Jumpstyle Is Not A Crime

Since I ran up against the buffers in Nightingale I've been game-hopping like crazy. Typically, when I was spending all my time in one game, I complained about feeling trapped. Now I'm back to jumping between half a dozen games it's giving me the jitters. There's no pleasing some people.

The games I'm "playing" just now (Although that's a very fancy word for what I'm actually doing when I log into some of them.) are:

• New World
• AdventureQuest 3D
• Once Human Closed Beta 3
• EverQuest II
• Nightingale
• The Dungeon of Nahalbeuk: Amulet of Chaos

I don't have one of those fancy apps that tallies exactly how much time I spend in each of them but I can say with a fair degree of confidence that it isn't a lot. I doubt it's more than a couple of hours altogether most days.

As well as those six, I have a mental list of about twice as many games I feel I ought to be playing - or could be playing - or was in the middle of playing before I stopped for no good reason. Those include:

• Valheim
• Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit
• Tales Noir Preludes
• Imposter Factory
• Lake
• My Time At Sandrock

There are more - potentially a lot more - but that's a round dozen so I'll call it there, just so I have time to give a little gloss on each of them, starting with the ones I'm at least managing to log into once in a while:

New World - I came back for the Spring event and kind of hung around. I've been logging in most days to do the rounds of the settlements and festival camps so I can pick up my freebies, especially the tokens. I've bought some of the furniture I wanted and I have a couple more days to get the rest. I need to remember to spend everything I've earned because the event currency vanishes along with the event itself a tthe end of April.

Other than that, I've done a few quests and I feel like I might carry on and do a few more, just for the fun of it. Questing in New World is generally entertaining and I see new quest markers everywhere I go. Unfortunately, I'd need to buy the expansion to level any further and I think it's a bit steep at £25.  I'm somewhat discouraged to do too much questing while the xp goes nowhere so I'll probably shelve this one soon in anticipation of whatever the Big Announcement in June might be. Maybe that will make it feel like it's worth buying the DLC.

AdventureQuest 3D - I log in every day just to collect my three daily chests. There are two reasons I keep doing it: 1) The first chest always gives some cash shop currency and I want some for housing items and 2) AQ3D has by far the fastest login process I've ever seen. 

Seriously, it's like lightning. I wish every MMORPG was even half as fast. I just timed it and it took 28 seconds from Pressing "Play" in Steam to looking at my character in game. I can log in, get my chests and be back in Steam in under a minute although I don't usually go quite that fast. Of course, I'm not actually playing the game but there's certainly nothing being put in my way if I wanted to, which is more than I can say about a lot of games - *cough* Lord of the Rings *cough*

Once Human CB3 - I logged into this one for the first time in a couple of weeks last night and my house was gone! That was a shock. It turned out to be more of a feature than a glitch, though. It seems that if you don't log in for a while (I don't know what the time-limit is.) your house automatically gets copied and stored using the system designed for moving home. 

All you have to do to restore it is find a new spot and put down the blueprint and it magically reappears, just as it was, with all the furniture in the right place. It seems like a very ingenious solution to the endless problem all games with open-world housing have, namely absentee homeowners. This way, no-one has to look at hundreds of abandoned homes and all the best building spots can be taken by people who are going to use them.

Once Human has a lot of clever design features like that. Yesterday I ran across the game's ingenious solution to that other annoying trope of so many F2P MMORPGs, player-owned strip malls. You must have seen them; dozens, scores, hundreds of stalls put up by players to sell their goods, all crammed together in a particularly ugly form of urban blight.

In OH, players sell from pick-up trucks on which they place vending machines. These fit so well into the post-apocalyptic environment, already littered as it is with broken-down vehicles and machinery, it took me a good while to realize what they were. They also have the benefit of all being different. I haven't found out how you get one yet but it looks as though once you have one, you can furnish and decorate it like a room in your house. I wonder if you can also drive about in it? There are vehicles in the game, so I don't see why not.

I want to do at least one more full post about Once Human soonish, so I'll leave it at that for now. I don't plan on playing much more of CB3 but that's only because I want to save my enthusiasm for when the game goes live. I did do some exploring yesterday, though, which is where all the pictures in this post came from. It's fun just driving around on my motorcycle, looking at the scenery. I might do some more of that before the beta ends.

EverQuest II - I'm in and out of this one as usual. This morning I finished the Signature Questline from the current expansion, Ballads of Zimarra, which would normally be a big moment. Instead it turned out to be something of an anti-climax. 

