Gift Horse: EverQuest, EQII

When I went to log into EverQuest II last night I noticed a new prompt on the launcher pointing to A Note From Jenn Chan. I clicked through to read it while the game was loading.

It's more like an essay than a note. It goes into considerable detail about some recent trials and tribulations, apologizing rather fulsomely and confirming something I'd already noticed since the transition of leadership, that the new Darkpaw is "trying to be much more transparent".

There's a different version of the apology on the EverQuest forums, giving more information about similar problems affecting the older game. It's clear that part of the issue there is the increased population, which is a nice problem to have, although not if you can't get it under control.

Both notes make for interesting reading, as do the responses. Even Feldon turns up with something nice to say! It's amazing how players respond so positively to an apology that both sounds genuine and which treats them as intelligent adults.

Oh, wait, no it's not! What's amazing is how so many game companies avoid this kind of open engagement with their customers in favor of silence or passive-aggressive self-justification. It's not that Jenn Chan's note is partiularly revealing, let alone indiscreet. It's mostly the absence of corporate doublespeak and the presence of what sounds like someone's natural voice.

While I was personally quite happy with Holly Windstalker Longdale's tenure, during which there were many notable improvements to the game and its prospects, I do think Jenn Chan comes across as warmer and more... well, more of a geek and more of a gamer. That, too, goes a long way.

The main reason I'm posting about all this, though, isn't to analyse any change in corporate style but to mention by way of a public service announcement that both apologies come with gifts.

EverQuest players get a 25% experience bonus, which isn't particularly exciting but is always welcome. I checked this morning and it applies both to free to play accounts and to xp from Overseer missions, which is good for me. My Magician is closing in fast on level 99 and every little helps in her drive to 100.

For EQII players there's a free mount and it's a very nice one. The appearance is taken from the Chaos Descending Collector's Edition, I believe, and it looks great. The stats, while they aren't anything that will excite raiders, are a very decent upgrade to the best mount I have... which happens to be the last one they gave away!

Best of all the mount, Samenda Honorhoof, is available to all accounts, not just to members. It's also Heirloom so you can move it about to whoever needs it. Characters do need to be level 110 or above to get the benefit of the stat buffs but it's very much worth grabbing even if you don't have a character that high yet. It's fast, it looks amazing and you can slap it in the mount appearance slot and keep the stats of whatever you normally fly.

I'll be logging all my accounts in to grab it before the offer expires in a couple of weeks on June 24th. One or two of them might even ride it, some day.

Seven Years In Advertising: GW2

Above is a still from a new promotional video for Guild Wars 2. Here's the whole thing:

Here's another one:

Those are from the "Summoned" series. There's another set:"GW2 Tourism". Here's one of those:

That was Divinity's Reach. This is Rata Sum:

And Hoelbrak:

The Grove:

And Black Citadel:

 Finally, there's this rousing call to arms, going out under the noble banner "Play for Free":

I took all of those from this forum thread. It was started by a player but Mike Silbowitz, ArenaNet's Head of Global Marketing, jumped in fast to quell the inevitable suspicions over authenticity and steer the discussion in a positive direction.

Conversation moved along predictable fault lines:

Who is this aimed at? 
"People who are not currently familiar with GW2"

 Why don't you just show gameplay footage?
"CG grabs the eye of that "outside" audience more effectively"

Are these leftovers from the cancelled mobile project?
"All these videos were made specifically for GW2 with the specific intention of bringing new players into our vibrant community".

All of which is perfectly fine, as far as it goes. And it's certainly nice to see some money being spent on advertising the game. It also makes for an intriguing contrast with Holly Longdale's recently-stated position that EverQuest and EverQuest II can get by very nicely with the audiences they already have, thank you very much.

Not that ANet is ignoring the legacy market. After all, as the F2P video boasts, there are eleven million current and former GW2 players out there, somewhere. And there's already a campaign under way to bring them back into the fold.

Without doubt, this new lust for fresh or former blood for GW2 comes off the back of the recent retrenchment, a development that must have placed ArenaNet in a precarious position. All the proposed projects they spent the last five years working on have been summarily cancelled. They appear to have no prospects of expanding, either via new platforms (Console or Mobile) or new products. Their fortunes now rest on a single property, the Guild Wars franchise, currently represented by one very old game and an aging sequel.

What's more, they have precious little to sell off the back of either of them. Guild Wars is officially in maintenance mode, while GW2 hasn't had an expansion since 2016, won't get a new one this year and may never get one. Plus, they already played the F2P Conversion card several years back. It's the very definition of putting all your eggs in the one basket.

