fine city but did I still want to live there?

It's been a long haul. First I had to level up far enough to be allowed to take quests and missions in Mourningdale. That took a couple of weeks and even when I was deemed ready the options were few.

All I could find were a couple of side-quests and the bare minimum of town board tasks, the basic upkeep ones that give minimal reward. No-one was upgrading Mourningdale because no-one lives there. Or goes there. Or knows it exists.

Because no-one was upgrading the town, crafting to earn Standing wasn't an option. The crafting stations weren't high enough to make the items I needed to level up my Armorsmithing, for which I had a long and very rewarding questline. I had to go to Brightwood or Everfall to do that, meaning all the hundreds of gloves I made went towards raising my Standing in those towns. I'm 24 in Everfall now.

Even when I could get quests in Mourningdale, I often couldn't do them. At the minimum level for the territory I was only barely able to do the easiest, ones where I had to find a single item in one chest or kill a handful of mobs I could pick off, carefully, one at a time.  

The near-total lack of town projects meant all I could really do were faction missions and at first I didn't even have the reputation to get those. When I did, they were frequently in places I couldn't fight my way into without ending up back in Mourningdale with a repair bill. One quest that I picked up weeks ago I was only able to finish last night and another remains in my book still. Padre Nuñez - I will have my revenge!

Over the weeks I spent much more time out of Mourningdale than in it. Almost everywhere else was more fun to be. I got to the point where I could live pretty much anywhere I chose. The only towns that wouldn't be happy to have me move in were First Light, Cutlass Keys and Reekwater. I can even live in Ebonscale Reach now and I might, too.

Still, I did spend enough time in Mourningdale to get to know it pretty well. After a while I began to have some doubts. On a fine day with the winter sun shining, Mourningdale has an almost ethereal beauty. It was like that the day I first saw it and after the dank swamps and stifling tropical shores of the south it felt clean, clear, fresh and fine. It seemed like there was nowhere I'd rather settle down.

Spend a few days there, though, and you'll come to know Mourningdale's true nature. It's bleak. It's cold. It rains all the fricken' time!

Before I got to Mourningdale I  wondered if New World even had weather. I'm not sure I've seen so much as a shower in the southern territories. Once you get into the mountains, though, it's either snowing or raining every day. 

In Mourningdale it's never snow. Snow would be a treat. In Mourningdale there are storms, one after another. Curtains of rain sweep across the harsh landscape, gales bow the trees. At night, even with the moon, it's hard to see anything. Travelling through Mourningdale can be a wet, cold, miserable experience.

There were times when I wondered if I wanted to live in Mourningdale at all. It wasn't just the weather, grim though it often felt. What would my prospects be, stuck up there in the far north with the wild, empty sea to the east, uninhabited Edengrove to the west and nothing but swamp and pirates to the south?  

The saving grace, looking to the future, is the road that heads yet deeper into the north. When New World expands and more of Aeternum opens up, that's one possible route we'll take. Expansion in that direction could turn Mourningdale into a gold rush town, some day.

That's what I told myself as I dug around in my bags for the money. With the first-time buyer's discount, the Tier 3 house I wanted cost me 7,500 coin. I could afford it. I'd saved up more than twenty thousand over the long wait.

There was never any doubt which house I was going to pick. The house itself is the main reason I've stuck with Mourningdale despite the obvious drawbacks. I've taken a good look around dozens of houses in all of the towns and there's not one that I like better, not even the Tier 4 mansions I've seen.

My house stands right beside the North gate. It's three storeys high with a long front porch facing onto the street. The back of the house overlooks the river and on the second floor there's a balcony that hangs above the water.

From the balcony, there's a fine view of the foothills, the beginning of the mountains that rise up behind Mourningdale to the North. If you turn and look the other way you can see the whole town as it sprawls along the river. If it's not raining it makes a perfect place to lean on the rail and think about life.

