If You're Reading This It May Already Be Too Late...

This is going to count as one of the tardiest PSAs ever but better late, as they say. I wouldn't have thought to mention it at all had Mrs. Bhagpuss not appeared behind me as I was about to log in for my dailies in Guild Wars 2 this morning to tell me there was a free gift in the Black Lion store (Which she confusingly referred to as "The Red Lion", as if it was a pub.)

As it happened, I already knew there was a freebie because I'd picked it up yesterday on both the two accounts I'm playing regularly. It's one of those Black Lion Claim Tickets that entitle you to a free weapon skin or some such cosmetic doodaddle. I only took it because it was there. I never turn down a free gift, even one I don't want. That would just be rude.

All I ever do with the things is throw them in the bank. I rarely even click on them or visit the vendor that takes them to see what they buy. This time, though, I was fortunate enough to have Mrs. Bhagpuss to advise me. 

She was keen that I should know there was an option right at the bottom of the vendor's inventory where you can buy something called a "Vintage Black Lion Weapon Box". As far as I can tell, this is a new addition to the game. The wiki entry doesn't give a date but the History there only goes back as far as last month.

Mrs. Bhagpuss told me the boxes contained all the old skins that used to be in Black Lion Chests, the game's heavily overpriced lockboxes. Okay, to be strictly accurate, it's the Black Lion Keys that open the boxes that are overpriced but it's always the keys, isn't it? I don't know why we talk about lockboxes being the problem. Does any game actually sell the boxes?

Getting back to the free ticket, my usual problem with them is that I suffer from choice paralysis. I hate choosing one item to pick from a list. Faced with a whole lot of things I could spend my tickets on I prefer not to spend them at all. Not making a choice means that, notionally, I own everything. So much more satisfying.

I have no such compunctions when it comes to shoving my hand into a virtual bran barrel. I love lockboxes just so long as no-one's expecting me to pay for them. I particularly love them when they're extremely likely to contain something I don't have and have a high chance it might be something I want. 

Better yet if it's something I can sell. All the skins that come out of these boxes are tradeable as far as I know. What's more, so are the boxes. Mrs. Bhagpuss mentioned that, should I not want to open the box, I could just take the money, currently somewhere around 30 gold, by hawking them on the Trading Post.

I didn't do that. I opened mine. One free ticket on each of my three accounts, the third of which I logged in for the first time in months just for the purpose. 

I even logged my free account in to see if ArenaNet were going to be super-generous. Unsurprisngly, they were not, although my Charr there did get his fourth birthday present and a Wintersday gift from under the tree, which he was standing next to, suggesting it's been a year since I last saw him.

On the paid-for accounts I was very pleased with what I got, so much so that I used several of the other tickets I had squirrelled away. The pick of the bunch was the Greatsword, the name of which I forget, closely followed by the Sceptre (Ditto.) You can see them both at the top of the post.

All of the skins I got were good enough that I might use them, although I'd have to find a character who wields the relevant weapon, which might be a bit of an ask. Maybe when End of Dragons shuffles the pack again.

I checked the going rate for all of them on the Trading Post. The lowest was 25 gold. The highest, suprisingly the rather staid-looking axe, sells for around 55 gold. I think if I was looking to make money I'd probably open the boxes and sell the contents rather than sell the boxes themselves. The odds look pretty good there.

I held back some of my tickets just in case. In case of what, you may well ask. I have no idea. 

I'm not clear on whether these Vintage boxes are a permanent addition to the game, even assuming they really are new, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. As for the free tickets, I believe this is the final day. I did say I was late on this one. Sorry about that.

Tomorrow, though, there's another freebie: a Guaranteed Wardrobe Unlock. Another spin of the wheel! The official announcement doesn't mention how long that's going to be around, either, so I'd recommend grabbing it on the 17th just in case it's a one-day wonder.

This has been a Public Service Announcement. We now return you to your regular programming. Assuming you can even tell the difference.

