I Am The Fox : WoW, New World

Massively OP may have struggled to come up with half a dozen topics I cared about over the ten days I was away but they made up for it this morning with a 33% hit rate on the overnights. I woke up to two items of interest: Amazon Games is apparently retrenching already, despite not even having a single game in production, while World of Warcraft might be adding foxes to the roster of playable races.

I'd like to avoid MOP-bashing at this point. The site is what it is.As with late-period capitalism, which it uncannily resembles, there's little point in wailing and whining. It's what we have so we're just going to have to make the best of it. Even so, the way positives so routinely turn into negatives, if not in the headlines or the body of the pieces, then in the comments is depressing.

When we hear about game studios dropping staff, closing departments and shuttering games it almost always reflects difficulties with the finances. In the case of Amazon I would think we could safely discard any such concerns. If the press release states

"These moves are the result of regular business planning cycles where we align resources to match evolving, long-range priorities"

then I think we can take it at face value. When they go on to say the moves will

"...allow us to prioritize development of New World, Crucible, and new unannounced projects"

 we should probably feel re-assured, optimistic, even excited, rather than piling on the doom and gloom.

So far, Amazon seem to have been following an exemplary path in their foray into game development. They aren't rushing unfinished games to market. They aren't asking anyone to pay to test their experiments. They would appear to be running a professional operation, adequately funded for the medium and long term, operating under solid project management.

If they have slipped at all, I would say it might be in the tightness of New World's NDA. My feeling is that, had alpha testers been allowed to express an opinion of the lengthy alpha process and share some of their experiences - and screenshots - the general level of anticipation for the game would be very high indeed.

I'm still by no means sure that New World will be a game I, personally, want to play long-term but I feel fairly confident that, when it finally comes to market, it will be polished, professional and coherent in a way few other major releases have been in the last few years. That it has been taken back behind closed doors for more intense work by a re-focused team seems to me to make that outcome even more likely.

Blizzard used to be a byword for the same level of well-funded professionalism in the gaming industry. That crown has slipped a little in recent times following a number of mis-steps and muddled decisions.  

WoW isn't the be-all and end-all of the Blizzard empire, of course, but even diminished as it is, it remains a behemoth, both in the genre and in the company's portfolio. The late-summer launch of Classic will see WoW back at the very top of the news cycle and, most likely, the sales charts. Meanwhile, over in the Live game, something is stirring.

There was a leak yesterday concerning the rumored "Level Squish". A poll went out by email to some subscribers. It included the question

“Are you aware that the maximum level of 120 will be reduced in the future (ie Level Squish)?”

Wilhelm, considering the possibility well before the recent leak, judged that "we won’t see a level squish" because "it just changes too much for too little benefit". He also included the eternal issue of Levels in general in in his shortlist of "problems MMORPGs are never going to solve".

Kaylriene, however, discussing a possibility that now seems more like a probability, concluded that, while polls do not indicate something definitely will happen, "...Blizzard has committed to a decision one way or the other by now, as the expansion development for 9.0 has to be well underway". He also pointed out that  "Blizzard inherently sells expansions on the value of the leveling experience and has always made a bullet-point in their expansion presentations about the new levels to achieve".

Still, they seem determined to go ahead with it, just as they went ahead with removing flying from the game going forward, a decision that was received extremely poorly by large sections of the audience and which has been subject to considerable refinement and re-evaluation ever since. Since I love both leveling and flying, these would seem to be strong disincentives to my chances of re-subscribing to the Live game in the future.

Not, however, strong enough to suppress the thrill of excitement that swept over me on reading the news that Azeroth may become the next virtual world to fall under the thrall of the mighty fox!

I have to confess I had no idea WoW even had fox-people NPCs.  I don't believe I've ever heard of the Vulpera, who seem first to have appeared only as recently as the latest expansion, Battle for Azeroth. I've read a lot of blog posts about BoA but if anyone mentioned foxes I must have missed it.

Since Vanguard introduced me to the joys of  the fox life with the incomparable Raki, my favorite MMORPG playable race of all time, I have had the strongest of joneses for the race. It's not impossible that, had I known there were talking foxes in BOA I might have bought the blasted thing just to see them.