Still, you work with what you have. In two decades of MMO gaming I don't think I can recall a single instance of a developer launching a major promotional campaign for an MMO that had nothing new to sell and no new payment model to promote but that doesn't mean it's not worth trying.

There are, after all, orders of magnitude more potential customers out there who haven't tried the game yet than those that have. It's just a question of getting them to take notice.

And as I said about Rift, if Trion had been able to launch that game "as is" in 2019 it might well have been quite a success. It doesn't feel "old" and neither does GW2. For most MMOs made in the last decade, aging technology, mechanics or graphics aren't really what's holding them back. Getting anyone to look at them in the first place: that's the problem.

It's going to be very interesting to see how this all plays out, although how we'll be able to assess the success, if any, of these campaigns is hard to see. I very much doubt we'll get any announcements boasting how many digital boxes were sold as a result, let alone any hard numbers on how many people are actually playing.

As the old saw goes, though, all publicity is good publicity. For the health of the hobby, let's hope it works.

It's All In The Trailer

Always been a tricky job, making trailers. Drumming up interest without giving too much away.  Heard a lot of complaints lately, movie trailers following the whole plot, telling all the best jokes, using scenes that aren't even in the film. Awkward balance to strike; too much, not enough.

Still, easy compared to making trailers for video games. Those tend to split into two types: mini-movies with production values orders of magnitude above anything in the game or "gameplay footage" that looks like, well, like someone playing a video game. Worst case scenario: the assets of the latter used to make the former.

The standard can be very high. The pre-launch trailers for DCUO were impressive at the time, although watching them again now they seem... clunky. Still, 1.3 million views on YouTube...

I suppose you might expect a developer like Sony Online Entertainment, backed by the resources of one of the world's largest entertainment megacorps, to rise to the occasion. Then, at at the other end of the resource spectrum, we find Standing Stone Games...

That jaw-droppingly terrible promo provoked more pity than outrage but at least it got some kind of response. Standing Stone tried to fix some of the PR damage they'd done, issuing a follow-up that was... not wholly embarrassing. To cross that minimal threshold they had to use a lot of long shots and no combat at all.

This is one of the big problems for MMORPGs, particularly older ones. What you get to do in the game is often repetitive and prosaic. Epic boss fights, spell effects going off like explosions in a firework factory, look thrilling; hours of attritional grinding, questing and busy-work that get you to that point? Not so much.

Many marketing teams approach the problem obliquely. Keep the trailers very short. Use a lot of title cards. Edit so the whole thing looks like it was filmed in a hall of mirrors, lit by strobe lights during a lightning storm. If it all moves fast enough, the theory seems to go, people will see what they want to see. That's always going to be better than letting them see what they're really going to get.

ArenaNet largely follow that logic. GW2 trailers tend to be brief, enigmatic and uninformative. Guaranteed to spawn a lengthy discussion in the Lore section of the forums, over-invested fans arguing their obsession from one blurred background shot a millisecond long. Other than that, cast a cursory glance then move on.

Not so with the current trailer "A Bug In The System". It may be the best ANet have ever produced. I've watched it five times so far and it still gives me thrills.

The last time I can remember GW2 taking this many risks and having this much fun doing it was Marjory Delequa's noir pastiche intro all the way back in June 2013, although that was actually an in-game cut-scene, not a trailer. It had encouraging confidence but none of the polish or punch of Bug.

If Bug ended half-way through it would still be one of the better trailers the game's "enjoyed" in the last six years. It's the unexpected mood switch that takes the whole thing to another level. The transition from cheeky Bond pastiche to foreboding horror is chilling and much of the emotional heavy lifting in the second act comes from the soundtrack; particularly that song.

I have still never finished the original Personal Story on any character, so in my case the inspired revisionary use of the heroic anthem that celebrates final victory over the elder dragon Zhaitan found no nostalgia buttons to press. It sent shivers down my spine all the same. I can only imagine how it must have affected those who recognized it and understood just how deeply their fondest memories were being played with and perverted.

Whether the Living Story episode itself can live up to the promise and threat of this exemplary trailer we'll find out on Tuesday. I imagine it'll turn out much like every other episode - a lot of talking, a tediously lengthy boss fight and plenty of busy work to make it seem like there's something to do for the next three months.

That's as it may be. The difference this time around is that at least my anticipation and excitement has been pumped enough to create the possibility of disappointment. If there's nothing more thrilling in the update than the trailer itself, well, at least we got a good trailer!

Take your wins where you find them, I say.