Trailer For The Future

As I write this I'm downloading Fortnite. How did that happen? Like this...

I have a terrible habit of flicking between things as I wait for loading screens. It's pathetic. These days most MMORPGs take a minute or two to log in, seconds to swap from zone to zone. It's time that doesn't need to be monkey-filled with chatter. Just let it flow.

Good advice I don't listen to. If there's a loading screen that lasts more than three seconds I'm off, alt-tabbing out, rabbitting through the favorites scrolling down the left. Except, insanely long as the list is, there's not much on it I actually care to look at, most days.

This morning I'd swapped between EverQuest and EverQuest II, setting Overseer quests and missions. By the time I'd been through the various stages, swapping characters a couple of times, I'd exhausted Feedly, my blog roll, the weather, the news, and matchup reports for World vs World in Guild Wars 2.

I was about to log in to GW2 to do dailies but as I exited EQII, in the thirty seconds it takes to camp out (because I always log out properly instead of just quitting, because I remember when closing an MMORPG too quickly could lead you to miss a character save and lose a few seconds of progress - or at least some people believed it could and why take the risk?) my eye cast around for distraction and found it in the shape of Box Office Pro.

I have five movie sites bookmarked from back when TAGN Movie Obsession was still a thing. Remember that? Of the five, two (Cinemascore, Theater Counts) are completely dormant for obvious reasons and one, Box Office Report, might as well be.

The remaining pair struggle on. The Numbers has turned into what feels like a personal blog about DVD/Blue Ray and Streaming releases. Box Office Pro, true to its name, has concentrated on interviews with cinema professionals and think pieces on what might happen to the industry in months to come. Today they ran this report, which opens with the news that

"The new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated Tenet has debuted online via the video game Fortnite and on YouTube."

Say what again? It happened last night while I was asleep and as far as I can tell wasn't trailed anywhere much earlier than that. The big video game sites had the story around eleven, my time, by when I was tucked up in bed playing Animal Crossing Pocket Camp and watching Season Two of Community on Amazon Prime.

I read the piece on Box Office Pro. Then I googled around and read a couple more reports on Kotaku and The Verge. The Kotaku piece has a magnificent clickbait headline which neatly sums up the reason I have Fortnite downloading in the background right now:

"New Tenet Trailer Premieres In Fortnite, Which Is No Longer A Video Game"

Isn't that fantastic? Give that sub-editor a donut!

I'd read about Fortnite's new Party Royale peace-out bliss mode, of course. I knew it was a non-combat area where Fortnite players could do what many of them have always done, namely hang out and chill, only without the buzzkill of imminent apocalypse. I also knew about Epic's propensity for using the game as a backdrop for major music and pop-culture events. Oddly, I hadn't quite put the two things together.

The Verge had:

"There’s an outdoor movie theater and a club with towering holographic dancers, alongside race courses and other points of interest like a pirate ship and soccer field. Epic describes it as an “evolving space,” so we’ll likely see more activities and events added in the future. Both of these updates point to Fortnite’s likely future"

The Travis Scott event, which made global headlines in the non-gaming press, took place inside the game itself - the Battle Royale - but there's already been a major concert in Party Royale, featuring Dillon Francis, Steve Aoki, and Deadmau5. Even I know Deadmau5.

As the Kotaku report on that one puts it "The show made Fortnite feel like a world". Yes, like the real world.

Because that's where this is heading: towards fulfilment of the promises made and never met by Second Life. Or, more pertinently, made by a mainstream media fooled into believing Second Life was William Gibson's cyberspace and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash all rolled into one.

As that BBC piece explains "Mentions of Second Life first crept into the UK media mainstream in early 2006... newspapers fell over themselves to cover it, devoting many column inches in their business, technology and lifestyle sections to profiles and trend pieces. "

But just a couple of years later there was silence. Businesses who'd jumped the trend backed off. Stores and embassies closed. The reason was simple. No-one cared:"You could go and open these stores and no-one would turn up...They would have 20 to 30 people there when it opened, and after that no-one would bother going in there again. It just wasn't worth the spend."

Those handfuls have become multitudes. Events in Fortnite reckon their attendances in millions. In tens of millions. These are the jetpacks we were promised.