Treat, Discover, Play

Gamesindustry.biz has one of the best articles I've seen on the thorny problem of lootboxes. It's entitled The Flawed Kinder Egg Defence and it collates a number of significant statements from various games publishers and developers before putting them into revealing context.

I have used the Kinder Egg analogy myself in the past. Won't be doing that again. Or, rather, if I do it will be in a context where it's relevant, such as the long-established content of loot tables on mobs and bosses.

I'd encourage anyone not already bored to distraction by the general topic of in-game monetization to read the full article, lengthy as it is. On the specific issue of Kinder Eggs as an excuse for lootboxes, however, this is all you need:

"A Kinder Surprise Egg does not collect your data. The Kinder Egg does not learn more about the person buying and opening the Egg, such as his or her preferences for its contents. The Kinder Egg does not adjust its contents according to an algorithm based on population data. People do not link their credit cards to Kinder Egg vendors. Kinder Eggs are physical and can be given away or traded, unlike virtual items. 

"It is difficult to spend thousands of dollars on Kinder Eggs, unless one visits a Kinder Egg 'megastore' or the wholesaler perhaps. You have to go to a shop to buy Kinder Eggs, they are not acquired in your living room. Kinder Eggs are not by their nature integrated into a broader online social experience and community of Kinder Egg purchasers. The transaction, user experience, and consequences are quite different."

Pretty much covers it. There are many other stand-out quotes I could pull, for instance

"Our review suggests that there are some emerging designs that aim to capitalise on player data to present individualised offers that the system 'knows' the player is more likely to accept. So it's not about being 'forced' -- it's about the game anticipating or making the best judgement about what the player is likely to accept."

There's little that I haven't seen somewhere already but I haven't seen it all brought together and contextualized as effectively before.

My position on lootboxes and in-game monetization is moving. I still remain strongly in favor of openable containers with randomized contents. I love opening those. I'm having no truck with smart containers that learn who I am and what I want and then use that data to extract money from me. Not that I ever buy loootboxes for real money but the principle stands.

I want my lootboxes to be delivered free, in-game, during normal gameplay, or free during login campaigns and the like, something I consider to be  fair and legitimate.

They should also, preferably, be tradeable, although that does bring up issues over purchasing in-game currency for real money to buy those lootboxes from other players. I wonder how many people do that during the brisk trade of Holiday Event boxes in Guild Wars 2, for example?

Anyway, this one is going to run and run and what's more it's just a reflection of changes in wider society that are likely to make the world of 2030 or 2040 all but unrecognizeable to those who didn't grow up in it.

They Got The Drugs I Could Use...

We're coming towards the end of this year's IntPiPoMo which gives me an excuse to bring out a few choice screenshots I've taken over the past few days. Otherwise they'd most likely molder in their folders since I didn't take them with any particular post in mind.

Not that I need a reason to take a shot. I can't pass a view without snapping at it. Never could. I don't recall exactly when I discovered the screenshot key in EverQuest and sadly my very earliest attempts at fantasy photo-journalism are lost to posterity but I do still have a few that pre-date the launch of EQ2 in 2004.

Taking screenshots costs nothing and with the seemingly endless, self-destructive nihilism of the lootbox war showing no signs of slowing down, far less fading away, this seems like as good time as any to remind ourselves of all the fun there is to have in an MMO without ever spending a single cent.

Oh, lootboxes...they really are the gift that never stops giving, aren't they? At least, when it comes to filling the internet with fury. If anything, further escalation of hostilities seems unavoidable. With that gloomy prospect in the background, how about we all just look at some pretty pictures and see if we can't remember why we came here in the first place...

I don't know about the rest of you but I came here for the virtual worlds and as far as I can see they're still here, in abundance. What's more, in these modern times I find myself free to visit more worlds than ever before and in every one I find yet more wonders and marvels.

But then, I'm just a virtual tourist. I point my imaginary camera and go click. And I'm an adventurer, too, let's not forget. Here to discover new lands, teeming with amazing creatures - then kill them, skin them and turn them into hats. But not before I've taken a few snaps for my album.

