OMG! It's The Grey!

EverQuest II's sixteenth expansion, Blood of Luclin launched today, at the absolute worst possible time for me. I neither have time to play nor write about it and won't until the New Year. But why let that stop me?

Servers came up about an hour ago and I've been running around exploring ever since. Nostalgia factor, for me at least, is orders of magnitude higher than World of Warcraft Classic because I spent countless hours over several years in EverQuest's Luclin zones. I've been waiting fifteen years to get back to the moon!

On my brief acquaintance so far it looks to be the most "open world" expansion since 2014's Altar of Malice. I hope first impressions don't lie. Also I foraged up four rares in fifteen minutes which is probably more than I got in the entire last expansion!

Nothing more to say right now except to advise anyone setting foot on Luclin for the first time, dressed in Panda gear or similar, to change everything out for the gear in Tishan's chest on the floor where you arrive. It looks worse when you read the stats but once I put it on I gained almost 20 milion HPs and over 20,000 Potency.

I just wish I had a week off work...

Black Desert Mobile: First Impressions

I'm a bit surprised no-one in this part of the woods seems to have noticed the release of Black Desert Mobile. Of course, it is a mobile game. That would explain it. Seven years after I first blogged about Celtic Heroes and Elemental Knights to a resounding silence there seems to be no more interest or curiosity around here for MMORPGs on the small screen than ever there was.

And I can't say I've done much to shift the paradigm. I like a number of Mobile MMOs but I don't like playing them on mobile screens. Not because the controls don't work or the graphics aren't as spiffy - they do and they are. It's that if I have a free moment away from my PC I can think of a lot of things I'd rather do with the time than play games.

But why should that stop me? As I was saying a while ago, with NOX I can play mobile games on my PC. So this morning I fired up NOX, logged into Google Play and downloaded Black Desert Mobile.

That was super-easy to do, although the footprint is enormous for a mobile game - almost three gigs. It took about five minutes to download and install. Registration was a single click, choosing from a list of social media identities Pearl Abyss assumes you must already have. I chose Google and I was in.

A mini-game to offset downloading fatigue. That's a first.

When Black Desert launched in the West, back in 2016, the depth and detail of its character creation tools were so celebrated, PA released them as a pre-launch standalone. At the time I reported that it took me over an hour to get a character looking the way I wanted.

It took me more like ten minutes in BDM. The controls weren't entirely intuitive but I muddled through. There were plenty of presets if I'd wanted to jump straight in. I started with one of those and then fiddled about with the details. At one point I got a pop-up asking me if I wanted to "deform" my character (I think that's what it said...) which freaked me out a little. I backed away quickly and settled for what I had.

There were five Class choices: Warrior, Witch, Ranger, Valkyrie and Giant. I picked Witch, the magic-user (Go on! Is it really? Who'd have guessed?). The regular version of Black Desert has an established pattern of feeding out new classes as a form of content. I imagine BDM will do likewise.

The game asks you to pick a "Family Name" which will be visible to everyone. This is supposed to be the surname of all your characters on that account. Then you choose a "Character Name".

That look really doesn't scream "Witch" to me. Thespian, maybe...

Even though I've played quite a lot of Black Desert I still erroneously assumed I would enter the world with "Character Name/Family Name" over my head, making up what we on planet Earth usually call a "name". Not so. All I got was the Family Name. You can just about see it in the screenshots if you have x-ray vision. How does that work if I make another character? Am I just always That Name, whoever I play? 

Don't look at me. I don't know! I guess if I was doing due diligence I'd make another character and log in to find out but this is a First Impressions piece, not a marketing report. My first impression is that BDM's name convention needs work. It reminds me of The Secret World, where back around launch you'd regularly hear people complaining that the name they were stuck with in-game wasn't the one they'd expected.

Other than that minor wrinkle, the rest of my experience was impressive. I chose a Region from a choice of three - America, Europe, Asia. I picked America and the game let me in so it must not be region-locked. Then I picked a server from a choice of three, all of which were rated "Busy" and in I went.

The world, at least the little I saw of it, looks almost exactly like the familiar PC version but the set-up for a new character is much improved. Instead of that confusing bit in the village with the Black Spirit giving you a checklist of things to kill and making you feel your character's having the Saturday Morning Cartoon version of a psychotic episode, you wake up at the dock of the main town in the region, where a nice woman called Eileen sets the scene in a reassuring tone of voice.

Didn't mean to scare you, Eileen. Now, where am I again?

BDM is what I'd call semi-voiced. Sometimes a character says out loud exactly what you see in text on screen. Sometimes they just say the first line of a paragraph. Once in a while they'll say something that doesn't quite match, as if they're reading from a different draft of the same script. I've come across this in other imported games and I can never figure out why it doesn't get tidied up before launch. Cost, probably. The voice acting itself is fine.

Back to the plot, such as it is. Naturally you've passed out then woken up in a place you don't recognize with no idea how or why you came there. This is an MMORPG after all. The Black Spirit is still there, wiffling and maundering as usual, but I found it less sinister, more petulant - like a disgruntled toddler, fractious from lack of attention. One thing that did take me by surprise was when one of the NPCs commented on it. I'd always assumed only your character could see the Spirit but apparently not. It started preening from being noticed, too, which was a nice touch.

Eileen sends you off to meet various townsfolk, who soon have you doing a familiar series of tasks - mostly killing local pests -bees, foxes, boars... Along the way you get tutorials on how to walk, fight, open your bags, the usual. Fighting was about as challenging as you'd expect from having played the original, by which I mean not challenging at all. It is sort of tutorial, albeit one embedded seamlessly in the game itself, so it ought to be easy but I've died often enough in tutorials to know that's not always the case.

