Possession Is Nine-Tenths Of The Fun

In former days, I used to pontificate - not infrequently - on general topics and trends affecting the mmorpg genre. I guess we all did, even though, by the time I came to the table, many of those themes and arguments had already been reduced to the blandest of mush by repeated rehashing. Still, that never seemed to stop anyone coming back for yet another helping. All you had to do was refer to the dead, dry horsemeat you were chewing in an arch, ironic or just plain world-weary way, so as to let people know you knew how long past its use-by date it was and you were good for another mouthful.

These days I see very few posts like that. The veterans seem to have worn out the tread on those tires at last and the newcomers have entirely different interests and concerns. This part of the blogosphere, once a support system for people with a very similar, niche set of interests - mmorpgs, basically - some time ago morphed into something much broader and - if we're objective about it - more interesting.

For years there's been an increased focus on general gaming and wider entertainment concerns, with reviews and opinions of music, movies, books, sports and TV all increasingly finding their place. There's also been a great deal more openness, a greater willingness to share personal details on everything from from lifestyle and employment to mental and physical health. 

Back when I was only reading blogs, before I had one of my own, I'd have been very hard to put to tell you anything about most of the bloggers I followed beyond what mmorpgs they played and possibly their gender and approximate age. Now the whole weblog thing has turned full circle, it seems, bringing back the original idea of a personal journal everyone can read. 

It's hard to say if I prefer it that way or if I've just become used to it. I think the former. There's only so many times you can fulminate over the way instant travel or flying mounts ruin the whole concept of a virtual world or argue passionately in favor or against the importance of the leveling process. These and dozens more shibboleths that seemed like hills worth dying on a decade ago now barely register as speed bumps in the rush to get to the good stuff, whatever that might be.

All of which brings me nicely, if circuitously, to my topic for the day: getting to the good stuff. Anyone would think I planned it this way. I didn't, in case anyone was in any doubt. I just type and the magic happens.

By "Getting to the good stuff" in this case, I mean getting your hands on a playable game. At all. I was pushed down this line of thinking by a couple of things that came my way recently. One was this news item at MassivelyOP. In it, Marc Jacobs, CEO of City State, the company producing long-delayed RvR mmorpg Camelot Unchained, boldly states

 "...we are almost at where I wanted us to be by summer ... we’re ahead of schedule. I really couldn’t be happier about that if I tried."

I don't always see eye to eye with MOP's editorial policies but one thing I do have to give them credit for is the way they consistently hold statements like this up to scrutiny by simply appending a clear and evidenced timeline giving context and history to whatever's being claimed. As the list of links at the bottom of the short piece confirms, Camelot Unchained, which began as a Kickstarted project, has been in development for a decade now and in closed beta for five years. If that's "ahead of schedule" I think I need a new dictionary.

I didn't back CU, luckily for me but I did back another forever game (As in it's taking forever to get finished.) Ashes of Creation. I didn't just back it, I backed it twice; I bought in once for myself and once for Mrs. Bhagpuss. 

The Kickstarter for that one wasn't quite as long ago as the one for Camelot Unchained, just a mere five and a half years. AoC, however, doesn't even have the fig-leaf of a closed beta to hide behind. As the Release Schedule on the wiki says, that's still "To be announced".

Given that, when I signed up for this thing back in October 2017, the Kickstarter gave an "Estimated Delivery" date of December 2018, I think it's safe to say the studio behind the game, Intrepid, overshot the mark somewhat. Undershot. Whatever.

If there's one thing you can say for Intrepid, though, it's that they communicate. There's no hint or suggestion that work on the project isn't ongoing. I get constant emails about the progress they're making. It never seems to be much although you wouldn't know it from how enthusiastic they all sound..

The latest in an endless series of relentlessly upbeat messages, informing us all how well the game is doing behind those closed doors, bangs on at inordinate length about the wonders of the UI they're building. It's not the most glamorous of topics to begin with but as Heartless Gamer puts it on his newly-revitalized blog, 

"As with the recent class updates the UI update this month was a typical lackluster update.  A developer was brought on and talked about their team and their approach. Then some screenshots were shown of different UI components which were followed by yet more screenshots of sample user interface windows which were followed by... more screenshots.  !  I don't think once during the UI update we saw an actual functioning UI overlaying a game being played."

It's too true. I barely scan AoC updates any more because they go on forever and tell us nothing. By comparison, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, for example, is an open book. They post massively long updates, too, but in them you can watch people playing the game for hours at a stretch and even at the pre-alpha stage it very much looks like a bunch of people in an mmorpg having a great time.

From watching a handful of Pantheon videos I know it's definitely a game I want to play. From watching the dozens of videos Intrepid have sent me, I still can't say with any confidence what sort of a game it even is! And that's a major problem.

I signed up for the AoC Kickstarter for two reasons: firstly, it was being made by a team filled with people who'd worked on other mmorpgs I'd enjoyed and secondly because the game was supposedly due out in a year or so. Not being completely naive, I never expected a finished game by Christmas but I did think I might get one inside three years, given that would be triple the time they said it would take.

Obviously, I know better now. Pretty much no Kickstarted mmorpg comes out within hailing distance of its estimated delivery date and plenty of them either never arrive at all or limp out the gate in such a spavined, emaciated form they're dead on their feet in a couple of months and just plain dead soon after.