I'd been kind of meaning to try Fortnite for what feels like a couple of years now. I've read so much positive print about about it. I've played a few Battle Royales, though, and they're not really my thing. Everything that interested me about Fortnite was the not killing each other part. And now, here it is...

... Intermission ...

So, the first thing I do is break Fortnite. It's downloaded and installed. I've made an Epic Games account. Woohoo! Free games for me!. I've logged in and...

Can I find Party Royale? I cannot. I fiddle around for a bit and then tab out to google it. I find what seems to be a seperate download. I download that and install it. It's not the right thing. It's something called Party Hub and it breaks Fortnite good and proper.

After several repairs, a welter of error messages and offers of online support, I finally decide to re-install the whole thing. That, eventually, does the trick.

... End Intermission ...

Turns out, Party Royale is something you select from within Battle Royale. I had to watch a YouTube video before I worked that out. I guess the hundreds of million who already play Fortnite don't need to be told but a signpost for the several billion who don't would be nice.

Then again, Fortnite is still in early access. I'd forgottent that, what with it being one of the most successful video games in the entire world! But no, there it is on the login screen. Early Access. Can't expect anything too polished, I guess.

When I finally stepped out into the mall-like streets of Epic's brave new world, the movie trailer was just about to begin. I could hear someone interviewing the star, John David Washington. Then it started and I could hear that, too, but by the time I'd figured out where the screen was it was all over.

A movie trailer does only last a couple of minutes. If it had been a concert or the promised full Nolan movie to be shown later in the summer, I'd have had plenty of time to get a seat. The trailer's showing on the hour, every hour. Maybe I'll drop back in and take a screenshot or two.

Except you can't. Or I can't. I went through all the in-game options looking for the screenshot key. There isn't one. I fired up FRAPS and it doesn't work with Fortnite. I googled it and watched some YouTube videos and apparently you either take video with the in-game playback feature or you just hit PrtScr and tab out. Which is what I did.

I know static images are so twentieth century but not even having a screenshot function does seem a bit primitive. Feel free to tell me what an idiot I am when you point out it does have one and how to use it in the comments.

Anyway, that's the hard work done. Fortnite is installed and working. I have an Epic Games account. Now I can play the game - all of the games - and drop in to mingle and marvel whenever something culturally significant happens.

I don't think Fortnite is the future. I just think it's a pointer to where the future's going to be. Think of it as MySpace to Second Life's GeoCities.

The next generation's the one. Or maybe the one after that.

Out Of The Ashes Rises...A Lame Duck: Ashes of Creation

I said I wanted to do more short posts. Here's a really short one.

Ashes of Creation, the increasingly controversial would-be AAA MMORPG, which I kickstarted both for myself and for Mrs Bhagpuss in some barely-remembered epoch of geological time, just launched its Battle Royale spin-off/combat test bed on Steam. It's called called, not inappropriately as it turns out, "Ashes of Creation Apocalypse".

Developers Intrepid already tested the BR mode a while back, of course. I played and wrote about it almost exactly a year ago. Back then it was an invitation only stress test but it made a reappearance earlier this year as a limited-time open beta. Now it's listed as F2P Early Access and looks to be hanging around semi-permanently.

I thought it would be easy enough to jump in, play a couple of rounds, take some screenshots and bang together a post about it and so it seemed it wouldbe...for about ten minutes. The download went quickly and smoothly as did the installation. I had my AoC login details to hand and they worked. Well, they worked to log into my account on the website. For the game, not so much. The login screen for the game itself just made a pffffttt noise when I entered the password and then sat there, looking at me blankly.

I'm fairly sure I know why this is. When I was installing the thing, which is published in Europe by MY.com, my firewall popped up two warnings. I chose not to override them. Not that I don't trust MY.com, who also publish Allods, which I've played via their portal many times but...

If I was more interested in the AoC BR (it's all abbreviations this morning, isn't it?) I'd fiddle about with permissions and settings and such until I got it to work. Apparently gettng in to the thing is quite a common problem. Well, so I read on someone's blog that I now can't find. I thought it was at Kabalyero's but that's just talking about how badly the game runs when you do get it to run.

Steam reviews are a bombsite right now although there are fewer than two hundred so far. Not unexpectedly, most are peeved that Intrepid are wasting time on a Battle Royale spin-off at all, rather than focusing on the long-overdue MMORPG they paid for, which, according to the official release schedule, is stil in "alpha-0", whatever that means.