What if it is raining, though? A balcony's not much use in the wet. Ah, no, but a huge picture window over the street, enclosed and cosy in a room with a blazing log fire - that's perfect. And that's just what my house has.

What's more, unlike some of the other houses I inspected, you can actually stand in the enclosed window and look out. Others have some sort of invisible wall that holds you back but not mine. Once I get an armchair in there it's going to be delightful on a winter's evening. Or it will be if Amazon ever add "sitting in chairs". They will. Every mmorpg does, eventually. 

Once I'd handed over my money, I finally got to play around with the decoration system. At first sight it seems okay. No hooks, which is good. I didn't have the furniture to hand to test placement options beyond hanging a fishing net and some crossed oars on the wall outside, over the porch but it looked fine. Better than some.. 

My next job is going to be running round the whole map, retrieving the various bits and pieces of furniture I've left in storage. There's a whole Furnishing craft that I haven't touched yet. The only items I have, I got as drops. I rarely spot them when they appear, just find them lurking at the bottom of my bag when I grub around in there, looking for things I can salvage or store to make me less encumbered.

As I've wandered around various players' homes, ghostly and unseen in the weirdly creepy implementation the game uses for visiting, I've observed how some folks have made their houses into comfortable, convincing homes, while others have just piled anything and everything in a heap on the floor. I do not intend to be one of those people, the pilers. I have some decorating to do . And probably a lot of trees to chop.

This morning's was a very significant session in another way, too. Dinging 53, as I did minutes after buying my house, meant I could finally start to wear the Marauder faction armor I've been able to buy since I was in the mid-40s. 

The rate at which you gain reputation with your faction as compared to when the game expects you to do it seems way off. I already maxed out Tier IV, Destroyer a level ago, long before I could equip most of the gear it brings. I now have the quest for the final tier, Commander, but even if I could kill the boss the quest sends me to fight (I don't know how tough she is. I haven't tried her yet.) there wouldn't be much point. That set of armor is flagged for Level 60s.

The important thing is that now I have a new set of goals. In a sandpark game like New World, goals are crucial. Without a clear idea of what you want to achieve, and achieve in the immediate future, not some notional moment far off in time, the whole thing can start to feel formless and unsatisfying.  

I want to learn how to make furniture so I can decorate my house. Pretty straightforward and highly achievable. Plus I want to mess around in some lower-level areas for a while as a relief from constantly knocking my head against mobs two or three levels above me. I think I've earned myself a few sessions of goofing around. 

And when I've had enough of kicking back, there's a faction quest waiting for me and level 60 beyond that. Still got a ways to go, me and this game, before we need to take a break, I think.

Hope You Like Our New Direction.

Here's a question we've all heard before. Should game developers tailor their games to the wishes, desires and behaviors of players, hoping to keep everyone happy by giving them what they want or should they follow their own vision and make the games they want to make, trusting in the quality of their work to draw and hold an audience?

From the end of the original closed alpha, Amazon Games have come down very firmly in the latter camp. Five years ago they announced they were going to make a "huge open-ended sandbox game set in archaic, seventeenth century colonial America" with free-for-all PvP. They said so, right here.

By the time the finished game reached us back at the tail end of this summer it had become a sandpark mmorpg with opt-in PvP, quest hubs, a story and full deniability on the embarassing colonial thing. They kept the cool armor and that was about all.

The closed alpha, about which we are still not supposed to talk, went rather well. The game looked good, played smoothly and by and large people seemed to have a good time. The territorial PvP was particularly popular. 

What a lot of people didn't seem so keen on was the almost total lack of anything to do other than roam around the woods and fight each other over forts. In the video linked above you can hear one of the developers proudly announce "the players are our content". It turned out the players had other ideas.

Over several years the game went through several iterations, each the result of a new round of exhaustive testing and feedback. In direct contrast to many similar projects over recent years, all of New World's test phases were genuine attempts to find out what worked and what didn't, both technically and conceptually.