If it was just a matter of patience, that would be problem enough but these kinds of timescales have much deeper implications than mere fractiousness over not getting something you've paid for when someone said you'd get it. Lead times spiraling from years into decades inevitably run up against two much less transient issues: growth and mortality.

I'm not the same person I was five years ago, when I put my money down for a new mmorpg called Ashes of Creation. No-one is. Back then, I was still excited by the genre, keen to see every new thing as soon as I could get my foot on the bandwagon. Now? Not so much. 

Mrs Bhagpuss, for whom I bought a copy and with whom I was planning on playing, has moved on from the hobby altogether. She prefers crafting in real life to crafting in virtual worlds now and she currently plays no mmorpgs. She says she'll pick it up again some day but even if she does I'm fairly sure Ashes of Creation won't be the game to bring her back. To different degrees, we've both aged past the window of opportunity that Kickstarter appeared to open.

And we're still ageing. I'll be 65 this year. At the glacial rate of development Intrepid are employing I will certainly be retired by the time the game comes out (Assuming it ever does). Even trusting in continued health sufficient to allow me to play it when and if that happens, at current rates of progress I could quite possibly be in my seventies. Am I still going to be interested then?

And it's not just because I'm old. If games take a decade to arrive, people who were interested in them in their teens, twenties or thirties are even more likely to have moved on from the hobbies of their youth by the time they get that once-coveted invite to closed beta. At least I have the advantage of being set in my ways!

It seems to me that the lead times for mmorpgs have spiraled out of all reason. Star Citizen sucks all the air out of the room in any discussion of delayed development but it's only the most outrageous example of a development trend that's now so entrenched people don't even bother to complain about it all that much any more. It's no wonder so many games go into Early Access or eternal beta while unfinished but approximately playable. Just look at the alternative.

In the end, the question isn't why so many developers start taking money for games that are clearly still under development. So long as it's done in good faith, with the team continuing to work on bringing the title up to code, I don't have an issue with that. It's really no different from back when mmorpgs would launch with a nominally playable base game and charge a subscription to play it while all the polish and most of the content got added in patches, month after month after month.

No, my complaint is with the companies who keep their doors firmly bolted shut after taking money up front, issuing endless, relentlessly cheery progress bulletins but never actually coming up with anything anyone can damn well play. As far as AoC goes, in all honesty I'd almost rather they'd kept the Battle Royale spin-off they were so criticized for wasting time on and junked the mmo. At least I got to play that.

It's not even a matter of a refund. After five years it's a sunk cost I don't care about getting back. Even if it was an option, I couldn't be bothered to do the paperwork. The point is, when and if the game ever does reach second closed beta or whatever my designated opt-in point might be, I can pretty much guarantee I won't care enough to do more than make a character, write a post or two and forget about it again. Always assuming I'm still capable of using a mouse and keyboard by then.

After years of this kind of thing, which seemed so exciting once upon a time, I find I hugely prefer games that just appear out of nowhere, arriving in a flurry of publicity around a launch that's only weeks away. That does seem to be an incipient trend of its own now. I can only hope it continues and grows. 

The two new mmorpgs I've most enjoyed in the last year - Chimeraland and Noah's Heart - fit that bill. I was playing both a matter of months after I first learned of their existence. They may not be as ambitious or full-featured as Camelot Unchained and Ashes of Creation but they're here and they work. I'll take that over any number of unfulfilled promises any day.

Step Into A New World

Last week's reveal of an approximate launch date for Amazon's New World (now confirmed as May 26 2020) got me thinking about the future as it relates to MMORPGs. Specifically, the games I'm vaguely looking forward to playing sometime, if and when they ever get their act together.

I'm going to do this from memory, without a lot of preparatory research, in the hope of clarifying what I'm actually interested in, rather than what I could all too easily make myself get over-excited about if I worked at it. That said, I'm fairly hopeless at remembering stuff like this so I'll probably miss some things I'll end up jumping all over when they appear.

Let's start with New World. Without a doubt this is now at the top of my wants list, moving above Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen by dint of having an imminent release date.  It's also backed by one of the biggest companies in the world so I have no worries over whether it will actually happen.

Of course, I'm still vastly more interested in Brad McQuaid's legacy MMORPG as a game that might become a long-term home for both me and Mrs Bhagpuss. It's as close to the model I prefer as I'm likely to get. I'm just not expecting to get it any time soon, although a beta buy-in for $100 or so wuld be more than tempting.

On paper, New World doesn't look like something I'd enjoy but personal experience trumps speculation. Like a lot of people, I was lucky enough to get an invite to the alpha. It wasn't a particularly exclusive event. I did, however, get in right at the start, which meant I saw the way the game changed and developed over many months.

The New World Alpha Test has a fairly strict NDA (albeit nothing on the scale of the one Belghast recalls from Guild Wars 2's testing process) and as far as I know it's still in force. That means I can't really say much about either the game or the testing process.

I will say that it was a real alpha, in which systems and gameplay elements were frequently changed with the specific intent of seeing how various approaches worked. This was done with great communication from the developers, including reasons and expectations for the changes.

My experiences in the Alpha made me a lot less surprised than some comentators when I read about the changes the game has apparently undergone since it was taken back behind closed doors. An increased focus on the fantastical elements of the setting and on player versus environment content is nothing more than I would have expected.

What I wasn't expecting was a move towards what looks as though it could be fully optional PvP. Game Director Scott Lane is quoted at Massively:OP, saying of the PvP aspect "“If you don’t care about this stuff as a player, you can have a huge, massive experience without any of it.”" There's a lot of meat missing from the bones of this statement, like how that will actually work, but even if it ends up being a hybrid PvPvE system such as those we're familiar with from Allods, ArcheAge, Black Desert and many others, that's fine with me.

