Never Turn Your Back On Them Until You're Sure They're Down For Good

I spotted a news item at MassivelyOP the other day. #356 in a never-ending series: "MMORPGs you thought were gone forever but oh boy how wrong you were!" They should call it that. 

I honestly don't know any more why we think anything goes away. It always comes back. Unless you really, really want it to, of course. Then it doesn't.

Things you don't care about, though? Can't get rid of 'em no matter how you try. Just this morning I saw another report at MOP, this time about something called High  Energy Heroes which, according to the article, "looks basically like Tencent just reskinned the now-dead mobile version of Apex Legends". I never played Apex Legends so I can't say how accurate that assessment mught be but I'll take their word for it since it supports the case I'm making, which is that nothing ever really stops any more.

Except Zentia. Why won't someone bring that back? Also, The Regrettes. Why did they need to "break up"? Bands don't "break up" any more, do they? Not if they have "absolutely nothing but love in our hearts for each other", anyway. They just stop recording and touring and do other things and everyone just says they're "on hiatus". Why didn't they just do that? Why be so dramatic?

Sorry I got distracted. I really liked The Regrettes. Where was I?

Yes, it's always the ones you want that stay gone. The ones you never cared about keep coming back like damn daisies. Case in point, Aika. And possibly Rick Astley. Although I quite like Rick Astley...

I played Aika, briefly. I even wrote about it on the blog, even more briefly. Here's everything I ever said about it: "Typical Eastern MMO. Quite pleasant, passably translated. Got to about level eight or nine. It's still running." That was in February 2014 and it was, then. Still running, I mean. The rest of it too, probably.

I had mentioned it a couple of times before, in passing. The earliest mention on the blog comes from December 2011, by which time the game had already passed into that misty hinterland of "MMOs I am thinking about playing, but not thinking very hard". I'd be lying if I said I'd ever thought about it again, other than as an entry in a list of games I once played.

Do I remember anything about it? Not really. In one post I lumped it in with a couple of other Korean MMORPGs I'd played - Loong and Argo. I remember both of those far better. 

I remember that Loong was introduced to me by the much-missed blogger Kaozz of ECTMMO, who also got me started on Blade & Soul (Speaking of MMOs I'm thinking of playing...). I can visualize the central square of the starting city, still, although not a lot more. 

And there it is...

 

Argo I found all by myself, I think. I really liked Argo. I miss it, although not as much as I miss Zentia. Or NeoSteam, for that matter.

Argo has its own category here on Inventory Full, with no fewer than five entries. Then there's a second tag, Argo Online, that I made for the 2014 revival of the game, which had been dropped from its European publisher, Allaplaya, before being picked up by the very unfortunately-named UserGames. 

I always liked Argo, even though it was probably pretty ropey, looked at objectively. Something about it just felt comfortable - friendly, even. I don't mean socially - I'm not sure I ever met another player there and I certainly never spoke to anyone. No, it was more the look of the thing, with its fuzzy foliage and cartoonish wildlife.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to find meaningful information about older MMORPGs. If you google many of them you either get lots of links, which either suggest they're still up and running or go to dead pages when you click on them. MMORPG.com does usually have basic details that seem reasonably accurate, at least on whether a game is still available, but if you want to know the exact date it fell over or what led to its demise, you're going need to do some serious research.

Borrowed from myself but it's fine. No-one remembers.

I don't propose to do any of that about Loong (It's down now but it was still up in 2017 and that's as far as I'm going.) or Argo (The revival failed pretty fast as I recall. I don't think it's going to get a third chance.) and Zentia is gone for good, I'm sorry to say. Aika, though, is back, at least for now and I suppose I'm probably going to give it a try, just for old times' sake.

Even I'm not sure why I'd bother. It's not as though it's been gone that long. It closed down in 2021, at which point I hadn't touched it for a decade. I didn't notice it wasn't there any more so I'm not going to say I missed it. Still, it just seems rude not to at least take a look, now it's back.

Aika is going to have wait its turn, though. The open beta only runs for a week. It started last Thursday, I didn't hear about it until two days ago and it ends tomorrow. I'm already missing the start of Tarisland Closed Beta 2 as I write this and I'm certainly not going to skip any more of that just to make the final day of a beta for the revival of a game I played a few times a decade ago, just long enough to get to Level Eight.

I guess I'll wait for the full launch (No hint yet of when that might be.) or another beta, should there be one. We'll see if it spurs any memories when I get there. I'm guessing not but maybe it'll all come flooding back. 

Whatever "it" was.

O Frabjous Day! Callooh! Callay! : Argo

Yes, alright, it's not that frabjous. It's not like SOE changed their minds and decided to give (or even sell) Vanguard back to its creators. What's so special about Pox Nora that it gets preferential treatment anyway? Not that I begrudge Pox Nora fans their luck. There must be some, right? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?.

Longtime readers of this blog probably have no recollection whatsoever of my brief flirtation with the SEA shovelware "steampunk" MMO Argo. It merited one post and it was something of a guilty pleasure, albeit a considerable one. It was the game I made an Allaplaya account for, which felt a little like forging my own long-handled spoon (not that I've ever actually forged a long-handled spoon, or indeed anything else...)

No sooner had I made a throwaway account on a garbage email address and bowed down to worship the devil himself PSS1, Allaplaya's mighty overlords, than they decided to pull the game from their sad collection of no-hopers roster of quality MMOs, leaving me bereft, or at least mildly irritated.