It's long been the complaint of players testing in-development games that developers have set ideas on how things should go, that feedback is ignored, that the whole thing is really a marketing excercise not a real development process. New World, demonstrably, was not put together that way.

 

Feedback, of course, is only one source of data available to the developers of a new mmorpg. For a very long time now developers have also had access to extensive metrics that let them know what the players are doing to an extraordinary degree of detail. As evidenced by the occasional infographic that comes out of the marketing department, they can tell you exactly how many trees were chopped, how many boars skinned, how many hours spent crafting gloves.

What they may not be able to say with anything like the same certainty is why. It's long been a topic of debate in these circles whether developers understand that just because players spend a huge proportion of their time doing a thing doesn't mean it's a thing they like to do. 

A slavish dedication to metrics has the potential to lead development into a death spiral as the game seeks to give players more and more of what it is they're already doing, not understanding the reason they're doing it is to try to get to the point where they can stop. That's how endgames get so grindy no-one wants to play any more.

Conversely, if developers just pay attention to what players say they'd like to be doing with their time, there's the huge risk that they'll find themselves catering to desires that are both unrealistic and unreal. There's a long history of players insisting they want things to be a certain way and then complaining bitterly when they get exactly what they asked for. 

At this point it might sound as though I'm suggesting developers should ignore what their players are telling them and stick to their vision regardless of the vitriol. I'm not. That's how you get WildStar or, it seems, the current version of EVE. 

It comes down, I suppose, to intelligent analysis. Metrics, feedback and all the other sources of information are just data points. Someone has to collate and correlate and then come to a conclusion.

 

Whether that's happening at Amazon Games only those inside the company can say. When specific changes get made, developers do sometimes show their working but when it's more of a general course correction explanations tend to be thin on the ground.

There were some quite detailed explanations on show to back up the deeply unpopular changes to the way farming Elite chests in endgame areas was nerfed into oblivion but the reasoning behind the latest broad assertion on the direction the game will be taking comes with some vague handwaving and that's about all.

“Our goal is to keep responding to what players ask for, and feedback from players will continue to help shape New World’s direction.”

says Scott Lane, a "game director" at AGS in a recent interview with PCGamesN. 

And what they're asking for, it seems, is more solo content. 

“We know we have some work to do to improve the experience in the early-mid game (especially for solo players) and have already begun working on content to improve that experience.”

Said improvements focus on more "story-led quests" and alternate, less social ways to complete the ones already there.

“We are also continuing to add more quests for the early and mid-game players. New quest types are being added, and they will help unfold more of the mysteries of Aeternum. We understand that some players would like to focus more on solo gameplay, and we are doing more to make that viable through alternate quest lines, and more solo-supported gameplay.”

Whether you see this as a welcome and much-needed broadening of the game's accessibility and appeal or a disappointing betrayal of what credibility the game had left will no doubt depend heavily on your personal preferences and playstyle. Personally, the more soloable the game becomes, the more I'll enjoy it. 

If they'd just remove the dungeon stages from the main questline that would be a start. I'm all for grouping but not when it suddenly pops up in what was previously solo content, landing as a roadbock to progress. 

 

Despite my preferences, I'm a little surprised at this change of emphasis. New World is already a pretty solo-friendly game, at least as I understand the concept but then I forged my conception of solo play in EverQuest around the turn of the millennium so my definition may be a little out of date. If by "solo gameplay" Amazon means equal access to equivalent content for everyone, regardless of playstyle then, yes, I suppose there is some work to be done.

The danger is, there's an extent to which all of this is starting to look more like a social experiment than a game. The disenfranchised ffa pvp players are already kicking off about dedicated PvP servers (Which aren't coming. Yet) It's fine to course-correct but how many times can you swing the wheel without everyone falling over the side? 

New World was a big hit at launch, challenging concurrency records and hitting the headlines even outside the genre press but now all the traffic seems to be going the other way. From a peak not far short of a million players online at the same time, New World now looks to have shed almost all of them, bumping along at a mere... erm... hundred thousand or so - putting it still very solidly in the top ten most-played games on Steam.