I never needed a lootbox for that and I don't now. No-one does. The only box that matters is wide open already: this richly furnished Skinner Box we like to call our hobby.

One thing's for certain, though: if games developers had to feed their children on the coins players like myself feed into the slot there'd be a lot of hungry children. And pretty soon no games.

It may be fatuous to suggest that the best things in life are free but it's equally simplistic to suggest there's no such thing as a free lunch. There's plenty of lunch to be had that you, yourself are never going to be asked to pay for, either in cash or favors. Whales pay for me, I let them, it ends there.

Except it doesn't because the flavor whales like best is crunchy lootbox and you can't catch a whale without throwing out the chum. If you don't like the taste you don't have to eat it but you're still swimming in the same ocean and it gets messy. There's blood and lootboxes in the water and I can't even hear the soundtrack for the wailing. Whaling. Whatever.

Where will it all end? SynCaine's still talking down the F2P revolution while Gevlon imagines a brave new world of equality and fairness but I prefer to go with Wilhelm's view that it's all a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing very much.

 At least I hope it is. If we ever really do reach a situation where national legislatures are seriously concerning themselves with creating the necessary legal framework that will allow you to bequeath your GW2 mount skin collection to your grandchildren, then I strongly suspect developers will call "Game Over" on MMOs.

Screenshots of your mount skins, though...now who owns those?

Tumbling Dice : GW2

If we're going to define gambling as "doing something the exact outcome of which is not entirely a foregone conclusion" (and regrettably it seems the consensus is that we are) then gambling in GW2 is very much not restricted to Gem Store purchases. It is, indeed, embedded in the game to such an overwhelming extent that it's somewhat surprising anyone plays at all, given the apparent propensity of gamers to quit at the first suggestion that there may be some element of chance involved in the enterprise.

Consider, for example, the Mystic Forge, an elaborate construction whose outlets in Lions Arch, The Mists and any number of pay-to-enter velvet-rope enclosures form a conduit to some netherworld dungeon, in which the Djinn Zomorros languishes, incarcerated for an indeterminate period by persons unknown for unspecified crimes. Here adventurers come in their thousands and tens of thousands to deposit rare or exotic weapons by their millions in the hope that Zomorros will turn them into pre-cursors.

Mostly he doesn't but people keep trying. The lure of a Legendary leads many to try their luck at the Mystic Toilet, so named because it's like throwing your money down one.

Then there are the Skritt with their enterprising, entrepreneurial, ectoplasm exchange. This feels a lot more like actual gambling. People call it playing the Ecto Slot Machine. In fact, you always get something back, even if it's often less than you put in, so it's really just buying a pig in a poke from a rat in a coat.

Open the box!

The original Skritt gold sink (for that is its true function) arrived unannounced along with the revamped Lions Arch. It was, indeed, so very far being announced that most players probably still don't know it's there and half of those who do can't find it. For reference, it's here and there's another one, which you're even less likely to stumble upon by accident, in Skrittsburgh.

As a company ANet is famous, among other things, for iteration; a design ethos whereby you do the same thing over and over and over again until either it works or you stop noticing that it doesn't, whichever seems most expedient. They have also talked about five and even ten year development arcs.

Who knows what their long-term plans might be? Is it unreasonable to suspect that the entire game was devised as a half-decade long softening-up process aimed at rendering lockbox sales palatable? Probably, although I do tend towards the maxim "if you can think of it someone, somewhere is doing it".

Tinfoil hattery aside, by the time Path of Fire arrived, ArenaNet clearly felt they no longer needed to hide behind Skritt collaborators in caves. This time they brought the whole operation out into the open, with a full-scale Casino in the main expansion city, Amnoon.

The ecto lottery became a fully-fledged card game for hugely inflated stakes.  Disappointingly, not really. The "fully-fledged card game" part, that is. The "hugely inflated stakes" is true.

You're getting colder...