For one thing, it's the first expansion for a long time where finishing the Sig hasn't also put me at the level cap. My Berserker is still only half way through Level 128. For another, there isn't a big, explosive ending to the storyline - just a regular fight with a named mob I wouldn't even call a Boss, followed by a hand-in, at which point you get a pop-up telling you the Sig line is finished.

It transpires there's a reason for that. The Signature Quest might have stopped but the quest faucet is still jammed full on. Other NPCs nearby immediately sprout feathers over their heads and everything carries on as before. I looked ahead on the wiki and there are tons more quests of all sorts in the expansion, many in direct line of sequence from the Sig. 

I'm not sure why they've done it this way although no doubt there are reasons. It's fine with me, anyway. Now I can just carry on chipping away until I eventually hit 130. I'd like to get it done before the Anashti Sul server arrives in June. That shouldn't be too hard...

Nightingale - As I said the other day, the changes they've made aren't significant enough to get me back playing regularly again. I would like to re-visit all the vendors so I can buy stuff directly from the UI in future, though. That would be a project in itself.

The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: Amulet of Chaos - The wild card on this list, being both the only game that's both solo and offline. It's also the one I've been playing the most. I've had a session most evenings, usually lasting a couple of hours, which is sometimes as long as it takes to finish a single battle.

I really like the gameplay. It's one of those XCom-style, turn-based, tactical group combat games, only with a high-fantasy skin. Lots of setting people on fire, knocking them down and hiding behind things until someone blows them up. All of that.

It's also - loosely - a parody and I was wary of what that might mean in the way of "humor" but it's largely okay. The voice acting is just the right side of amateurish and the jokes rise just above embarrassingly cliched. I wouldn't call it witty or original but it raises the odd smile and the characters... have character.

The game also seems to go on forever. I feel like I've been playing it for months. I know I'm doing all the side quests but I feel if I wasn't my party wouldn't be tough enough to handle the main quest so it doesn't feel like that's much of an option. Anyway, I'm enjoying it and I hope one day I might even finish it.

And now the ones I'm thinking - but not doing much - about...

Valheim  - Wilhelm writing about this one again reminds  me I ought to go back and at least take a look at the Mistlands. I had a terrible start with that biome, although from what Wilhelm says that was likely the developers' intention. 

I'm not even going to bother trying to play the game properly any more but luckily I don't need to because I've switched all the mobs to Passive, meaning I can go explore without fear of being jumpd on by a spider the size of an elephant, moving as fast as a cheetah. I mean, does that sound like fun to anyone?

I was tempted to go back and have a wander around yesterday but then I thought about the final biome, Ashlands, which is in testing now and should be going live in a matter of weeks. It probably makes more sense to wait for that and then explore both biomes together. If I do, I won't be switching mob aggro on for that either, I'll tell you that for nothing!

Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit - I bought this in January. Haven't even logged in yet. Every time I see it in my Steam Library I feel uncomfortable. Maybe I'll start on it as soon as I finish Naheulbeuk.

Tales Noir Preludes  - I bought this around the same time and played it right away. I was really enjoying it but then I stopped, for no reason I can recall. I keep meaning to carry on from where I left off but somehow I never do. Must try harder.

Imposter Factory - Much the same story for this one, although I got further before I stopped.

Lake - And this one! I have no idea why this keeps happening. I have a post in mind to write about Lake, too. Something very odd happens in it. Twice, in fact. 

I thought I might already have posted about that but search suggests I haven't. I guess I could tell you what the Odd Thing is now but there's still the outside possibility it might happen more than twice, so I really ought to finish the game first, just in case.

My Time At Sandrock - Will I ever play this damn game? I very much doubt it. 

I almost wish I hadn't bought it, now. I feel like its whole schtick has been done by so many other games, I can't really see the point. Then again, the My Time At... games probably do it better than most of them, so why play any of those, when I already have this one installed? 

And there we have it. Not so much a post, more of a to-do list. Maybe putting it all down on paper will even inspire me to get some of it done.

I kinda doubt it but you have to try something, don't you?

It's Our Birthday - We Got You Something!

While we're on the subject of unexpected emails from game developers, I got a couple more this morning. To be fair, one wasn't entirely unexpected, at least not in content; I already knew we were getting a free dinosaur mount in celebration of EverQuest II's 18th Anniversary. The unexpected part was being told about it by electronic post.

I tend to to tick all the boxes that ask me whether I'd like to be kept informed of events, offers and promotions in the games I play. I've never been one of those people who object to being handed flyers in the street or receiving so-called junk mail through my letterbox and I'm equally open to getting random emails from people trying to sell me things. 

