Scooby Gang X Drain Gang

Another Friday, another grab-bag, helped by a couple of interesting tidbits that came in late yesterday's news. Plus I have actually listened to some music that isn't my own for a change, so there'll be some of that, too.

We've Got Some Work To Do Now

First up, the best entertainment news of the year so far. As per the NME, there's a Scooby-Doo live action series coming to Netflix. Or you can have it straight from the Great Dane's mouth, so to speak.

There have been a lot of Scooby-Doos. "Three theatrical films, and more than a dozen animated series" according to Netflix, which isn't even counting the numerous, long-running comic-book series, the novelizations, the games, the toys... It's a major franchise.

Still, even the most ardent Scooby Gang buff would have to own that most of them haven't been all that. And yet, news of another always stirs... something. The heart? The imagination? Not sure exactly what, but I was more excited when I read the headline than seemed reasonable. 

And that was before I even noticed the really exciting part: "Produced by Greg Berlanti".

Greg Berlanti is the guiding hand behind a whole raft of TV shows, chief among them, from my persepctive at least, Riverdale and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina plus pretty much the whole of the DCTVU, including Supergirl and Titans, all of which I very much enjoyed. He and his production company seem like both the obvious and the perfect drivers for the Mystery Machine.

Berlanti is producing but the Showrunners are Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg, whose credits include the much-maligned live-action Cowboy Bebop. I liked that one a lot more than the critics or the installed fanbase so that's not a warning flag for me, although I guess it may be for some. 

Granted, the lived show wasn't anything like as subtle or nuanced as its source material but the anime was "hailed as one of the best animated television series of all time". Scooby-Doo is well-loved but I don't think it can claim the same aesthetic status and as I suggested earlier, the bar for revamps is already set pretty low. I'm confident this one will clear it with room to spare.

There's no release date yet. I'm not even sure if they're shooting. It was reportedly "in production" in 2024 but who knows what that means?  Whenever it comes, I'll be there for it.

Let's have a break for a song, shall we? And for a change it's one everyone's going to recognize.

 Ashes To Ashes - Magdelana Bay (Original David Bowie)

 Magdalena Bay are critics' darlings just now, or they were last year at least, and they richly deserve it. Triple-J churns out an endless stream of covers, by no means all of them memorable or worthy of their originals but it's a high-profile promo slot for artists and some people really get competitive about it so there are some standout performances. 

This is top of the range. It starts out sounding a little flat (As in unemotional, not off-key.) but when Mica Tenenbaum starts to sing... oh boy. She really works her way into every corner of Bowie's peculiar phrasing. 

As Mathew Lewin, the other member of the duo, observed, "It’s a great kind of weird, experimental pop song". They haven't made it feel any less weird but I guess forty-five years have smoothed away some of the odder angles.

Even so, it still sounds weird. Imagine what it sounded like in 1980!

Oh No! He's Back!

Some people may count this as good news. I don't think I would. It is news, though, provided you're inside a certain bubble, which everyone reading this either is or has been at one time.

Yes, John "Smed" Smedly has returned. Whether his latest venture will bear any more fruit than the last two remains to be seen. Certainly, the precedents aren't encouraging. 

The much-hyped "Hero's Song" was cancelled before it got a full release, although Smed did get some credit for giving all the money back. As for his six-year stint with Amazon Games... anyone remember what he did there? I don't.

He left Amazon in 2023 and since then he's been quiet but it seems he hasn't been idle. He's back, alongside another name you might remember from Sony Online Entertainment, Matt Higby. Higby was Creative Director for Planetside 2, a game I think I played twice. Maybe three times. He also worked on pretty much every other SOE game at one time or another. His full credits include EverQuest, EverQuest II, Free Realms and Clone Wars.

The two of them have been cooking up something from pretty much the moment Smedley quit Amazon so I imagine he went straight from the one to the other. These people never seem to take a day off. 

As to what they've been working on, no-one's saying, yet. MassivelyOP are speculating it could be some kind of military shooter, based on what's showing on a couple of monitors in the background of the publicity shots. If so, it's of little interest to me and anyway I imagine, whatever it is, it's years from being something any of us will play. 

More More More - The Molotovs

A little less than a year ago, I did a whole post about the Molotovs, which seems like an odd thing to have done, in retrospect. I think it was the raw energy that got my attention. That and the covers they were doing at the time.

They did have a couple of originals even then and now here they are with their first, official single, a self-penned number called More, More, More, demonstrating that you don't always have to cover other peoples' material to be a covers band. 

Honestly, if this sounded any more like the Jam... well, there's no good way to end that sentence because it would be impossible for anything to sound more like the Jam than this does without actually being the Jam. I bet it sounds more like the Jam than Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler's From The Jam ever did, and they were the Jam!

Whether sounding exactly like a specific band from the late 'seventies makes any kind of sound, commercial sense is up for debate. I think the retro needle has swung well into the 'nineties now, maybe even the 'aughts. 

Then again, Britpop was built on a foundation firmly laid down in the 'sixties and the Jam were mining tthe same sources for all they were worth, back in the 'seventies, so I guess it's all there and thereabouts the same thing, seen from space. 

It is endlessly fascinating to me that these sounds can just go on and on, fascinating and attracting people of a certain age. It's as if something happens to the brain in mid-adolescence, making neurons fire every time there's a valve amp with the gain turned up, a guitar with too much treble and and a barking voice that sounds like it ought to be flogging china down the market.

I like it, anyway. I mean, I've heard it a million times but I can always hear some more. Some More. More More even.

Less, Less, Less

That's what I'm asking for. I can't face another ninety hopefuls all in one go. Yes, it's the Glastonbury Festival Emerging Talent Longlist again. 

There's a playlist if you can face it. It's over two hours long. I haven't even started on it yet and I'm thinking this year maybe I won't. The returns seem to get slimmer every year.