I was hoping for something like FFXIV's Triple Triad, where you play a hand of cards against an NPC. What we got was just another merchant selling lootboxes.

These are just a few examples of the cradle-to-grave integration of "gambling" in GW2. There are many, many more and yesterday I happened, completely by chance (ironically) upon another.

Mrs Bhagpuss and I spent much of Sunday doing Map Completion in Desert Highlands. It took a very long time because as I have mentioned before, and as I am finding to be truer and truer the deeper into the expansion I delve, Path of Fire is hardcore.

Well, hardcore by GW2 standards. Certainly the most hardcore open world content since the original Southsun. Heart of Thorns is decidedly casual-friendly by contrast. Anyway, that's really a post for another day.

The point is that I spent so very long trying to fill out PoIs that were next-to-impossible to find that I ended up discovering a slew of hidden rooms, corridors and caves that weren't marked on the map. Some of those had interesting things inside and some didn't. And then there was the Curious Bowl.

But who's counting?

The Curious Bowl is a small bowl sitting on the floor of a room at the end of a broken railway line half way down a forgotten crevice somewhere near the aptly-named Derelict Delve waypoint. Behind the bowl is a large statue of a kneeling demon. The bowl looks as though it might be where you place offerings.

If you inspect the bowl the game suggests you might like to drop a gold piece into it. Make an offering to an unknown demon? I should coco!

So, I dropped a gold into the bowl and next thing I knew I was inside a locked room. Facing me were two chests and two more demons. No exit. No NPCs. No mobs. No hints.

What else was there to do but select a chest at random and click on it? Aaaand...Bingo! Back in the room with the bowl. Now I'm down a gold and back where I started.

So naturally I did it again. With the same result. At which point I decided to google it. I'm not made of gold. Also, who knows what flags I might be setting?

It transpires this is the start of a nested "The Lady or The Tiger" trick only without the lady or the tiger. Instead, each successful choice puts a reward in your bags and flips you to the next room to try again.

Back to the day job.

There are four rooms. The rewards improve each time. Or, rather, the number of rewards reduces, leaving fewer, better items and therefore an enhanced chance of getting something good, although the wiki entry interprets this as "diminished returns".

In point of fact, other than an Achievement, there doesn't seem to be any rational reason to continue. There are no good rewards with the sole exception of a slim shot at a 24-slot bag in the final chest. Everything else is either very common indeed or can be bought from the Trading Post for much the same price as a single attempt.

It took me five tries to get a single chest to open at which point I called it quits while I was behind. I did have fun, though. Five gold well spent. Would play again - if it wasn't so much trouble getting there.

Let's face it, I am not a natural gambler. I was an unpopular presence at the table at college poker games because I would reliably stand up after a couple of hours with almost exactly the same in my pockets as I'd had when I sat down, a feat achieved by barely engaging with the process at all, other than the drinking and smoking parts.

I think it annoyed people even more that I really seemed to be enjoying myself. And I was. I like games of chance a lot so long as they don't involve any actual risk. The moment I feel anything that even hints at an adrenaline rush I stop.

It's just as well. I doubt I could play GW2 otherwise. After all, looked at from a certain angle, it's nothing more than a random number generator with a rococo front end.

Lockbox Apocalypse : GW2

A few days back, when I posted about the addition of new mount skins to GW2's Gem Store cash shop it was mostly with the intention of examining the emotional disconnect I was experiencing between the concepts of "Mounts" and "Mount Skins". In retrospect this seems somewhat like pointing out an unusual species of squirrel leaping from the branches just before a falling oak tree crushes you to death.

As it happens, at the time I wrote the post, I was blissfully, not to say naively, unaware that the topic was even a matter of particular controversy. It was only after Jeromai drew my attention in the comments to the fire raging on the forums that I became belatedly aware of the crowd brandishing pitchforks and flaming torches.

The "Official Mount Adoption Feedback Thread" started by GW2 Communications Manager Gaile Gray has now dropped to page two of the forums, albeit not before it grew to more than seventy pages containing nearly three thousand comments. It would probably still be top of page one and growing if it hadn't been for an intervention by ANet CEO Mike O'Brien, who stepped up personally on Friday to try to get things back under some sort of control.