Hang on, I think you forgot a little space, just to the left of center. Can't you get another button in there, somehow?

The controls, via NOX, are excellent. There's an unobtrusive screen overlay to remind you of hotykeys, visible in the screenshots, that can be toggled with F11 for detailed information. Almost everything else can be clicked with the mouse. I found it instantly understandable. I also realize this tells you nothing about how the game might play on a phone or tablet but it's probably fine. I imagine. I mean, it's a touch screen. How bad could it be?

Like most mobile games, Black Desert doesn't believe in wasting screen space. The graphics are supposed to be top notch for mobile but it's hard to know when you can barely see the world for buttons and windows. Why developers respond to a smaller display size by cramming more and more onto the screen beats me.

Aesthetically, I could have done with less clutter but for practical purposes I found it all pretty easy to navigate. It didn't take me long to notice I had presents. Oh, boy, did I have presents! My Mailbox was stuffed with "Pre-Registration Awards" - loads of them. I don't recall pre-registering but I might have done. It's the sort of thing I do without really thinking about it.

My support and love is easily bought, it seems.

I took a present and got a warning that if I took it I wouldn't be able to take it again on a different server. Do people normally play on multiple servers here? Is there some reason to do that? I ignored the warning and opened the box.

There were seven things inside and several of those opened into more things. It occured to me that if I took all my presents out of the mailbox and opened them I might have inventory issues before I'd even got going so I just opened that one. I have six weeks to open the rest before they vanish. That's a thing that could happen.

I carried on questing, as you do. BDM has auto-questing and auto-combat, the former of which I used happily to get from questgiver to target and back, the latter which I only discovered when I received a "Mission" and was told I couldn't use auto-combat in the mission zone.

At one point I received a quest from a very twee child who asked me (several times) if I liked cats and dogs. I didn't get the chance to tell her because in BDM your character doesn't speak. Or, indeed, make any response. You either take the quest or you don't.

I'm pretty sure any self-respecting dog would keep well away from you anyway, Spirit.

I took it. I went to feed some animals and came away with a puppy. This is something that used to happen in real life when I was growing up. People were always trying to find homes for kittens and puppies and any passing child was fair game. Don't suppose it happens much any more, for any number of very good reasons.

As the Black Spirit explained, as it was disparaging my dog, my new pet did have one use - it would pick up loot for me. That's a mechanic I always appreciate. Pets are also upgradeable and there are three slots for them so you can have both dogs and cats. No need to choose!

At this point I'd been playing for about half an hour and I was enjoying myself. I kind of preferred the opening experience to the regular game in an odd sort of way, other than the extreme screen clutter. It felt more like a regular MMORPG and less like whatever it is Black Desert normally feels like, namely something slightly off-kilter.

I'd received my first Mission - protecting a farm against an invasion of boars - and I was just about to zone into what I presume would have been an instance, when part of my computer desk fell off. It was the bit holding the keyboard and mouse so I could hardly ignore it. The metal strut had sheared clean through so it was no quick fix.

Cat mathematics.

I had to log out to make repairs and by the time I'd done that I'd lost the flow. I'd made Level Four and taken a bunch of screenshots. I thought I'd done enough for a First Impressions piece, so here we are. I'd have liked to have been able to say how the mission went but it'll have to wait for another day.

Overall, I liked BDM. At 3GB it would be a major imposition on my Kindle Fire, which is already groaning with downloaded nonsense. I'd need to make some space first. Given that I'd probably never play it once I'd installed it I'm probably going to skip that.

On a 24" monitor the graphics, which I imagine look amazing on an 8" HD screen, are a little fuzzy. There's probably no reason to play it via an Android emulator when you could be playing Black Desert itself. The regular game certainly doesn't have the insane screen clutter of the mobile version, either.

On the other hand, as I said, in these very early stages I did find the gameplay strangely more MMORPG-like than the PC version I'm used to playing. I am quite curious to see if that carries on or if it's only something that happens in the early stages.

I may be back. I may not. If I'm not, it's no criticism of what looks like a very impressive port from PC to mobile. More a comment on my lack of free time right now. Why don't these things come along when there's nothing else to do?

Step Into A New World

Last week's reveal of an approximate launch date for Amazon's New World (now confirmed as May 26 2020) got me thinking about the future as it relates to MMORPGs. Specifically, the games I'm vaguely looking forward to playing sometime, if and when they ever get their act together.

I'm going to do this from memory, without a lot of preparatory research, in the hope of clarifying what I'm actually interested in, rather than what I could all too easily make myself get over-excited about if I worked at it. That said, I'm fairly hopeless at remembering stuff like this so I'll probably miss some things I'll end up jumping all over when they appear.

Let's start with New World. Without a doubt this is now at the top of my wants list, moving above Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen by dint of having an imminent release date.  It's also backed by one of the biggest companies in the world so I have no worries over whether it will actually happen.

Of course, I'm still vastly more interested in Brad McQuaid's legacy MMORPG as a game that might become a long-term home for both me and Mrs Bhagpuss. It's as close to the model I prefer as I'm likely to get. I'm just not expecting to get it any time soon, although a beta buy-in for $100 or so wuld be more than tempting.

On paper, New World doesn't look like something I'd enjoy but personal experience trumps speculation. Like a lot of people, I was lucky enough to get an invite to the alpha. It wasn't a particularly exclusive event. I did, however, get in right at the start, which meant I saw the way the game changed and developed over many months.

The New World Alpha Test has a fairly strict NDA (albeit nothing on the scale of the one Belghast recalls from Guild Wars 2's testing process) and as far as I know it's still in force. That means I can't really say much about either the game or the testing process.