What did surprise me was the mention of personal housing outside guild-based territorial warfare. I didn't see that coming and it adds a huge potential value to the game for me. If I can potter around in safety in low/mid level areas, gathering materials and crafting stuff to build my own little wilderness home, that will suit me very well. It's a lot like what I was hoping for from Atlas and didn't get.

About the only thing I don't much look forward to is the "focus and very skill based ... moment to moment game play". I'm too old for that kind of thing. That said, PvE combat in the alpha was fine. Not my favorite kind of fighting but perfectly manageable for an incompetent button-masher. And I only played a melee character. I'm guessing ranged will be easier on the hands.

I'm not convinced New World will be something I'd recognize as an MMORPG but it doesn't claim to be one so that's not a problem. I am expecting a gorgeous, rich and fascinating world with immense exploration potential and that's more than enough. I pre-ordered the game today, which gives me guaranteed access to the Closed Beta, whenever that starts. I imagine it will also have a strict NDA. Looking forward to dropping a lot of veiled hints when the time comes.

Camelot Unchained does claim to be an MMORPG; the spiritual successor to Dark Age Of Camelot, no less. We've been waiting a long time for CU. The Kickstarter was getting on for seven years ago. The first phase of beta, expected in 2015, arrived three years later and that's the phase we're still in.

As Wilhelm observed "It is starting to make Star Citizen look positively progressive in getting test content to users". I've played Star Citizen on "Free Roam" and I'm not any kind of backer. I'd love the option to do that with Camelot Unchained, a game I'm far more interested in, but as far as I can tell it's still a $60 buy-in to get Beta 1 access.

The underlying concept of CU still appeals to me. Realm vs Realm is the best kind of PvP I've played - when it works. It often doesn't. This would be the first game to make it the be-all and end-all and I'm interested to see how that pans out. Also, Mrs Bhagpuss loves RvR so she'd almost certainly be on board.

How long does anyone want to wait to play a video game, though? CU has been "in development" since 2013 and it's only in the first stage of beta with a "lengthy" second phase planned. At this rate it's not going to go Live this side of 2021-2022. Does any game really need that long in the oven?

While we've been waiting for Mark Jacobs to get CU out the door, Broadsword have taken almost as long to get around to making DAOC free to play. They did finally manage it a little while ago and I've been meaning to download the game and revisit my old stamping grounds in Midgard and Albion.

So far I haven't been able to make the time but it's a virtual certainty that I'll be re-playing DAOC long before I ever set foot in its sequel. That's a straw in the wind for something that's becoming an increasing theme of MMORPG hobbyism for many: the past is more inviting than the future.

2019 saw two huge MMORPG news stories involving games coming back from the dead: WoW Classic and City of Heroes. In both cases, games long since abandoned or dismantled by their creators came back to an astonishing response.

Games developers as a species are never slow to jump a passing bandwagon, provided it passes by with all the alarms blaring and lights blazing, but they're ridiculously late on any trend that doesn't fit their ironclad pre-conceptions. If they'd had an ear to the ground they'd have heard the rumble that's been building for many years.

In the blogosphere, we've often talked about the dearth of new titles and reminisced about the good old days. It should surprise no-one that a good old 'un beats a lackluster newbie every time and yet it seems to have taken the industry a long time to cotton on.

The cumulative success of projects like Classic, Homecoming, Old School Runescape and P99 make it very hard to ignore the untapped demand for games that have supposedly run their course. The uncomfortable fact that for some of the mainstays of the industry it's five or ten year old games that still feed the bottom line is belatedly being re-shaped into a narrative the suits can understand.

The latest buzzword is "ongoing games", now an Award category in its own right. We're already moving past "games as a service" into the sunny uplands of forever gaming. Why make and market expensive new products when you can just re-furbish old ones? Getting new players has always been a gamble - why bother, when you can just hang on to the ones you've got?

On the back of that, some of my most eagerly-anticipated "new" games aren't anything of the kind. They're emulated versions of old games I either played and miss or missed playing when they were around.

Even I'm surprised by how many emulator projects I now have bookmarked. There's the Vanguard Emulator, obviously. I log into that every month or two and post about it occasionally. There are several more I'm looking forward to more than I'm looking forward to most official product.

Top of the list is Project: Return Home. It's a bold attempt not only to bring back a much-missed MMORPG but to port it to a new platform. If it comes off I'll be able to realize a long-held dream, one which I thought would have to remain a fantasy: I'll be able to play the EQ game I missed out on because I didn't own a PS2.

Return Home plans to make EverQuest Online Adventures available for the PC. If the team behind the project manage to pull it off there's a good chance I might have found a new home for months. Short of an actual new EverQuest game from Daybreak (and where's that "big news" that was coming in November, Holly?) Return Home might be the last "new" game set in Norrath I ever play.

Then there's Free Realms: Sunrise, about which I have written a few times. The folks behind that don't seem to be in much of a hurry so I'm not holding my breath. I'd still bet on getting an open beta before Camelot Unchained goes live.

A real left-field entry to my watchlist is FHX Restoration, a project aiming to bring back a barely-remembered MMORPG that operated under several names in various territories. It's the game known to some as Hercot or Xiones. I knew it as Ferentus.