Blue is the color.

Unfortunately, far from dampening down the fire, his peculiar "Message About The Mount Adoption Certificate" merely served to pour gasoline on the flames. The full text is too lengthy to reproduce here but the gist appears to be "Thanks for complaining. We thought it was a good idea but maybe it wasn't. We aren't going to change anything but next time we'll try to finesse things so it doesn't look quite so much like an obvious cash grab". Or, in his exact words:

"Microtransactions can be polarizing, and we’ve received both positive and negative feedback on the license. We won’t change the existing license in a way that would invalidate the investment players have made, but I want to confirm to you that our next planned mount skin releases will focus on individual sales like the Reforged Warhound and bundles like the Spooky Mounts Pack. We will not add any skins to the currently available Adoption License, thus not pushing down the odds of acquiring any one skin in that set.

We appreciate the thoughtful feedback many of you have provided, and that you hold us to high standards for monetization."

Unsurprisingly, this has satisfied almost no-one. The new thread resulting from Mike's non-apology can't quite match the size of the previous one but it's still near the top of page one and growing, with less than half as many posts so far but even more page views.

A lot of the conversation isn't particularly edifying. There's a deal of the usual to-and-fro between a relatively small number of ultra-committed opponents or proponents that these threads always see. Filtering out the trolls and professional complainers, however, it seems clear that, at the very least, ANet risks losing a deal of good will over this.

Or so you would think from reading the forums. Looking for some further context I went to Reddit. Couldn't really find anything apart from a thread about Wooden Potatoes destroying a Mount Adoption Certificate in his stream. Some good jokes in that thread but not much salt other than a few people calling the OP out for disrespecting Wooden Potatoes.

Starbound top and center.

So much for anecdotal evidence and reportage. How about a witness statement?

Last night, for no better reason than someone called it in map chat, I decided to go do Triple Trouble. I've been two achievements short of a meta there for months but I'd stopped bothering the Wurm after the last several "organized" attempts turned out to be a complete shambles.

This time was much, much better. Organized by QUTE, everything went very smoothly. All three heads came off and died. I went with Crimson, having first remembered to join the escort party (thanks to a sanity check via Dulfy, despite having been told by two people, in answer to my question in-game, that I didn't need to). I got the Phytotoxin Enthusiast achievement I was missing and the kill on the Crimson head. All I need now is a single kill on Amber and I'm done.

Before all that, however, there was half an hour of standing around the campfire at Firthside Vigil waiting for a critical mass of players to be taxied in, squads to be formed and so on. While we waited we were entertained by aerial displays from a squadron of multi-colored griffins including the undeniably impressive if utterly bizarre Starbound,.

I wasn't expecting it to be quite this big.

Also present was a green bunny skinned as a frog and the only mount skin I really like, the Twin Sands jackal. In short, there were a lot of people riding mounts skinned up from the recent and supposedly unacceptable loot box sale.

What's more, they all seemed to be very pleased with their purchases, to the point of wanting to show them off at every opportunity. With a full map and a lot of newer players (judging by the questions being asked) I didn't hear a single negative comment about mounts or skins from anyone.

That was also my experience in Lion's Arch, the traditional home for GW2's never-ending fashion parade. A lot of chatter about the new mount skins and all of it excited and positive. While the forum threads may be filled with vitriolic complaints and threats to quit, the response in game and on Reddit seems to be quite the opposite.

At the very least, the visual evidence within the game seems to be that these things are really selling. What's more, I would note that at time of writing I have yet to see even one player mounted on a 2000 Gem Reforged Warhound, the only mount skin available as a single, direct purchase.

It adds a whole other dimension, doesn't it?

Maybe that's because the Jackal is the least popular and least useful of all the mounts and no-one rides them anyway. Or maybe it's because 2000 Gems is significantly above what the market will bear for a single mount skin right now. I imagine it's a little of each. 