It's all potentially interesting information as far as I'm concerned. I give it a quick glance and if it looks like there might be something in it for me I read it more thoroughly. If not, into the recycling bin it goes. I can't really see why people get so het up about it. 

There is, of course, a good ecological argument for objecting to the environmental pressure applied by the uneccessary use of energy and the wasteful consumption of resources involved in the production of printed handouts few will read and even fewer appreciate but the grounds for similar objections to the electronic distribution of publicity and advertising seem shakier. If we're going to start worrying about the hidden costs of communicating via the internet, we probably have a lot more to feel uncomfortable about than an inbox full of press releases - especially as online gamers.

Whether I ever get to see the emails I've opted in to receive is another matter entirely. As I mentioned yesterday, I have a lot of email addresses. For a while I had a policy of creating a new, game-specific email for every mmorpg I signed up to play, a plan that worked well when new mmos were relatively unusual but which ceased to be practical after the unanticipated success of World of Warcraft led to a gold-rush (Followed, appropriately, by a virtual landscape filled with crumbling ghost towns, but that's an extended metaphor for another post.)

These days I tend to pull up one of my email addresses almost at random when signing up for an open beta or registering an account with the latest South Korean or Chinese developer to throw a hat into the global market ring. Most of those are email addresses I never look at so anything that goes there sits quietly, gathering virtual dust, unopened for eternity.

When I was setting up some of these emails, though, and when I remembered to do it, I would sometimes link to my main email account, the one I check multiple times every day. (Yes, I know I could have the emails pop and wave at me as they come in but I like to retain at least the illusion of agency.) Some of them shower me with offers and promises, while others raise a hand only occasionally, as if to say "Remember me? We were friends once. Weren't we?"

Unlike an actual friend from college turning up on the doorstep, overnight bag in hand, these are the kind of catch-up visits I welcome. It's nice to be reminded once in a while of games I forgot existed, let alone that I once enjoyed playing.

Clearly, that doesn't apply to EQII, a game I still manage at least to log into at least every week or so even in the times when I'm not actively playing it. At the moment we're in a fallow period of our relationship but even so I was there for a short session earlier this week, doing the latest Panda quests and checking the vendor for upgrades.

I'll also be logging in after I finish writing this so I can claim the Stomposaurus Thunderstrider mount and take some screenshots for the post. I'm not quite sure when I'm likely to use a gigantic brontosaur land mount but I'm damned if I'm going to miss out on the opportunity to add one to my stable.

That, though, wasn't the email that prompted me to write this post in the first place. What set me off was a newsletter from Artix Entertainment concerning AdventureQuest 3D, specifically the part that said "We love our 20th Anniversary maps so much that we just can’t stop adding to them."

Wait! What? 20th Anniversary? The game I first encountered when it went into open beta back in 2016? How does that work?

The answer is in the post I linked - which I wrote, of course, so I really ought to have remembered (/jk!) AQ3D, like EQII, is a spin-off from an older mmorpg, in this case AdventureWorld itself, which launched in 2002. The anniversary relates to Artix Entertainment itself, not their current flagship title, which, for the record, is still in open beta, six years on, although the definition is now so fuzzy it's functionally meaningless. 

These three emails - yesterday's concerning the strange half-life of Crowfall, then these two celebrating eighteen years of the never-that-successful EQII and the ever-under-the-radar two decades of the AdventureQuest franchise - handily point up one of the most mistifying peculiarities of the mmorpg genre: success is almost impossible to quantify.

Crowfall managed to attract enough attention and money through crowdfunding to get itself made, which in itself counts as an achievement. Once it flopped out the gate, however, all its impetus and energy seemed to have dissipated. 

The excitement, enthusiasm and headline-grabbing controversy that accompanied the Kickstarter campaign burned itself out over the endless years of development and testing until, by the time there was a nominally finished game ready to buy and play, few cared. Crowfall was in live service for little more than a year. It may return. I wouldn't count on it.

EQII was fortunate to begin before the open beta/crowdfunding/early access era, meaning its hype cycle was relatively compact. It also had a lot less competition (Ironically, as it turned out...), new AAA mmorpgs being something of an event in the pre-WoW world. 

Most importantly, EQII had the benefit of a safety-net in the form of a megacorp that appeared barely to know or care where the money was being spent. When the game failed to meet expectations, rather than shutting down it was slowly refurbished and refitted to make the best of a poor situation and thereby, over time, was able to build a solid, if relatively small, core audience, willing to stick with it for the long haul.

Artix, meanwhile, like the co-incidentally assonant Jagex, chose to focus on an audience and a platform that time has shown to be both much larger and more robust than the flashier choices of the big-name game houses. 2D and later 3D browser-based games, aimed squarely at middle-school kids, may not get the same attention as supposedly mould-breaking "serious" mmos but it seems they can attract and hold an audience for decades.