If that's a disaster I imagine it's one a lot of developers would be very happy to own. As I've said before, timescales on all of this seem extraordinarily telescoped to me. For some reason there seems to be an expectation that to be deemed successful, new mmorpgs need to both find and hold a large audience from day one. Any slippage is immediately touted as the end of the game. Get out now, while you still can!

That's not how mmorpgs work. For every Tabula Rasa, which lasted less than a year and a half, there are dozens of Flyffs, the NA version of which will celebrate its sixteenth anniversary on Christmas Day. Even Wildstar lasted nearly four and a half years.

 

Amazon's extreme willingness to respond to player feedback looks likely to make the ongoing development of New World a bumpier ride than most. We can expect any number of lurches and mis-steps as the developers try to tack into the prevailing wind of player feedback. If there's one thing you can rely on players to be it's incoherent, inconsistent and contradictory in their desires. Okay, three things.

The correct response, in my opinion, isn't to jump ship but to go along for the ride. When the ship seems to have docked at an unfriendly harbor, maybe stay in your cabin until it ups anchor and heads for somewhere more clement. When it arrives there, go ashore and make the most of it. It probably won't last.

For the most part, these games don't go away. Neither do they stay the same. Sometimes they feel welcoming and fun, sometimes they feel alienating and unpleasant. Take the smooth, leave the rough. There are lots of other games. Go play something else then come back when your sub-demographic is being pampered. It will be, eventually.

I'm still having fun in New World although I'm only feeling the need to spend a couple of hours there most days. For me, the announcement of a renewed focus on solo play means I'm likely to stay longer and play more but it will, naturally, depend on just what that new, solo content involves. 

It's not as though the lack of stuff to do on my own was ticking me off to begin with. Other things annoy me a lot more, like the lack of playable races and the non-existent character customization. There's plenty Amazon could add or change that would excite me more than some new solo quests but for now I'll take what I can get.

I'm On A Train... I'm Still On A Train... I'm On A Different Train... I'm Still On A Train...

I finally did it!  I finally bought something off my Steam wishlist! It was the cheapest thing on there and it had to go to half-price before I'd bite but apparently I do have a price sensitivity trigger after all. Within thirty seconds of reading the email telling me it was on sale for 50% off, I'd bought it.

I can still claim I only buy games I'm going to play, at least. Within a couple of hours I'd started playing it. Or maybe I mean watching it. No, listening to it...

All of the above. The Longest Road on Earth isn't exacly what you'd call a game. Reviews on the Steam store page, where it has a Very Positive rating, albeit from just a hundred and six reviews, say things like "This game is like an interactive screensaver" and "It's hard to really call The Longest Road on Earth a game". And those are the raves.

My favorite negative comment was "Great music but I don't understand the point of this game and by that I don't mean that I'm not sure what's going on in this game but why would anyone play such games." Tibore has a point. The music is great.

It reminds a litle of The Papertiger Sound and it's so good, in fact, that if I'd heard it first as an album it would have made my Pitchfork 25 longlist. Or would it?

That's a question I'm never going to be able to answer. The whole experience of hearing those songs is so inextricably linked to watching those images and also to pressing those keys that to judge the elements separately makes no more (or less) sense than singling out the individual instruments in a recording and rating them in isolation.

Which, of course, is something we do all the time. Or I do, anyway. Like, what would Sun60's Take Me Home be without that trumpet solo? I guess I could pick the fabric apart and talk about the graphics and the gameplay and the sonics independently. I might, yet, if I ever get around to a full review.

I think I won't, though. I think I'll stick with the gestalt. I think that's what matters here.

The first comment I quoted above, the one about the "interactive screensaver", gets very close to what The Longest Road feels like to play (or play with) but what I was thinking as I watched and clicked and listened along last night was "this feels like I'm directing a music video". I'm guessing there'd be a market for an app that let you do that although I'm not sure it would need to be a "game".