I scanned the full list, which was surprisingly hard to find, to see if there was anyone on there I'd heard of. Usually there are a few. This year the only name I recognized was Dirty Blonde and I don't much like them. Too rawk for my refined tastes. They are good, though.

Given they were the opening act on the Big Top stage at last year's Isle of Wight Festival, it would seem they're also overqualified. I'm sure the publicity will be welcome all the same but it's a bit like those established acts who enter Eurovision, only to come 23rd. More risk than perhaps the reward could ever have been worth for them. I mean, the big payoff from the ETC is £5k and a slot on one of the main stages. Dirty Blonde might have been in line for one of those anyway. A 2pm slot when no-one is paying attention, sure, but still... 

I don't have anything left but music now so if you're not into digging the new scene I'll bid you goodbye. For the few that remain...

The Wolf - Witch Post

You know those songs that go on too long? Yes, I know. It's most of them. Well, this isn't one. I could have this on a loop for hours. Maybe I'll make one and post it to YouTube. People do that. I'm learning all sorts about making videos and content just now. I could branch out.

Also, it's one of those songs you just can't hear loud enough. And the video is great, too. Really, it's got everything. I wasn't quite as keen on their first single but the last one was good and this is way better again. All the videos are good, too. They could be something, maybe.

I think that's about it. Oh, alright then. One more, since you ask so nicely. Would you like Yung Lean being shot full of arrows or would you rather have Sept hanging out with their girlfriends? Difficult choice, I know. Let's have both, then.

It's always both, isn't it?

Babyface Maniacs - Yung Lean

Remember when Yung Lean was off the radar of anyone under twenty? And Drain Gang sounded like it was probably something from an Anthony Burgess novel? Yeah, well, those days are long gone.

All the critics call Yung Lean a rapper but I'm not sure that's what he's doing here. Or anywhere, really. Then, why would I know? Whatever he's doing, he's not doing it for me. I like it all the same.

Braces - Sept

The song goes back to 2022 but the video is brand-new. It's a real mood piece, the song. The video is more of a vibe. I'm not one hundred per cent convinced they go together.

The lyrics, all of them, run like this:

I said I liked you, I said I missed you
Never forget you, said I won't let you
I did it wrong
And now I cannot believe

Just like my braces
You're caught between my teeth
Like

You're in a hurry, I'm cold cut
Say not to worry, I love you, but
I didn't know
How could you see me so clean?

You hate yourself
But you don't know what that means
Like...

 

I dunno. They look like they're all having a much better time in the video than that would suggest. 

I could listen to that one a loop, too. I really ought to look into how to make those. Like I need another project right now...

Second Time Around

In a post called "What Should Everquest 3 Even Look Like?", Wilhelm quotes John Smedley, ex-CEO of Sony Online Entertainment and Godfather of the EverQuest franchise, as saying the main lesson he learned from launching EQ2 was that he shouldn't make any more MMO sequels.

Smed didn't follow his own advice and neither has anyone else. Off the top of my head and in no particular order I can think of

Lineage II
Guild Wars 2
Asheron's Call 2
FFXIV (Twice!)
Planetside 2
EverQuest II 

Releasing a game under the same name with "2" or "II" appended (or XIV, if you're Square) isn't the only way to follow up a hit MMORPG. Ultima Online was going to have a sequel, Ultima Worlds Online: Origin. That never happened. Dark Age of Camelot is hoping for a spiritual sequel in Camelot Unchained. That may or may not ever happen. City of Heroes spawned City of Villains and Wizard 101 was followed by Pirate 101.

You don't even have to make a new game. Archey, in the comments to Wilhelm's post, suggested World of Warcraft already had its sequel in Cataclysm. Or you can just port your current game to another platform. It worked for H1Z1.

Sequels, then, seem fairly well-established. Success varies but by and large the effort seems worthwhile. FFXIV and GW2 have been unequivocal successes and most of the rest would seem to have washed their faces, at least.

What's missing from the above round-up is threequels. Quite a few companies have seen fit to take a second trip to the well but no-one so far has risked a third. Okay, that's not strictly true. NCSoft has had a third Lineage title in development for seven years and that's where it remains - in development.

The only MMORPG I can think of that actually has had three discrete versions of the same IP, all running as full MMORPGs simultaneously is... EverQuest. Long before Lineage Eternal, just after the peak of EQ's success, in the mid-2000s SOE had three MMORPGs set in Norrath : EQ, EQII and EverQuest Online Adventures, the PS2 Console version. Arguably they had four, with the Mac version but since that was effectively just a sliver of the main EQ game, frozen in time, we'll discount that for now.

By that count, if Daybreak did go for a new EverQuest game it would either be EverQuest 4 or EQ5. No wonder SoE went with EQNext. Whatever number or name they stuck on the back of it, I'm not wholly convinced it would be a great idea even to try. But then, if they don't try, where does that leave them?

As I've mentioned before, there's been an increasing murmur of speculation among GW2 players about the possibilites of a second sequel to Guild Wars. There hasn't been the least scintilla of a hint from any official source that such a thing is even in the earliest planning stages, let alone imminent. On the contrary, there have been past statements suggesting the developers are minded never to let it happen.

Even so, people talk. MMORPGs have very long lives and by design they don't need to be replaced. They can be refurbished and re-purposed to meet changing requirements without any need to scrap the whole thing and start over. But.

Yes, and it's a very big "but", indeed. Old game is old game. Old players are old players. Every time you make a radical change to attract new blood, first you have to convince anyone you have something genuinely fresh and then you have to calm your existing players who think you're going change the game they love. Hard circle to square.

It's a dilemma no-one has quite figured out yet. Blizzard has been steadily "re-starting" WoW with each expansion for years now but the evidence for that approach working is sketchy at best. If they'd just carried on building on top of the same systems instead of tearing them down and starting over every 18-24 months, would they have fewer subscribers now or more?

Perhaps it is a safer bet to launch a sequel after all. Maybe you will split the audience but you also might find a way to keep your hardcore while also attracting players who hadn't really wanted to buy what you were already selling.

