Elteria Endures

Just shy of a year ago, I received an invite to the alpha test of a sandbox mmorpg by the name of Elteria Adventures. I gave it a go and wrote a First Impressions post in which I described the game as being like "Landmark and Free Realms had a baby". I called it a "solid" and "convincing" start.

That was pretty much the last time I mentioned it until this February, when I wrote a catch-up post in which I went back and looked again at all the First Impressions posts I'd ever written to see how well my initial takes held up. Things didn't look all that promising:

"I went back and played a few times but I ran out of new things to do and stopped. Development seems to have stalled. The Steam page says "There's no recent activity from the developers of this title..." I might look into that later.

Turns out I was a tad premature in writing the game off. Yesterday I was browsing through my Steam library when I happened to notice that Elteria had received an update. I took a look at the notes to see what might have changed.

The first thing I saw was a massive Ukrainian flag with "We Stand With Ukraine" emblazoned across it. Beneath that was this statement:

"Greetings from the Elteria Adventures team!

Despite this difficult time, when half of our team is hiding in bombshelters, and another half is doing everything to help, we still decided to fulfill our promise and release this update in time. It contains several months of our work, so we hope you enjoy it.

We will continue working on this project for as long as we can.
No to war."

Elteria is being developed by the eponymous Elteria Team. I'm not sure if they're actually based in Ukraine or not since information about the company on the web seems unusually sparse. The publisher, Heatherglade Publishing, is based in Hungary, which is right next door.

There followed details of an update that would have been impressive in any circumstances, let alone with a war going on.  It includes a companion for your character, a new mechanic that allows you to expand and upgrade your personal island, a major revamp of mob AI, an expansion/progression mechanic for inventory, significant revamps to both combat and building mechanics, a new Adventure Journal and a "massive rework" of the landscape generation systems. 

Oh, and Raspberry Snails that you can catch and eat. Plus all the usual bug fixes you'd expect in an alpha, naturally.

I thought I'd log in and see things for myself. My old character was still there, something you can never take for granted in an alpha, but it seemed like a better idea to roll a new one and start fresh. There was a choice of North American or European servers and for once I decided to go Euro. The 11ms ping might have swayed my decision there.

As soon as I got in, any plans I had to focus on the new stuff disappeared. For one thing, I'd completely forgotten what a brutal game Elteria Adventures can be, right from the start. 

Looking back at my First Impressions piece, I think I rather glossed over the unforgiving nature of the early stages. I did make some comparisons with Valheim, but having recently gone back to that game as well, I'd have to say that Elteria Adventures makes the Viking afterlife look like a toddlers' tea party.

In Valheim, you might get killed by a skeleton once or twice before you get the hang of things. Maybe by a boar, if you're particularly inept. Last night I lost count of the number of times I was sent to my spawn point by both of them. 

As soon as night fell (And night in Elteria is dark.) the skeletons come out to play and the boars, benign and harmless by day, turn feral. I note with some concern that last year I said that once I'd worked out how to equip a staff and fight with it I had few problems staying alive. Either I've gotten worse since then or the game's gotten tougher because having a stick in my hand didn't really help all that much this time around.

In the end I got so ticked off with pigs and animated bonepiles lunging at me out of the darkness I built myself a shelter. It didn't help much but at least it was something to do with the endless stacks of sand and rubies clogging up my bags.

As I wrote last time, the tutorial takes you through the basics up to the point where you have to make a portal to take you from your personal island to the public areas, where most of the resources are. I got so wrapped doing all that, I lost track of time. 

When I finally got my portal done and logged out, Steam told me I'd been playing for two and a half hours. As I've mentioned before, I have a real problem with games where you can build houses and terraform the landscape. It's as close as I ever get to feeling addicted to a game, which is why I'm wary of getting sucked in. 

I logged in to check a couple of things for this post and found I'd played another hour and a half. It's a yellow flag for me but a recommendation for the game. Clearly it has something going for it if it can set a hook like that.

Of the listed changes, the most immediately noticeable was the Personal Sidekick, a floating bot that accompanies you from your first moments. It neatly fixes a problem I noted last time, namely the ridiculous survival genre convention of punching trees and rocks to get started. The Sidekick does that for you with some kind of ray and it also acts as an attack droid if you haven't made yourself a weapon.