The other big complaint is that this Early Access fragment of a game not only has a fully-functioning cash shop but that it's a highly aggressive one at that:

I don't have much - or really any - interest in playing a Battle Royale right now, let alone in jumping through hoops to get an unfinished one to run. I have enough to be going on with trying to get Riders of Icarus to patch. (Still not working after a month).

I've also all but lost interest in Ashes of Creation as an MMORPG. If Intrepid ever do get as far as beta, for which my Kickstarter qualifies me, no doubt I'll try it but it looks increasingly like a half-assed hybrid of Black Desert Online and EQNext, which really wouldn't be anything I'd be looking for even if they could pull it off.

WoW Classic has pretty much convinced me that what I do want is a new, old-school, diku-MUD inspired MMORPG. About the only one out there is Pantheon and the way things are going I'd bet on Brad's team to hit some kind of buy-in closed beta before my AoC account gets flagged for anything similar.

And I'd happily pay Brad a hundred dollars or so for access to a working, persistent beta. At least I'd know I was getting some kind of game access for my money that way, not just throwing it down a hole or paying for some entirely different kind of game, one I never wanted.

Ashes To Ashes: First Impressions Of The Apocalypse

Ashes of Creation is one of the contenders for the next MMORPG Mrs Bhagpuss and I might play together as a main MMO, the others being Brad McQuaid's Pantheon and Mark Jacobs' Camelot Unchained. To that end, when I kickstarted the game back in the spring of 2017, I made two pledges, one for each of us.

Ashes got the nod partly because it proposes using a form of "hybrid" controls that supposedly meld action and tab-target into a version suitable for fans of either. I'm somewhat skeptical of how that might work but at least they're trying.

Mrs Bhagpuss isn't a fan of action combat and doesn't favor games that lock the mouse. She's tried a few - DCUO and Black Desert to name a couple - but I think it's fair to say she's not keen. I wasn't either, to begin with, and although I've become more accepting of mouse-mashing over time, I still very strongly prefer what's often known as "WoW-style" combat.

Ashes will also offer a great deal of non-combat content, or so the developers claim, so there seems to be a passable chance of the game working for both of us. It is, however, still a long way off and most of the eventual systems and mechanics are shrouded in fog.

That's why I was pleased to see that what had been proposed as a closed alpha test for combat a few months back was going to spin off into a publicly playable mini-game known as Ashes of Creation Apocalypse. Eventually AOCA (now we can use the acronym!) is supposed to include full-scale siege warfare and a PvE Horde Mode but for now, of course, it's a Battle Royale.

There's been a certain amount of huffing about this. Some Kickstarter backers and later adopters  claimed to smell bait and switch. It's true the precedents are alarming. H1Z1 and Fortnite both started out as co-operative PvE projects only to find themselves derailed by the runaway success of their supposedly subsidiary Battle Royale modes.

I don't think there's any doubt that AOCA is intended to provide developers Intrepid with an income stream. It's monetized both via "Legendary Paths", which equate to seasons, and by a robust cash shop seling cosmetics. I understand why alarm bells are ringing for some but for now I'm willing to give Intrepid the benefit of the doubt and believe them when they say the main thrust of their operation is still working towards finishing the MMORPG they promised.

I backed Ashes at close to the lowest level, giving me access sometime in beta. I'm always interested in seeing MMORPGs develop but I'm not so keen on paying for the privelige. Not to say I'd never do it again but it would have to be for a game that appeals to me more than Ashes of Creation.

Low-level though it was, my commitment turned out to be enough to entitle me to an early-doors entry to the Apocalypse. A few days ago I got an email inviting me to stress-test AOCA before the gates open wide on Tuesday.

The testing was quite restricted, just a few hours a day, centered on primetime for the U.S. West Coast. There was about an hour or so when I could have feasibly given it a shot but unfortunately the launcher refused to accept my credentials.

I was going to forget about it but then this morning I received another email saying testing had been extended for twelve hours, meaning the servers would be up for much of Sunday. This time, a new launcher installed itself and my login details worked. I spent a couple of hours playing, took a bunch of screenshots, then I logged out to write this post.