When I played, Ferentus was in beta. I don't recall it ever going Live in this territory. I only ever saw the first zone or two and I can't really say why it's stuck in my mind the way it has but I've never forgotten it. Apparently there was a whole game there at one time, one which people paid for, played and enjoyed. I'd be very happy to take a look at what was on the menu after the taster I tried all those years ago.

As with most emulator projects, details on progress are hard to come by but there have been two brief opportunities to step into the world and see what's been achieved so far. Both of which I missed, because I only found about the project after they'd happened.

The first was a single day over a year ago. The second was two days in August. I'm keeping an eye open for the next. Maybe that'll be a whole three-dayer!

Games I was looking forward to, now not so much, include Ashes of Creation and Crowfall. Both of them have passed that point where they've been in development so long that all my intitial enthusiasm has burned away.

I was never all that keen on Crowfall to begin with. The early PR releases got my back up with all their talk about how they were going to save the genre. I didn't (and still don't) think it needs saving. As time went on, though, I began to think ArtCraft had some neat ideas on how to solve some longstanding issues, including payment models and PvP vs PvE.

Sadly, whatever it looked like they might do has become moot due to the length of time they've taken doing it. A lot of the things that seemed like problems then don't seem to be all that pressing now and I wonder if anyone really cares any more.  I know I don't,, although no doubt I'll give Crowfall a look - if it ever makes it out of buy-in testing.

I was a lot more invested in Ashes of Creation to the point that I pledged for both myself and Mrs Bhagpuss during the Kickstarter. If the game ever happens we'll get copies and I'll definitely play it and write about it here.

When they put up the first version of the Battle Royale spin-off, Ashes of Creation: Apocalypse, I enjoyed it well enough, considering what it was, but by the time they got to the latest version I couldn't be bothered. And neither could anyone else. The current Steam Chart stats show the average number of players online in the last thirty days was 8.5. Good luck getting a Battle Royale going, guys. Maybe you could invite the three people still playing Planetside:Arena.

And that's about it. I'm sure there are plenty of upcoming MMORPGs I'd be curious to try should I happen to come across them but I can't bring any to mind. I'd welcome any suggestions!

View From The Long Grass: Upcoming MMOs 2018-2020

Syp posted a very useful checklist of upcoming MMOs. Forty-four of them, a lot more than I would have guessed were out there in development right now.

I'd heard of most of them but even so I'd have been hard put to bring some of the names to mind. The handful on my own watchlist would be New World, Ashes of Creation, Camelot Unchained, Crowfall, Pantheon, Project Gorgon and WoW Classic.

Of those, I kickstarted Project Gorgon for myself and Ashes of Creation for both myself and Mrs Bhagpuss, so I believe I pre-own at least the game and a month's sub for each of them. AoC I'm keen to play, eventually, but Project Gorgon has been around for so long already I'm struggling to retain much interest in its eventual launch.

Camelot Unchained seems to be taking a lot longer than expected. I'm mildly curious to try it because Realm vs Realm is a great concept but I wasn't the greatest fan of DAOC, which had more longeurs than it ever had frissons, so I'm not over-excited. As a subscription-only title I can't imagine playing it for long.

Crowfall is in much the same basket but it has the benefit of being faster-paced and set in seasons, which appeals. It's buy to play, which is my preferred payment model, and I'm interested in the permanent world aspect. The competitive game not so much but I'm more than willing to give it a try.

Not having followed Crowfall's development particularly closely I'd missed that the game's currently available in Early Access, with a live server up 24/7. There's an announced launch price of $50 but the cheapest buy-in right now is $70.

In theory that doesn't get you in until Beta 1 and the game is currently way back at pre-alpha 5 but according to the official website "The following test groups have been activated for playtesting: Pre-Alpha 1 and 2, Alpha 1 – 3, Beta 1 and 2." Everybody, in other words.

Still, I'll pass for now. There will be an open beta prior to launch. I think I can wait for that, although it could be a while because Crowfall is already well behind schedule.

When we'll see WoW Classic/Vanilla is anyone's guess although I'd bet on it arriving before Amazon's New World, which I wouldn't expect to see this side of 2020. WoW Classic will be a short run affair, I imagine, but one that I might dip in and out of for years, while New World is a completely unknown quantity.

Pantheon, the one I most want to play, is currently in some kind of alpha. You can buy-in for $1000. I'll pass, thanks all the same, Brad. If it goes to a more reasonable Early Access though - say $50 or less - then I'll probably jump. All the videos I've seen make it look eminently playable already.

At launch (not before 2019 I'd guess) it will be either Buy To Play or Subscription. I'm surprised at that - I thought it had been nailed down as a sub game - but the FAQ currently reads: "We are considering either using the traditional subscription based model or a model where the player buys the game and then has the option of purchasing mini-expansions or ‘modules’ after launch." It will also have a permanent free trial so everyone can experience the first five or ten levels before making up their mind.

So, that's seven titles out of forty-four. Of the remaining thirty-seven there are plenty I'd try on a whim if they're free to play or have a free trial but none that I can imagine giving much more time than I'd need to take a few screenshots and gather material for a blog post or three.

And then there are the four Syp came up with that I'd never heard of: Caravan Stories, Freeman: Star's Edge, Soulworker Online and Tale of Toast. I went to take a look...

Caravan Stories looks interesting. It's gorgeous, for a start. It has a striking visual conceit with anime characters against what looks like (but presumably aren't) hand-drawn backgrounds. There's a lot of video on YouTube already, including plenty of gameplay, most of which seems to involve auto-running.