When you've made the decision and your sequel, what then? Maybe you planned for obsolescence and your elder game goes to maintenance (FFXI, Guild Wars) or even sunsets. Maybe you run both in tandem, serving two sets of players, hoping they have synergies you can exploit (EQ/EQII, Lineage/LineageII).

And then what? What happens when your sequel is itself fading, long in the tooth and bleeding players, server count shrinking and press releases going unreported? Do you double down on what you've got, dig in for the long haul, husband your diminishing resources and declining revenues to keep the lights on as long as possible? Or do you risk throwing everything you have to the winds with another roll of the same dice?

No-one knows the answer to any of these questions. The concept of online video games with no "use before" date is still fresh and untried. As Wilhelm regularly reminds us, people still play MUDs. Why? Who? For how much longer?

TorilMUD, EQ's direct ancestor and therefore WoW's, too, turns thirty in four years' time. EverQuest is twenty this year, EQII and WoW both fifteen. Are these things ever going to stop? Will they die faster if they spawn sequels or will the publicity extend their lives, too?

The calculations are going to work out differently in every case and there is, of course, the small matter of whether the sequel is any good. FFXIV:ARR and GW2 are strong sequels because they're strong games. Had they been launched with different titles they'd most likely have been successful too.

On the other hand, standing on the shoulders of strong, successful MMORPGs probably didn't do either of them any harm. To go back to Wilhelm's original question, if it ever happens, what EverQuest 3 should look like is a good game.

I'm not naive enough to believe that quality is its own reward. There's timing, luck and publicity to consider, for a start. I also understand that brand recognition matters. When you have a tainted brand like EverQuest, however, people knowing your name cuts both ways. Whether the next Norrath comes to us on PC, Console or Mobile, it is going to have to be good.

It doesn't have to be original. Originality gets you column inches and awards but it doesn't necessarily get you customers. It also doesn't have to be perfect. Was Fortnite? Was PUBG? Was WoW?

No, what EQ3 has to be is a game that people want to play; a lot of people. Those people could be the people playing EQ and EQ2 right now, in which case EQ3 could replace either or both, or they could be new people, in which case Daybreak might end up running three EverQuests again.

When - if - DBG announces a new EverQuest title, what it can't afford to be is something no-one wants. Something that alienates almost everyone. Something people laugh or sneer at or even plain ignore. Something no-one believes will ever happen. Not again.

It's a big risk. Would you take it if your livelihood depended on it?

For what it's worth, I think the opportunity waiting to be explored here is indeed a sequel. Not to the original, nor yet to EQ2. The Norrathian game that's crying out for the full-blown sequel treatment is EverQuest Online Adventures.

PC gaming is in its twilight years. The future is Mobile, Consoles and, one day, VR. The concept of MMOs, once alien, is becoming very familiar to console gamers. They seem to like it. And DBG already has a very successful console title with DCUO.

What's more, EQOA has an unblemished reputation and a nostalgia market of its own. Combined with the much-discussed trend towards less-punishing mechanics and more action-oriented gameplay, interest in a new, well-designed, console-based MMOLite under the EverQuest rubric could be considerable.

I'd buy a console to play that. Although, come to think of it, I'd have to buy a television, too...

Triple Threat: Smed, Domino, Dociu

For many years one of the things I found most confusing about the MMO scene and the people who follow it was the way individual game developers would sometimes be talked and written about as though they were rock stars. It seemed to me as peculiar as if the owner of a refrigerator were to praise the vision and skill of the factory worker who put the parts together.

It seems odd, my attitude, in retrospect. Not only did I come to MMO "fandom" fresh from a couple of decades reading comics, during which time I attended conventions, presented panels, interviewed artists and writers and wrote extensively for fanzines, but also I played video games throughout the 1980s.

Those were the days when the typical media representation of a video game creator was either a precocious social outcast coding his way (and it was always a "he") to a million from his teenage bedroom or an eccentric, bearded quasi-hippy expressing the kind of offbeat individuality more usually found in second division provincial prog rock.

The twin ideas, then, that a collective, commercial enterprise could be driven by the vision of individuals and that video games were a form of personal, creative expression, should have been well established in my worldview. Nevertheless, by the time I came to understand that MMOs weren't simply the inevitable byproduct of technological progress but something made by humans, those logical links seemed to have fractured.

It used to annoy me quite a lot when, on forums I frequented, people would refer to developers, designers or producers by name, according them the kind of stature, respect or admiration that a music fan might routinely give to a favorite songwriter or instrumentalist. It seemed deeply inappropriate, uncomfortable, embarrassing. To be frank, I thought it was gauche.

Over time, as I became embedded more and more deeply in the MMO milieu, some of the discomfort faded. I became familiar first with the names and later with their achievements. I began to develop some knowledge and even understanding of the history of the medium and the form and with this context the constant name-checking began to feel less like bizarre affectation and more like technical jargon.

Although I adopted, almost by osmosis, the coloration of the environment within which I now moved I still struggled badly with the overwrought emotional intensity that sometimes came with that territory. I was comfortable with reference but not with deference. I recognized that the games were made and that named individuals made them but still it seemed to me that this was a technical rather than an artistic achievement and should be addressed accordingly.

This persisted for a long, long time. It can't be that many years ago, certainly in the life of this blog, when I first came across "Developer Appreciation Week" and felt my hackles rise. Why I might have reacted that way, only five or six years ago, somewhat mystifies me now.

Over the intervening years I have, at last and not before time, come to share most of the opinions and attitudes towards the people who make these games and this hobby possible expressed so well by Rowan in his opening paragraph here. While I, too, may criticize as much, or more, than I praise, even that criticism comes, these days, with full recognition and understanding that everything we see, hear and do in our MMOs derives directly from the imagination, effort and endeavor of named individuals.

All of which is a very long preamble to contextualize my reaction to a trio of apparently unrelated news items from the past week.

