Short Attention Span

"Of course, all of this means EverQuest II and the Fallen Gate server will drop by the wayside as I jump games after a month yet again".

Wilhelm at TAGN

Ah, yes. "All of this". It's a problem, that's for sure.

In March I was enthusing about returning to Lord of the Rings Online. That didn't last.

In April I was thundering through Twin Saga  on a turtle until FFXIV's endless free trial shouldered it out of the spotlight for a while.

Along the way I took the unusual step of buying Tanzia, a game that plays like an MMO but isn't. I barely even wrote about that one but I did play it quite a bit before yet another distraction came along.

I ended up enjoying Secret Worlds Legends more than I thought I would, although many of my original reservations remain. (For a more considered take on the problematic nature of this ill-conceived revamp, read Karinshastha's excellent review) but, much though I wanted to get to the end of the story, something else soon caught my eye and it was off to Norrath once again.

Did it stop there? No, of course it didn't. This weekend I found myself dithering between two new possibilities. Dark and Light appeared unexpectedly on Steam and Yonder cropped up on several blogs I follow.

I vaguely remember D&L from its original, disastrous launch as an MMO back in 2006. I didn't pay it much attention then and I hadn't been taking much more notice of the revamp but I visited the website and it looked somewhat intriguing.

Given that I'd been speculating about what a hybrid Survival/MMO might look like only a few weeks ago, it seemed churlish to ignore one when it came along. I got as far as reading some of the Steam reviews but while I was there I also took a look at what people were saying about Yonder.

It was neck and neck for a while but in the end it was Yonder's delicate footprint that nudged ahead. D&L is a 50GB download; Yonder is less than a tenth of that.

So I ponied up my £15 and downloaded Yonder, which took less than five minutes. That was on Saturday and I was working Sunday but Steam tells me I've already played for four hours. I would have guessed longer but time seems to drift when I'm exploring Gemea.

Posts specifically about Yonder may or may not follow. There's an awful lot I could say. It's as gorgeous as I was led to believe but nowhere near as relaxing. In some ways it's not so much an Explorer's dream as an Achiever's tick-list. I certainly wasn't was expecting so many quests, let alone a central storyline.

Perhaps we'll get back to that in a proper review sometime - or a First Impressions piece at least. Or maybe we won't because the next cab's already pulling away from the rank.

Tomorrow the Living Story Season 3 Finale drops. Titled "One Path Ends" it supposedly takes us back to Orr. Once the dust settles everyone's expecting the official announcement of GW2's second expansion, which so rumor has it, could be with us as soon as the end of September.

That's going to push everything else off the table for a while. Looks like I won't have time to take advantage of the Level 105 boost that comes with LotRO's imminent Mordor expansion after all. Maybe I'll ask for that one for my birthday in November.

Except, that's when the still-under-wraps EQ2 expansion will probably appear...most likely right on top of the XPack for GW2 (which I don't for one moment believe will land in September - at least I hope not, because I'll be in Italy then...)

Anyway, getting Legion for my birthday last year didn't work out so well. I still haven't found a window for WoW.

Remember when we used to talk about Three-Monthers? Ah, those were the days!

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. 

A Quest By Any Other Name : GW2, EQ2

There was a time when questing in MMORPGs had fallen very much out of fashion, both with developers and players. Five years ago, when GW2 was powering up, all the talk was about how Dynamic Events would sweep away the outmoded system of quest hubs and questlines for good and all.

Supposedly it all began with Warhammer Online and its "Public Quests". They weren't quests as we knew them. You didn't need to accept them, just be in the right place when they happened. Rift picked up that ball and ran with it but for all the mold-breaking, both those MMOs operated with a safety net of traditional quests hanging below the high-wire of their fresh, communal gameplay.

GW2 tried to go that extra mile, launching with nothing that could easily be identified as a "quest" or a "hub". Hearts had some similarities to both but ANet did succeed to a degree in diffusing the whole "go there, do that" paradigm into something less authoritarian. It was a conviction in the future of the genre that didn't survive contact with the players.

