Otha Fish or You Can't Get (All Your) Blood From A (Standing) Stone

When the news about EG7's acquisition of Daybreak Games broke last week I wasn't in a position to say much about it . Now that I have the time, the moment has passed. But maybe I can find a different angle.

There's been a wealth of discussion and debate, first about the sale itself and then over the astonishing flood of detailed information concerning the population, popularity and profitability of the games themselves. Wilhelm covered most of what I would have written about and linked to everyone talking about the revelations and the implications. By and large, I feel sanguine about the change of ownership but I wouldn't say there were no warning flags at all.

In contrast to many commentators, I've been happy with Daybreak's stewardship of the portfolio they assumed from Sony Online Entertainment almost six years ago. It's only through the thick glass of a robust pair of rose-tinted spectacles that anyone could regard the later years of SOE's tenure as some kind of pre-lapsarian Golden Age. Daybreak may have had its issues, not least over who the hell was driving the bus, but so did every incarnation of ownership before them, from Verant Interactive and 989 Studios onward.

Rather than objections grounded in anything in particular, much of the criticism of DBG felt more like the generic, endemic contempt of mmorpg players for the companies that run the games they play, a tedious pose that acts as an enervating drag anchor on every discussion of custodianship across the genre. By contrast, during what I tend to characterize as SOE's decline into late-period decadence, there were much more substantive concerns as hubris, arrogance and barely-concealed personal agendas drove the ship onto a seemingly endless series of sandbanks.

From the selfish cynicism of the PSS1 debacle (yeah, I'm never gonna let it go - it's like my personal NGE) to the inglorious self-aggrandizement of the EQNext pipe dream, it seemed there was no limit to SOE's capacity to disappoint. And yet, through the worst of it, SOE remained my favorite MMO studio, albeit mostly by default. 

Even so, the six years under Daybreak has felt like calm sailing in comparison, with most of the drama confined to confused and confusing claims and denials concerning ownership along with a peculiar predilection for moving and renaming the furniture. That's been more of an entertaining sideshow than an existential threat, although the month or so when it looked as though the Russian connection might see the games banned in the U.S.A. had its moments.

As for the games themselves, after a shaky bedding-in period, they settled into a comfortable rut. For a genre that relies almost entirely on predictable, repetitive content, that was close to ideal. And for all the negative news stories about cutbacks, for all the developers "let go" and for all the evident strains imposed by reduced circumstances and resources, the whole ramshackle edifice still felt far more stable than it had in the last years of SOE, when all the stories revolved either around sunsets and closures or grandiose projects that hinted of mania.

If life under Daybreak has been dull but good, then looking into the intentions and ambitions of EG7 suggests it could get better yet and more exciting, too. There seems very little doubt that the new German owners have purchased a portfolio of games with the firm intent not only of continuing to run them but of building on the platform they provide, as this paragraph from the press release amply demonstrates:

"The acquisition of Daybreak will further strengthen and add diversification to EG7’s IP portfolio through acquisition of best-in-class original and third-party IPs (EverQuest, The Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, DC Universe Online). Daybreak will also add a strong team of both operationally and strategically capable individuals. The Transaction will increase size and profitability of the Company through stable cash flows from free-to-play model with loyal communities for existing IPs. Furthermore, the Daybreak platform offers future upside through upcoming content releases for e.g. DC Universe Online and The Lord of the Rings Online, potential synergies across the group, and strengthened team to identify and execute further M&A".

Whereas theories about the motivations behind the Columbus Nova buyout (CN being the original purchaser of SOE, later morphing into DBG, in case anyone forgets) ranged from the illegal to the exploitative, EG7 clearly seems just to want to become a global player in the online gaming marketplace. As the plethora of financial and demographic information released to consolidate the fiduciary wisdom of the acquisition suggests, the whole point of buying the games is to make money from operating them.

And there's the red flag. It's a small one and it's waving somewhere towards the back but it's definitely there. I spotted it even before I read Yeebo's excellent post on the monetization of the two Standing Stone games, Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online, both of which we now belatedly understand to have been owned by Daybreak all along.