I will say that it was a real alpha, in which systems and gameplay elements were frequently changed with the specific intent of seeing how various approaches worked. This was done with great communication from the developers, including reasons and expectations for the changes.

My experiences in the Alpha made me a lot less surprised than some comentators when I read about the changes the game has apparently undergone since it was taken back behind closed doors. An increased focus on the fantastical elements of the setting and on player versus environment content is nothing more than I would have expected.

What I wasn't expecting was a move towards what looks as though it could be fully optional PvP. Game Director Scott Lane is quoted at Massively:OP, saying of the PvP aspect "“If you don’t care about this stuff as a player, you can have a huge, massive experience without any of it.”" There's a lot of meat missing from the bones of this statement, like how that will actually work, but even if it ends up being a hybrid PvPvE system such as those we're familiar with from Allods, ArcheAge, Black Desert and many others, that's fine with me.

What did surprise me was the mention of personal housing outside guild-based territorial warfare. I didn't see that coming and it adds a huge potential value to the game for me. If I can potter around in safety in low/mid level areas, gathering materials and crafting stuff to build my own little wilderness home, that will suit me very well. It's a lot like what I was hoping for from Atlas and didn't get.

About the only thing I don't much look forward to is the "focus and very skill based ... moment to moment game play". I'm too old for that kind of thing. That said, PvE combat in the alpha was fine. Not my favorite kind of fighting but perfectly manageable for an incompetent button-masher. And I only played a melee character. I'm guessing ranged will be easier on the hands.

I'm not convinced New World will be something I'd recognize as an MMORPG but it doesn't claim to be one so that's not a problem. I am expecting a gorgeous, rich and fascinating world with immense exploration potential and that's more than enough. I pre-ordered the game today, which gives me guaranteed access to the Closed Beta, whenever that starts. I imagine it will also have a strict NDA. Looking forward to dropping a lot of veiled hints when the time comes.

Camelot Unchained does claim to be an MMORPG; the spiritual successor to Dark Age Of Camelot, no less. We've been waiting a long time for CU. The Kickstarter was getting on for seven years ago. The first phase of beta, expected in 2015, arrived three years later and that's the phase we're still in.

As Wilhelm observed "It is starting to make Star Citizen look positively progressive in getting test content to users". I've played Star Citizen on "Free Roam" and I'm not any kind of backer. I'd love the option to do that with Camelot Unchained, a game I'm far more interested in, but as far as I can tell it's still a $60 buy-in to get Beta 1 access.

The underlying concept of CU still appeals to me. Realm vs Realm is the best kind of PvP I've played - when it works. It often doesn't. This would be the first game to make it the be-all and end-all and I'm interested to see how that pans out. Also, Mrs Bhagpuss loves RvR so she'd almost certainly be on board.

How long does anyone want to wait to play a video game, though? CU has been "in development" since 2013 and it's only in the first stage of beta with a "lengthy" second phase planned. At this rate it's not going to go Live this side of 2021-2022. Does any game really need that long in the oven?

While we've been waiting for Mark Jacobs to get CU out the door, Broadsword have taken almost as long to get around to making DAOC free to play. They did finally manage it a little while ago and I've been meaning to download the game and revisit my old stamping grounds in Midgard and Albion.

So far I haven't been able to make the time but it's a virtual certainty that I'll be re-playing DAOC long before I ever set foot in its sequel. That's a straw in the wind for something that's becoming an increasing theme of MMORPG hobbyism for many: the past is more inviting than the future.

2019 saw two huge MMORPG news stories involving games coming back from the dead: WoW Classic and City of Heroes. In both cases, games long since abandoned or dismantled by their creators came back to an astonishing response.

Games developers as a species are never slow to jump a passing bandwagon, provided it passes by with all the alarms blaring and lights blazing, but they're ridiculously late on any trend that doesn't fit their ironclad pre-conceptions. If they'd had an ear to the ground they'd have heard the rumble that's been building for many years.

In the blogosphere, we've often talked about the dearth of new titles and reminisced about the good old days. It should surprise no-one that a good old 'un beats a lackluster newbie every time and yet it seems to have taken the industry a long time to cotton on.

The cumulative success of projects like Classic, Homecoming, Old School Runescape and P99 make it very hard to ignore the untapped demand for games that have supposedly run their course. The uncomfortable fact that for some of the mainstays of the industry it's five or ten year old games that still feed the bottom line is belatedly being re-shaped into a narrative the suits can understand.

The latest buzzword is "ongoing games", now an Award category in its own right. We're already moving past "games as a service" into the sunny uplands of forever gaming. Why make and market expensive new products when you can just re-furbish old ones? Getting new players has always been a gamble - why bother, when you can just hang on to the ones you've got?

On the back of that, some of my most eagerly-anticipated "new" games aren't anything of the kind. They're emulated versions of old games I either played and miss or missed playing when they were around.

Even I'm surprised by how many emulator projects I now have bookmarked. There's the Vanguard Emulator, obviously. I log into that every month or two and post about it occasionally. There are several more I'm looking forward to more than I'm looking forward to most official product.

Top of the list is Project: Return Home. It's a bold attempt not only to bring back a much-missed MMORPG but to port it to a new platform. If it comes off I'll be able to realize a long-held dream, one which I thought would have to remain a fantasy: I'll be able to play the EQ game I missed out on because I didn't own a PS2.

Return Home plans to make EverQuest Online Adventures available for the PC. If the team behind the project manage to pull it off there's a good chance I might have found a new home for months. Short of an actual new EverQuest game from Daybreak (and where's that "big news" that was coming in November, Holly?) Return Home might be the last "new" game set in Norrath I ever play.