From the very earliest days you could routinely hear new players plaintively requesting directions in map chat. "I'm level 13 and I've done all my Hearts in Queensdale - where do I go next?" Or, frustrated, "I can't do any more of my Story. Where can I get more quests?"

Wait a moment...you realize this requires social capital?

It wasn't long before GW2 acquired a whole tangle of quasi-questlike activities. I think I first noticed mission creep around the time of the Great Karka Invasion, less than three months after launch. By the time the first Living Story arrived in early 2013 it was obvious ANet were searching for a way to coral players and move them through a narrative. It wasn't entirely working.

As the months and years rolled by the experiments continued. We had mysterious benefactors, unsolicited correspondence, personal, meta and hidden achievements, collections... You name it, ANet tried it.

Some of the systems worked better than others. Some barely worked at all. Syp condemns what he calls "the Jenga Tower of MMO gear complexity" but the same problem afflicts all systems. GW2's ersatz quest analogs form a thick palimpsest that hides meaning and access from the unenlightened. As MMOs age they thicken.

Perhaps we've outgrown all these tricks to draw us in and lead us on, anyway. Clearly some developers continue to hope so. Tyler F.M. Edwards fears Blizzard may have lost faith or interest in narrative and if WoW stops telling stories will anyone else bother? We've come a long way from the days when BioWare sought to re-make and dominate the genre with Story and The Fourth Pillar, that's for sure.

SW:TOR turned out not to be the future after all. Instead the huge, ongoing success and popularity of those online games that take some inspiration from MMOs but decline to bother with the complexities or the expense of creating coherent, continuing storylines, The MOBA and Survival genres, has begun to bleed across.  Following the money would seem to indicate that all players really require is a playground, some toys and a few basic rules.

Snail Games, the people behind the re-emergence of Dark and Light , seem to think so. The game everyone thought was dead, assuming anyone ever thought about it all, which seems unlikely, is back but not as anything we'd have recognized as an MMO when it first flamed and burned a decade ago. Fifty players to a server and the first concern keeping fed and warm is a far call from GW2's opening-day charge.

Of course the reward's an achievement. I had to do six quests to get it, didn't I?

And yet, the more things change the more they stay the same. For me, this last week has been all about the questing. In EQ2 I spent hours finishing up the basket of quests recommended for the Kunark Rising expansion arriving on Tuesday. When I'd finished that I began running repeatable Heroes Festival quests for statues, paintings and furniture.

Along the way my Inquisitor somehow managed to pick up the preparatory questline for the introduction of Channelers to the game - back in 2013. She finished that although I can't explain why, other than that I'd forgotten most of the story and it was fun doing it again. She also started the introductory questlines for two previous expansions because...well because someone with a feather over his or her head offered them to her, I guess.

You're not fooling anyone, ANet.

Even GW2 offered no safe haven. There may be no questing in Tyria officially but what would you call an "Achievement"
that comes in multiple stages with a checklist of activities to complete, each of which ticks off and counts down as you criss-cross the world, speaking to NPCs and collecting items? Ducks. Walking. Quacking.

My feeling is that Tyler shouldn't worry too much. The need humans have to find and follow a plot is too strong to be denied. There are countless forms of entertainment that don't require a story, but once you place a backdrop that contains characters then story is going occur, whatever you try to do to stop it.

Sandbox fans love to claim the player is the story but in reality the player is just a part of a much wider narrative. Not always the most important part. Even if they don't need to follow the plot it seems most people do at least need to know it's there.

In the end it's an MMO thing. Games can get by without narrative just fine but MMORPGs, despite the increasingly archaic acronym, aren't just games. If you want to have any kind of a virtual world you have to have story. You can tell it an infinite number of ways but you can't not tell it at all because without story all you have is a game.

Questing is a cliche, yes, but cliches are a form of shorthand that arises from the need to express quickly and plainly a concept so familiar it needs to be codified for convenience. There may be smarter, fancier, flashier ways to tell stories in MMORPGs but while there are stories to be told quests will be there to tell them.

Even if we call them something else.