Yes, I've used these pictures before. What do you expect? Game's been down for 18 months.

In a pattern frustratingly familiar from my distressing experience with the even better SEA shovelware "steampunk" MMO, NeoSteam,  Argo continued to run successfully in Korea. Then, in July last year, it was reported that Games-Masters.com, purveyors of SEA shovelware quality MMOs such as Cabal and Ran (no, me either...) had acquired Argo for the European market.

Well, I'd heard that one before. Some company I'd never heard of, can't remember and really don't have the willpower to google, claimed they had bought NeoSteam for an EU release - that never happened. Fool me once and all that jazz.

Except this time it seems there really is a pony! Massively just reported that the European beta for Argo starts tomorrow and I just signed up. I really shouldn't be excited about this but I am all the same. It's like when your cat goes missing and he's gone for six weeks and you're certain he's gone forever and probably dead and then one day there's a knock on the door and you open it and a stranger says "Excuse me but I think this might be your cat" (True story).

So, I might get in beta or I might not and the game might actually come back or it might not but either either way it's another notch on the "MMOs never really die" tally-stick and that's a warm fuzzy if ever there was one, so be happy even if you never heard of Argo, never play it and have no idea what I'm making all this fuss about.  

Urs and Worse: Argo

What with all the MMO doom and gloom of the last few weeks, the bankruptcies, closures, lay-offs and cancellations it's worth remembering just how many of the blasted things there are out there. I'm a dipper and a sampler of MMOs, a collector even. In a dozen years I must have tried sixty or seventy. That's not even one in ten just of those released in English.

I do try to keep my end up. I sign on for betas and download trials. I follow the news and watch out for anything coming along that might be interesting. I know about ArchAge and Firefall, Origins of Malu and The Repopulation, Salem and Storybricks. I've written about City of Steam and The Missing Ink. And as I've mentioned, still they slip by.

I am not a pixie! These are mechanical!

I hadn't missed Argo. I just hadn't paid it much attention. Argo is one of the small but growing cadre of supposedly Steampunk MMOs, most of which have very little steam and no discernible punk. Now, I haven't read a lot of Steampunk so maybe I'm missing a key genre convention, but does it always have elves?

Oh alright, not elves. "Elves" is inflammatory, I grant you. Hippies. Tree-huggers. Druids. Nature-boys. There always seems to be a Tech team and a Nature team slugging it out for the future of the inevitably war-ravaged world, spells against guns, tanks versus treants. Wait, I have a video here somewhere that says it best...

Well Argo is all that. Plus the website looks horrible. And it's published by Allaplaya, the gaming wing of PSS1, who as we all know are The Devil. And anyway, I don't have time for yet another badly translated F2P.

So I downloaded Argo. And guess what? It's quite good.

I might go a bit further. It's possibly the most enjoyable non-Western F2P I've dabbled in since Zentia. Ah, Zentia, high-water mark of random acquisitions. I'd play it now if I hadn't broken it. I really must fix that.

More Steam Fair than Steampunk

But for now I'm going with Argo. Yes, it's badly translated. Yes, the low textures look like a child's painting seen through a rain-smeared window when compared to the exquisite detail of The Secret World. Yes, the quests would insult the intelligence of a laboratory rat. Yes, the character models look like day five of "Learn To Draw Anime in Seven Days". Yes, my character's gun is bigger than she is. Yes, all of that.

Looks just like The Somme, doesn't it?

But I'm level 10! And I've played half a dozen sessions and I want to play more. The world may not stand up to the kind of detailed examination that's so richly rewarding in TSW or GW2, but it's an intriguing, idiosyncratic place all the same. For a "post apocalyptical MMORPG" set in "a post-world-war realm" (source) it sure looks bucolic. And that's the techie starting area! God only knows what the hippie commune's like. I'd go check but I'd have to make another account. They make you pick a side and stick to it. There's a war on, in case you didn't know. Or was. Anyway, we don't talk to them.

Aww come on! You wouldn't shoot me!

I've roamed around. The website promises a "vigorous open world", and while I'm not vouching for the vigor it's certainly open. Distances seem large, especially without a mount. Wildlife is insanely plentiful, freakishly cute and disturbingly fast to respawn. It really rubs your nose in the futility of your own existence, virtual and otherwise, when another Urs respawns on top of the one you just killed before you've even had time to pick up his bear-bag. (That's like a man-bag, only for bears. All the smart, six-legged metrosexual bears are carrying them).

There's crafting. And gathering. Very reassuringly traditional. Buy a pick, find a node, stack some ore. Get a recipe, learn it, select and combine. I felt at home right away. And that's the trick, right there. Argo gets that one indefinable thing right. It feels like a place you could live in. Like Zentia does. Like Loong doesn't.

Yes I would. I need the practice.

In that Loong piece I asked myself the question "Will I play it much?". I didn't. With Argo there's a good chance. It's a poor time to be finding new MMOs, what with TSW going live this week, City of Steam alpha and EQ2's Qeynos Revamp in July and the inevitable GW2 pop-ups. All the same, I think I might find time for a little Argo here and there. It would be very nice to get past the newbie areas in one of these imports just for once. Level ten's a good start.

I'll keep you posted. I bet you can't wait.