Sometimes there didn't seem to be a lot of direction needed. The action (I use the word in its loosest possible sense.) is so perfectly synched to the music that even though I had no clear idea in some scenes what I was expected to do, whatever I did seemed to fit. It's strangely empowering. It feels almost like dancing, only if you could.

It's such a strong meld that on the odd occasion I couldn't quite find the rhythm it felt frustrating. There were a couple of scenes where I wasn't entirely sure whether I should be doing something or just sitting, watching and listening. 

That. It turned out to be that. One thing the game does that you only really ever see in experimental works and art installations is ask you to experience something from a perspective other than your own, for longer than feels comfortable, making no attempt to entertain you while it's happening.

I played for an hour and there were several train journeys, two of which asked me to do nothing much other than sit and wait until the train got to where it was going. Once the ticket collector came by. Slowly. Then he came back. The other time, not even that. 

In both cases I could do just one thing while I waited: change my point of view from mine to the character's. In one train carriage the character put her her elbows on the table and her head in her hands and all I could see from her perspective was the lamp on the table. In the other the character sat upright facing the other side of the carriage and all I could see through his eyes was the opposite window and the hanging straps.

Just that. For about three minutes. While a song plays. A whole song, start to finish.

When one of the Steam reviewers says "this is not a game for eveyone" they're really not kidding. Mostly I love it but in those extended train journeys even I began to feel the lack of agency. 

I'm fairly sure, though, that in those scenes lack of agency is precisely the point. The characters are trapped in situations they can't escape, doing things they find emotionally harrowing or soul-destroying. They can't change their perspective or take control of their lives so why should you think you should be any different?

Or at least that might be what's happening. It's hard to be sure. The Longest Road is not a narrative-driven experience. There are stories being told but what they are is mostly up to you, the player, to interpret. Or invent. Or imagine. 

As yet, I'm not even sure the scenes always happen in the same order. I think they do but I've only played the original demo and the first hour of what is generally reckoned to be a three-hour game. In last night's session I remembered many but by no means all of the scenes from the demo I played back in February.

Even though the demo only lasts twenty minutes, there are screenshots in the old post of things I didn't see when I played for an hour last night. I'm curious to know if there's a random factor or whether it's just that the demo is really a trailer, a few of the best bits stitched together, not, as I thought at the time, the whole of the first story.

I'll get the chance to find out soon enough. The main reason I played for an hour last night, rather than the thirty minutes I intended, wasn't because of how wrapped-up in the experience I was but because I couldn't find any way to stop. The controls are the very definition of minimal - left and right arrow to move, space (or mouseclick) to choose an action. Or, I should say, choose whether to act. The only choice, ever, is Act or Do Not. Yoda would love it.

Similarly, you either play or don't play. There didn't seem to be any way of saving the game that I could find. Hitting Escape pauses the game and gives you access to a couple of icons but all you can do with them is adjust the volume or close the game. I closed the game.

 

Afterwards I noticed that when you very first start there's an icon of an old-fashioned floppy disk. It seems to be crossed-through by default but you can uncross it. I am guessing that might relate to some sort of Save function. I cleared it for next time but as yet I haven't been back to see what effect that's had.

I'm not sorry to have to start over. The whole thing could stand some poking. I'm very unclear on just what can be done. I was wondering even as I was playing what would happen if I just let a character stand in the middle of a scene indefinitely. Would the game move on to another when the song ended? Would the song start again from the beginning? Is the music designed, like most game soundtracks, to loop indefinitely without making it obvious that's what it's doing?

And the animations and the vignettes - are they always the same or do they pull from a pool of possibilites, puzzle pieces that slot together like Lego to give an unending impression of mundane, quotidian, workaday existence? That would make the whole thing more than I imagined it was. Or possibly, as yet another Steam reviewer would have it, "Beautifully mundane... But nothing more.".