Once I had a stick the Sidekick didn't seem to atack any more. It might be nice if it joined in the fight as well. Other than that, I was very happy to have it's company. You can upgrade it, too, although I didn't quite figure out how.

About the only other changes listed in the update that I spotted were the hives from which you can get restorative honey. That was a lifesaver - literally. Until I got my hands on a honeycomb I couldn't find any way of recovering health, which was one of the reasons I kept dying.

It seemed to me the world looked more detailed and visually richer but looking at the old screenshots and the new I'm not sure I could stand that observation up. The forests do look denser but that's about it.

One difference I definitely did spot was a change to the recipe for the portal that gets you off your Personal Island. In the old post I make mention of needing "Deep Gold" and having to spend some considerable time and effort delving the caves for it. This time round I only needed iron, not that that was particularly easy to come by, either.

If I get a moment, I'm going to log my original character in and see if there's anything new for her to do. As the passage I quoted earlier confirms, the main reason I stopped last time was that I ran out of options. Maybe the new Adventure Journal will have some suggestions.

It's very good to see that development on the game is still progressing, especially given the circumstances. I hope everyone at Elteria Team, including Alice, who was kind enough to drop by and leave a comment on the original post, is safe and well. Let's hope for calmer, brighter days ahead, when the team behind Elteria Adventures can put all their efforts into making something we can all enjoy, rather than playing their own real life survival game.

First Impressions, Second Chances

As I was reading back yesterday's Lost Ark post it occured to me that I often finish ""First Impressions" by making some bold statement about whether I'm likely to go on playing the game and if so for how long. I started to wonder just how accurate predictions like that tend to be and whether you can really tell from the first session whether you'll play a game for days, weeks, months or years.

Luckily, for once I don't have to guess. I can go back and check. That's one reason for having a blog.

I've been reporting my opinions on new mmorpgs since the blog started in 2011 but it appears I first started using the "First Impressions" tag about six years ago, when I posted about my experiences in Blade and Soul. I've used it for expansions and game updates as well as full games but for the purposes of this excercise I'm limiting my research to new mmorpgs (Or games that have been widely treated as though they were mmorpgs.). Most of the conclusions were drawn from release builds but there are a handful of betas and early access reviews in there as well.

I expect I missed one or two but I think this is most of them. Almost thirty titles. For most of those I seem to have restrained myself to a single first impressions post, which I've linked. Some, Star Wars: the Old Republic and Atlas, for example, I seem to have managed to turn into "first impressions: the mini-series". For those I've linked to the post from which I took the quote.

Here, then, in reverse chronological order, is what I concluded about the games, often with a promise or a prediction about how likely I was to go on playing them. I've followed that with a few words saying whether I actually did. I'm curious to know if it reveals anything that might make me consider how to approach these posts in the future. Let's find out.

Chimeraland - January 11 2022 - "I can guarantee this won't be the last post about Chimeraland. I don't imagine for a moment it's going to be something I play the hell out of for years but equally I can already see it's going to keep me amused for at least as long as it take me to figure out what the hell is going on, which could be a while. " 

I think we all know which way that went. For a few weeks immediately after that post, Inventory Full became the unofficial home of the Chimeraland Fan Club or it certainly felt that way. There are seventeen posts tagged "Chimeraland" here already and that count is going to keep on climbing. I may not play for years but I also have no plans to stop.

Elyon - November 5 2021 - "Whether I'll log in again remains to be seen. I wouldn't say, as I did with Tera, "Thirty minutes is more than enough." but I have too many other, more appealing options right now. Maybe one day."

I don't think I ever did log in again. I remembered absolutely nothing about the game until I looked at the screenshots in the post and even then I couldn't remember much, not even if I still had it installed.. Turns out I played it via GeForce Now, which does at least mean I could log in on a whim at any time. I have no plans to do that, though.

Bless Unleashed - August 11 2021 - "I like Bless Unleashed and that's my first impression. What my last impression will be, who can say? But no-one ever does Last Impressions posts, do they?"