First there was the announcement that John "Smed" Smedley, last seen going down with the good ship "Hero's Song" as captain of the doomed PixelMage Games, had bobbed up, not clinging to the wreckage but safe on board a much larger vessel, indeed back in the Captain's chair, at Amazon Games.

Second came the departure of Daniel Dociu, GW2's art director and the man who "has been defining the art direction for ArenaNet since 2003". Shamefully, until I read the news that he was leaving, I could not have named the man whose influence and oversight led to what I have frequently referred to as the jewel in ArenaNet's crown, its ineffably confident, secure and professional visual style.

Thirdly, freighted with the most emotional heft by far, came the news that Emily "Domino" Taylor is leaving Daybreak Games. Domino is not only my personal pick for the most consistently reliable MMO developer with whose work I am directly familiar but also the one who is most clearly emblematic of what I believe a developer should be.

Her work is not just sprightly, lively and fun but also logical, coherent and constructive. In two lengthy stints, first with SOE and then with DBG, she both created a wealth of excellent content herself and inspired an extended period in which development around her appeared to take a healthy, positive direction.

Also she once posted a comment on this blog, which, apart from being pleasing for my ego, demonstrates a degree of involvement with the wider hobby that exemplifies why my own attitudes towards the people who make it all possible have changed so much over time. We really are all in this together.

What these three personnel changes mean for the industry as a whole and the MMOs I play in particular is not yet clear. That. naturally, won't deter me from speculating.

As far as impact on existing games goes, probably the move that will impact players the least is Daniel Dociu's departure. The look and feel of GW2 is by now surely too established to change significantly. What's more, Daniel is succeeded in post by his son, Horia, who has himself been working on the same team for as long as his father. I would expect business as usual to be the watchword there.

Domino has left Norrath before. Based on previous evidence I wouldn't expect to see any radical change of direction in EQ2 either. Last time crafting, Domino's prime, although not sole, area of influence, carried on by and large along the same heading. You don't just slot in another visionary of Domino's class, though, and while it was steady sailing without her last time the difference when she returned was immediate and marked. She will be missed but how much depends on who replaces her and what resources they are given to empower their own vision.

Smed, of course, doesn't leave a game behind him from which he could be missed. Hero's Song crashed and burned. The MassivelyOP thread following the announcement is filled with conspiracy theories pondering the timing and the provenance of that simple, uncomfortable fact. Not to mention how very closely the staff of Smedley's new San Diego operation reassembles that of Pixel Games. Oh well, at least everyone got their money back. Somehow.

Looking to the future, the prospects for us as players and the three developers (if we can call Smed that) seem more vague. There seems to be no information available yet about where Daniel Dociu might go or what he might do. All that's said is that he's leaving ArenaNet. He's 59. He might be taking early retirement. He might be ill. He might be changing career paths.

Dociu certainly has no shortage of options. To quote his own biographical details, "Daniel is a prolific freelance artist, contributing to numerous publications, advertising, film and world wide educational and public speaking engagements. With his skill and talent any MMO would be lucky to nab him but I'll be quite surprised if any does. Even Amazon.

Domino already has a new job. She's just not ready to tell us what it is. Unless she's remote-working it won't be Amazon for her, either: "it feels like time to return home to Canada, and remember what shoveling snow is like" she commented with typical whimsy. With her management background it could easily be any kind of supervisory position but her heart always seems to be set in gaming so it would be a surprise to see her re-appear in an unrelated industry. Does Canada have any MMO developers though?

All of which just leaves Smed, who one Massively commenter memorably described as a cross between a cat and a cockroach because he always falls on his feet and would probably survive a nuclear war. I savored that comment because otherwise it's disturbing the way the tone of the comments on Massively have veered of late towards some kind of rehabilitation for Smedley.

The previous knee-jerk reaction that could be relied on to paint the industry veteran as some kind of mustachio-twirling villain from a Victorian melodrama is being replaced by an equally un-nuanced picture of Smed as The Old Lion brought down by hyenas. To me he seems more and more like a management executive who, whether by inclination or imperative, has donned the clothes of a creative. He reminds me a little of the great Rock Managers of yore - Peter Grant or Colonel Tom Parker or, perhaps most tellingly of all, Malcolm McLaren.

What games Amazon want or expect him to make we have no idea. It would seem odd if it was anything entirely different from the games he's famous for but whether it will be something old-time MMO players will want to acknowledge or own as an MMO I wouldn't be so sure. Early talk of "an ambitious new project that taps into the power of the AWS Cloud and Twitch to connect players around the globe in a thrilling new game world" suggest something most people reading this probably will only download out of curiosity.

Whatever the future holds for these three significant players in the field I wish them all well. Even Smed, although where he's concerned I mostly hope Amazon keep him the hell away from any MMO I'm trying to play. Oh well, I guess if anyone has the infrastructure to shrug off a DDOS attack it would be Amazon.

Video games in general and MMOs in particular are strange. Here we are, talking about these people and the impact their job changes may have on our entertainment and yet the youngest of the three, Domino, must be in her early 40s, while Smed is in his late 40s and Daniel Dociu almost 60. The average age of the people who make our MMOs seems out of kilter with what I see in other media I consume, where the drive and innovation comes mostly from people twenty or thirty years younger.

If there's to be a real step-change in MMOs I'm not sure it can ever come from giant corporations like Amazon or industry veterans like Smed. While I'll watch what they do with interest it won't be with any great expectation. When change comes it will be sudden and from a direction no-one's looking.

Or we can hope so, at least.

The Torch Passes : Pantheon, EQNext

Now here's a thing. In all the dust and smoke kicked up by the falling giant that would have been EQNext it was all too easy to miss the latest PR push from the only other current pretender to EQ's throne, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen.