Then there's Free Realms: Sunrise, about which I have written a few times. The folks behind that don't seem to be in much of a hurry so I'm not holding my breath. I'd still bet on getting an open beta before Camelot Unchained goes live.

A real left-field entry to my watchlist is FHX Restoration, a project aiming to bring back a barely-remembered MMORPG that operated under several names in various territories. It's the game known to some as Hercot or Xiones. I knew it as Ferentus.

When I played, Ferentus was in beta. I don't recall it ever going Live in this territory. I only ever saw the first zone or two and I can't really say why it's stuck in my mind the way it has but I've never forgotten it. Apparently there was a whole game there at one time, one which people paid for, played and enjoyed. I'd be very happy to take a look at what was on the menu after the taster I tried all those years ago.

As with most emulator projects, details on progress are hard to come by but there have been two brief opportunities to step into the world and see what's been achieved so far. Both of which I missed, because I only found about the project after they'd happened.

The first was a single day over a year ago. The second was two days in August. I'm keeping an eye open for the next. Maybe that'll be a whole three-dayer!

Games I was looking forward to, now not so much, include Ashes of Creation and Crowfall. Both of them have passed that point where they've been in development so long that all my intitial enthusiasm has burned away.

I was never all that keen on Crowfall to begin with. The early PR releases got my back up with all their talk about how they were going to save the genre. I didn't (and still don't) think it needs saving. As time went on, though, I began to think ArtCraft had some neat ideas on how to solve some longstanding issues, including payment models and PvP vs PvE.

Sadly, whatever it looked like they might do has become moot due to the length of time they've taken doing it. A lot of the things that seemed like problems then don't seem to be all that pressing now and I wonder if anyone really cares any more.  I know I don't,, although no doubt I'll give Crowfall a look - if it ever makes it out of buy-in testing.

I was a lot more invested in Ashes of Creation to the point that I pledged for both myself and Mrs Bhagpuss during the Kickstarter. If the game ever happens we'll get copies and I'll definitely play it and write about it here.

When they put up the first version of the Battle Royale spin-off, Ashes of Creation: Apocalypse, I enjoyed it well enough, considering what it was, but by the time they got to the latest version I couldn't be bothered. And neither could anyone else. The current Steam Chart stats show the average number of players online in the last thirty days was 8.5. Good luck getting a Battle Royale going, guys. Maybe you could invite the three people still playing Planetside:Arena.

And that's about it. I'm sure there are plenty of upcoming MMORPGs I'd be curious to try should I happen to come across them but I can't bring any to mind. I'd welcome any suggestions!

I Covet The Waterfront: EQII

Yesterday marked the first day of Frostfell in EverQuest II. The midwinter celebration is a huge event in Norrath's calendar, bringing a welter of quests and activities, several seasonal instances and a whole zone dedicated to games, crafts and gift-giving.

There are no new quests this year, which is probably just as well. There are already nearly two dozen, several of them multi-part, some repeatable. There are three new Collections, all of which I completed in a ninety minute session last night.

EQ2 Traders, as always, has full details. I found the gloss there very useful although I was familiar with the mechanic from previous holiday events. Each of the three Collects comprises nine items, three sets of three, to be found in three locations - a home city (Qeynos, Freeport or Neriak), a secondary starting city (New Halas, Kelethin, Gorowyn) and Frostfell Wonderland Village itself.

I started in Freeport for the very good reason that it was where I found myself when I logged in. There were purple sparkles scattered across the cobbled streets of Lucan's capital and I wasn't the only one trying to grab them. Track Harvestables came in handy once again.

It was while I was grubbing around down by the waterfront in North Freeport that I noticed the hole in the wall. I know Freeport pretty well after living there for a decade and a half but it still has the capacity to surprise. I must have passed the building in question a hundred times and yet somehow Id never noticed how different it looked from the rest.

The walls were grey stucco, patterned with swirls. Fancy. An archway opened into a small, featureless courtyard. Had it always been there? How had I never noticed it before?

Against the outer wall there leaned a crude ladder. Planks nailed together. Why was it there? Had it been forgotten by the plasterers? Left behind by burglars? More to the point, could I climb it?

Climbing in EQII is quite specific. It was added as a feature in the first expansion, Desert of Flames, back in 2005 and has been included in content ever after, albeit somewhat sporadically.

Climbable surfaces are usually easy to spot; the walls are marked with the tracks and handholds of previous climbers or there are ladders or nets. All you need to do is move close enough and your character will begin to scale the obstacle, hand over hand.

Freeport predates all that. When it was built there was no climbing in the game and as far as I know, no-one ever bothered to go back and add climbable surfaces to original game zones. But we never needed special skills to climb back in the old days. We just...climbed.

And the way we used to climb was by jumping, hoping to find a piece of geometry that extended, invisibly, far enough into the horizontal to allow a precarious perch. I looked at the ladder. The expression "thick as a plank" came to mind. Those were pretty thick planks.

My Berserker tried a standing jump with a little jink forward. He landed on the first cross-strut - and stuck. Good start. He tried again and there he was, on the next rung. Third jump he fell off. Luckily no-one was watching except his Mercenary and he's paid not to laugh.

The ladder turned out to be fully climbable - old school style. I'm not sure I've climbed a ladder that way in EQII before. I kind of think I have but I couldn't say where it was if I did. 

At the top was a wrought-iron railing and no roof. I stood and looked down into the courtyard of the room with the hole in the wall and I pondered. I knew now that the ladder could be climbed but I was no wiser as to why it was there in the first place.