There are also several official Trailers, the first of which (above) gave me strong Zentia vibes, a very good thing. I can't see this being a regular game but I would expect to get a Twin Stories style month or so out of it once the English translated version appears. It's also cross-platform with Android, IoS and PC.

Soulworker Online has a premise that could have been designed to put me off: "In Soulworker Online, gamers play as psychic teenagers who use their emotions (or “soul”) to fuel their Soul Workers". Looking past the emo, though, I found a rather attractive game that's winning comparisons to the well-respected and much-missed  Rusty Hearts.

It sits extremely comfortably on a 9.3/10 rating from more than three thousand votes at one MMO site. Definitely worth a look since it will inevitably be free to play. Hardly like to be a stayer, though.

Freeman: Star's Edge appears to be yet another Star Citizen/EVE Online affair. Pass.

Which leaves by far the oddest of the bunch, Tale of Toast. The cuddly, quirky name is appropriately misleading for this unsettling offering, possibly the creepiest MMO I've come across since the skin-crawling Glitch. The disconnect between what this game looks like and how it plays is stunning.

Here's the Greenlight video - a bright, simple cartoon world full of loveably cute chibi characters...

and here's the gameplay pitch: "Tale of Toast is an open world MMORPG with hardcore PvP mechanics and where dying actually means something, and is inspired by old school MMORPGs and boardgames. Experience battles throughout the entire world against other players and guilds with the goal to take their items upon killing them, and risk losing your own upon your death."

Read the official description and yes, it does mean non-consensual PvP with full item loss, everywhere in the world. Pretty nearly, anyway.

So that's nice. It's free to play so if it ever launches, which I doubt, I'll probably give it a try. What have I got to lose? Apart from all my stuff, obviously.

And that's what we have to look forward to over the next two or three years. Unless anyone has any other suggestions?

MMOs On The Horizon - 2017

As is traditional, when the number at the end of the date rolls over, lots of people are making predictions, plans and pledges. Those are always fun to read but what really started me thinking were the lists of upcoming MMOs that might, or more likely might not, appear in 2017.

Syp gave us the full rundown of every wannabe WoW killer that managed to throw together a PR release over the last twelve months. The Ancient Gaming Noob and Endgame Viable both offered their thoughts on what we might expect. Or fear.

Wilhelm covers a round dozen, of which I observed in the comments, somewhat hyperbolically, "Seven of those titles I wouldn’t play even if every other MMO in the world closed down. I’d find another hobby first." UltrViolet comes up with no less than thirty-two possibilities, which is actually more than Syp found for his "All the MMORPGs Coming in 2017" article, but even there I struggle to find anything to get especially excited about.

Of the entire collection probably the only two I'm actively interested in are Project: Gorgon and Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. The problem with those two is that I already feel like I've played the first and I wonder if I'll ever get the chance to play the second.

Project:Gorgon I first blogged about back in 2013 when, as you can see from the screenshots, it looked like it might be a very good-looking game. Unfortunately, since then it seems to have undergone a major graphics underhaul and now looks like DAOC circa 2003.

The gameplay is solid and I've spent a good few hours there already. I backed the first, failed, Kickstarter, missed the second entirely and then backed the third, which succeeded. I've yet to do anything about getting the key from that so when the game finally moves to Steam Early Access, which it looks as though it will do very soon, a year later than planned, I'll have to dig through my old emails or else I won't be able to log in any more.

That wouldn't be too traumatic, though, because the last time was probably 2015 and I can't say I've missed it much. I suspect that Project: Gorgon will be one of those MMOs I think about playing but rarely play. There's no shortage of those.

Brad McQuaid's Pantheon, however, looks increasingly like an MMORPG I would actually spend a considerable amount of time with. The graphics may not be spectacular but they look more than serviceable and the art direction looks solid. The world looks...well, it looks like Telon. Or Norrath. The gameplay looks like...well, it looks like EverQuest. Or Vanguard.

Oh, let's not be coy! It's the same bloody game, isn't it? The same MMO Brad made last time and the time before that. He hasn't even bothered to change the names of half the classes or the spells they use. And that's fine by me. The last two MMOs he made are either my first and second favorites ever or they're at least in the top five, depending what mood I'm in.

I like that game. I'd love to play it again with a new skin. The only issue is whether I'll ever get the opportunity.

So, with those two out of the way, what's left? Well, there are a few I will most likely at least kick the tyres and take for a test drive.

Crowfall - I started off loathing this because of the arrogant and aggressive tone their PR took but that has cooled down and I've warmed up. I like the episodic approach they are trying and I'd like to see the game succeed if only so that other developers might steal from it. I also like the sound of the non-combat, permanent housing. It's odds on I will buy this just to futz around in the safe areas.

Camelot Unchained - I do like Realm vs Realm combat. I have some, if not many, good memories of DAOC and more of Warhammer. It's got to be worth a look. On the other hand, I was bored to tears with DAOC in less than six months and the best part of Warhammer was the instanced battlegrounds...

New World - It's Amazon, I trust them to at least make something that works and comes out on time. Plus I have an Amazon account already. We know so little about it it's impossible to guess if it's something I'd want to play long term or not but it's very likely I'll at least give it a go, along with almost everyone reading this, I bet. Of course it won't be coming out in 2017 so I don't know why we're even talking about it.