Almost exactly two years ago, when Brad "Arudune" McQuaid unleashed his ill-fated Kickstarter campaign to an embarrassed shuffling of feet and jingling of pocket-change, the great EQNext project was still all systems go, even though none of it was actually going anywhere. Smed was still in charge of the the EQNext roadshow with Dave "Smokejumper" Georgeson as the ever-grinning master of ceremonies.

Compared to their three-ring circus act, Brad's indie effort looked like a dog and pony show. Once the Kickstarter went down in flames barely half-way to its goal most observers thought that was curtain down for ever. There was even a little speculation over whether the Great Smed would wave his magic wand over poor, deluded Brad once more, the way he'd done when Brad so spectacularly failed to realize his vision with the launch of Vanguard, and haul the Pantheon project on board the good ship SOE.

Hero's Song. For a very small value of "Hero"

And now, here we are in 2016. EQNext is dead. Sony Online Entertainment is dead. Smed is...well, he's failing his own Kickstarter for a game that sounds vastly less-ambitious and less interesting than anything Brad ever put his name to over the last twenty years. There would have been some serious money to be made had anyone run an accumulator on those odds.

I didn't watch the Twitch stream live as Brad and a bunch of his co-developers at Visionary Realms showed off their pre-alpha build to anyone who cared. I only vaguely knew it was happening. My interest in Pantheon, never strong to begin with, pretty much fell off a cliff after the Kickstarter failed.

Brad, however, turns out to be made of stronger stuff than I or probably anyone who'd vicariously winced at his career downhill since the infamous parking lot firings would ever have believed. Instead of rolling over and giving up, Brad and his Visionary Realms crew (VR - that's an unfortunate acronym) have rolled on, picking up funding from who knows where.

Two years on not only is the Pantheon project still alive, not only does it have a smart new website, no, much more than that, against all odds it appears they are actually making a game. Ald Shot First, who is far more on board with Brad's vision of a fully group-centered retro retread of EverQuest running on a modern game engine than I will ever be, has full coverage of this weekend's big reveal.

So far I've only watched the first fifteen minutes of the hour-and-three-quarters of footage that's up on YouTube. That was more than enough to convince me that Pantheon is the real thing after all.

It might look rough around the edges. The animations and spell effects might look faint and sketchy. There might not be any lens flare, light shows, spectacular explosions, giant lion-men walking on their hind legs or buildings falling down but by all that's holy those guys are playing an MMO!

To be precise, they appear to be playing EverQuest. Only with prettier pictures. The dream is real.

Ald observes that "More surprising than anything is how modern the interface appeared. I was worried we'd get some sort of terribly clunky interface all for the sake of either EQ nostalgia or some sense of stubbornness many old school players seem to have. So far i'm not seeing that." I take that to mean he hasn't played EQ for a good while, because that interface looks remarkably similar to how I have EQ set up today.

I like my spell bar on the left but otherwise that's just about perfect.

The entire thing just screams EverQuest, from titles of the classes to the text in the chat boxes to the names of the mobs to the placement of the camps. And, of course, to every last detail of the gameplay. Starting with the pulling, through the the adds and the fights to the brief territorial tussle between two groups of players vying for the same Orc Camp, to (and this was the capper for me) the minute's sit-down for the entire group after a big fight so the casters could get their mana back, this could be me playing EQ a decade and a half ago.

I'm not in the least bit convinced that's something I want to do. I did it already. It was fun while it lasted but those days are gone. I'd like to think I've moved on. I know for sure the world has.

Still, it really is good to see that someone, somewhere is still holding the faith. EQNext, had it ever appeared, seemed set to erase every last vestige of affection for the look, feel and gameplay that supposedly made EverQuest the world's most successful MMORPG of its day. Jeff Butler, one of the original architects of that success, seemed particularly determined to ensure none of That Kind Of Thing ever happened on his watch again.

When Pantheon eventually becomes something we can buy and play (and it looks more likely now than ever before that that's a thing that could happen) I will almost certainly give it a try. Curiosity, nostalgia, and the knowledge that, for all his multifarious shortcomings, Brad has been the visionary force behind two of my all-time favorite imaginary worlds, make that much a certainty.

With the heavy emphasis on all group play, all the time, and the very unattractive lore, it's extremely unlikely that I'll make Pantheon my new MMO home but I wish Brad and his team all the best in making it happen. Just don't screw it up again, this time, okay?

Well, That Was Unexpected! : Warhammer Online

Thanks, Smed!  Tweeting your respect for the EMU folks who bring dead MMOs back to life gave Massively OP the opportunity to start a conversation in their comment section, which, of course, like most sane people, I never read.

Only, for some inexplicable reason, this time I did.

And thanks, also and more so, to BritoBruno, Massively OP commenter, who popped in near the top of the thread (just as well because I didn't get much further) to mention the existence of Return of Reckoning, a Warhammer Online private server running under an ongoing WO emu project.

As BritoBruno says, "It's an alpha, so, a lot of broken things", but it works!  Registration is minimal, the files all download and unzip properly, the Launcher opens the game and there you are. Back.

I made a Squigg Herder, one of my top five all-time favorite MMO classes. I fiddled with the UI a bit and then wandered out and started plinking. The place was heaving. The server holds a thousand players and I was in the mid 900s when I logged in.

All the RvR action is in T3 if the lively global chat is anything to go by. Be a while before I get anywhere near that. I managed Level 2 in about twenty minutes. I was rewarded with a Pack Mule, possibly so-called because he was already in my pack when I opened it.

Really, all I want to do is work out how to do Scenarios so I can Squigg Herd in Nordenwatch again. That was the best instanced PvP ever, pranging Order off the walls into the sea.

Never say never again.

Blue Skies Ahead For Daybreak Games?

It's really not my intention to stalk Smed. I don't even follow him on Twitter. Okay, that doesn't prove much - I don't follow anyone on Twitter. I don't do Twitter.

Well, not as such. I do have an account. I had to make one years ago to play Echo Bazaar, as it was called back then, now known as Fallen London and well worth a look if you haven't already tried it. As is Failbetter Games newer title, Sunless Sea, which I have only watched someone else play on YouTube. Or was it Twitch? Wait, I remember, it was Total Biscuit (what kind of a name is that, anyway?).