It could also be that both EQII and AQ3D are just better games than Crowfall, of course, which they absolutely are, at least in my experience and opinion. Then again, EQII's had eighteen years to polish itself up and AQ3D is still in fricken' open beta! Maybe if Crowfall had been able to hang on that long it might have built a reputation as an overlooked gem, too. I kind of doubt it but it could have happened. I guess, if it ever comes back, it still could.

Until that mythical day, let's raise a virtual glass to the games that keep on punching and don't just throw in the towel when they're on the ropes. Here's wishing EverQuest II a happy 18th and the AdventureQuest franchise a happy 20th. Long may they both run.

Dog Days

Shortly after we got our new puppy I posted about the unexpectedly positive effect she had on my reading habits. Since then I've mentioned a few times how having a puppy in the house has impacted the amount of time I have both to play games and write about them.

It's exactly three months today since Beryl arrived and I think I can now say she's effectively pressed the reset button on my gaming schedule. It's possible that things will swing back into the old pattern in due course, when she grows up and demands less attention, but I suspect some of the changes, like the dog herself, will already have settled down and made themselves at home by then.

The biggest impact has been the end of my decade-long affair with Guild Wars 2. I realised yesterday that I couldn't actually remember the last time I logged in. It must be several weeks. 

The last time I used the GW2 tag here on the blog was at the very end of May. That means I went a whole month and wrote almost two dozen posts without even mentioning the game, let alone making it the subject of a post. I'm not about to go back and look through a dozen years and more than two thousand posts (Over seven hundred of them tagged "GW2") to see if I've ever ignored the game for that long before but I'm guessing I have not. 

I don't have any plans to abandon Tyria for good but I'm beginning to feel it might be a good time to explore other possibilities. Mostly I'm looking for games that can be paused or saved or which have gameplay that can be left to idle indefinitely.

It's not as if I was playing the old three-to-six hour sessions of a decade and more ago anyway. I was already playing far fewer long sessions even before Beryl joined the family. Even games that I found compelling, like Valheim or New World, I was largely putting in sessions lasting no more than two to three hours.

The big difference is that, whereas a year ago I was able to play a couple of sessions a day and write a blog post, together taking up eight or ten hours all told between breakfast and bedtime, now two or three walks and a couple of play sessions in the garden take up much of that time. It's not that I don't still get time to play or blog but often it's either one or the other and when I'm doing either I need to be able to stop at a moment's notice and not return to it for quite a while.

It's a happy coincidence that my interest in single-player games has bounced back of late and that my tastes in that direction tend so strongly towards the walking simulator/adventure end of the market. It's a lot easier to drop in and out of those kinds of games than it is the average mmorpg.  

That said, mmos have changed a lot since the days of having to give notice and wait for a replacement to be found before leaving a group. I can remember when, even as what passed for a casual player back then, if you were playing an mmorpg and needed to do something in real life at three o' clock, you'd need to be making your apologies and sending out recruitment messages by two-fifteen at the very latest, in the expectation that it might easily be thirty minutes or more before you could actually leave.

Most of the kind of things I do in the mmorpgs I play nowadays don't require much more than that I finish the event I've started. There's usually no-one relying on my participation other than my pets and my mercenaries and they can go whistle. Even so, an event or a boss fight takes as long as it takes and unless you're willing to lose whatever progress or reward you were trying for, you do at least have to keep going until its all over.

Boss fights in any game, mmorpg or single player, can take quite a while. Ten or fifteen minutes isn't uncommon. I've known some last twice that long. That's a commitment I can't always afford right now. It does limit the options somewhat.

Yesterday I was pleased to be able to finish the whole of the new Scorched Sky instance while Beryl was fast asleep. She tends to sleep a lot in the morning and early afternoon, which means I'm learning to restructure my playing hours to fit around her naps. EverQuest 2 is a pretty good fit for what I'm after, especially if I play my Bruiser, who can flop over at an instant's notice and just lie there for an hour or two until I can get back to him.  

I have a lot of non-combat things I could be doing in EQII as well. Things that can be put on hold without hesitation for as long as necessary. The only problem with those is that, while both necessary and useful in preparing my many characters for future adventures, they aren't all that exciting in and of themselves. Even I can't get that pumped over the prospect checking every character against every potential upgrade in the bank.

Consequently I've been on the look out for mmorpgs that encourage fast drop-in, drop-out sessions with short bursts of focused gameplay that doesn't require a lot of set-up. I have a lot of mmorpgs installed and I'm happy to add some more. There must be some that fit the bill.