As Yeebo explains, "DDO has the highest monthly average revenue per-paying-player of any game in the Daybreak portfolio.  In other words, the income of DDO is disproportionately dependent on whales". This stood out for me, too, when I read the recently-released details we'd previously guessed at but couldn't know for certain. 

What really surprised me, though, was the information relating to EverQuest II. Anyone not in denial must long ago have realized that EQII never really managed to step out of the shadow of its progenitor. EverQuest has been running for longer, has more servers and I believe it also has more developers assigned to it. There's been a widespread belief for the last few years that it also has more players and brings in more money, both of which we now know to be true.

 

It's not quite as straightforward as that, though. The figures we've seen are snapshots. We don't have a longitudinal analysis. Anecdotally, EQII has been hemorrhaging players for several years. Perhaps it once did compete on equal terms with EQ. There was certainly a time when it felt that way. 

Why has EQII lost so many players, if indeed the rumors are true? Almost certainly because of the increasing use of the kind of practices Yeebo ascribes to DDO. The mechanics may differ but the intent and the result is the same. 

EQII has frequently been described as "pay to win" by disgruntled ex-players but what it really is is "pay to play". I'm not talking about the subscription, which is good value but by no means necessary for a casual player. I'm referring to the ever-increasing raft of purchaseable consumables that service the myriad progression systems within the game.

Just off the top of my head, these include familiars, mercenaries, mounts and by far the most controversial, spells. All of these are far more than cosmetic or flavor choices, although most of them are that as well. They all add power and at the top end the game is tuned to expect players to have it.

Over time, all of these systems and almost certainly more that I'm forgetting have been expanded and tuned so as to allow a never-ending spiral of upgrades. If you play casually, as I do, you'll get all the upgrades you need for free just by playing but if you want to move into Heroic dungeon content or, most certainly, raiding you'd better be ready to pull out your credit card.

There's always been a little of that, or at least since the cash shop was added more than a decade ago, but under Daybreak the system has been pushed to breaking point. Probably the most common complaints I read on the forums (and there are a lot of complaints because EQII players are and have always been quick to reach for the tar and feathers) revolve around having to buy consumables to accelerate the many time-gated upgrade processes. 

It's also the reason most commonly cited for players leaving the game and, even more importantly, not feeling able to return. No wonder the time-limited expansion server, Kaladim, is so popular. As yet progress there hasn't caught up with the expansions that introduced these systems.

Where the whaling in DDO and the consumable racket in EQII strike sparks with the EG7 acquisition is in this slide from the Investor Presentation:

Terms like "Industry leading monetization" and "Deep monetization model" may excite investors but are unlikely to settle a nervous player's concern. And not without reason. As you can see, EQII is second only to DDO in ARPPU or average revenue per paying user. The two smallest games in the portfolio by "bookings" (I think that means how many people actually play) bring in the most money per player.

It's a red flag but as I said it's a small one. There's plenty in the presentation emphasizing the benefits of player loyalty, game stability and the strength of the I.P.s and the breakdown of where revenues come from is balanced: "Mainly monetize via in-game purchase, membership subscription and DLC / expansion pack." 

It must be of some concern to the new owners, though, that the games with the highest MAUs stand in reverse order to those with the biggest income. It wouldn't be all that surprising if they wanted to do something about that. Let's just hope that in seeking to do so they don't kill off the goose that lays the silver eggs. (I mean, c'mon, these numbers are maybe better than we expected but they're hardly golden are they?).

As I said, I remain sanguine. In the short term I'd expect little to change and I'm happy with the status quo. Once the new owners get their feet under the old DBG boardroom table (presumably it's somewhere in Jason Epstein's garage right now) I imagine there will be some changes but so long as they stick to the "Evergreen live service game portfolio" (translation - keep the servers up) and go on pumping out the expansions, I'll be happy.

And maybe they'll even tweak the parameters a little so as to realize that "potential to leverage for marketing and reactivation". Win some of those 178m "registered users" back. They might not all be whales but some of them could still be worth fishing for.