Either way, it certainly seems people are keener to pay 400 gems for a random skin than 2000 for this specific model. I know I would be.

I'm relatively neutral on the whole lockbox issue: I agree one hundred per cent that there are some serious concerns that need to be addressed over the accessibility of quasi-gambling activities to vulnerable individuals and minors but other than that I don't have any particular problem with items being available either only for real money or via a form of randomization or, indeed, both those things together.

Unless and until regulation applies I think we can safely say that developers will continue to make their decisions on how far to go with this approach based on how much money it brings in. If lockbox sales are outweighed by lost revenue from people leaving the game to avoid them then we'll see fewer lockboxes. If not, then we can expect such sales to continue apace.

Polly want a cracker!

When it comes to these particular lockboxes, I have more of a problem with what's in them than how they're sold. The addition of mounts to the game had an immediate and, to my mind, unflattering effect on the visual landscape. If we're to expect a steady stream of garish and bizarre mount skins - and we are, since that's clearly what sells - it doesn't bode well for what little immersion we have left.

Oh, well. It's no more than  bringing the look of Tyria in line with the looks of Azeroth and Norrath. I guess if I really wanted visual consistency I'd go play LotRO.

As for the commercial future of GW2, it would appear from the first financials since Path of Fire that Gem Shop sales will have to take up most of the heavy lifting over the next year or two. Expect ever flashier skins and even sneakier sales strategies.

I think I'll put my gold in tar and feather futures.

I Should Be So Lucky : GW2

I like lockboxes. There. I said it. I do, truly, unironically, like lockboxes.

What I don't like, of course, is paying for them with real money.

In-game money - gold, karma, reputation, pretty shells you pick up from the beach - that's fine. I don't mind paying imaginary money to open imaginary boxes. Where I draw the line is paying money I could use to buy something more tangible like, oh, I don't know, food?

I'm a huge, huge fan of RNG in MMOs. If I had my way there would be at least an element of chance in every possible transaction, from whether a crafted item turns out to be exceptional or below-average to the standard path to upgrading your armor. As for drops, as we call them, I freakin' love drops!

What I find tedious, dull and unimaginative are trading systems where you earn tokens and buy things from a vendor. That is too much like real life.

Dragon's Stand. Please clear inventory before arrival.

GW2 has its share of token systems but fortunately for me ANet are much more obsessed with delivering loot of all kinds inside boxes. Boxes and bags. It's long gone beyond parody. After any major event it can take me up to half an hour to go through my inventory and open all the bags and boxes I've acquired.

Seriously, it has actually taken me half an hour in real time, although to be fair some of that was time taken clearing space to receive each new burst of goodies and not-very-goodies. I did Dragon's Stand tonight and it took me almost twenty minutes to open everything I got.

EQ2 likes to use flashy ground chests but generally the game tends more towards direct drops because, for all the ridiculous things SOE and DBG have done over the years, at least they never invented "Magic Find". Magic Find is a ludicrous stat used in many F2P MMOs under various names. It purports to increase your chance at getting better drops.

Not in my experience.

Originally GW2 included it as a stat on gear but that proved controversial, with people being kicked from Dungeon groups (remember them?) for wearing Magic Find gear rather than something useful for killing the mobs that drop the loot in the first place.

These days it's a character stat instead. On my main account my Magic Find is 330%. I'm not going to explain how that works. Just roll with it.

Magic Find is bloody useless. With a handful of exceptions it only works on direct drops, although you'd hardly know it. In theory it includes hyper-rare items like the Precursors for Legendary Weapons. In five years, on six accounts, with thousands of hours played, Mrs Bhagpuss and I have received one precursor each. I hate to think how much worse that drop rate would have been if we didn't have MF!

The reason ANet loves putting drops in boxes is that it protects them from Magic Find. First they add the stat, then they make it useless. Brilliant. The first rule of magic find is we don't use magic find and that's also why we can't have nice drops.