If Blizzard does go ahead and add the Vulpera as a playable race, complete with their own starting area, concomitant quests and lore, I will pretty much have to re-subscribe to try them out. Even if it also means buying the current expansion, though I have yet to set foot in Legion, which I already own. And I don't think I'd be the only one.

Of course, since a subscription is required to access Classic, which I almost certainly won't want to miss, at least for the opening frenzy, all may come together in a harmonious synchronicity towards the end of the summer. It's something to look forward to, at least. It's going to be a much longer wait before we see the fruits of Amazon's labor, I fear.



Some images borrowed from the Interwebs. As always, if one is yours and you'd rather it wasn't here, let me know and I'll remove it.

Off To The Races

When I checked my Feedly this morning the first thing I saw was this question from Keen:


What’s Your Favorite MMORPG Race and Why?


I immediately thought of the Lunar New Year's race through Divinity's Reach in GW2. I did that over and over and really enjoyed it. Did I enjoy it more than the aerial races organized by EQ2's gnomes for every City Festival, though? Or the many races around Metropolis and Gotham in DCUO? And what about that all-time classic, EverQuest's Naked Gnome Race from Ak'Anon to Freeport?

Then I read Keen's post and realized he didn't mean that kind of race at all. He meant the kind of race you choose at Character Creation. The one that decides whether you're short or tall, hated or admired, a genius or a dimwit. Whether you're covered in fur or scales, have a tail or wings. All that good stuff.

The term "Race", of course, is a bit of a misnomer as it's generally applied in MMORPGs. Sometimes it can be an accurate description, as in Vanguard, which has four "races" with the subtitle "Human", but usually it means Species. Then again, the species boundary gets very blurry in fantasy.

We tend to think of Humans, Elves and Orcs as genuinely disparate, separate species but that can hardly be the case when they can interbreed to give us Half-Orcs and Half Elves. Not to mention Half-Giants. The line fades to the point of invisibility when magic comes into the picture with races like EverQuest's Drakkin, "a human race" with "a touch of dragon blood...scaly skin, marking, hair and sometimes horns that mirror the dragon that gifted them their heritage".

Exactly how a dragon  "gifts" such a heritage is - probably wisely - left to the imagination. The more you ponder on all this, the less sense it seems to make. Why are there so many half elves but no "half-humans"? Is that just a naming convention or are the Elven parent's genes always dominant? If Elves and Humans can interbreed successfully, why not Gnomes and Dwarves? Or can they, but they just don't, for cultural reasons?

At first blush MMORPGs - particularly those with a fantasy setting - appear to offer a multiplicity of racial options but they tend to narrow down to a handful once you look at them closely. For a start, almost every Player Race in every MMO is bipedal. Istaria famously lets you play as a (four-legged) dragon, which was the game's primary USP back when it launched as Horizons. Project: Gorgon's Cows are another notable exception, although even there you can't actually roll a cow (!) at character creation. You have to become one by magic in game.

GW2's Charr are highly unusual in that, while bipedal in combat, they drop to all fours when running. It's one of the features that make them so appealing as a racial choice for me even though they are definitely on the larger end of the scale. I do cleave to the smaller races as a rule.

Many Western MMOs have a handful of options that at least attempt to add some variation to the "Short human", "tall human", "human with horns", "human with tail", "human with wings" palette seen in so many imports from the East. WoW has Bulls, Wolves, Goats, Pandas and Undead, all of which walk upright on two legs and look like humans dressed up for Mardi Gras.  

Allods, which modelled a deal of its visual appearance on WoW, took things a stage further with Gibberlings, who come in packs of three and are a lot closer to "animals dressed up as humans" than the other way round. Indeed, Gibberlings probably rest at the cusp of Fantasy and Anime, or Fantasy and Cartoon if you want to be Western about it, which is where the real non-human races come into their own.