With the exception of GW2's Southsun Survival I have never played a Battle Royale game. I've read enough about them to know the basic principle: you drop out of the sky, pick a place to land, grab some gear and weapons, then either hide and hope or search and kill.

I felt I that was enough. It's last man standing in a shrinking ring of fire. How hard can it be to understand? As yet there's no Character Creation (I believe there will be at some point) so I just picked a gender and hit Play...

My very rough first impressions:

• Not impressed by having to wait five minutes in a queue just to get into the lobby. I was begining to wonder if the thing was working at all. Is that a normal wait-time for one of these games? I was under the impression part of the attraction of PUBG/Fortnite et al was instant gratification. Maybe I got that wrong.

• Once in, it's slick. Everything works smoothly. The animations are fluid, movement feels weighted and natural, the UI is intuitive. 

• It needs to be because there are no instructions of any kind. At any point. Anywhere. Okay, there are tooltips and a small pop-up window appears when you pick up a new item to explain what it does but that's your lot. I'm against tutorials but I'm pro instructions. Access to a simple "This is how to play" FAQ while you're waiting in the queue would be handy.

• Graphics are appealing but somehow not quite there yet. Everything has a fuzzy, soft-edged look and although scale is naturalistic there's still an off-kilter "this is just a tad too big" feel to the architecture.  

• Given the small map there's an impressive array of geographical and architectural features. Fields, farms, gardens, rolling hillside, coasts, caves, rivers and waterfalls, villages, mines, castles, towers, lava fields, giant mushrooms... it's as if the designers decided to showcase all the environments in one place. I didn't see any snowfields but I bet they're somewhere.

• The interiors of the buildings are sumptuous and attractive. Bodes well for the housing. 

• The music is generic but the soundscape is decent. Birdsong, water, explosions.

• There's a bewildering array of gear already. Every building is loaded with stuff just waiting to be looted. When you open a chest everything bursts out and scatters around you so you have to pick it all up individually. I'm guessing this is a function of the PvP nature of the Apocalypse, creating ambush opportunities and adding a sense of urgency. It's certainly not going to play as a standard loot mode for PvE.

• Gameplay is addictive. I can easily see why Battle Royale has become so successful so fast. There's a fascination with grabbing free loot combined with a tension caused by the imminence of sudden death that creates an immediate sense of immersion. Death, when it inevitably comes, is swift and sudden, leading to an immediate desire to try again.

• On the other hand... the first two times I was killed by another player I never even saw them. Then in a later match another player and I spent the best part of a minute hacking away at each other with greatswords and axes and literally no injury to either of us. The fight only ended when a third player appeared and shot us both dead with his longbow.

• Suffice to say weapons might need some balancing.

• I don't know if this is a common trope of the Battle Royale sub-genre but I was surprised when, after my first death, my point of view changed to that of the player who'd killed me. I was then able to sit back and watch the game through his eyes - or rather from a few feet behind the back of his head. That's how I learned how deadly the longbow can be.

• As a beta-backer I'm supposedly entitled to the benefits of the first Legendary Path. It's fifty levels (yes, there are levels and xp) of cosmetic rewards that carry over into the eventual MMORPG. I'm interested in that. Sadly, even though I finally managed to rack up some experience points, they disappeared the moment the match ended. I might have to wait until the official launch on Tuesday before I make a real effort. Nothing more annoying than losing progress you thought you'd banked.

• I didn't count how many matches I played but it must have been at least half a dozen. They varied in length from barely a minute (I attacked an obviously well-geared player and he smacked me down in a second) to nearly twenty (I lasted eleven minutes, my best run so far, and then I stayed on in the persona of my killer to see him go on to win the match with the other three in his team). 

• I found there was a real "just one more" bite to the game, although I can also see the impact fading quite quickly once the novelty wears thin. I also found that I was improving a little after each run, which is motivating. I'm certain I'll never be anything anyone would call skilled at this kind of thing but there seems to be enough randomness and luck involved to make it entertaining even so. I just know I'm going to yell out loud the first time I actually kill someone!

The more interesting part of AOCA for me is going to be the sieges and the Hordes, I think. Deathmatches and one-on-one PvP have never been my thing - I'm a lot happier hunting in a pack. As a taster for the eventual MMORPG I'm not sure it really tells us much (it doesn't even feature the "hybrid" combat I wanted to see) but at least it doesn't raise any red flags...yet.