In the end, I'm not sure it matters. It's a mood piece. It's a series of images set to music. It's a suite of songs with pictures. It's a something to do with your hands while you listen to an album. It's a place to let your eyes rest while you think about the lyrics. It's an experience.

If and when I work out what that experience is I'll be sure to come back and let you know. Better yet, go try it for yourself, then come back and tell me. It's on sale at half-price (£3.99/$4.99) until November 24.

Nine Pictures

I did warn you this would happen. It's eight in the evening, I haven't even logged in to do my Guild Wars 2 dailies yet, let alone anything more interesting and yet I still don't want to skip a day, so here comes something I prepared earlier. Although "prepared" may  be stretching a point a little.

I was curious how Artflow would interpret some of my favorite fictional characters. My first attempt, which was more of a title than a character, came out rather well, if you think Uncle Wiggly was an elderly fisherman rather than an elderly rabbit. Also I just now realize I spelled his name wrong.

After that debacle I tried just putting in the character names but I didn't much like the results. Then it occured to me to try adding the name of an artist to use their style as a kind of filter. The AI seems pretty well-versed in that sort of thing.

I had a brief think about who I could try. I'd already done a few pop stars as they might look if David Hockney had done their portraits, as indeed he could easily have done but I for some reason the AI seemed to think Hockney's defining trope was making people look like they'd fallen asleep in the Californian sun while lounging around the pool in his Los Angelean home.

That didn't seem like it was going to work for the pasty, New York intellectuals I had in mind. I toyed with Warhol but it seemed a little too on the nose. Rothko seemed like he might be interesting but only in a metaphysical fashion. I couldn't see how it would actually bring anything to the experiment other than another color wash.

While I was trying to come up with something better, Roy Lichtenstein popped into my mind, as he so often does if I start thinking randomly about art. Not that I'm a particular fan of his work or even of Pop Art in general, although obviously I like it well enough, who doesn't? It's more that he's so brash and loud he tends to push his way to the front.

I took a couple of shots at it to see what popped up and they weren't at all bad. They might have been even better if I'd spelled the artist's name right. I sense a theme developing here...

I find it fascinating how consistent they are. They really do look as though they'd been painted by the same artist. I'm not sure that artist would be Roy Lichtenstein but I guess it could have been Roy Leichtenstein.

They didn't look anything like the versions of the characters in my head, though. Phoebe is too old and also far too sophisticated. Seymour looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger in drag. Holden looks the best of the three but I always imagined him to be a lot thinner in the face. The hair and the sullen, defeated-yet-confrontational expression are pretty close, though.

Just then, probably because I'd been talking about her earlier that day, I thought of Cindy Sherman. At this point I'd dearly love to just let that lie there while I bask in it. I'd love to be thought of the kind of person who has casual conversations about Cindy Sherman over afternoon tea. 

What actually happened was that Mrs Bhagpuss and I watched an old episode of Pointless on YouTube and there was a question where you had to name a female American photographer from a picture. Not one of her pictures, a picture of her.  I've already forgotten who it was. It might have been Dorothea Lange. I know at the time I could only think of Diane Arbus and I knew it wasn't her. 

Anyway, it started me thinking about Cindy Sherman, who I like enough to have a picture by, up on the wall in a room downstairs, cut out of a magazine and snap-framed about a quarter of a century ago. I figured she'd be worth a try.

Yeah... kinda.

As you can see I went all out for accuracy and consistency in the seeds and I damn well got it, too. What I don't think I really got, once again, were either the characters or the artist as I'd imagined them. 

I can see a touch of Cindy Sherman in the shots of Phoebe and Franny. There's a hint of that processed color I like about some of her stuff. The backgrounds also seem to have some redolence of what I remember about her work in a certain period, although I suppose that's just pure chance.

Phoebe's too old again. I think I'd have to specify her age to get anything remotely close. Other than that, and especially if she wiped off that lipstick, she's not too far out of line. Franny looks closer to my idea of her, Cindy Sherman or not, and Zooey isn't far off, either. Seymour is at least possible. I don't have a super-strong image of him to begin with, although I see him as well-built and solid with a more traditionally masculine look than the rest of the Glass family. This version is that, at least.