There was that one MMO where I played as a rabbit. What was that one called? Eden Eternal, that's it! It's still running, too. There was also the similarly-named and much-missed Earth Eternal, an all-animal MMO I played in beta with some degree of enjoyment. Those animals still stood upright, though, unlike the deer in Endless Forest, a bizarre affair which has, astonishingly, spawned some kind of sub-genre that incudes Meadow and Wolfquest.

Plenty of choice if you cast your MMO net far enough. Closer to home, in the handful of MMOs we all talk about as though they represented the genre, not so much. Which brings me back to Keen's original question. So, what is my favorite MORPG race?

Just for once I can answer that question! In fact, I can list my top ten in order without having to think too hard about it.

1. Raki - Vanguard - Stocky foxes with a great backstory, characterful animations and the happiest faces.

2. Ratonga - EQ2 - Cute rats with another excellent backstory and the most endearing verbal tic in gaming.

3. Gnome - EverQuest - Short, smart, every one kinda likes them and they have the tickingest city in Norrath.

4. Charr - GW2 - Big cats that don't do the "catgirl/catman" thing, run on all fours and have the city Ak'Anon would be if it was a military-industrial complex.

5. Asura - GW2 - They're rats but they won't admit it. Why do you think they're so obsessed with the Skritt (who would totally be on this list if you could play them). Best animations and great voicework, too.

6. Gibberlings - Allods - Three demented gerbils for the price of one. What's not to love?

7. Vah'Shir - EverQuest - Another non-cute cat race. I never really took to the EQ2 version but I played a Vah'Shir Beastlord in EQ for many years and the combination of a tiger-person with a tiger pet is hard to top.

8. Goblin - Warhammer Online - Cowardly, obsequious, disgusting and only they can be the second-best class in any MMO, the Squig-Herder.

9. Dwarf - EverQuest - Just a classic. So solid, so reliable, so predictably gruff. Everything you want a dwarf to be and everything you don't.

 10. Riven - City of Steam - The race I wish I'd played more before the game closed down. Cool, stylish, mysterious, the Riven could have been so much more if only City of Steam had followed its original plan.

Well, that's the top ten today. Ask me tomorrow and it may have changed. Raki is always going to be number one, though. In my heart, anyway.

Sailing Into The Sunset : Vanguard

Just a few days now before the curtain comes down on Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. When the "sundown" was announced I had a whole load of plans - videos to make, places to re-visit, adventures to have - but in the end it all felt too painful and not much fun at all so not much got done.

I already had all the music downloaded and of course I have a wealth of screenshots and video clips, but when I learned that some of the people behind previous successful MMO emulators had a project going that aimed to preserve Telon itself, well, that did take some of the sting out of situation. When it comes down to it, I'm not obsessed over which Telon survives; just so one does. 

Whether they'll ever get something up and running that can be played as a game I have to wonder. The code for Vanguard was famously unravellable and even now it barely works much of the time. Frankly, though, I don't particularly care how "playable" it gets. Had SOE left a server running Vanguard for another decade or two I don't suppose I'd ever have gone back and played any hours you'd call full-time. I'd have gone on doing what I'd been doing for years, dropping in now and again as the mood took me, knocking out a level on my Sorceror here, another on my Necromancer there, mostly just flying around on my toothpaste-blue griffin, taking screenshots.

If the VGOEMU people can just get the world back up so I can wander around the streets of Khal when I'm of a mind to that'll do me. Oh, and Diplomacy please, guys. That'd be neat. As soon as the official server goes down next week they're going to be taking a break for a few months to assess what they've got but they seem very confident they'll get this horse back in the race. And why shouldn't they be? They've done it before. I'll be watching with interest and cheering them on with enthusiasm.

In the meantime, though, I thought it might be appropriate to commemorate the characters that have given me so much pleasure over these last seven-and-a-half years. There's a round dozen of them and here they are:

Rolled on some long-forgotten server one day, when my own server, the much-missed Hilsbury, was down. That was back in the days when Vanguard had more than one server. Explored Mekalia with him a little but never really played him. He came along for the ride when the merges hit because why shouldn't he?