No, they don't. Maybe I should start but if I do it won't be with Bless Unleashed because I'm not done with it yet. Last summer I played it most days for a few weeks and thoroughly enjoyed it. I logged in for the winter holiday event and I often think of dropping in again. If it had a control system I liked better, I'd still be playing it regularly but it's too far towards the "action" end of the action mmo spectrum for me ever to feel really comfortable.

New World (Second Open Beta) - July 21 2021 - "It does feel as though Amazon might have got this one right. I guess we'll know for sure come September."

We sure did! Quoted for irony. 

Swords of Legends Online - June 20 2021 - "Chances are I won't buy Swords of Legend Online right away but chances also are I will buy it, sometime."

Hmm. This one's interesting. To me, anyway. Until I re-read this, I'd actually forgotten how much I enjoyed the game when I played it. I did almost pay the full box price, too. The only reason I held back was that, as you can see from the cluster of "First Impressions" posts dated June and July, there was a lot of competition last summer. I really need to install this and try it again, now it's gone free to play. And I would, if only there wasn't still too much else going on.

Phantasy Star Online 2: New Generation - June 12 2021 - "I can't imagine I'll be devoting much time to this one. I'll probably give it a couple more goes then put it quietly away. Don't let that put anyone else off, though. This is definitely the right game for someone. Just not for me".

And that's almost exactly what happened. It's a decent mmorpg but I don't like the controls and the exploration is too restricted. I gave it a fair shot but it didn't stick. I've uninstalled it now.

Crowfall (Open Beta) - June 4 2021 - "With the beta set to run for another couple of weeks it's quite likely I'll spend a fair few hours as a Crow. I wasn't anticipating that when I downloaded the game but I'm always happy to be pleasantly surprised by the confounding of my misapprehensions."

I played until I hit the level cap and posted about my experiences in the game several times. I was still playing, on and off, as long as the beta lasted but after I hit the cap there wasn't really much to do. I never saw anyone do any PvP the whole time I was there. I followed the desultory reports of its sputtering launch for a week or two and then forgot all about it.

Elteria Adventures -  June 2 2021 - "For an alpha this looks solid. I'll be more confident about that when I've seen more but it's a convincing start. "

I went back and played a few times but I ran out of new things to do and stopped. Development seems to have stalled. The Steam page says "There's no recent activity from the developers of this title..." I might look into that later.

Valheim - February 11 2021 - "I guess we can look forward either to dozens of posts, where I eat my words and bang on about the game to the point of delirium or to never hearing me mention it, ever again. It's going to be one of the two, I bet. I just can't tell which, yet."

Three hundred and eighty-one hours played and counting. Mmmm! Delicious words. Eat them all up! The game I didn't want to play and didn't like much when I did turned out to be the thing that took up almost all my free time for a couple of months. I haven't played much since but the upcoming update looks interesting enough to get me back for a few sessions.

Genshin Impact - October 2 2020 -  "Since the game is free to play and genuinely so as far as I can tell, I can't see any reason not to give it a try."

Another one I really didn't expect to like but which grabbed me by the scruff and wouldn't let go. I gave it a good run at launch and I've been back a couple of times. I had screenshots from GI rotating as my desktop background all the way up to last week, when I swapped the folder for Chimeraland. I'm not done with Genshin Impact yet but as always it's finding the time.

New World (First Open Beta) - "I like New World a lot. At the risk of breaking that earlier NDA I'll confirm I always did. It doesn't do anything you won't have seen before but everything it does, it does well. It's solid, entertaining, accessible and polished. What more do you want?"

It's fascinating how most of my posts about New World's various betas emphasize how solid, stable and polished it is. I wasn't alone in thinking that at the time. What the hell happened? Despite all the bugs and breakdowns and foot-shootings I played for several hundred hours and I will certainly add to that over the next year or two, always provided Amazon don't throw in the towel.

Black Desert Mobile - December 16 2019 - "I may be back. I may not."

I was not.