Special Snowflakes : EQ2

As Wilhelm reported, Standing Stone Games have some very pricy pre-Christmas deals going for Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings Online. Daybreak, SSG's publisher, is also running a limited-duration holiday offer for EverQuest II but it's a different beast altogether.

The SSG packages both rely on long-term commitment. The DDO package includes two years of premium membership; for LotRO you get one year. In both cases you also get access to a very large amount of content that would take months to play through.

The EQII offer is called 12 Days of Frostfell. It does indeed last for twelve days, running from Tuesday, December 4, when this year's in-game winter holiday season began, until just before midnight on Wednesday, December 16, and it's much more about instant gratification.

It's also a somewhat convoluted affair, requiring nested purchases in both the cash shop and from an in-game NPC. It took me a couple of read-throughs and a bit of digging around in game to figure it out. The short version goes like this: if you buy specific packs (all labeled "Holiday") in the DBG Store during the promotion they come with a new currency called Glug's Chocolate Coins. You can then spend that currency at a vendor who lurks in the shadows near the wardrobe that zones you into the Frostfell Wonderland Village.

It might seem like an odd way to go about things but I guess you could argue that it turns a marketplace transaction into something more lore-appropriate. In doing so, it also connects what you're doing more strongly to your character, since it's they, not you, who makes the final purchase.

I would argue that, as it happens. Yes, it would be simpler and more convenient just to buy the items directly from the store but simplicity and convenience aren't everything.

Those are the means. How about the ends? What can you buy, how much does it cost, and is it worth it?

The "what" is simple enough. As is usually the case in EQ2 these days, what you can buy with your chocolate money is Mercenaries, Familiars and a Prestige Home. Mercs and Fams (No-one calls them Fams. Let's not start.) are mostly sold in the cash shop via randomized packs but the in-game vendor sells them directly, so you can get exactly the ones you want, first time.


(As an aside, DBG have managed to finesse lockboxes through the store in such a way that I see very few complaints. In fact, in a game where complaints are commonplace and the playerbase is frequently grumpy, lockboxes rarely get a mention, although this particular promotion has raised a few hackles. I believe the lockboxes are broadly accepted because the items inside are both tradeable and convertible to Status, the currency all high-end players crave and can't get enough of. I'm guessing people are more than happy to sell or salvage their spares. Probably some even buy them for that very purpose).

Getting back to the current promotion, while it's quite expensive, it does seem to offer decent value. The various bundles in the cash shop give coins in various quantities. Things like the unattuners that cost a few hundred DBC come with a single chocolate coin and the number you get scales according to cost all the way up to ten coins with the 4999DBC Mindbender Merc seven-pack.

Santa Glug's Curious Clerk, the in-game vendor, charges three, five and seven chocolate coins for the different Mercenaries. The Familiars are all three coins each except for the Blush Gumdrop, which is top of the shop at ten coins. That's because the Blush is Ethereal quality while the rest are merely Legendary.

The Prestige House, which the promo calls "Santa Glug’s Snowglobe Home" but which is known in game as Santa Glug's Cheerful Holiday Home, also runs to ten chocolate coins. The blurb says "This amazingly cozy winter home really has to be seen to be believed! " and fortunately you can do that without buying it if you go to the Prestige Home portal in game and take the tour.

Naimi Denmother did just that and posted a video but it only shows one of the three globes.
Denmum must have been tired that day (she works harder than Dulfy on this stuff and for a lot less reward, I bet) because you can visit all three globes on the tour. I just did.

As well as the one on the counter-top there's another on the mantlepiece and a third on the table. You just have to click on the tiny globe at the edge to swap from one to another. Snow falls constantly inside the globe and flying is enabled, making for some spectacular views.

The breakout zone for the new home (and it's been cofirmed there is one) would seem to be either the Baubleshire Inn itself or, just possibly, the whole of Baubleshire. Only on a Land of the Giants scale, since your character has been shrunk to a suitable size to fit inside a snowglobe.