Yesterday I happened to get an email from AdventureQuest 3D promoting the new Nulgath Saga update. I don't usually pay a great deal of attention to press releases from games I'm not currently playing but I noticed the update included a raise in the level cap - to 37.

Thirty-seven seemed such an odd level for a cap that I ended up reading the whole thing. Then I started wondering what level my character was and then I noticed AQ3D is on Steam and next thing I knew I was patching up and playing.

I was going to write about the experience tonight but I seem to have written this instead and now it's too late. What I will say is that I really enjoyed playing AQ3D again. It seems to have come on quite a lot since the last time I played. It also seems to be very well designed to get you straight into the content with the least amount of fuss and bother, which means I'll almost certainly be playing again.

With a bit of luck and dog permitting I'll have something more substantial to say about the game itself later in the week. Right now, though, it's time to take Beryl out for the last time today before I settle down to watch the penultimate episode of Stranger Things.

Nobody and nothing is going to interrupt that!

Staying In Is The New Going Out

In a comment to my recent post on AdventureQuest 3D, Gen. Alexander commented "I was totally expecting a post about an in-game concert".  And I nearly wrote one. Or at least a paragraph.

There were a couple of reasons I didn't, the main one being that the concert in question took place quite a while ago. Also I don't really like Breaking Benjamin much. Or at all.

I'd never heard of them before the AQ3D gig. If it hadn't been for that appearance I most likely never would. Someone clearly likes them because this video on YouTube has over 165 million views.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the BB gig is the way Artix has installed it as a permanent event in the game. The screenshot at the top is from my recent visit and as you can see there were plenty of people moshing in front of the stage, possibly because the performance now comes with additional in-game benefits.

The encore is a direct result of the pandemic but AQ3D was already provided a virtual space for performance even before recent events, such as this one featuring Alice in Chains. Online games have long offered a potential stage and audience for performers but few developers or artists have chosen to take advantage of the possibilities.

As this fascinating article from Gamesindustry suggests, that might be about to change in a big way. Sometimes you can just feel the synergies colliding. This is one of those times.

All I really wanted to do was link that article, which says much of what I've been thinking these last few weeks and does so with some authority. I recommend reading it all the way through. It's going to seem prescient in a year or two.

My favorite quote comes right at the end:

"...when agents and promoters continue to dismiss virtual concerts as lacking the energy of live performance, they're missing the most important point: next-gen music fans -- the very ones they spend every day trying to reach -- have moved past the live entertainment model. The lack of that live interaction is not a problem with them, as they're already perfectly comfortable with virtual experiences. These next-gen fans are now awaiting the next step in the medium."

And so am I.

Four Years Later: AQ3D

According to Steam, the last time I played AdventureQuest 3D was back in 2016. It was also the last time I wrote about it here.

That's perhaps surprising, given the highly complimentary things I had to say about the game. It was in beta back then but I was already impressed. I liked the combat animations ("fluid and satisfying") and the UI (slick and extremely easy to use").

The overall feel of the game, particularly the writing, appealed to me: ("The whole game has an off-kilter, meta feel to it, a kind of post-post-modern sub-ironic knowing-yet-innocent stance that reminds me somewhat of Project: Gorgon."). I concluded my First Impressions piece, saying "I enjoyed it" and promising to "play more and write more."

That promise was, technically, kept when I posted about the game again a couple of weeks later. By then I had identified what appeared to be a problem, : "...the extreme dichotomy between what the game looks like it's going to be and what it is. It looks like a cheerful, cartoon-colorful knockabout MMO aimed at a younger-than-average audience. You come to it expecting a light-hearted, unchallenging romp and you get something that plays like EQ circa 1999. Only more so."

Back then, AQ3D had one of the most ferocious xp curves I'd ever encountered at the starting levels of an MMORPG. It took me two hours to get - barely - to level three. The game was also hard. I died many times on that epic journey from character creation to the starting zone.

Still, I was optimistic: "It has a great feel, tons of personality, huge potential... there's nothing very much wrong here that can't be fixed with some tuning, tweaking and a general reality check". My feeling was it needed a little longer in the oven: "The game probably could use at least the rest of the year in Closed Beta".

I think, back in 2016, we hadn't fully acclimatized to online gaming's new normal. I feared for the reviews if the game declared itself ready too soon. Four years later AQ3D is still in Early Access and my concerns that "Once it goes to Open Beta... that verdict could be as harsh on the game-makers as the game itself is on the players." appear hopelessly naive.