Sunless Sea isn't an MMO so naturally it's been reviewed, very favorably, in the mainstream press. The Guardian gave it four stars. The Daily Mirror gave it five! And that's the first and probably the last time I'm going to link to The Mirror...

Where was I? Oh yes, President Smed.

The Big Landmark Wipe finally arrived yesterday. Scheduled originally for the end of last month it got bumped, first to the fifth, then to the eleventh and finally back down again to the fifth of May, which was yesterday. The servers will be down for two or three days after which the new, all-singing, all-dancing, still-not-ready-for-open-beta-let-alone-prime-time Landmark will sidle onto the servers hoping no-one is looking. I'll probably log in then and see if it feels any different, wander aimlessly around for a while, decide it's too laggy and log out. That's the usual routine.

I may not have been playing Landmark much, or indeed at all, but I'm still interested in it. Somewhat. Enough to visit the forums, on and off, to take the temperature of the waters. Which is how I came across a couple more of Daybreak President John "Smed" Smedley's always entertaining interviews.

How about a chicken next time? Seems more of a fit, somehow. Can't imagine why...

Players of games from the Daybreak Games studio (née Sony Online Entertaiment, née Verant Interactive, or was that the other way around?) love nothing better than to use the official company forums to link to anything their President ever says, mostly so they can point to everything that confirms their perpetual belief that the sky is falling and then cluck about it.

The first is with Gamasutra where Smed is once again accompanied by his hapless PR minder Senior VP of Marketing, Laura Naviaux. It's another "industry" piece and it has plenty of meat on finances and processes.

The second is much more directed to an audience of people who actually play Daybreak's games, or might be persuaded to do so. It was conducted by Veluux of Ten Ton Hammer. He asks Smed, who seems to be soloing this time, some very pointed questions and gets some surprisingly straight answers. I thoroughly recommend everyone interested in the future of the Everquest franchise, including EQNext, takes time to read it.

Doom-mongers will be disappointed with both these two chats, especially the TTH outing, in which Smed is very clearly on some kind of charm offensive aimed at PC gamers in general and his existing Everquest playerbase, past and present, in particular. Far from confirming any falling sky rumors Smed makes every effort to lean hard on the scaffolding that holds everything up to show just how sturdy and reliable it all is.

Morrissey would feel right at home on any Everquest franchise forum

I was trying to hold off doing the quote thing again but I can't resist a few. Here's the President in full damage-control mode. Veluux had just asked him straight out whether Daybreak plans to move away from developing games for the PC platform:

"Let me start at the last part first, because when I get a question like that, if I'm not careful how I answer people might think I don't like PC. PC is our primary focus for all of our games. Period. We love PC, we're never going away from it."

Even more reassuringly, in response to another very direct question about the security of the older EQ titles going forward, Smed makes this forceful and unequivocal statement:

"They will continue to exist well into the foreseeable future. Not only have there been no discussions but we haven't even talked about it because these games are all very healthy."

He's even prepared to give timescales:

"What you can expect from us with EverQuest, and I'll say the same goes for EverQuest II, we expect that these games which are already out are going to be around here at least five years from now." 

It's a secured tenancy on a five-year lease...unfurnished let.

There. That clear enough for you? Now you can relax. Except now I have David Bowie's  Five Years playing in my head and that's not reassuring at all...

I could go on pulling quotes out of both interviews until, well until I'd reprinted pretty much the entirety of both of them, all cut up and in the wrong order, like one of Mr. Bowie's love-letters to William Burroughs. Probably better for anyone who's interested to go read the originals. It's all good, thought-provoking, question-raising stuff that could spawn a dozen blog posts.

The entire tenor of the Gamasutra interview is worth noting, though. Smed and Naviaux repeatedly emphasize how much more freedom the team have now as Daybreak Games, how it feels almost like a start-up, how

"it's like the difference between renting a house and owning it".

Which is all very well, except they don't own it, do they? They just have a different landlord. 

It may be true - I'm sure it is - that 

"Columbus Nova doesn't get involved, even a little bit, in game design"
 
 but they do hold the purse-strings. When you're saying things like

"As Daybreak, we've already had a conversation with our new owners about whether we can go get new people if we need them"  

then it hardly gives an impression of complete freedom, does it? (And it turns out the "new people" he means are in fact some of the old people he "let go" earlier this year. I think we all know how that works...). 

Also, it just seems odd to talk about the creative shackles being broken one minute and then come out with something like this: 

"...when we want to do something, a new business thing, we have to actually justify and make a business case for it." 

(That's enough Smedley quotes. Ed.)


Grrr. I said I wasn't going to do that, didn't I? It's just so hard to resist. I'll stop there. Until next time...

 

President Smed And The Things He Said : Daybreak Games

Here's an interesting little read:  it's an interview with Daybreak President John "Smed" Smedley and Laura Naviaux, his vice-president of marketing.

The interview is full of revelations. How about that new logo? Wilhelm was almost right. It's not an Owlbear's eye but it is the eye of some kind of owl.

Why? Well, apparently we gamers, we're all night-owls, who stay up hammering the keys until dawn's light seeps in through the tightly-closed shutters. That's why they called the company Daybreak. I'm not making this up. Here's Laura Naviaux:

"The Daybreak logo was designed to reflect that brand, with a nocturnal aspect, (the owl's eye), a technological aspect (the gear within the eye), and a more literal aspect (the "Daybreak" of a rising sun within the gear)". 

That's just an amuse-bouche before the main course. Here comes Smed:

"I firmly believe the days of the WoW-style MMO are over. How many people do you still know that are still raiding in WoW every night, or EverQuest and EverQuest II?"