I find this an immensely appealing prospect. I'm not particularly interested in the Familiars and Mercs (although having Santa Glug as a healer has a certain appeal) but I'd love to break out of the snowglobe and go exploring in the old, no longer accessible, pre-invasion Baubleshire.

(Another aside: one of the less well-known reasons that EQ2's housing is best in genre is the ability to "break out" of the homes into the surrounding area. This used to be a somewhat clandestine activity but is now fully sanctioned, albeit on an "at your own risk" basis. By breaking out you can effectively gain access to an entire zone, which you can decorate (and in EQ2 "decorate is a synonym for "build") just as though you were in the core home instance. The snow globe home has apparently been designed with breakouts in mind and the breakout zone covers an area larger than Antonica!)

To get ten chocolate coins is no small undertaking. Well, okay, it is a small undertaking in that it doesn't ask much more of you than a few mouse-clicks. What I mean is, it's quite expensive. It varies a little according to what Holiday Packages you choose, but it always comes in, near as makes no odds, around 5000DBC.

Five thousand in Daybreak Cash would cost you $45 (or £37). It's a lot less than the $200-300 SSG are asking but I'm not about to spend that kind of money on an imaginary house I most likely will never spend more than a few sessions messing around with. It's also very expensive compared to any other Prestige House, none of which breaks 2,000DBC.

And yet...

All the Holiday Bundles are genuinely useful: the Mercs and Familiars, as I mentioned, can be converted to Status and also traded on the Broker. You might even get a really good one that you'd end up using. Other bundles include things that always come in useful, like extra character slots, server transfers and item unattuners.

Even so, I still wouldn't spend $45 on a whim. Only I don't have to... As a result of SOE's notoriously idiotic policy of running regular double and even treble cash sales (sometimes cited as the reason they never made any money) plus the regular 500 stipend I get for being a member, I have over 20kDBC on my current main account and 17k on the old one.

I might as well spend it on something and five thousand isn't even going to make that much of a dent. So I'm thinking about it.

And because I'm seriously considering the offer, it also clarifies for me the reason why game companies like to put a either a time limit or a limited number on what is self-evidently an infinitely renewable resource. It makes purchasers decide.

If there was no time limit I'd tick the mental box that says "one day" and forget about it for now. And probably forever. I'm extremely good at feeling as though I've bought something just because I thought about buying it. Put a time limit on it, though, and I have to make an actual decision.

It's a wonderful house.

I really would like it.

Let's not be hasty, though.

Still got six days.

Don't rush me, I'm thinking!

The Machine Stops

I’ve killed that goblin a hundred thousand times across a dozen games over more than a decade, and I can scarcely muster the energy to read about how it is being re-skinned as a different shade of orc

Zubon - Kill Ten Rats

Yesterday brought the surprising news that Turbine, one of the longest-established and most influential of MMO developers, had made the final decision to turn its back on the genre it helped to found and form.

Turbine's first MMORPG, Asheron's Call, was one of the original "Big Three" along with Ultima Online and EverQuest. Some MMOs are bigger than others, though, and even back in October of 1999, when I was sitting in front of my 14" CRT screen at work, searching the World-Wide Web via NetScape for information about these scary, mysterious "online" role-playing games, Asheron's Call, even though it was just about to launch the following month, barely registered.

Back in those days of shortage I tried to play every MMO I could find. Unlike Lineage, which I have still never played even now, Asheron's Call wasn't hard to access. I just went to one of the three video game shops on my local high street and picked the enormous cardboard box off the shelf.

I didn't take to Asheron's Call. By the time I tried it I'd been playing EQ for a while and I'd also tried UO and would have taken either in preference to the strangely loose, unmoored experience I found in Turbine's flagship. I wasn't alone. While AC had its dedicated supporters and was commercially successful enough for Turbine to follow it with an ill-fated sequel, like Pete Wylie in The Crucial Three, the Asheron's Call franchise was destined to disappear behind its peers into the rear-view mirror of history.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given my lack of enthusiasm for the original, I didn't pay much attention to AC2 at the time. When it went dark in 2005 I assumed I'd missed my chance but I finally got around to kicking its wheels when Turbine made the surprising decision to resurrect it as a F2P title almost a decade later. I didn't enjoy that experience a great deal more than I did the first one.