Of course, no matter how bad something is, it can always get worse. In the upcoming Path of Fire expansion we are apparently getting a new system wherein loot will drop as "unidentified". We'll then either have to take it to an NPC and pay to get it identified, at which point we'll find out if it's worth anything or just fit for salvage. Or we can cut out the middleman and salvage it unidentified.

This is proving controversial, although not very. The main thread on the topic didn't manage a hundred replies. I'm betting most GW2 players don't know about the change yet so the real shouting won't start until launch day. Who knows, maybe it'll be popular. At least the unidentified items stack.

Anyway, I like opening my bags and boxes and so, as long as no real money changes hands, I find lockboxes are 100% acceptable as well. They're fun. More than that, they're exciting. They have interesting things in them, as you can see from the recently-added inspection feature, although in my experience most of those interesting things stay inside the box.

It's like the Bizarro World version of Developer Appreciation Week

They certainly did today, when I logged all my accounts in to grab the free "Customer Appreciation Package" from the Trading Post. It turned out to be a Black Lion Chest (aka lockbox) and a Black Lion Key to open it.

I opened one on each account, three of them (F2P players aren't "customers" apparently, which I guess is technically true if not something game companies usually say out loud). The only remotely interesting thing I got was a dye. Everything else was embarrassingly dull.

Leaving aside the name, which I can only assume is a marketing department in-joke, the clear and obvious purpose of this free taster is to encourage players to buy Black Lion Keys, which by an exceptional co-incidence happen to be on sale right now.

I did once work in Marketing. It was a long time ago but I think I can still remember how it goes. Something about getting people to use your company's products or services more, not shun them like a fatal disease.

I'd have thought it might be worth rigging the odds on these infrequent freebies so that everyone gets at least a halfway decent item. The dye would do it. A mini, perhaps. Nothing amazing, just not a Bank Express and a 30 minute booster.

Had there ever been the slightest chance that I might one day buy a Black Lion Key to open a Black Lion Chest (there wasn't) this utterly pathetic experience would have put the can on it. As a promotional device it's up there with "Two For The Price Of Three" (an actual promo run by a London bookshop once - it did at least get them some free publicity on national media...).

None of which is going to stop me squealing with excitement and linking it in guild chat next time I get a Black Lion Key for free (they do drop, incredibly rarely, and you can often get one for completing a map). I still love lockboxes!

Open The Box! Take The Money!

When I was a child one of my favorite treats was a trip to the fair. Not to ride the Dodgems or the Big Wheel, not even to lose another loose tooth to a toffee apple. All I wanted was a pocket full of pennies and a slot to stick them in. Penny Cascade was my favorite.

As a teenager I graduated to slot machines. Didn't need to wait for the Fair any more, nor a trip to the seaside and a long walk down a windy pier. City arcades were none too fussy about age checks so long as you kept pushing in the pennies.

By the time I was a student there were slot machines in pubs, chip shops, anywhere people stood around. It's a wonder they didn't think to build them into bus stops. They had heavy competition by then from Space Invaders, Galaxians, Frogger and the rest and I only had so much loose change but on a pub video game you always lose in the end. On a fruit machine you do occasionally win and if the coins going in were silver by then, so were the ones that came tumbling out.

So I've always gambled, yet I hate to lose money. Purely hate it. I was banned from playing poker in university because I'd play for hours and leave with the same cash I had when I arrived. Not the same amount. The very same notes and coins I came in with, near as dammit. I only like gambling when there's no gambling involved. I'm not really gambling at all. I'm buying amusement.

MMOs have always scratched this itch very well. All those Nameds in Everquest with their fair chance to drop something you didn't really want and their piddling little chance to drop something you really, really needed. What else were we doing when we camped the hill in Crushbone for hours on end, killing the Orc Trainer over and over again in the hope he'd finally drop the Shiny Brass Shield? Playing the slots, that's what. Pulling that arm one more time and hoping for a payout.