I can't say I have any particular notion what Buddy might look like except he sure as hell wouldn't look like he does here, where he reminds me of Hugh Laurie playing the role of a supercilious officer in a movie about the War Between the States. Not sure which side he'd be on. Maybe he's not, either.

Holden, I think, looks less like himself than he did under Lichtenstein's influence. He looks like a young Dean Martin caught in the middle of removing his stage makeup. He's got that worn-down, ready to give up look again, which is right, but this time he doesn't seem to have the energy left to be belligerent.

Anyway, there you have it, for what it's worth. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I might just have enough time before bed to get those dailies done.

I'm working again tomorrow so I may very well have to trot out the results of my attempts to actualize the main cast of C.S. Lewis's Narnia stories. There's something to look forward to, eh?

Void When Opened

Despite what I said in yesterday's post, it wasn't until this afternoon that I found time to log in to New World to see what the Void had brought. Maybe that should be "wrought". Seems more appropriately doom-laden.

I was way the hell up in the north in Mourningdale but I remembered the patch notes had said something about "a force of invading knights currently raiding Southeastern Aeternum" so I guessed I'd better head that way. I looked at the map and figured if the Varangians had come by ship (which, since Aeternum is an island, they pretty much would have had to have done) unless they had some kind of magic portal or they flew in on dragonback (by no means out of the question) presumably meant a landing somewhere in First Light.

Although that's on the same side of the map as Mourningdale, the overland route is tortuous. Since I've never seen any good reason to change my original bind point from the Monarchs Bluff inn, over to the southwest, I figured I'd recall and run across from there. That would give me a chance to kill several crows with one rock: I had a few quests to hand in at various town boards, I'd be able to get a feel for that oh-so-generous ten per cent speed buff for running on roads and I might be able to snap a shot or two of the "updated visuals" in the starting areas.

The speed buff was easy to assess. For a start there's an icon that pops up when it kicks in so you're in no doubt whether it's on or not. I think I'd know even without the visual indicator. Somewhat to my surprise, I could just about tell the difference. 

It's very much not like getting Spirit of Wolf in EverQuest, where people would routinely refuse even to set out on a long journey until they'd found someone to cast SoW on them, even if they had to pay for the privelege. I can't imagine changing my route to stay on roads just to keep the buff, not if taking a cut across country looks shorter. It's better than nothing, though.

By the time I'd reached the beach in First Light I'd seen no signs whatever of either the invading army or the supposed new eye candy. I went right to the point where you get the first quests in case "starting area" was being used in the most literal sense but nothing. If anyone knows what the changes were, please chime in. I'm not likely to go back for another look unless I know just what I'm looking for.

I had a lot more luck spotting a couple of the new mob types. The Beetle, as far as I know, is genuinely new or at least I've never seen one before. I guess there might be some in a dungeon or a very high level area. In fact, the more I think about it, the likelier that seems. 

Either that or it's a pre-existing model they never got around to using until now. I find it hard to imagine anyone would sit down at their desk at this point in production cycle and proudly announce to their co-workers "Y'know what this game really needs? Beetles!"

The other new creature I saw was the "Lost Alligator Pet". Let me parse that because it's not what you may be thinking. It's not a pet alligator that wandered off and now can't be found. It's the alligator pet belonging to an NPC who's succumbed the overwhelming sense of existential despair that comes with eternal life and has passed into the realm of The Lost. 

I guess they could have called it "Lost's Alligator Pet" to make it clearer but that just sounds wrong. Although, now I think about it, who's to say that alligators can't suffer from existential despair? Maybe it's a pet alligator that is Lost (but not "lost"). I may be overthinking this.

Two things aren't in doubt. It's clearly an alligator and it's clearly domesticated. I spotted the first one on the porch of a cabin in the woods, not somewhere you'd expect to find a wild alligator. If there was any remaining doubt, the fact that it was wearing armor and a saddle soon cleared it up.