Turbine's third MMO looked a lot more interesting. In 2006 they launched the first MMO officially based on the D&D licence, Dungeons and Dragons Online. Given that I'd originally decided to give MMORPGs a try on the understanding that they offered something akin to a 24/7, on-demand automated D&D session, this looked promising.

Mrs Bhagpuss and I both joined the DDO beta and, like many, perhaps most of the testers, came away disappointed. What with the extreme instancing, the lack of an open world, the almost complete reliance on grouping and the unfamiliar choice of the Eberron campaign setting, our few forays into Turbine's first licensed MMO were not happy times.

We declined to buy DDO when it launched in 2006 but we did give it a second glance three years later, when Turbine made their industry-shaking decision to make the game Free to Play. By then DDO had been largely re-structured to be a much more open game with a fair-to-middling solo experience. I dabbled for a while and enjoyed it in parts.

DDO wasn't the first Western F2P MMO. That was Anarchy Online, which opened the doors to the great unsubbed in 2005. Somehow Funcom's innovative move slipped by largely unnoticed while Turbine's dropping of the subscription required to play DDO was seen even at the time as a harbinger of storms to come.

And come those storms did when Turbine played the F2P card for the second time. Despite the very rocky start for their first licensed outing, just a year after DDO's launch Turbine took a second run at someone else's IP and again it was a big one. Indeed, it's not unreasonable to suggest that in Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings Turbine took on the two biggest IPs the genre knew. For a relatively small and specialist player they were certainly thinking big.

Lord of the Rings Online launched in 2007, which was several years after the global success of Peter Jackson's trilogy of movies. Perhaps that was coming a little late to the party. The world may have been a little Tolkiened out by then. Like SW:toR a few years on, LotRO wasn't as big a deal as the power of the name might have led investors to expect. 

It certainly wasn't a failure. Critics loved it and it sold respectably if not spectacularly. It took Mrs Bhagpuss and I a while to get around to trying it but when we did we found a solid and enjoyable MMO wrapped around a very convincing iteration of Middle Earth. We played for several months, eventually tapping out in the mid-40s. 

Mrs Bhagpuss would probably have gone on playing longer but one Sunday morning I had one run-in too many with the roleplaying police and decided life was too short to argue the toss over authenticity with people who apparently believed Hobbits were real and Middle Earth was historical fact. There was also the issue of the combat, which alone among MMOs gave me seriously painful RSI. 

In the years since I've dropped back in a few times.The world is always a joy to explore. In 2010 dropping in became something you could do on a whim as Turbine again abandoned the subscription model. 

If taking DDO F2P had shaken the industry the move to free for LotRO rocked it on its foundations, not least because of the apparent financial windfall it meant for Turbine. The reported threefold increase in revenue six months down the line was almost certainly the spur the industry needed to move en masse away from the decade-old subscription model towards the plethora of hybrid and F2P options that have dominated the genre ever since.

That turned out to be Turbine's last throw of the dice as far as shaping the course of the genre went. LotRO was Turbine's final MMO. Since then, other than a long drawn-out and ultimately futile attempt to enter the congested MOBA market with yet a third Licensed IP, the DC Comics' based Infinite Crisis, Turbine seems to have done little more then curate, fitfully, their one money-earning product, LotRO.

The license granted by the Tolkien Estate to run that title expires next year. There's an ongoing legal case that apparently means no-one from Turbine can talk about what happens next, even if they wanted to, which they most certainly don't.

There's been a deal of speculation about what that might mean for LotRO but yesterday's announcement that the company would be "transitioning into a free-to-play, mobile development studio" would be impossible to interpret as anything other than a hard blow to the prospect of a happy outcome for the many thousands still enjoying their journeys through Middle Earth.