I needed a bank mule and I was determined to have one who wouldn't sneakily worm his way into my affections and end up as a proper character. Hence, halfling. It worked. He never left Tursh.

Goblins are great. Every fantasy MMO should have them as a playable race. Blood Mage, on the other hand, is something of an acquired taste and one I never really managed to acquire, even though I first played one back in beta. This one, like half my people, ended up in New Targonor because when SOE decided Vanguard was a lost cause the first time round, rather than close it down, they began giving away presents by the barrowload and the bottom of the ramp into NT was where the man with the barrow used to stand. No, he didn't really have a barrow...

Another goblin and there's plenty more where he came from. In theory this was a less unusual class than Blood Mage, somewhat resembling an EQ Enchanter, but it still took some getting used to and I never put in the hours for that. The whole Union of Minds thing, where all Psionicists automatically entered a global chat channel for Psionicists only (something no other class had) creeped me out a bit if I'm honest.

Ah, the good old Dwarf. He got played a lot more than his lowly level would suggest because he was my original Diplomat. He spent most of his time mediating in the endless court intrigues of Bordinar's Cleft. Since he was a Paladin he never had much hope of progressing as an adventurer - it's a class I've never enjoyed in any MMO ever. I have no memory of why I chose it when I rolled him although given Vanguard's Class/Race restrictions there probably weren'ta lot of choices for dwarves.

Here come the Rakis. My favorite race in any MMO or RPG ever. This Sorceror was the character I created when the Isle of Dawn was added, which in itself was long after Vanguard had ceased to be my focus game. He finished everything on the island and carried on from there. He got played a lot, mostly in short, late-night sessions. Sorceror turned out to be a really fun class. I don't normally get on with wizards but I got on just fine with him. He'd have made fifty one day - probably sometime around 2025.

Mrs Bhagpuss played a Shaman in the first duo we took to the Level Cap so I had a good idea how they operated. I know they have dogs that bite you all the time even when you're on the same team for one thing, although maybe that was a bug. It was certainly a class that required a lot of choices, anyway, never something that appeals to me. It got simplified some later on but by then it was too late. I already had the best healer ever and I didn't have time for a runner-up.

Like most MMO fantasy worlds, Telon is dominated by humans. They have some great starting areas. The clifftop village that looks down on Khal and the Lomshir horselands are wonderful. Despite that, this is the only one I played and I'm quite surprised he got as far as level twenty. Ranger is one of those classes that always sounds as though it's going to be more interesting than it turns out to be and even Vanguard struggled to buck that trend.

Good old Gnomes. Good old Necros. Can't go far wrong with either. He was a relatively late addition, made long after I'd stopped playing regularly, but he had a good run all the same. I think he had to defer to the Sorceror above as the late-night go-to guy. I remember a lot of messing about with grafts and that's about it. Look at that 'tache though...

Telon has not one but two canine races. Well, to be accurate, it has a Vulpine race, the Raki, and a Lupine one, the Vulmane. This was one of my earliest charaters. I loved the Vulmane starting area and I found the Druid spell-set and gameplay very familiar. Vanguard took an awful lot directly from EQ and one of the things they lifted almost unchanged was the Druid class. He'd probably have made it all the way if Vanguard didn't have some extremely annoying (intentionally I think) issues with tethering and agro. Playing a class that's been given all the tools for kiting but wasn't allowed to use them effectively eventually became just a little too annoying and he took early retirement.

And so we come to the Big Boys. An Orc Dread Knight was my second character to hit the cap back when the cap was fifty. I never went on to 55, which was designed mostly to occupy the time of the small but dedicated hardcore and which therefore took for-frickin'-ever. 

Back when the level cap in Everquest was 60 and subsequently 65 I'd had two characters at cap simultaneously. One was a healer, the other a tank, a pattern I repeated in Vanguard. My EQ tank was a Shadowknight and I thought the Dread Knight would play similarly but I was in for a surprise. Instead of focusing on a single target the way my SK had, the DK's motto is "the more the merrier". This was the class that taught me to love AE, a preference that has stayed with me ever since. There's nothing like being in a massive fight, seeing your health dropping uncomfortably fast and thinking "Crap! I better pull some more mobs, fast!"