Revelation Online - This years Black Desert. Or ArcheAge. I liked Black Desert. I liked ArcheAge. Okay, I only lasted a month and a half in each of them but it was a dam' good month and a half. I'm up for doing that again. Plus everyone will try it and I'll get a string of blog posts with great screenshots.

Bless Online - See Revelation Online.

Dark and Light - See Bless Online and Revelation Online. Come to think of it, isn't D&L out already? One of those Early Access package deals maybe? I can't keep up with those.

Shroud of the Avatar - It's a fantasy MMO with housing. That alone gets it onto the watch list. Then again, it looks really dull and nothing I've read or seen from anyone who's actually played it suggests otherwise. A possible but not a probable.

And that's about it. Of the rest, there are some I would actively avoid, some I don't believe will ever launch and some I don't know enough about even to make a call. A few, like Ever, Jane, I wish nothing but success but I can't imagine ever playing them myself. A few more, like Peria Chronicles, I might try out of curiosity. (I mean, I downloaded Twin Saga last week so my standards aren't exactly high...)

The rest look boring beyond belief. Someone, somewhere, presumably, is excited over Gloria Victis, Life is Feudal, the two Darkfall remakes or The Exiled but it isn't anyone I know. I'll try pretty much any MMO but even I have to draw a line somewhere.

Missing from the lists I linked are any of the various City of Heroes remakes and several emulator projects for closed-down MMOs. I have a soft spot for Valiance. I'll probably keep an eye on that one. I'm also still logging into the excellent Vanguard Emu every couple of months for my Telon fix and it's coming along splendidly.

All in all, though, it doesn't look like a bumper year for the genre. 2018 or 2019 should be better. And that's fine. There are literally hundreds of MMOs out there already and I have literally dozens on my hard drive. How many MMOs do you need, anyway?

The coming year may be weird and scary in all kinds of ways but I think it's a safe bet that as far as MMOs go it will look much the same as the last one. I can live with that. Quite happily. 

Light All The Fires

World of Warcraft is becoming infamous for its content droughts; those long months of blank canvas stretched between the tent-poles of bi- or even tri-annual expansions, when players in their hundreds of thousands lose focus, let their subscriptions lapse and wander off to other realms. GW2, the MMO that started out as the antidote to WoW but which is increasingly growing to resemble it, took its own first stab at the content drought concept this year, letting the game drift in a long, slow arc from the announcement of the expansion that was never meant to happen to the eventual launch of Heart of Thorns last month.

As the glare begins to dim a little on these new lands we have somehow found ourselves calling Magus Falls, light begins to dawn on just why some MMO developers have become so fond of their "cadences";  the drip, drip, drip of content in small packages that we saw exemplified best in ArenaNet's Living Story but which appears throughout the genre in various guises, from EVE's six-weekly "expansion" schedule to EQ2's seemingly inexhaustible calendar of "Holidays". Anything to keep the customer playing and paying.

For some inexplicable reason I began Saturday by reading some of Marc Jacobs' Foundational Principles for Camelot Unchained. CU (working title) is not an MMO to which I have paid much notice in the past and I haven't followed its development with any close interest. I'd never read these principles before.

Several things struck me as I skimmed through the lengthy perambulations. Marc Jacobs is a good communicator and an excellent self-mythologist, that was the main takeaway, but then so many superstar game developers are. It often makes me wonder if they're really in the right business. That aside, it was his apparent willingness to leave money on the table and let dissatisfied or just plain bored customers walk away that got my attention.

The Camelot Unchained website is peppered with bold statements and brave claims to this effect:

"We respect your commitment to a subscription-based game; in return, you won’t see thinly-veiled grabs for more money. Everything you need to succeed in Camelot Unchained requires skill and effort, not an open wallet."

"...we are an RvR-focused game and if you are not feeling it that night and nothing we have interests you, well, it’s time to take a break..."

"I want the freedom to take some risks with this game without enduring sleepless nights as I worry about whether a feature (or lack thereof) will alienate too many players, anger the boss, piss off the investors, etc."

And so on and so on. It's a coherent and rational plan and so far it's raised almost four million dollars. Star Citizen, on the other hand, another game whose development I have barely been following but, if what Derek Smart tells us is true, (don't go there..) is aiming to be quite literally all things to all players, is rounding the final corner on $100m.


As Saylah at Mystic Worlds observes in passing, Chris Roberts' behemoth already has some 900,000 backers signed up and waiting to play. Come launch day (whenever that might be) that number could reasonably be expected to grow into the millions. Mark Jacobs is bullish about the degree to which that isn't likely, necessary or even desirable for his game, which he anticipates "even if successful has no chance of threatening Dark Age of Camelot’s peak subs (250k)".

Saylah is understandably enthused by the chance to live, fully if virtually, in another world or in this case another universe. "It's hard to explain to anyone who's not passionate about gaming, MMOs and/or space sims why people continue to invest so heavily in this project. For many of us, SC has a dream list of features, combined in a way that no company has ever attempted before" she says. She goes on to describe what must be many an MMO player's dream: "The atmosphere, graphics, attention to detail, realism and cinematic soundtrack is breathtaking to behold. No one's pictures will do it justice. The way they knit your introductory experience together, it feels like waking up in a future where man has conquered the stars."