And I'm still not. Does it have a role in some quest, possibly for a class I've never played? Did some designer place it there intending to add some feature they never got around to finishing? Is it some kind of in-joke? I have no idea although I'd bet someone does.

One thing occurred to me as I stood on the roof. I've known since almost the start of the game that there are buildings you can rent in Freeport which have outdoor views. I actually own one on some character or other. Unless it's in Qeynos. Whichever, that one's a closed rooftop with no real view but I've seen and visited a large Freeport house with a rooftop terrace and views of the harbor. Maybe this was it...

Not to undercut the tension but yes, it was. I went round the front and checked the door. I was outside 7, Compassion Road, one of the original Guild Houses. I took the tour and went upstairs. The six-room home has not one but two rooftop terraces, both with great views. And neither of them is the rooftop I climbed onto.

There was a time when I coveted that house. It seemed impossibly expensive. Not only did it cost three platinum to buy the lease but 250,000 status as well - and you had to be in a guild of at least Level 30. And if you could manage all that, weekly upkeep ran to fifteen gold and 50,000 status.

Well, that may have been a pipe dream in 2004 but fifteen years later it's trivial. I have almost a million platinum on my Berserker alone, his one-person guild dinged Level 63 two days ago and he has enough Personal Status to pay the upkeep for almost as long as the game has been running. Fourteen years-worth, in fact.

I did consider buying it. It's a fantastic property in its own right and I'm pretty sure it's breakoutable. I could have a whole section of the Freeport waterfront all to myself.

In the end I decided against it - for now, at least. I already have an astoundingly over-furnished mansion in Maj'Dul on that character, which he long ago broke out of, giving him access to much of the city. Plus he's in the process of landscaping his Mara Estate, a bona fide small town, complete with river, ocean and fields, no breakout required.

EQII is one of those games where it's all too easy to take on more than you can handle. I don't need another housing project right now - I still have my Inquisitor's Baubleshire to deal with and my Wizard just set up home in the Mistmoore Crags Estate.

I shut the door of 7, Compassion Road and went back to my shiny hunting. An hour or so later I'd finished all three collections and handed them in. My Berserker was the proud owner of a Bleachbone Faun Mask (the sunbleached skull of a deer, complete with antlers, set in a silver hood, covering the whole face and making him look like the first jump-scare in a 1970s horror movie), a Bleachbone Faun Cloak (a silver cloak, embroidered with an image of the same skull and quite  possibly made from the flayed skin of the same deer) and a Bleachbone Faun Staff (made, I'm guessing, from whatever bits of the deer were left over).

What connection those gruesome items have with Frostfell and its happy-go-lucky cheer I cannot begin to imagine. They're druidical, that's as much as I know, but what druids have to do with goblins, false beards and Dickens parodies beats me.

It's another culture. Who am I to impose my values?

On with the revels!

New World, Old World

It's been a good, long while since a news item on Massively:OP piqued my interest but the last twenty-four hours pinged a couple of blips on the radar. Blipped a couple of pings? Does radar even make a noise or do they just dub it in to make it more exciting in the movies?

First came a heads-up that Amazon had broken radio silence on New World. I haven't really thought about the game much since the alpha went offline back in May. I certainly haven't been following the Twitter feed so I was unaware that it had a) been inactive for months and b) had just come back to life.

This, of course, is why I still check M:OP every day, even though almost everything there, apart from the news itself, raises my blood pressure. There isn't any more comprehensive or timely coverage of the genre and I'm guessing there's not likely to be so I make the best of it.

When Amazon said they were taking New World back behind closed doors to "“design major new features” that were “large in scope and create changes to the world that could be disruptive.”", to quote Massively quoting Amazon, I saw no reason not to take them at their word. I was surprised (although I really shouldn't have been) to see M:OP taking a doom and gloom tack on the story back in May and even more suprised (again, why?) to see them still rowing that boat even now.

Amazon isn't some nebulous, sketchy indie, prone to making grand claims with no means of backing them up. It's one of the biggest companies in the world with a reach and scope that dwarfs even major game development houses. Why would they want to claim they were still working on a game when they actually weren't? True, they also have the resources to can a product in development if it doesn't seem to be going anywhere but, as we have already seen with Breakaway, if they're going to do that they won't be slow in telling us.

I have so many better screenshots of New World than the ones I can use here...

I always expected that New World would return, bigger and better than before (at least from its developers' perspective). It looks as though that day is coming. Possibly as soon as this Friday.

As far as I know, the NDA for New World's alpha is still in force. It was a pretty strict one, too. Still, I've always held the belief that very few developers worry about positive leaks. I really liked New World and I wasn't expecting to. The world was gorgeous, exploration was compulsive, the survival gameplay was accessible and satisfying and the lore was intriguing.

Combat was fine - reminded me a little of Black Desert - and in the time I spent there I saw no indication that the game was or would become a "survival gankbox", which seems to be the current buzzword among M:OP commenters. I realize alpha populations often don't represent post-launch behaviors but in the time I spent in alpha I think I got into a fight with another player precisely once. Most of the time, when players would pass each other, there'd be a wave and that was all.

Anyway, I'm excited to see what Amazon have to tell us about where New World goes next. It would be nice to see it return with more directed, narrative content, something its fascinating setting looks admirably well set to support.

Looks a bit like my Mara Estate in EQII.

The second news item at M:OP that caught my attention really couldn't be further apart and still be on the same spectrum. It relates to an upcoming MMORPG that had previously escaped my notice, although Massively had already mentioned it in despatches a while back.

The game in question is called Inferna and it was due to go into Early Access via Steam four days ago. That never happened. But it's still on, apparently.