I thought about retiring him to the Orclands but he left there so long ago it scarcely feels like home any more. No, he was happiest in the great seaport of Khal and the souks of Ahgram so that's where he's going to stay. I picture him, standing on the dockside, cleaning imaginary specks from the immaculate, enameled inlays of his mace while the colorful cloth awnings overhead flap and crack in the breeze. There he waits, patiently, for the sailors to unload the cargo and the merchants to pack the camel-bags, before he sets out once again, a highly-paid mercenary guard on the Khal-Ahgram run. Bandits beware.

And so we come to the the undisputed champion: best race I've ever played, best class I've ever played, best character I've ever played. Stand up, my Raki Disciple. Oh, you are standing up...

I'd never played anything like him before although I've played a few poor imitations since. A three-foot high whirling bundle of fur and claws with impeccable manners, he was equally at home hurting or healing, but he was at his very best doing both at the same time.

The class went through many changes and refinements. In the early days he seemed as weak as a kitten, later he could comfortably solo mobs intended to challenge a full group. He could Feign Death and, until they changed the way FD affected aggro, his hobby was to run into dungeons, round up everything then fall over and let the monsters fight it out between them as they blamed each other for the trouble he'd started. That never got old.

He wasn't only my favorite character of all time; he was one of the most rounded. He hit the cap as an Adventurer and only stopped a couple of levels short as a Leatherworker because by then there were no more recipes left that he had any use for. He never quite made it to the same levels as a Diplomat but he was making steady progress, working on it until the end.

My memories of him are manifold, his adventures and exploits multifarious, but I like to think of him best sailing his blue sloop Foxglove along the rivers of Qalia, following the shoreline of Abella Cove, where the domed home he built and rebuilt with his own paws stands. He always did like to fish. Now he'll have all the time he needs.

Rest well, old friend. All my old friends. Though the gates are barred to us may your roads roll ever on.

Mr Raki Builds His Dream House : Vanguard

Some time ago, when Telon suffered the seismic shift of the latest round of server merges, my house fell down. I'd already rebuilt it once when our original server, Hilsbury, was merged and it was a big job, what with one thing and another. Yet another server merge was on the cards, with the last remaining European server rumored to be joining us any time, so I decided to wait and see how that wind was blowing before I got the hammer and nails out again.

In the event that merge never happened but I still never got round to putting my house back up. For a long time I kept my plot reserved but eventually I began to worry that, since I wasn't playing often enough to keep my coffers topped up, the slow drip-drain of 25 silver a week in upkeep would erode my limited savings to nothing, so I let the plot go too.

Now, with a definite end date in sight, that's no longer an issue, so a couple of days ago I rifted over to the Oasis settlement around Tar Janishar, climbed onto my virulent turquoise store-bought Griffon and flew down to my old neighborhood, Abella Cove to see if I could get the old place back.

Given this is an MMO that no-one plays, the shoreline looked remarkably built-up. I flew down and landed as near as I could remember to my old plot. There it was, still available! I snagged it fast and went to see if any new amenities had been added while I'd been gone. No such luck.

Abella has a fine crafting area in a large tent at the back of the dunes complete with vendors and taskmasters but it has never enjoyed the services of an escrow merchant. The nearest I know is some way south, past the ruined city of Venik Ragnew, near a dock that always seems to have a large sailing ship tied up at the quay.

By the time I'd flown all the way down there, negotiated the return of my building materials, along with some furnishings, from the Escrow merchant (the list of the things he was holding for me ran to twenty-nine pages) night had fallen and the moon was up.

After a number of false starts, as I tried and failed to remember just exactly what kind of house I used to have, finally I managed to get all my bricks in a line. A few blows of the mallet and down went the foundations, up went the frame. I'd taken so long working out what went where that by the time I'd finished the sun had risen across the bay.

I worked on, wanting to get the house finished before the burning Qalian sun rose directly overhead. The work went fast. It seemed like no time at all before my beautiful house was back to its former glory, just as though it had never been gone.