Way to go to piss off your core audience there...except of course that was SOE's core audience not Daybreak's, wasn't it? Daybreak's core audience are the million-plus people who stumped up $20 for H1Z1. Apparently they're a bunch with very short attention spans:

"...the average life expectancy in H1Z1 might be 45 minutes, and that's what today's gamers want."

Smed's still very much a believer in F2P, which he expects to take off big-time on consoles soon:

 "I think it's in its infancy and you're going to see the doors blow off it...as a consumer, a gamer, when you go to open your new PS4 or Xbox One, the first thing you're going to look for is what free content is there".

I'd be looking for where to plug it in but that's just me...

Naviaux steps in just to make it clear they're not losing sight of the main target:

"We need to run a profitable, sustainable business". 

I think we can all get behind that sentiment. This took me by surprise though: 

"Going forward, it may be that there's an entrance fee to our games, but there will always be a microtransaction element as the industry moves more toward that".

When I first read that I thought for a moment they were proposing a return to the Subscription model but on reflection I think it just means things like selling alpha access and going Buy-to-Play at launch. Even so, it's a retrenchment, isn't it?

And speaking of launches, those seem to be a moveable feast nowadays. Didn't Planetside2 launch a long time ago? I could have sworn I remembered hearing something about it. Don't say it's still in some kind of beta? I only ask because:

"I can tell you [what it will take to get big budget AAA free-to-play games to take off on consoles] as soon as we launch Planetside 2 because that game cost nearly $30 million to make." 

That's not all the fun stuff. There's more on the SOE/Daybreak layoffs, the focus on mobile gaming, how hard it is to get people to take you seriously when you don't have Big Sony standing behind you...

As I said, it's an interesting little read, full of the kind of detail Smed always gives when he's talking to the business press. I first read one of his industry journal interviews way back around the turn of the century, when he was estimating that Everquest should run three years, maybe five with good luck and a following wind. 

He's the man to go to for a prediction on the future of gaming alright.

Oops, They Did It Again: SOE, EQ2

Using the now-traditional method, a chaotic flurry of disorganized semi-reveals, mollifying forum posts, half-baked statements of intent, tweets and Reddit convos, Sony Online Entertainment, the company that likes to say "Yes! No! Wait...maybe...we're not sure...", announced...something.

Wilhelm has an excellent account of the shenanigans, including links to Sheldon's usual first-rate news coverage at EQ2Wire, so I won't go over the details here. Go read those if you need to get up to speed.

I just wanted to make a couple of quick observations from a UK perspective.

Smed briefly addresses the PSS1 elephant in the room, albeit rather pointedly not by name:

"European players – we have an idea on how to include you in this but we need to discuss with our partners.We have a pretty good idea on this though. give us a bit of time to suss this out."

 Really? I should damn well hope you do have "a pretty good idea". I'd hate to think that you were planning on offering the rest of the world unfettered access to all SOE games for a single monthly charge of $14.99 while leaving the poor relations over here in the myriad countries enmeshed in the PSS1 web to pay separate, individual subscriptions to each game.

Because, and please correct me if I'm wrong, PSS1 has no equivalent of the All Access pass. That was one of the reasons that, while SOE stopped accepting new AA Subs from PSS1 territories long ago, existing Access subscribers have been allowed to retain their accounts and pay SOE for them directly.

Then there's Landmark. The only SOE game specifically excluded from the PSS1 deal. A free-to-play title for which I am about to pay a hundred dollars to alpha test. And EQNext, which, whenever it finally arrives, will be played on SOE servers in America but for which access in PSS1 territories will be through their portal exclusively.

A mess is what that is.

Whatever the upshot, it's going to save me money. If I keep grandfather rights to the new deal I'll be paying $14.99 a month instead of $19.99 and I'll save $5.00. If it's deemed that Access no longer exists and those rights no longer pertain then I'll be playing my SOE games for free and I'll save even more!

The way SOE do these things I'm resigned to watching it play out like a slow-motion train wreck over the next few weeks but nevertheless I'm optimistic. They have the most appalling habit of making everything absolutely as difficult as possible for both themselves and their customers along the way but by and large they do tend to wind up in roughly the right place in the end.

If only they'd learn something in the process once in a while.

No, that'd be asking too much.

Blue Skies All The Way? : EQ2, EQNext

So it turns out that EQNext won't have permadeath after all:

In case people did not catch the sarcasm I was kidding about EQN having permadeath :)
— John Smedley (@j_smedley) March 7, 2013

 He wasn't joking about this, though

we're making major changes in the F2P matrix of restrictions on EQ and EQ II. massively.joystiq.com/2013/03/07/eve… - just common sense
— John Smedley (@j_smedley) March 7, 2013

 
And that's probably going to be the last time I embed a tweet. It's like having an ant shout in your ear through a megaphone.

I'm very pleased to hear that EQNext  won't have permadeath. I did indeed miss Smed's sarcasm, as did Feldon at EQ2Wire. More surprisingly, I have mixed feelings about the loosening of the reins on EQ2's F2P matrix.

One ratonga good, two ratongas better

I'm very pleased that all races and classes bar Beastlord and Freeborn will be available to everyone. There is no downside to more ratongas. On the other hand, I gained a huge amount of value from the restrictions on storage. As I mentioned only the other day, having limited bag space affects the way I play and in some respects improves the experience. I'm well aware that next time I play EQ2 and see all those freshly-opened inventory slots on all my Free and Silver characters the chance that I will resist the temptation to throw capacious empty bags into all of them is vanishingly small.

Gis a job, I can do that

Once you have half a dozen 44-slot bags you just know you're going to end up filling them all with stuff that you'll never need but won't dare throw away. By the time you need the space it's taking up you'll have forgotten why you thought it was all worth keeping in the first place and it would take too long to find out, so, well, safest to hang on to everything, eh?

Beckavar? Do I know a Beckavar?

The storage limitations were kind of like a stern-but-fair nanny, making you put all your toys away neatly and giving the ones you didn't play with any more to other children who would appreciate them. (I hasten to point out I never had a nanny, although I did see Mary Poppins several times at an impressionable age...)