The new "launch" date is December 20. The game has been held back "to firm things up" as M:OP put it, a process that involves "updates and new features", details unknown.

I watched the embedded gameplay video and found myself... intrigued? Puzzled, too. It looks for all the world like a trailer for an MMORPG from before the days of World of Warcraft. It actually reminded me of one of my favorite "lost" MMORPGs, Ferentus, a game I thought never made it out of beta (although maybe it did) but which apparently has - almost unbelievably - an active emulator project.

Horse Power!

Always up for another old-school, tab-target, hotbar MMORPG, I clicked through to the official website. It has to be the least-informative I have ever seen, particularly for a game that was meant to have entered Early Access last week.

The very, very few claims the website make are... vague. "Incredible Atmosphere", "Catchy Battles", "Get Awards". And... that's it. Doesn't even tell you the Classes or Races.

There are links to a slew of social media feeds - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram - and a Discord server. I thought the missing detail might be over there, somewhere, so I took the trouble to look. And... I'm really none the wiser. I even joined the Discord, but all I found under "Game News" was the new EA date and this:

"In the game you can slip into the role of a hero, who you can choose from 4 character classes. At the beginning you have to decide whether you want to start as a magician, warrior, assassin or semi-demon and within the class you can still choose your fighting style."

Well, it's more than I got from the website. It's also the first paragraph of the entry on the Steam page. Steam seems to have received the bulk of what little detail there is, i.e. not very much at all. We do at least find out the name of the world - Pangaeu. Also that "...the glory days of security and unity are over". Aren't they always? Why is it we never get to explore these empires at the height of their powers, only in decline or crisis?

There are two starting cities, Caratas or Jerro, from where you can set out to explore "numerous maps", something you'll want to do because "Various runs and dungeons await you". There are also quests "throughout the game" that will "give you an insight into the past, present and future of Pangaeu".

I surmise Inferna is going to be a pretty traditional, quest-driven MMORPG. More than that, who knows? About the only unusual aspect I can see is the checkbox on Steam for supported languages. There are a dozen and they all include "full audio". That would be impressive indeed, only nothing actually states outright that the game even has voice acting. There's none in the videos.

Two hobbits, three lizardmen and a snake. Think I bought a 12" by them back in the '90s.

I can't even tell if Inferna is primarily oriented towards PvE or PvP. It has an "online PvP" tag on Steam and there's mention of protecting the kingdom of your choice "against the darkness and the enemy realm" but other than that I see no reference to fighting other players.

Indeed, what little detail there is suggests a PvE orientated experience: "You will fight your way through hordes of monsters alone or in a team... We currently have a functional base game with the most important features ready (combat, party system for playing with your friends, various item upgrade mechanics, trading, multiple maps, quests and more)."

Another thing I can't seem to find is any indication of pricing. The game itself, when it finally launches, is going to be Free to Play. It says so in big letters at the top of the main page on the website. But, as we all know, F2P at launch doesn't preclude paid-for Early Access packs and/or a functioning pre-launch cash shop.

For now, though, Inferna has nothing like that. Maybe it really is free. I guess we'll find out for sure when it goes live on Steam in just over a week.

I do like the general, old-fashioned look of the game. If it turns out you can play at no cost I'll definitely take a look. I'm minded to give it a try even if there's a small entry fee. I might use my $15 Grand Prize from IntPiPoMo. If that doesn't cover the door charge, though, I'll probably pass.

Only Collect

I don't suppose EverQuest II was the first MMORPG to include Collections as a form of content, although it was almost certainly where I first ran into the idea. I've seen it in a few games since, most notably Rift, where Trion appeared to have lifted the system almost wholesale from EQII. It's a staple of the genre but one that's far from universal.

If there's an MMO that's taken it further than EQ2 I'd be interested to hear about it. In Norrath collections are everywhere. Every zone has them, every game mode, every expansion and holiday event. The wiki has a comprehensive list that has to be seen to be believed.

Wilhelm was satirizing Blizzard for asset re-use among its plethora of collectible pets but think of the icons EQII artists have to come up with! It's lucky there are a lot of bones and pages in there.

I couldn't summon up the willpower to count the current total number of Collections, each comprising anything up to a couple of dozen items. I'm guessing there must be more than a thousand by now.

Looking at my Berserker, probably my most-played character, I see he's Discovered 573 Collections so far. I'm hoping that's over half of everything that's out there but the goalposts keep moving. There are three new Collects for Frostfell, which starts tomorrow. Blood of Luclin, the upcoming expansion, will doubtless bring dozens more.

Of the 573 he's started, my Berserker has completed only 167. That's not even a third. But he's close on plenty more. Of the remaining four hundred and some Collections in his journal, eighty-four need just one more shiny to complete.

I could buy those from the Broker any time I wanted because in EQ2 collection items are tangible and tradeable. When you stoop to scoop up a shiny it doesn't trigger an update automatically, it puts an object into your packs. You can set a checkbox to trigger a pop-up window inviting you to add the shiny to the relevant collection (sometimes they can go in more than one) but you get to decide whether to use it, sell it or pass it on.

For a ha'porth of tar. Hang on - I think I've got one of those in the bank...

Collect items can sell for very, very large sums on the Broker. Seven figure sums, assuming anyone buys at those prices. I know people pay five figures because they've paid me that much, on occasion.

The value comes from the hand-ins. Every Collection in EQ2 comes with a reward and some of those rewards are highly sought-after. Completed collections can also lead to meta-collections, where the reward for completing the collection is another item that can be collected as you work towards an even bigger reward. There are even house pets you can feed to produce random collectibles (probably best not to think about how that happens). The food they consume, dropped by mobs, sells for good money too.