After rebuilding an entire two-story house complete with cupola in just a few hours I felt I deserved something to eat and maybe a lie down. If only I had a table. Or a bed. No rest for this fox. After the building comes the decorating.

It didn't take too long. I'd only brought the essentials: my rugs and pillows, my flower baskets and flowers, my tables and chairs, my books and my bed. And my bread and cheese, of course. Soon had everything back where it came from. Approximately.

I'd brought my chests, all six of them, but I left the contents, mostly hundreds of powders and dusts and skins and ores back with the Escrow merchant. I'll move them another day. For now I felt I'd done enough. I deserved a good, long rest on my comfortable bed, surrounded my books.

So there I am, back home in Abella Cove. The rent's paid til the end of the world. I'm not going anywhere. Ever again.

A Dragon In Ahgram: Vanguard

Today is the fifth anniversary of the launch of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, almost certainly the best least-played MMO in the world. For a long while it was my second-favorite MMO of all time. Now I'm not so sure. I think it might be my first.

No point rehashing Vanguard's story all over again. Anyone likely to be reading this already knows it. Did Vanguard start the trend of huge expectation verging on mania before launch followed by crashing disappointment and tidal waves of hatred after? I can't remember. It was a long time ago and now every MMO launch is something like that. All I know is that I loved Telon from the day I first set foot there and I love it still. If I could step through the screen and live there, I would.

Built with my own paws

And yet, how much time do I spend there nowadays? Not much. Not enough. A little diplomacy here, a boat trip there. I visit when I remember. Even my house is packed up and stored away. Telon is so quiet now. Lonely, almost.

So it was a joy to see the Festival Square in Ahgram filled with people for the fifth anniversary party yesterday. Well, it was a joy when I finally found it. I didn't know Ahgram even had a Festival Square. I spent nearly forty minutes running around the dusty sun-drenched streets and flying above the flat, white roofs looking for fireworks and listening for the sounds of people having fun.

What can I say? Even though I've arrived at Ahgram by river many times, I never noticed the dockside gate. I always came in from the Khal side, where the Riftway stands beside the shipbuilders and the bindstone. I thought that was the main entrance. In the end I saw a flaming pegasus spiral down and I followed. I found the party at last but it seemed they were having a bit of a problem...

Kotosoth reacts badly when asked if he brought a bottle

There was a dragon in Ahgram.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a real dragon in Telon. When the highest level a character could reach was fifty I had two of them, a Raki Disciple and an Orc Dread Knight. Now the top level is fifty-five I still have two level fifties. The ultra-grind, raid-focused endgame that SoE chose to go with doesn't appeal to me, although it was probably a sensible choice given the limited resources available and the hardcore residue that remained after the general population boiled out.

I'm under there somewhere

This dragon was Kotosoth, who I believe normally lurks in the Ancient Port Warehouse. My little Raki had a wonderful time kicking the big lizard in the ankle for ten minutes while a slideshow played. Reminded me of beating on a Keep door in Dark Age of Camelot in 2002, only a lot more fun. Finally the dragon fell over and the party started up again.

Your correspondent as a chicken

There were some marvelous party games. We all got turned into chickens. And camels. And skeletons. And ghouls. I went to the bank and got some sparklers and smoke bombs. I even found some snowballs to throw. Several people had invited Slappy the Cool so there was much dancing to actual music. Plenty of people came in fancy dress. I saw someone in the cat illusion from the Shidreth Mines and I wanted to use mine but I couldn't remember where I'd put it. Still, just thinking about the time I got it made me smile.

Evolution took a different path on Telon...

Half an hour after the dragon died the crowd had begun to thin a little. I saddled up Randolph the Controversial Reindeer and flew out, all the way back to EQ2. But a few hours later I was back in Telon, killing rats in Ksaravi Gulch with my level 18 Raki Sorceror. A kill 50 rats quest and I stayed up until one in the morning to finish it and relished every single rat.

So, happy fifth birthday Vanguard and here's wishing you many, many more. And I promise to visit a lot more often than just once a year.