Massively OP managed to prise a clarification out of Turbine's owners, Warner Bros, to the effect that "The Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons online games will continue to operate as they do now." Be reassured if you will.

So, dark days for Elves, Hobbits and Men and a shadow over the genre. Many, like Zubon, while feeling angered or saddened by the ignominious fall of a once-respected pillar of a once-great community, will see it as another brick in the wall that separates them from their past. Undoubtedly the future for the genre is not the future we thought it would be back when the sun first rose over The Shire. 

Yet these are not the last days. For the while light still shines from the East, as the relative success this year of Blade and Soul, Black Desert and the ongoing renaissance of Final Fantasy XIV attest. As Zubon observes, old MMOs roll on, playing to their own, niche audiences, oblivious of trend. For those of us still excited to see what colors the next lot of orcs might come in there is always likely to be someone standing ready with the paintbrush.

If you want to enjoy what Turbine brought to the Tolkein table, and it was a very considerable contribution to the canon, then as Wilhelm advises "Play the games while you have the chance, as the future is more uncertain than usual and nobody is likely to make a game like LOTRO again". If, on the other hand, it's the MMORPG genre itself that fires your imagination and makes your clicking finger itch then lift your head and look up.

MMOs are coming to mobile platforms and to consoles. VR, when it settles down and beds in, looks to be made for the form. The last two decades laid down the foundation for the future of an imaginary experience that will be with us for as long as imagination itself lasts. MMOs aren't going anywhere. They're going everywhere.

Who knows, maybe Turbine will even make some of them. For your phone.

Neverwinter Spring

This weekend saw the first of three short betas for Cryptic's upcoming D&D flavored MMO, Neverwinter. Massively have been giving the game extensive coverage but Tipa at West Karana has by far the best write-up I've seen.

Last November I mentioned my interest but it had faded somewhat . Most of the information that trickled out didn't sound all that inspiring. I didn't even bother signing up for the beta, far less lay out $60 for the "Founder's Pack" so I could play three weekends then have my characters deleted. Oh, and then another three days with my real character before the game launches completely free-to-play. Yes, I know there's a mount and a companion and some other odds and ends but, really... $60 for three beta weekends a month or two before a full F2P launch?

This seems to be a thing, though. City of Steam did it too and I guess if you know you are going to play the game and you know you are going to spend that much in the cash shop anyway, it does no harm to pony up in advance and have the benefit of beta. I can't pretend I won't be doing it for EQNext if the opportunity arises.

Neverwinter, though, I am not that stoked for, but Tipa's piece and some of the comments on it have rekindled my interest, as have some of the videos and screenshots. It's still the Forge content creation system that I most want to get my hands on, but the game itself looks like it could turn out to be fun.

I played Dungeons and Dragons Online for a fair while, first in beta, when it was rubbish (and that's being generous) and later when it had been tarted up into something that could pass for a real MMO in a dim light. By then it had become sort of fun, but the reliance on repeating story-driven dungeons on increasing levels of difficulty struck me as ludicrous after a short while, so my stay was short.

Another point against DDO was the Eberron milieu. It was unfamiliar and I can't say it grew on me much in the time I spent there. I'm no big-time D&D fan but I do know and like the Forgotten Realms setting and that alone makes me considerably more interested in Neverwinter.

I also like what I've seen so far of Cryptic's MMOs. While neither Champions Online nor STO grabbed me, that had more to do with the genres they inhabited than anything about the way they were made. I found both of them clean in design, straightforward and pleasant to play. I have reasonable confidence that the House that made those could make a fantasy MMO that I would enjoy.

There's still the action-MMO aspect to get past, but I found Shawn Schuster's negative impressions of Neverwinter's combat strangely encouraging. The very things he rails against, the hand-holding, the clunky, static movement, the lack of strafing, lead me to hope that there might not be all that much "action" after all.

Anyway, not long to wait. Neverwinter should be out in a couple or three months. I'm quite looking forward to it.