AQ3D currently enjoys a 76% "Mostly Positive" rating on Steam from over five thousand reviews. Its recent review rating is even better, 87% "Very Positive" from just under a hundred and fifty satisfied new customers.

I'm not surprised. This isn't the post I meant to write today. I had other plans. I'm writing this because somehow I ended up playing Adventure Quest 3D for much of the day.

I have the game bookmarked and I occasionally take a quick look to see what's new. I clicked on the link this morning, while I was waiting for something else to load, and I happened to see a news item about dungeons getting an auto-level feature, meaning they could be soloed. That sounded interesting and I'd been meaning to take another look at the game for... well, for years.

I dug up my old login details, patched up (it took about a minute and a half - Steam has been dutifully updating everything even though I never play), and logged in my one and only character, a level three warrior.

I clearly remember logging out four years ago in the main hub city, Battleon but the game wasn't having any of that. There's a new tutorial, it seems, vastly improved over the one I nitpicked back in closed beta, and I wasn't going to be allowed to skip it.

The new tutorial is every bit as peculiar as the original but infinitely slicker and far more amusing, featuring a personification of Death that owes no small debt to Terry Pratchett. I thought that was a fine idea, not because it's clever or original, which it profoundly is not, but because if you don't like pop culture references, pastiches and parodies this is very much not the game for you. It's best you see what you're letting yourself in for up front so you can bail if you don't like it.

From then onwards the gameplay is remarkably similar to how I remember it from four years ago, only now everything's on castors. If I had to pick one word it would be "slick".

The flow is just about perfect. So perfect, in fact, that when I thought to tab out and check the time so I could start on this post, I fouind I'd lost nearly two hours of my life. I thought I'd been playing for about ninety minutes. It had actually been three and a half hours. There's never really a moment when things stop. Everything leads into something else but it never feels forced or rushed.

Artix seem to have performed some kind of minor miracle on the xp curve. Looked at objectively it's still fairly slow by modern-day standards. In over three hours of continuous play, during which I was questing, killing and receiving experience non-stop, my character managed to progress from level three to level six.

That's not much in the way of progress but she did do it twice. There are regular levels and then there are class ranks. I started as a Level three character with Rank three in Warrior and ended rated six in both. The xp bars for each start in the middle of the screen and progress outwards to the left and right, which is a trick I've never seen before. I don't know if they fill out equally or at the same rate or from the same source. I was having too much fun to notice.

The thing is, it doesn't feel slow. Not at all. The sense of grind I remember from beta is gone. Time to kill is measured in seconds. A few seconds. Kill quests only ask for five or eight mobs. Mobs that drop quest items drop them every time. There's a quest tracker and a directional pointer so you can get to where you need to be without delay.

Gear rains down, although a lot of it is the same, over and over. I got several upgrades. Everything displays, too, so it's a perpetual fashion show. Crafting options appear early and seem useful. There's a linear storyline quest but also plenty of sidebars. Not just NPCs with problems for you to solve or the inevitable mission board but oddities in the landscape that lead into mini-dungeons or boss fights.

The game looks good. A little hypersaturated but I like that. It's cartoony in a brash way and someone is far, far too fond of the color orange. Nevertheless, Lore (that's the name of the world, because if AQ3D is anything, it's meta) feels like a place, somehow. It probably shouldn't but it does.

Since I spent so much longer playing than I planned this afternoon I'm going to cut this short. A first impressions of first impressions if you like. I can't see any reason why I wouldn't play more given how much fun I had but then I said something similar four years ago and look what happened.

I also said back then "My previous post on [AQ3D] drew fewer page views than just about anything I can remember writing; certainly fewer than any post this year". At the time the only people I'd heard mention the game were Syp and Kaozz. Syp still does post about it very occasionally. No-one else seems to remember it exists.

Anyone else want to admit to having played it? Or want to read about it? Not that I either need affirmation or take requests but it's always interesting to know.

A Couple Of Comments On AdventureQuest 3D And DCUO

It's not uncommon for bloggers to claim that the true measure of success is found not in page views or followers but in the quantity and quality of the comments they receive. That's certainly how I see it.

Five years ago, when I was vacillating over whether or not to take the step up from commenting on other people's blogs to starting a blog of my own, perhaps the biggest concern I had was the risk of opening a comment column to...well, to the world. After all, I certainly wouldn't want to wake up of a morning, sit down with a cup of coffee and find myself confronted with some of the comments I'd made.

In the end I decided to risk it. After all, as Wilhelm observed in his magnificent Ten Glorious Years post, in extremis you can always just switch people off because "life is too short to put up with that sort of thing".