WoW Classic - August 27 2019 - "When I finish this post I'm going to log in and carry on so I guess I must be enjoying myself. I might do my Guild Wars 2 dailies first, though. And log in to Riders of Icarus. Oh, and go do the first of the new Panda quests in EverQuest II. I don't think there's anything going on in WoW Classic that can't wait."

I found this very surprising on a re-read. I'd forgotten how lukewarm I was about the whole WoW Classic project. I only played at all because everyone else was writing about it and I wanted to get a few posts out of it too. Then I found myself completely drawn in and played almost nothing else for a couple of months. Never did get to sixty, though. I might go back for WotLK Classic, if it happens and if Blizzard looks like a tenable proposition to give money to by then. I still wouldn't play one of their games at the moment but the day is obviously getting closer.

Secondhand Lands - July 3 2019 -  "It is, after all, exactly the sort of quirky, original take on the established format that many lovers of the genre have been asking for for years, while roundly ignoring its existence. It would be shame, having found it at last, to let it slip through my fingers simply because of a lack of patience on my part."

Yes, it would, wouldn't it? Do I feel ashamed? Yes, I do a little. I have been back several times but I think I finally need to accept that things that were fun twenty years ago may not be fun forever. No fault of the game, just recognizing an uncomfortable reality.

Star Wars :the Old Republic - April 22 2019 - "I have already decided to subscribe to TOR for a single month to bump my account up to "Preferred" status."

I played the hell out of SW:tOR for a couple of months and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's WoW in space, what's not to like? I didn't mean to stop, either. Something else was happening and I put it aside for a moment and never went back. I often think about logging in again and carrying on from where I left off but - broken record time - there's just too much happening in the genre right now to look back.

Atlas - January 5 2019 -  "I've enjoyed learning what Atlas is trying to be, but as a PvE MMO, right now it's pretty much a bust. It's still a co-op survival game under the hood and that's a genre that's never appealed to me, no matter how fancy the paint job."

Astonishingly, to me anyway, Steam says I only played Atlas for six hours. I got a lot of posts out of that short time and in my memory it feels like it was a lot longer. For a long time I thought about trying again but last week I finally accepted it was never going to happen. Uninstalled.

Ashes of Creation: Apocalypse - December 16 2018 - "As a taster for the eventual MMORPG I'm not sure it really tells us much (it doesn't even feature the "hybrid" combat I wanted to see) but at least it doesn't raise any red flags...yet."

OMG! Remember this one? The standalone AoC spinoff Intrepid spun up out of nowhere in the heat of the Battle Royale craze. That got them yelled at. A lot. I quite liked it. I played it several times, more than I've played any other Battle Royale game, and I would have played it more if anyone else had. I remember logging in one weekend for some fragging fun and finding literally no-one else there to kill or be killed by. Then it closed down and we all pretended it had never happened. Still waiting for my Kickstarter-pledged beta access to Ashes itself, of course. How many years is it now?

Bless Online - August 21 2018 -  "Bless is in no way going to change anyone's mind about anything. If you didn't like previous Korean MMOs you're not going to like this one... If you're easily amused, like me, though, it's definitely worth giving Bless a go. I'm sure there are a good few more hours in it for me and the odd blog post, too."

There were. I played for a couple of weeks and got my character into the mid-teens. Then I lost interest and stopped. Then the game shut down. I did like Bless but I like Bless Unleashed a lot more. I hope it lasts a lot longer.

 Legends of Aria - July 13 2018 - "Let's give it the benefit of the doubt for now. Open beta is due sometime later this year. I might take another look then. Or I might just skip it. I don't think it's really my sort of thing. Might be someone's, though."

Completely forgot I ever played this. I did not try the beta. I did skip it. I can't remember what happened to the game after that... Ah, I just checked and it's on Steam, free to play, with a "Mixed" reviw rating. I'm happy with my decision to pass.

 Warframe - July 19 2018 - "I do quite like it so far..."

A more honest reading would be "I tried to like it..." Warframe is obviously an excellent mmo and several people whose opinions I respect absolutely love it. I just found it awkward and often annoying, plus the character models are absolutely hideous. I gave up after half a dozen sessions. I don't expect to play again.

 Auteria - April 16 2018 - "I may well be back..." 