Collecting also used to be a very popular means of leveling. Each completed collection doesn't just reward an item, it gives level-appropriate xp, as would a quest. Only, unlike most quests, anyone of any level can hand in a Collection. A level ten can buy all the items for a collection that takes place in a Level 100 zone, hand it in to a Collector in the safety of their home city and gain several levels instantly.

These days not so many people level up the old-fashioned way and those that do are likely not in any kind of hurry. Even so,collecting remains a whole game mode on its own - or something very close to it.

Over the years I have bought a few items from the Broker to round out Collections, usually to nudge a character over a line so I could get some spell or ability I wanted or go to a zone that was just out of my level range. I've also made a great deal of platinum by selling my surplus finds to other people.

One thing I never really have done in fifteen years, though, is to go to a specific zone to hunt shinies for a particular colllection. That is a thing people do and always have done, just not me. All I do is pick up every shiny I see and let serendipity do the rest. Which, I guess, is why I have completed less than a third of all the collections I've started, on a character that was created nearly ten years ago.

No Neriak Necromancer's Lair is complete without a Vampire Piano.

Before last night, I can only remember one single occasion when I went somewhere with the specific intent of not coming back until I'd completed a Collection. That was for the once-famous Mistmoore Piano.

The collection was correctly called "Candles", the name it appears under in the Journal, although at the time everyone called it "The Piano" because a piano was what you got for finishing it. Every decorator wanted a piano. As I remember, the collection in Mistmoore was one of only two ways you could get one. The other was to do the Crafter Epic questline to the point where you received the Earring of the Solstice, which lets you see red shinies (shinies are like Kryptonite- they come in all kinds of shades). There was another collect for those.

I had to wait until I was significantly over-level for Castle Mistmoore to get the candles because it's a Heroic dungeon full of vampires. I ended up doing it on the Test server with my Necromancer, when when the mobs were still very tough for a solo player but not one-shot tough. Feign death made it possible but it was still a long afternoon.

Last night's enterprise was infinitely less challenging but almost as satisfying. It all began when I was browsing the Broker looking for something to wear.

For most of his nearly ten years, as hundreds of screenshots on this blog stand witness, my Berserker has dressed either as a Gaucho or a Pirate. I don't like to change the look of my chaacters too often but when I decide to do it I can get quite excited about the possibilities.

It was the Dragon Attack event that started it. If you spend that many hours standing around in huge crowds, waiting for time to pass, you inevitably end up looking at what people are wearing. And, as we all know, that sort of behavior leads to envy and discontent.

The red version. I'll be getting that as well.

So many people looked so amazing/impressive/ridiculous I began to think my Berserker a little drab. Time for a change of outfit. I'd been clearing my bags and bank vaults and piling stuff into EQ2's excellent Wardrobe feature, so I started my search for a new look there.

As a Plate Armor wearer, though, most of what I'd acquired seemed to be variations on a theme. It's one thing to play the role of a tank, another to look like one. Especially an old water tank that's somehow on fire.

I'm not a fan of the heavy metal look in gaming at the best of times. I wanted something lighter, fluffier, funnier. I ran through some of the many craftable options I could make for myself but they're all quite bland. Also many of them make you look like a disgraced 1970s children's TV presenter. Not exactly the look I was going for.

I moved to the Broker and began going through the options there, which was when I began to notice a number of outfits with a "Vesspyr" prefix. They were all Appearance items any class could wear, and they all had a clothlike texture. They mostly reminded me of fancy silk pajamas. I tried some on. They looked pretty spiffy on a ratonga. Trust me, not everything does.

The prices weren't outrageous but even with nearly a million plat in the bank I wasn't too keen on forking over a thousand just for the chest piece. I wondered where the clothes might have come from and if I could go get my own for free. "Vesspyr" suggested the Tears of Veeshan expansion. I thought they might be drops or, more likely, quest rewards but when I checked it they turned out to be rewards from completed collections.

I discovered that by way of one of the top results from a Google search: a table of Collections, yes, from the Tears of Veeshan expansion. The source was unexpected. Bizarre, even. It seems to be an FTP file associated with a website apparently entirely unrelated to gaming - The Viking Answer Lady Webpage, a serious website devoted to real-life Viking history. There's no mention of EQ2 or gaming on the website itself - I wonder if the table was even supposed to be publicly visible? Nothing, it seems, is invisible to Google.

In its zone of origin the pajamas are distinctly blue. And plush.

Whatever the provenance, it was just what I needed to get started. I scanned the list and decided to go for the Vesspyr Citizen's Elaborate Blue Tunic, a reward from the Withered Away collection. A quick map hop to Vesspyr Isles, a short flight to the sky island of Sothshae and there I was, hoovering up shinies and pages while my Merc despatched any wildlife foolish enough to butt in.

The mobs were green, which, thanks to EQII's insane power creep (more like power-sprint) these days means one-shot kills. I left a trail of death behind me as I circumnavigated the island scanning for shinies. As a max-level Weaponsmith my Berserker has the Track Harvestables skill, meaning I could see every ? and ! that popped. It made the whole process very manageable and considerably less random than I'm used to.

It took a couple of very relaxing and enjoyable hours to get all seven items. When I arrived I'd found ten or so spots on track. Some turned out to be pages for a book, the rest either items for the Collection I was there for or any one of half a dozen others. By the time I'd finished the collect I wanted I'd also completed one of the others, made significant inroads on all the rest and acquired a dozen or so duplicates to sell or pass on to my other characters.