It's what I thought I wanted, once. The chance to lose myself in another reality. To be there. It's a wish, though, that like all magical wishes, comes with a warning. Mercury expresses it well when he writes at Light Falls Gracefully about the freedom that comes from accepting someone else's rules: "There is a certain something that is called into being with the arrival of the holiday events at year’s end when the rules of everyday life are put up on the shelf for a while. As a child, these times were magical: decorations, a festive atmosphere, and a fundamentally different tone to the rhythm of life filled my little body with wondrous awe. Nowadays, the magic lies in pretending that I am not a responsible adult and that these figments of our collective imagination are somehow the real thing."

Heart of Thorns has proved much more involving than I imagined it would be. Before it landed I had arrived at something close to equilibrium in the allocation of my gaming time. I had a stable of titles I was paying some attention to and while GW2 consumed the predator's portion there was still time to flit between half a dozen other MMOs and make something that could, in a poor light, be taken for progress there.

This is a familiar experience. Every time an MMO in which I'm emotionally invested drops a large update it wins focus from all the others. It's a time of great excitement but it comes at a cost. Everything else slides. When several games decide to overlap their major updates time won't stretch to accommodate them. One will win.

And that's how I came to understand that content drought isn't necessarily a bad thing. In a way it's like breathing out. It took ArenaNet's six-months of purdah and pre-expansion crunch to create the space for me to break the pattern of habit and open out my horizons again. I'm actually happy we won't be seeing any more Living Story updates this year and quite probably not before next spring.

I have a long, long list of MMOs that I want to get back to, to re-invest in, to play. Even updating the clients and logging in would be something. There seems to be a lot of that around at the moment - Tipa, reminding me about Landmark, Wilhelm dipping back into LotRO, Stargrace firing up ArcheAge... Plus the conveyor belt never stops. There are already half a dozen new candidates I'd like to give the once-over, although not necessarily the ones on Syp's list of conversation starters.

I'd welcome some downtime just for all that although I know I'll probably have to wait for Wintersday and Frostfell and all the other quasi-Christmas celebrations to pass first.

Mark Jacobs isn't unduly worried about players like me, those who have itchy feet and eyes elsewhere. He says of his avowedly niche, specialist offering: " If on some nights it isn’t what you are looking for, well, that’s okay, your realm’s enemies will be still waiting for you when you get back." And, barring the game going dark for good, they always will.

These days that feels closer to what I want. Not a world that feels more real than the real world, where missing a day feels like a small death; more a room in a mansion filled with rooms, all warm and waiting for my return, with my things all safe where I left them and a small stack of welcome-home gifts waiting on the mantle for me to open.

In the end though I don't get to choose. When the game takes over the game takes over. That's why a little drought sometimes can quench a thirst.

Snow At First, Rain Later With A Chance Of Zombies : H1Z1 et al

Soon-come zombie survival MMO H1Z1 is going to have a "dynamic weather system". The intention is that changes in the climactic conditions will materially affect gameplay.

It's neither a new idea nor an unusual one. Many MMOs have dabbled with it but few, if any, have gone as far as to synchronize weather effects with changes in the broad mechanics of gameplay. FFXI has an arcane system of crafting and synthing that no-one really seems to understand, in which the day of the week and even the direction you face may, or may not, affect the outcome. That's coming from a similar direction but it's still not weather.

For the most part you can ignore the weather conditions in MMOs. If it rains your character won't get wet. The dirt track he's running along won't churn into viscous mud that sticks to his boots reducing his movement speed. Those thick eyebrows you were so proud of at character creation won't soak up rainwater like a sponge, dribbling it down into his eyes and knocking twenty percent off his Precision skill. That gleaming, two-handed spear he loves to carry strapped to his back like a flagpole won't attract a lightning strike that hits for 2k points of electrical damage.

I suppose it's a bit rich to expect environmental causality in a world where a three-foot high gnome can swim ten miles across a lake wearing a full suit of plate armor while carrying six backpacks full of iron ore. There's that oft-cited realism vs fun dynamic to take into account after all. Still, when asked, players generally seem to be in favor of some correlation between what they see on the screen and what's happening to their character and it doesn't seem to be beyond the wit of games developers to incorporate at least a modicum of entertaining cause and effect.

They certainly seem happy enough to include specific, localized environment-related gameplay when it suits them. GW2, for example, currently going gung-ho for sandstorms, has a number of places where crosswinds blow, strong enough to knock your character off a ledge to her death or at the very least the start of a long clamber to get back up for another try. Rift has a "dungeon" where white-out blizzard conditions form a major part of the final challenge. Many MMOs have lava pits and flows that cause burning damage (I seem to remember one that was instant death). Both Vanguard and WildStar have rivers with currents that will move your character against his will in the direction of flow.

All of these, though, are primarily environmental effects, not weather. When it comes to large weather systems that affect large areas or entire maps the only reliable impact on gameplay comes not from changes to the in-game mechanics but from a simple, practical fact: if you make it hard for the player to see what's on the screen the player will perform less well.

The history of blanking out the screen to make things more "challenging" goes back at least to Everquest. Back in 2000, when the rain came down in West Karana I used to have to go and hole up in the Centaur village 'til it stopped because I quite literally couldn't see far enough to know whether I was about to walk into a lion. When the Kunark expansion arrived and I ventured into Firiona Vie on the first day, the combination of thick forest, pounding rain and deadly wildlife meant my druid lost her corpse for good and all as did the couple of people who bravely helped her try and find it.

Rain, snow, mist, fog - they all work to disorient and constrain the player. Add in a proper day/night cycle and you can render many of your outdoor zones nigh-on unplayable more often than not. For some reason players didn't seem too enthusiastic about that so over the years night became twilight and twilight became a tint in the filter while rain, snow and fog ceased to be brutal gamestoppers and developed into delicate, beautiful visual haikus.