I was but only a couple of times. I still check in on the website occasionally to see if anything new's happening. It never is. It's still running, though. And I still have it installed.

Stash - January 9 2018 - "I don't know whether I'm going to find the time to invest in this one that it certainly requires and possibly deserves but it's tempting. It may look funny but it's a proper, real MMORPG and that's not nothing, not nowadays."

Reading this again was surreal. I remember Stash by name but if you'd asked me what kind of a game it was I'd have said some kind of tile-based puzzle title. I'd forgotten it was any kind of mmorpg, let alone a "proper, real" one. It's vaguely coming back to me now. I did play a few more times but not for long. I seem to remember it being quite difficult. And slow. That would tie in with the old school mmo thing, I guess. Maybe I should take another look.

Secret World Legends - June 26 2017 -  "I don't like it. The overarching impression I was left with was one of disrespect. The Secret World was a unique and original creation: this is just another bash 'em slash 'em F2P MMO. What a shame."

I might not have liked it but that didn't stop me playing it. I've played SWL plenty of times since then. I got as far as Egypt, I think. Certainly well into Blue Mountain. I also ended up preferring both the slightly-easier combat and the somewhat simpler mechanics of SWL over those of The Secret World, although I can't really say I felt the diference was as great as all that. Still always on the table, both of them, although I don't suppose I'll ever do more in either than play the odd session and take some screenshots. Best costume designs in any mmorpg, ever. Worth logging in just to change outfits.

Shroud of the Avatar - May 13 2017 - "Even after nearly three years in Early Access this does feel like an alpha not a beta. Pre-alpha might be over-egging it but it definitely feels like there's a long way to go."

It was rough. I wonder what it's like now? Not planning on finding out.

Revelation Online (Closed Beta 3) - January 2 2017 - "It's a step up from Riders of Icarus, on a par with Blade and Soul, and definitely worth a look if you like this sort of thing. If you don't like this sort of thing though I wouldn't bother. It's not going to change your mind"

What!? Have I been hacked? Revelation Online is better than Riders of Icarus and as good as Blade and Soul? Who says so? Me!? If so, why did I play both of those near-daily for months at a time but RO only for a handful of sessions when it launched? Okay, I can at least remember playing Revelation Online but I couldn't tell you anything about it, whereas I could chew your ear off with tales from RoI and B&S. 

Riders of Icarus - July 10 2016 - "Riders of Icarus is by no means a bad game or a bad MMO but with so many others to choose from I'd struggle to come up with a good reason to play it rather than something with a bit more soul."

Then again, this was 2016. It seems I've changed more in the last six years than I realised. These were my first impressions of Riders at launch and I didn't cotton much to it. When I came back for a second look a few years later I had a much better time. As I've said before, I might still be playing it now if it hadn't been for all that kerfuffle when the game changed hands and I got locked out for months. I am starting to wonder whether it might be a good idea to go back for another look at all the mmorpgs I said I didn't like, first time around. Not that there are many of them. I do seem to be very easily pleased.

Black Desert Online - March 8 2016 - "The world is inviting, the storyline is intriguing and the learning curve is satisfying.... At this early stage it's impossible to judge the stickiness but I think I'll get the box price out of this one, at least".

I did. And then some. I've played a lot of Black Desert, on and off and I'm far from done with it yet. I often think of BD, when I'm playing other games that remind me of it and wonder why I'm not playing BD instead. Black Desert doesn't need my recommendation, though. It's done rather well for itself.

Blade and Soul - February 1 2016 - "I don't get the feeling this is an MMO I'll pursue for long but I've thought that about a few Eastern conversions and ended up pottering around in them for a good while so who knows?"

Not me, obviously. For a while, probably right after I said I wouldn't be playing it for long, became my main back-up game, the one I played when I wasn't playing Guild Wars 2. I still play, occasionally. I have a character I like, I'm slowly leveling her up and it's only because other games keep interrupting that I never get very far. I still think Blade and Soul is one of the best of the imports and I've never really understood why it isn't more popular in the West.

And there we have it. All the first impressions from the last six years. I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn, other than if I say I don't much like a game it probably means I'll end up playing it for months. 