I flew back to the hub village, Falinpol, where they have most facilities including an NPC who takes in Collections. He gave me my new tunic and I put it on.

It looked great. Just what I wanted. It also acted as a robe, covering the Chest, Shoulder and Leg slots. With the addition of my Circlet of Frost and Withering Hopes Cloak I had pretty much the look I was going for. Only Feet, Hands and Weapon to go.

Elsewhere they take on a grey/blue tone. It's like when you look at clothes under strip-lighting.

My usual selection of comedy weapons - Shovel, Anchor, Rubber Cockatrice - didn't seem to fit the mood so I looked at the flashier end of my rack. I picked the Blessed Aethersteel Greatsword for its blueness and sparkles.

Hands were a bit more of a problem. I didn't really have anything that matched but the closest was either the Fabricator's Gloves or the Frostfell Wonderland Plate Gauntlets. Decision-making wasn't helped by the fact that, as can be seen in the screenshots, the color of the outfit changes depending on the lighting of the zone.

As for the Feet slot, there the decision was taken for me. Not one pair of shoes or boots in my wardrobe would show up at all. It's the barefoot look for now until I can get a pair of Vesspyr Citizen's Blue Boots, which I'm hoping will play nicely with the tunic.

That means another trip to Vesspyr Isles and another session picking stuff up off the ground. Which is more than fine by me. After fifteen years I feel as though I've just opened a door onto a whole new way to play.

Going out and finding the missing items for a collect - or setting out to begin a new collection entirely - is a lot more fun than buying the same things off the Broker. Not that I'm above buying the odd item, when the rng gods aren't favoring me, but I don't intend to make a habit of it.

It amazes me that I've never taken shiny hunting seriously in EQ before this2. I  took it more seriously in Rift but perhaps that says more about how much - or rather little - there is to do in Telon, compared to Norrath, than it does about any inconsistency of approach on my part.

Whatever the reason for my late arrival at the Collectors Ball, I'm ready for the dance at last. Bring on the shinies! I've got a lot of catching up to do.

When The Party's Over: EverQuest II

The fireworks have finished. The bunting is back in the box. EverQuest II's 15th Anniversary celebrations are over. Yesterday saw the end of the Dragon Attack event, leaving nothing behind to show it ever happened, except for banks and vaults stuffed with mount and mercenary gear and a hugely disrupted economy.

There should also be two giant dragon statues, one above the Freeport dock in Commonlands, the other on the wild Antonican shore, close by the cloud-scraping towers of Qeynos. Unfortunately, something seems to have gone wrong . The "permanent, impressive statues" (my emphasis) are nowhere to be seen.

I'm sure they'll be back when someone realizes they were included in the script that cleared out the build sites and sent the questgivers back to their workshops. Maybe it requires an update to push the new zone art.

Unless it was all some kind of con trick... Maybe a couple of ratongas put together a balsa-wood-and-canvas mock-up behind our backs as we crafted, then took it down under cover of darkness and legged it back to Temple Street.

As for the left-over dragon parts, of which I have thousands, I'm hanging on to them for now. They're probably useless but you never can tell. I have plenty of room in my Depot so why take the risk?

I've spent more than four hours so far today tidying up my bags. I have a lot of saddles and other sundry horsewear. I also have an incredible amount of storage space so it's just a matter of deciding where to put it all. 

It's confusing because some of it is No Trade, some Heirloom and some fully tradeable. It also comes in several qualities, from Handcrafted to Mythical. Mounts these days have almost as many gear slots as characters and there are a lot of mounts. I'm sure it will all come in handy - one day.

A few of the pieces are worth a good deal of money on the open market. I already sold a couple during the event but I held a few more back in anticipation of prices going up when the supply dried up. That's already begining to happen. I also heard on the beta grapevine that mount gear is scarce in the new expansion so I'm not rushing to sell just yet.

The other common drop from the event was Mercenary gear. Most of that is No Trade, otherwise everything I said about Mount gear applies. I got complete sets of Fabled gear for most of my six max levels' primary mercs, plus spares. Lots of spares. Some of my mercs raised their stats by two orders of magnitude over the course of the event and when they level up and open more slots that will increase even more.

Tallying up after close of play, in addition to the huge upgrades to a dozen mounts and mercenaries, I also notched up

• 800,000 Platinum from the sales of three items
• 25 levels on my Beastlord (now Level 46)
• 28 levels on my Channeler (now Level 49)
• 48 levels on my Carpenter (now Level 100)
• 83 levels on my Alchemist (now Level 110, although the final 10 levels came from quests)

It's been enormously enjoyable, particularly for the positive spirit that prevailed for the entirety of the event. I think it ran for just about the right length of time.

We have a short break to get our breath back before Frostfell arrives on Tuesday 10 December with the expansion, Blood of Luclin following just a week later. The main complaint I've heard over the past month is that there's just too much to do. There usually is in EQII.

In other "news", I discovered today that you can sort your bags by no fewer than twenty-one categories. I knew you could drop items on your character portrait and they would auto-sort onto matching stacks anywhere in your bags but I had no idea you could also set criteria at this level of detail.

By complete co-incidence, as I was looking at the sort window I'd just discovered by accident, a conversation broke out in General Chat on the exact same subject. It turns out that you can even sort the contents of your bags into alphabetical order by use of a slash command.

EQII has a plethora of such commands. Some simple ones like /stand are familiar from many MMORPGs but the arcane syntax of the coder pervades the outer regions of knowledge. What would be the chances of finding "/sort_bags 1 name a" by trial and error?

Whether I'll ever get around to setting paramaters on my hundreds of bags and boxes is another matter. Nice to have the option, either way.