Judging by the moss on the boots I'm guessing this place gets a lot of rain.

So far, fingers crossed, that hasn't been necessary. Most of the comments here are well-intentioned, good-mannered and a pleasure to receive. I'm very poor at checking my spam folder so most of the automated nonsense there goes unseen. Apologies to anyone who may have had a comment left there to languish but there are only so many hours in the day.

The best thing about comments is how much you learn. I try to fact-check before I post but this is a blog not The New Yorker and sometimes I just wing it. It's great to be corrected or be given fresh information by better-informed readers who just want to help, not score points.

Last week I had two extremely welcome comments that I was happy to put to immediate use. One was from an anonymous reader who explained, with appropriate links, how to access the nested levels of DCUO's Style tab so that I could undo the creation error that gave my new character banana-yellow lips.

Tell me again. Why can't we just start here?

It turns out that was a "Make Up" option. I vaguely remember fiddling with that in Character Creation to see what it did before deciding it didn't do anything I wanted. It seems that when I closed the window I left the pointer in the yellow quadrant of the color chart and that's how it saved. Thanks to the anonymous commenter my Hero now has lips that match her face and I have a much clearer idea of how to use the Style tab.

The other comment was from Kaozz of ECTMMO. She was one of the few people who read my  recent post on how much I was looking forward to trying AdventureQuest 3D. The AQ3D fan club doesn't seem to have many members in this neck of the blogging woods. It might just be me, Syp and Kaozz because that post probably had the fewest views of any post this year.

Although I mentioned in the post that Artix Entertainment was planning on doing some Closed Beta giveaways I hadn't come across any on the MMO sites I read and I hadn't taken the trouble to look any further. Luckily Kaozz had spotted that there were keys to be had at MMORPG.com, a site I haven't looked at in years, and thanks to her alert in the comments I was able to snag one of the last few.

They were down to a hundred and fifty or so by the time I arrived and that had dropped to just over a hundred in the time it took me to make and register new accounts for both MMORPG.com and AQ3D. It's not a quick process, let me tell you.

I'll come back when you're ready.

There's no NDA as far as I can tell so I'm free to say that getting the game itself up and running is very quick and easy. I've only played one session so far so I've barely got a feel for the game yet. Still, "First Impressions" matter and so far mine are very positive.

Character Creation was very simple and straightforward. Four classes, two genders, one race. Some basic appearance choices. In and out in a couple of minutes. That leads into a strange kind of limbo wasteland introduction that I didn't really understand, where your character is confined to a very small area with never-ending skeleton spawns and a quest to find a wheel for a wagon to get you out of there.

I couldn't find the wheel and the quest interface was far from clear. After a few frustrating minutes I gave up wheel-hunting and just clicked on the "Travel" option the goblin-analog was offering. A swift loading screen and intro movie later and there I was in the real starting town of Battleon.

Sorry, I can't concentrate on what you're saying with that...thing...watching me.

I'm not entirely sure why we don't just get sent to Battleon directly from Character Creation or what the whole "I can't take you until you get me a wheel" thing was all about. That needs some tidying up or I need to L2P. From then on, though, everything was much clearer, smoother, better explained and a lot more fun.

It's apparent this is still beta. Most of the buildings and some paths to other areas come up short with an abrupt "Currently in Development" screen. There's plenty to be getting on with, though, with some nicely humorous, occasionally disturbing, quests and some delightfully designed creatures to kill.

Combat animations are fluid and satisfying and the UI overall is slick and extremely easy to use. The cross-platform aspect of the game is evident in the clustering of controls at the sides and corners of the screen, where thumbs will naturally find them on a phone or tablet. They work perfectly well for a mouse-clicker as well. It's an elegant solution.

Prime example of meta. Her full name is Robina Hood and she puts the gold on the monsters that you kill so you can loot it. Of course back in the glory days of EQ we literally did do that...

From reading the developer posts on the AQ3D website I was forewarned that leveling in this game is not the blink-and-you'll-miss-it afterthought you might expect from something with such child-friendly graphics and cross-platform aspirations. Well, they weren't kidding. It's flipping slow!

I played for a couple of hours and my character is around 10% into Level 3. What's more, everything is a tough fight. Take on a mob one level above you and expect it to be close. Get an add and expect to die. Go in the Level 4 dungeon at Level 3 and don't plan on making it past the first pull.

I died a lot. A lot. There doesn't seem to be much (any?) penalty for dying other than the delay and the shame but there doesn't need to be. This is a world that requires you to pay attention from the get-go. Try yoloing this and you will regret it. When you wake up.

Surprisingly nihilistic. Or maybe fascist?  Definitely not kitten and bunny talk anyway...