On that basis, I guess we should expect a lot more posts about Lost Ark.

Summer Fever

There's a lot going on at the moment, isn't there? I can barely keep up. 

Only yesterday I got an invite to the alpha of Elteria Adventures, a new game I'd forgotten I'd signed up for. I've seen enough already to know it's a game I'll be following as it develops, one I might well enjoy playing regularly, when it reaches something approaching a persistent state.

Less than a week ago I was made aware of Swords of Legends Online, an mmorpg currently in the final stages of beta as it heads towards a summer launch. I haven't yet had the chance to try it out but from a distance it looks eminently playable.

A couple of weeks before that I was running around in the final closed beta for Bless Unleashed, already available on console and now very close to a PC release. I liked that one quite a lot and since it's both free to play and available via Steam I can think of no good reason not to play it.

Today Crowfall finally confirmed a release date: July 6. It's a game I've been paying vague attention to for many years as it's been making its slow but unsteady progress from successful Kickstarter campaign to finished product. I've never been convinced it's a game I'd want to play for long but it's certainly interesting enough to deserve a dabble.

As far as I can remember, the original payment model was going to be an odd hybrid. The full game was either going to be Buy to Play or might even have needed a subscription but the non-combat housing and crafting segment, the Eternal Kingdom, was going to be freely available to anyone. 

That's now changed. It's plain Buy to Play with a box price of $50. I doubt I'm going to want to put my hand in my pocket for that much but I'm not ruling it out. I might. 

Luckily, I don't have to guess. Crowfall is currently in what might as well be Open Beta. MassivelyOP has an infinitely useable access code (MOPCROWCODE) that will get you into the beta, guaranteed, but I think you can pretty much get in for the asking anyway. 

An hour ago, I filled out the request form and used MOP's code and as you can see from the screenshots I've made a character and had a little run around. I have actually played in one or two of Crowfall's earlier open-access tests although I couldn't find any trace of an existing account. I do remember there not being much to do when I tried it last time but it was ages ago.

The beta runs for almost three weeks before it closes down in preparation for launch. That's plenty of time to find out if I want to pay $50 for it. 

Of course, even if I don't, history suggests I'll be able to get it for a lot less, quite possibly nothing, in a few months' time. What was the last AAA mmo not to end up either going fully Free to Play or at least adding some kind of endless free trial? Is there one?

I'm not going to say anything about Crowfall just yet. It might make for a nice First Impressions post for tomorrow or Saturday. Also I should probably check if there's any kind of NDA. I can't imagine there is but it pays to be cautious. As I found yesterday, not for the first time, you never know who's reading!

As well as Crowfall's release date I read some other intriguing news at MassivelyOP today. Notice of yet another in-development AAA mmorpg, this time from a team of ex-Blizzard and Riot devs. It's called Palia and you can sign up for pre-alpha right now. Which I have. It looks quite interesting and very pretty, so why not?

Should my application bear fruit that's another game I'd have to fit into the schedule over the next few months. As the MOP article says, "While we don’t have a launch date, we do know the pre-alpha is set to begin this summer".

A game with similar intentions to Palia although with a very different art style, Book of Travels, is also supposedly set to arrive on Steam very soon. The Steam page actually says "Quarter 2 2021". 

I have very mixed feelings about the unfortunately-accronymed BoT, which for reasons I can't easily explain feels quite creepy to me. That doesn't mean I don't want to try it. I would like at least to be able to dislike it from personal experience rather than some irrational phobia I can't even define.

That's already a lot of new, high-quality mmorpgs, all due to become available in some form or other over the next two or three months. But it's not just new games.

The big mmorpg news this week, of course, was the opening of the Dark Portal in Azeroth, signalling the arrival of Burning Crusade Classic. I did consider, momentarily, resubbing for that. A day one scrum is always fun. Burning Crusade might well be my least-favorite World of Warcraft expansion, though, so it would seem unlikely I'd make much use of it after that opening day. You never know, though. If people start blogging about what a great time they're having I might crack.