The quest restrictions I found equally welcome. All my Gold characters have bulging quest books, filled with long-forgotten, half-finished, barely-started tasks for NPCs whose names no longer ring the faintest bell.

It's been common practice for years for me to begin any session in a new area with fifteen minutes of rootling through my Journal trying to second-guess my future self. Which half-dozen quests can I safely delete to make room for these six highly important new ones that I really will finish this time, I promise, without my future self reaching back into the past and throttling me when he has to start over from scratch because the quest I thought he'd never miss turns out to be the essential prerequisite for something crucial I haven't found yet?

More questing, less editorializing please.

Temporal anomalies aside, honestly, it doesn't matter how deep you make the quest pot. I'm just going to fill it to the brim. If there were no restrictions I'd just take every quest because, why not? I need protecting from myself.

All in all, though, the changes do sound welcome. As time rolls on in that way that it has, all these bumps in the road to a F2P experience that's both genuinely enjoyable for the player and profitable for the producer are beginning to smooth out. There's nothing "free" about Free to Play and as that becomes clearer to everyone the options are expanding. It's all about a smarter way to pay and, very slowly, we do seem to be getting somewhere. Maybe we can have nice things after all.

EDIT:  When I made the "ant" comment about the tweets linked above, those tweets were displaying on the blog in the same enormous boxes you see if you click through the links. Overnight they have converted themselves to a much neater, less shouty format. I did nothing. One of the mysteries of the interwebs. The ant joke doesn't work any more, though. If it ever did...

One More Time, With Feeling

Keen has an interesting post up about repetitive tasks in MMOs, wondering why they are fun in one game but not in another. He has some good suggestions why this might be the case for him but me, I struggle to think of any MMO in which repetitive actions aren't fun.

MMOs are built on repetition. As pastimes designed to be open-ended and unfinishable, they have to be. SynCaine, with his enviable flair for the Naming of Things, has taken to describing certain MMOs as "Play-to-Finish" but I remain to be convinced that any such thing exists. "Play-until-Bored", sure, but that's a different issue and one that says more about the player than the game.

Am I playing an MMO or reading Raymond Carver?

Adding finite, narrative-driven structure to MMOs was last year's Big Idea and it certainly helped to create an impression that games like SW:TOR, The Secret World and even Guild Wars 2 have a  beginning, a middle and an end. They don't, though. The stories devs  shoehorn into them do, but beyond those arbitrary, linear paths the same kind of worlds open up within those games as in every other MMO. (Well, I shouldn't make presumptions about SW:TOR. Still haven't played it, still not likely to, but I guess it's true even there in the Home of the Fourth Pillar).

That's not to say that MMOs shouldn't have stories, nor that narrative is a total dead-end. After all, it's just another form of developer-created content. As SoE's John Smedley has become so fond of telling us recently, user-generated content is the future. It just isn't economical to produce new, discrete, unique dev-crafted content at high-enough speed and in sufficient volume to stay ahead of even the average player's ability to consume it.

Remind me, what was in this corner last month?

About the only producer attempting the trick in the last few years has been Trion with Rift and while they've received praise for the efforts they've made they certainly haven't made such a success of things that anyone's rushing to emulate their business model. Anyway, Rift's fast-flowing content stream itself is built on repetition. The frequent events bear a marked similarity one to another. There's a very distinctive pattern, format and flavor to them that hints of the cookie-cutter. The sprinkles and spices they add to each new batch do a good job of disguising the familiar crunch but after a while even different-colored sprinkles begin to look like just what they are - more sprinkles.

Goodbye flophouse, hello penthouse!

"Everybody is content for everyone else" is Smedley's new line, and that's fine as far as it goes. I've been playing a lot of World vs World in GW2 these last few weeks and there surely wouldn't be much content there without all the other players lining up to kill me and /dance on my corpse. Other players aren't reliable though. Sometimes too many turn up, other times not enough.

For truly reliable user-generated content you can't beat resource nodes and what you make with them. As I write this I have DCUO patching in the background. It's a huge download because I last logged in the best part of a year ago. What's brought me to update it today is the upcoming "Home Turf" DLC that adds super-hero housing to the game. Forget fisticuffs - let's decorate!  Oh heck, why not do both?  Let's build houses and then fight in them. Just mind that lamp!

Watch it feathers, you're next.

Repetition and user generated content aren't the same thing but they sit closely beside each other. In a complete system you might source all your raw materials through time-consuming gathering, take ages learning the skills to craft them into components and longer still designing and building. In the end there'd be a fresh resource in the world, created by you, usable by others. Then you start again and so the wheel turns.

What the two concepts have in common, and what makes them both key to the long-term health of a true MMO, is self-determination. There's a qualitative difference between chopping at an imaginary tree for an hour because you want to make something from the logs and spending an hour getting logs to give to an NPC because he needs them for some project of his own.

Another 500 guards should do it...

It's much more palatable to spend a few hours slaughtering orcs so that the guards at the gate of a city nearby will only sneer as you sidle past, rather than charge out with halberds raised, than it is to run errands day after day after day after day (and only once every day, mind you) to collect enough tokens from the very NPC sending you out to work just so you can turn around and spend your wages in his company store. One is private enterprise, the other is wage-slavery.

Rabbits? They're just rats with good PR.

I learned to how to "play" MMOs from Everquest. It might not have been the full-on sandbox experience Smed is promising (threatening?) to bring us with EQNext but the fundamentals were all in place even then. "Here's a stained shirt and a blunt sword - go find your fortune". As I step out into each brave new virtual world it's just another step on that same journey. Exploring, discovering, building, creating, what matters is that I'm the one making the choices and (within the terms of the EULA at least) I'm the one setting the rules.

So, if I want to spend six hours logging or six days decorating, I will. And if I kill ten rats it's because I want ten rats dead and that's no-one's business but me and the rats.