As time went on MMOs began to shuck the disguise. Why surrogate when you can simulate? And clearly there was demand. Players had been running games of chance inside MMOs for years. Some of them weren't even scams. Bringing the street operation into The House was not uncontroversial but in-game casinos fitted so smoothly into almost any milieu, once we had them we couldn't remember why we'd be making so much fuss. In EQ2 the Gigglegibbers set their slots up right there on the docks where the trade passes. In Fallen Earth the action's underground. Make it light and fluffy or dark and sleazy, it's all just good, clean fun.


Then came the Lockbox.

Hard to remember now they're so ubiquitous but I think I saw my first lockbox in Allods. The thing about a lockbox is it, it's not a game. You don't open it because it's fun to see the numbers spin. You open it for what might be inside. Might. And it costs. You don't just sidle up to it and slip a gold in the slot. You need a key and there are always more boxes than keys. You never have enough. But you can always buy more. That's a well that never runs dry.

Of course you need a motivator. If the boxes had stuff you could get elsewhere, why buy keys? So the boxes have strange allure stuffed inside. Pets, mounts, hats. Treasures craveworthy and rare. Did I say rare? There are hens walking round with toothfilled beaks more common.

Me, I quite like a lockbox, once in a while. But then, I can let a phone ring until it stops. My curiosity is malleable. I'm not uninterested in the contents of the scores of Black Lion Chests stacked in my bank but their mystery will keep until a Black Lion Key chances to appear, say when I complete a map now and again.

When I logged into Rift for the first time in months to see what presents F2P had brought it was no surprise to find lockboxes among them. Nice try Trion but Deeps is going to have a very long wait before he gets his dripping little claws on any of my money. The subscription was probably a better bet.

And it seems to have been a better bet for me than I thought, too. The substantial sum that Storm Legion and a year to play it cost had seemed wasted with barely a few hours logged in Telara since then. Now that it seems to have contributed to a very substantial stash of the new currencies, Loyalty and Credit both, I feel more sanguine. F2P seems to have made me money. Imaginary money, anyway.

There's plenty in the Store that catches my eye. All those Dimensions and the things to put in them. Mounts faster than most of my Level 50s ever rode. Extra bag slots and bigger bags than I was ever willing to craft to go in them. And I have 20k to spend. We seem to have moved an awfully long way from either adventure or roleplaying but hey, shopping with someone else's money is a kind of fantasy too.

Rift is up to speed with the new trends in a way GW2 isn't quite yet. In Tyria I'm farming coffers and shattering holograms that spawn in the world, for an event. These are the ones I love because they don't even need a key, not like the Southsun Supply Crates, but if I want them, crates or keys, I either have to fight stuff or buy from the Store. My Deeps' Lock Box Key in Rift I got just for logging in.

Daily and weekly log-in loyalty is where it's at now. We don't care what you do so long as you just turn up. If you ain't here we can't sell you anything. The past few weeks, other than when I was seeing real castles in Spain, I have logged into City of Steam and DinoStorm every day. Every. Single. Day. I don't play either much, not because they aren't good - they are - but because I have a lot to do and I can't fit in everything I'd like. But I sure make time for those two because every log-in is its own prize.

City of Steam presses buffs, currency and many lockboxes into my leather-gloved hands as I step onto The Nexus, slips in some keys as well. Never nearly enough to open the boxes. Clever that. DinoStorm is subtler still, loading me up each day with xp, potions and Gold Coins plus every few days a bandana, say, or a title. I got The Loyal last night. Smell the irony on that. Oh, and there's that once-a-day free spin on the Slot Machine that always pays out. Second spin uses those Gold Coins we just gave you so that's still sort of free, isn't it? All out of Gold Coins and you still didn't get the Big Win? Well hey, we can do something about that. Just step this way...

So as I say it doesn't bother me. Much. I have a decades-long history of gambling for fun without really spending any money. This is just another manifestation. Do I think it adds value to my fantasy adventure life? Not so you'd notice, no. I'd probably prefer that it went away. But it won't so I'm working with it. Fun is where you find it, after all.