More on point for me is the possible late-summer release of Guild Wars 2's End of Dragons. The big
reveal for that is due at the end of July and if I was forced to bet on a date I'd still pick sometime in September. Even if the expansion itself comes later than that we're bound to get some kind of beta weekends. ANet have form on those.

Meanwhile, the inexorable weekly schedule of Living Story re-releases grinds mercilessly on. I seem to have set my foot on the conveyor belt and I'm not sure I know how to step off. I've already done the first of this week's pair, something that took me several hours. It must be years since I played this much structured PvE in GW2. I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying it.

That's already a fearsome amount of new (or recycled) content. Considerably more than I feel able to consume. I haven't even considered making a new character on one of the new EverQuest Random Loot servers, something I would probably have done in quieter times and as for the plans I had for Genshin Impact and Dragon Nest Origins...

I'm not complaining. Well, not much. It's great to see so much activity in the genre. I'm certain I've left out lots of other impending releases. We seem to be undergoing a bit of a quiet renaissance right now. It's getting hard to keep it all straight in my head. Most refreshing after all the doom and gloom of the last few years. I think we can put the "mmorpgs are dead" meme to rest for a while.

I do wish everyone wouldn't pile on to the summer release window, though. I get that it's the best for commercial reasons and I understand the historical basis in education cycles but it's not ideal for the older player. 

Summer is the time I feel I have to do all those things around the house and garden I was happily able to ignore when it was dark by five in the evening and raining every day. When the sun's shining in my eyes and the room's too warm for comfort, a nice walk in the woods or a picnic by the old iron-age barrow (oddly specific...) seems more appropriate than an afternoon spent over a hot keyboard.

I'll manage somehow. It's a nice problem to have. So nice, in fact, I'm open to suggestions if anyone knows of anything else that's happening. I wouldn't want to miss anything. 

I mean, let's be realistic. Think about where I live. It's probably going to rain most of the summer anyway. I'll probably be glad of something to do indoors.

Elteria Adventures: First Impressions (or You Can't Get The Staff)

This morning I got a pleasant surprise. An email from Steam. You're now in the Steam Playtest for Elteria Adventures Alpha! it said. And an explanation. You are receiving this e-mail because you requested access to the Steam Playtest for Elteria Adventures.

Did I? Did I really? I don't remember. It does sound like something I would do, though.

And there it was, waiting for me on Steam. Press the button, wait a minute or two for the download, not very big, not even a couple of gigabytes, and off we go.

A short introductory presentation to explain how a perfectly ordinary world happened to get eaten by a giant slime and regurgitated as an archipelago of voxel-based space islands. Happens every day. On to character creation.

Character creation is odd. You have to be a human but you can have cat ears. There's a surprising range of horns and antlers. You can choose between something like a dozen different heart-shaped tattoos. All of that and yet the only hair color is green.

I'm guessing the tonsorial monoculture is unintentional or at least not permanent. Lots of characters in the intro have different color hair. It is an alpha.  At least it matches my work shirt. (Edit: Called it! They patched in hair color even as I was writing the post! I'm plum, now.)

 

Pick a name and let's get started. We'll learn how to press WASD and Space and then we can punch some rocks and trees.

Let me add an aside here. What is it with the survival/building genre? How hard would it be to start with a hammer? If it's too much to expect us to know how to open our inventory and equip one then just have us log in holding the damn thing. Punching rocks? Who thought of that?

The rock punching phase passes fast. The tutorial ticks along nicely. Soon you're zapping everything with your psychokinetic splitter. That feels so much better. Point it at anything and blast it like a firehose. See all the little bits whizz into your capacious pack.

The next bit reminded me of Valheim. Not the part when it got dark and I got killed by a skeleton although that did happen in both games. No, the bit where I had to make a workbench first and place it in the world before I could make anything else.

At least, that's what the tutorial said I had to do. I didn't notice it said that until I'd used the icon of the workbench in the crafting UI and made whatever it was I was supposed to be making. I only realized when I'd done it and the tutorial prompt didn't move on to the next instruction. It is an alpha.

 

A lesson in bricklaying later and the basics are all but over. Now all I have to do is make a portal and get off this starter island. The things I need to make it are scattered around the island. Resources here are limited it seems. I'd be a fool to stay. A final word from whatever ethereal being is guiding my hand: Night time is dangerous. Watch yourself.