In so many ways this is a good thing. For a start, the sheer, breathtaking beauty of the weather in modern MMOs creates a weather-high barely less powerful than being outdoors in actual weather. On these hot, sultry summer days just looking at the Shiverpeaks drops the temperature in the room.
 
Then there's playability. The first few times I got caught in a rainstorm in EQ it was immensely affecting and immersive and the first time I got lost at night, an old story often re-told that I won't rehash here yet again, it created a deep and lasting memory that endures vividly to this day. Just a few weeks after those seminal experiences, however, impenetrable darkness and rain that reduced visibility to a few yards didn't seem so immersive any more. They just seemed irritating.

The pendulum swings. The roundabout turns.  Perhaps the days of meaningful weather are due for a comeback. On balance I hope so. I wouldn't advocate a wholesale return to the days of "sever weather conditions expected - stay indoors" but I think there must be ways to have our characters recognize the impact of cataracts and hurricanoes without making players rave like Lear on the blasted heath.

If H1Z1 gets it right perhaps that will pave the way for meaningful weather in EQNext or even Landmark but as Renee Machyousky, Community Manager for City State Entertainment, producers of the upcoming Camelot Unchained, observes in reply to a question about the influence of "day/night cycles, weather, seasonal influences on game play", it's a balancing act that all developers have to perform with extreme care:

" ...we need to find that sweet spot where we implement just enough of them to keep people engaged and entertained, without feeling overwhelmed or worse, frustrated".

Agreed, but I think that sweet spot is somewhere a little saltier than where the genre is right now. 

It's Only A Thought And Other Cliches: Camelot Unchained & WildStar

My job gives me a lot of holiday, on top of which I only work four days a week. Like Travis McGee  I'm doing my best to take my retirement in installments. Consequently I've been able to spend much of the last ten days playing MMOs. I've also been writing about them, reading about them and, here's the dangerous part, thinking about them.

While I've been taking time off work, Mark Jacobs has been doing just the opposite. He's been on a PR blitz for Camelot Unchained, the spiritual sequel to his landmark MMO of a decade or so back, which he intends to bring to Kickstarter sometime soon and, if he gets the backing and a fair wind, to market sometime around Autumn 2015.

The MMO blogosphere has been ablaze with discussion (well, smouldering slightly at the edges), both on Mark Jacobs' prospects of success and the nature of the game. Probably the best discussion that I've read has been at Keen and Graev, where Mark Jacobs himself has been responding and clarifying.

Apparently we've been here before with Warhammer Online, whose legendary hype train I completely missed in much the same way I mostly missed the first few years of WoW's success. I've written and read about MMOs for as long as I've been playing them, but for most of that time all my writing and reading took place on the forums of MMOs I was playing or websites dedicated to them, so if I wasn't actively following a game I had only the barest knowledge of its existence.

Nowadays I keep myself much better informed, so even though I have no particular plans to play, I'm paying close attention to Camelot Unchained. Another MMO I have a weather eye on, one that I definitely do have plans for, is Carbine's WildStar and there, too, the hype flows fast and free, not least in this typically well-made and witty promo.

This lengthy preamble brings me to my point. All this hype is intended to get the players - us, that is - thinking about these games, so I've been doing just that; thinking about which I might want to play and why.

When I found Everquest in 1999 (and yes, it was a little like finding God...) I was hoping for something akin to a perpetual game of AD&D, with the computer acting as DM and the general population of the entire world standing in as players. I wanted a goodly portion of roleplaying, a hefty dollop of adventure, plenty of wilderness to wander and witty banter all the way. Mostly, that was what I got.

Over the years a little of that has been lost but a lot has been added. The concept of the MMORPG has stretched until it's all out of shape. At the Camelot Unchained end of the forest it's a four yorkshiremen world, uphill both ways, in the snow; down at the WildStar Wonderpark it's "how would you like it, sir?".

Well, I don't know how I'd like it, that's the problem, isn't it? And I'm not likely to know until you give it to me. An unpaid job, doing repetitive tasks in my own time in order to build something to entertain myself with, isn't that what the new shibboleth of "player-driven content" amounts to? That doesn't sound like such a great offer. When I go to the cinema, they don't hand me fifty yards of canvas and a needle and tell me to stitch up a screen before I get to watch the movie.

On the other hand, there's little to match the satisfaction of standing back admiring something you've made for yourself, and I wouldn't be sitting here writing instead of playing if I wasn't at least as interested in creating as consuming.

Yes, thinking about things is a dangerous practice. It rarely leads to contentment. I've had a week of it and I'm more confused than ever. I don't even have a conclusion to this post. I wrote several closing paragraphs and when I read them back I realized I didn't even agree with myself so I had to delete them.

One size doesn't fit all. There's a cliche to end on. Maybe I'll just have to play Camelot Unchained and WildStar and decide which I like best by seeing which I want to play more of, rather than deciding in advance that one will suit me and the other won't. Maybe I'll just have to keep an open mind - another fine cliche worn smooth with justified use. ArcheAge, Neverwinter, Dragon's Prophet (you thought I'd forgotten you, didn't you? Well I haven't!), City of Steam, EQNext... maybe I should even try TESO. Don't close any doors, burn any bridges, leave any stones unturned. Or am I just sitting on the fence?