At least I'm pretty sure it's a saddle. It's hard to see in the screenshot, where it looks as if it could be a harness. In game, though, I definitely thought it was a saddle. That would be significant because there are currently no mounts in Aeternum for either players or NPCs. The alligator I saw looked too small to be the mount for a human-sized character (even ignoring the logistics of riding a creature with a ground clearance of less than six inches) but it could be taken as a straw in the wind.

Finding nothing in First Light I decided to do a little research. I googled "Varangian Knights" and found next to nothing of any use except this YouTube video, which irritatingly doesn't feature the obligatory map shot to tell you where it was filmed.

 

Luckily, someone had already raised the question in the thread and the uploader had replied"North West of Everfall, where it is written 'Stonereach.'" That sounded odd. Everfall is pretty much in the middle of the map, so the location would be more to the southwest than the southeast. 

I opened my map and looked and stap me! Not only is there an area called Stonereach to the northwest of Everfall but there was a big, yellow quest marker right on top of it. I moused over the marker and a helpful precis of the text appeared confirming that it was indeed the breadcrumb quest for the new content.

Leaving aside the uncomfortable fact that I have apparently had my map upside down this whole time, I had also been assuming the invaders would have been added as something to keep the bored sixties occupied for a while longer. It had puzzled me a little that endgame content would be added to lower-level areas but I had literally been musing as I ran down the road about this being a good first move toward keeping all of the map in play as people stacked at the cap.

I couldn't have been more wrong. The invaders and the associated questline are wholly appropriate to the level of the area they're in. What's more, absolutely nothing in the promotional material or the patch notes suggests anything else. I'd made the whole high-level thing up out of no evidence whatsoever.

A disgruntled Abigail Rose set me to evicting the invading army from the abandoned keep from which they'd just evicted her. I approached cautiously, not knowing what to expect, only to find a bunch of level seventeens lounging around some bright yellow tents. Even though they were all wearing full plate armor they died in a hit or two. Hard to say how tough they'd be at level, although the shield-carrying guards do have a very nasty stun.

As well as killing the necessary half-dozen I also found their not-so-secret plans. These, along with several other notes and letters I read, very strongly suggest the invasion is just the start of a new, longer narrative. How long it will be before we see any of it depends on how quickly Amazon can produce new content, I guess, but it is at least a fair indication they have something in the works.

The story moves from the Keep to the coast, where the Varangians have a gaudy encampment of the ugly mustard-colored tents they favor. Keeping a low profile does not seem to feature in their agenda, whatever it is.

Disturbingly, the camp turns out be barely a stone's throw from the town of Monarchs Bluff. Had I come out of a different gate when I ported there at the beginning, I might have spotted it from the clifftop. It seems particularly brazen that the invaders would set up camp so openly right next to a major population center but as this other note I found suggests, they are neither subtle nor entirely free to make their own tactical choices.

That raises far more questions than it answers. Who is the Lord Commander? Who is the Great Lord? Are they the same person or two, separate individuals? What are they trying to find out? What is their task? Why is it so urgent? 

And why do they call themselves so many different names begining with "V"? Varangian, Varikulaki, Vulkgard. Not to mention where the hell have they come from and how did they get here? I thought the entire island of Aeternum was surrounded by storms that wrecked every ship. Come to think of it there is a wrecked ship right next to the beach camp. And it has their banners flying from the wreckage...

In common with much of the writing in New World, it piques my curiosity and makes me want to know more. I can't yet say if the quest carries on after the first step because having finished it I noticed I was at my Azoth cap and since part of the reward is 150 Azoth I'm going to have to find something useful to do with some of mine before I do the hand-in. I really hate the caps in this game.

That's going to be something for another day, maybe not until next week. It'll be too late to carry on after I finish this and I'm working all weekend. It was a fun session, though. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes next.