The writing is interesting. The whole game has an off-kilter, meta feel to it, a kind of post-post-modern sub-ironic knowing-yet-innocent stance that reminds me somewhat of Project: Gorgon. This is fantasy gaming for sophisticated gamers who come with an innate understanding of the layered patina of the form. Or else it's for kids. Same thing, really.

Anyway, I enjoyed it. I will play more and write more as I learn more. Whether anyone else is interested I guess we will find out from the comments - or the lack of them.

Backwards Into The Future : AdventureQuest 3D

The death of the traditional MMORPG has been on the cusp for a while now. Blog Nation goes through repeated spasms of fear, self-loathing and schadenfreude over the topic. Recent reports that the MMO craze is beginning to wilt in its last remaining stronghold, South Korea, stirred a flurry of concerned chin-stroking and a spat of smug I Told You Sos.

The original article is tucked safely behind The Financial Times' Pay Wall but Google has a ladder that will let you peek over the top. If you take the time to read the actual article you'll find that the FT weren't bemoaning the decline and fall of the diku-mud model per se but pointing out that South Korea needs to pull its socks up if it's going to compete with China and, to a lesser extent, Western competitors in the freemium field.

Part of the problem - a big part - appears to be the ongoing and accelerating switch by consumers (we used to call them gamers, I believe) away from large screens connected to big boxes that sit on special desks in front of revolving chairs to tiny screens they can carry around in their pockets and tap away at anywhere. Convenience, accessibility and, naturally, a vast saving in upfront costs makes mobile the smart choice for the future.

Only the story isn't quite so simple. Blizzard just rang up 3.3 million sales in the first week for the latest expansion to their unfashionable, aging, very definitely not zeitgeisty diku-mud World of Warcraft. That matches "the all-time record achieved by previous expansions...making it one of the fastest-selling PC games ever".


Blizzard, never the fastest to react to changing trends, has recognized the lure of the small screen for its customers. Smartly they've acted to tether those dangerous phones and tablets to the subscriptions already being paid. The Legion Companion app has been well-received and who can say what it presages for an integrated WoW experience further down the line?

If that comes, though, Blizzard will, as usual, be playing catch-up. There before them, with a fully-integrated MMORPG that you can play on your Windows PC, your Android tablet and your iPhone, comes Artix Entertainment, creators of the AdventureQuest IP.

What's more, if  you're on the PC, your friend is on his tablet and your wife is on her phone (this is beginning to sound like a sitcom) you can all play together, in the exact same virtual space. All you need is a Magic Word. Ok, now it's definitely a sitcom. Probably I Dream Of Genie.

AQ began as a single-player online RPG a long time ago. A really long time ago - 2002 in fact. It was successful enough to spawn a fully-blown, if still resolutely two-dimensional MMORPG version, AdventureQuest Worlds, in 2008. It's one of a surprisingly large number of long-established, successful MMOs that no-one in Blog Nation ever mentions. Or plays.

I've never played it. It kind of slipped under the radar, plus I had it confused in my mind with the Cartoon Network's Adventure Time. Not a good thing.

Unsurprisingly I wasn't paying attention when Artix announced a Kickstarter for the third iteration, a real 3D version this time. Had I noticed I very much doubt I'd have kicked in and probably wouldn't have taken a second chance to get on-board early when they were selling alpha access packs either, even if I'd spotted what was happening.

By the time they got around to flagging up the open beta, though, something had caught my eye. I read Syp's cautiously positive preview at MassivelyOP, and goggled at a later news item which seemed implicitly to question the sanity of taking such a totally unfinished project from Closed to Open Beta in a single week, something that, fortunately, Artix eventually decided against.

Open Beta got pushed back and I waited, not particularly patiently. I even considered buying in to the Closed Beta but it seems I was too late for that. And now the wait is over. Almost.

AdventureQuest goes into Open Beta in October. I will be playing. Whether I'll still be playing in November we shall see but the possibility of playing on my tablet and, possibly, my iPod Touch is very intriguing. I already play some MMOs that way but being able to integrate across all three systems is really taking the next step.

Of course, what matters more is whether it's any good. Going back to where we started, given the uncertain future for full-fat diku-mud MMORPGs, I hope it takes off like a rocket. I'm pretty sure it's going to be more appealing to me than Smed's upcoming offering at any rate.

If anyone can't wait until October there will be some giveaways of Closed Beta keys as Artix do "interviews with popular gaming news websites starting Thursday". I think I can hold off until the end of the month but if I happen to see a key then I won't say no.

Here's hoping there's life in the old diku dog yet.