They're not kidding. First I got killed by a boar. Couldn't figure out how to fight back. Tried punching him. That didn't work. Tried zapping him. Neither did that. 

Then I got killed by another boar. Then I got killed by a skeleton. Still couldn't figure out how to fight back. 

The next time I ran away and fell off the island. I forgot we were floating in space.

About then I remembered when I was learning to craft I'd made a staff. Nothing told me to. I just saw I had the recipe and the mats so I made it. Then I forgot about it. I opened my inventory and there it was. I tried to equip it but my paperdoll only had six slots: two for the head, two for the body, two for the feet. No hands.

 

I've been around this block before. A few times. I figured it out. Eventually. When the tutorial told me about the zapper it also told me to put it in the hotbar. That was a clue. I put the staff in hotbar slot three and clicked the same number on the keyboard and voila! Staff in hand!

After that I didn't die all that much. To one really big boar. To a boar and a skelton at the same time. Only then.

I killed several boars and a skeleton and then it got light. I went exploring and found a cave. I went down and carried on exploring underground. I zapped everything that looked different. If zapping didn't work I hit it with my staff. 

I worked out how to make lights. That was really useful. I searched for parts for my portal but since I didn't know what I was looking for I didn't find any. I worked out how to open my journal but it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

Finally, as I was coming round the island for the second time, I came across my workbench. I'd forgotten about it. I pressed "F" to use it and found a list of recipes quite different to the list I'd been looking at in the UI. Portal was on there. With a list of mats.

Off on my travels again, looking for gold. I already had the underground stone and some of the skeleton bones and boar tusks. I knew how to get more of those but I'd have to wait for night to fall. Nothing dangerous comes out in daylight.

I hadn't seen any gold but the recipe called it "Deep Gold" so I guessed it must be down in the caves. A long way down. And it was. Lots of it in a room with some pillars that couldn't be zapped or struck or punched.

Deep gold takes longer to mine than any other resource. A lot longer. I stood there with my zapper on full blast for what seemed like ten minutes, watching the black cracks spread across the surface, chipping away at the lode. 

I may have overdone it. I only needed five blocks for a portal. I came away with nearly fifty. It's gold, though, You're not going to leave any behind, are you?

When I got back to the surface it was daylight. I had everything I needed except bones and tusks and I'd have to wait for night to get those. I was right in the middle of doing that waiting when the server came down. It is an alpha.

That's all I've seen so far. It's not much but all of it I like. The controls are simple and intuitive, the concepts make sense, the tone is light and the colors are vivid. If the server hadn't booted me I wouldn't be writing this. I'd be playing.

My elevator pitch? "Landmark and Free Realms had a baby". Fill in your own voxel-based and kid-friendly games of choice. For an alpha this looks solid. I'll be more confident about that when I've seen more but it's a convincing start. 

What puzzles me most is how I came to get the invite in the first place. I guess I must have clicked a box to express an interest but I have no memory of doing it and no memory of the game at all beyond the dimmest recollection I might have seen a news item on MassivelyOP about it some time.

I went to look it up before I posted this. I was trying to find out if there was an NDA. There isn't because it's an open alpha.

 "The long-awaited and (literally) game-changing Open Playtest is finally here, for both new and returning players to enjoy!Join the Open Playtest by clicking the [Request Access] button on the game’s Steam Shop page — and you’ll be automatically granted access to the game!"

I'd do that, if I was you. I did, apparently, even if I don't remember doing it. I'm glad I did. It looks like an interesting game.  

You can read a lot more about it on MMORPG.com, which is where I found the most helpful overview of what the game hopes to be when it grows up. The part that probably led me to register my interest in the first place, before I immediately forgot all about it, was this: "Elteria Adventures is a free to play massive online sandbox RPG". That's a hedging-your-bets way of saying mmorpg by using most of the same words but in a different order.

So, a new mmorpg and one with some potential. They seem to be coming from all directions this year. I think it's safe to say the slump is over.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and see if the server's back up. That portal's not going to build itself.