Good Things Come: EQNext

So, the supposed EQNext screenshot posted by Massively turned out to be a hoax, shot down by a terse Smed on Twitter. Although I guess Twitter is terse by definition...

Ah, EQNext. Is that even A Thing? When it was first announced back in August 2010 I didn't expect to see it in beta before 2013 at the very, very earliest. As for a final release date, given the development cycles of comparable projects such as GW2 I thought I might be sitting down to create my first permanent EQNext character sometime in 2015.

Since then the entire project has supposedly been stripped down and rebuilt not once but twice and I'd re-calibrated my expectations to somewhere north of 2016. I was a tad surprised, then to find (courtesy of Syl at Raging Monkey's) that PCGamer magazine had EQNext  listed in their "Best Games of 2013" MMO section with a release date of "Late 2013".

Where this date comes from I have no idea. It's certainly not at the link provided in the PCGamer article, which goes to a page on the SoE website that doesn't even mention EQNext. As for Smed, the most he's letting on is that there will be news of some description at SoELive, for which a date hasn't even yet been set.

Assuming I'm still alive and in control of my faculties by the time it does finally come out, be it in 2013, 2015 or 2020, there is no doubt whatsoever that I'll be playing Everquest Next. I don't care if it ends up being a sandbox, a theme park, a sandpark or a themebox. I don't care if the payment model is F2P, B2P, Subscription or Blood Ritual. I don't care if it plays on PC, Console, Tablet or Holographic Tabletop. If I have to buy new hardware to play it, new hardware I shall buy.

 I don't even care if I have to go through PSS1 to get to it. That's how much I want to play the next installment of the one, true MMO.

What I don't want is to have to suffer through an endless drip-feed of rumor, speculation and hype based on nothing but the odd, gnomic utterance of The Smed. Or, worse still, anything remotely ressembling the unrelenting pipeline of PR puffs Carbine have been force-feeding us every WildStar Wednesday. EQNext Tuesday I do not need.

It'll be done when it's done and that will be soon enough. Leave it in the oven and let it bake.

But You Promised ! : GW2

Zubon at Kill Ten Rats has a short piece up about the confusion caused by ArenaNet dev Colin Johansen's recent comments on what we might expect from his company in the early part of this year. I'd already read the original developer interview, which I picked up from a link in this Massively article.

I read it once, not particularly carefully. Rather hurriedly in fact since I was at work at the time. I took "an expansion's worth of content" to mean "the amount of content one would expect to receive when paying for an Expansion Pack from ArenaNet". That qualifier is quite important, because to ArenaNet the word "Expansion" has a different meaning to that which it would have if Blizzard or SOE used it.

The only content release for ANet's other Guild Wars game that was ever described officially as "an expansion" was "Guild Wars: Eye of the North". Historically at least, in ANet/GW terms, an "expansion" is something less than you might expect. The previous additions to the elder game which were released as boxes through retail outlets were called "Campaigns". Those were stand-alone products incorporating the original Guild Wars. Because EOTN uniquely required that you already own a Guild Wars Campaign to play it, they used the term  "expansion pack"  instead.

You can already see how muddled this is. Developers, producers, players and commentators are throwing terms around without a common understanding of their definitions. That always leads to trouble. An "expansion" for EQ2 is a very different beast to an "expansion" for EVE, which is different again from one for Darkfall and round and round we go.

Perhaps! I said "Perhaps"

Using ANet's own established benchmark for "expansion", Eye of the North, it is not unreasonable to anticipate "new content for existing characters: dungeons, a number of new skills, armor" to quote from the GW1 Wiki.

The Wiki goes on to add " Eye of the North is set in previously inaccessible territory from the first Guild Wars campaign, Prophecies". From that we might hope to see the opening of some of the areas that we can currently see on the GW2 map of Tyria but cannot reach. That's certainly what I'm hoping for.

New races, classes, levels or entire new categories of gameplay such as you might expect to find in something caled an expansion from another MMO House (Wrath of The Lich King or Scars of Velious for example)? No, we won't be getting those.

The upshot of all this is that after a decade and a half it is still a bad idea to give games developers open access to the public.

Sunlit Uplands

I wasn't going to comment on SynCaine's recent piece on the future for niche MMOs, or on Keen's very similar take on the same topic because, well, its all been said so many times already. But then I happened to read Massively's short piece this morning on the Pathfinder Kickstarter campaign.

This is the summary of what Pathfinder is supposed to be:

"a grindless, classless system that allows for limitless character progression, large-scale battles, player-built structures, player-driven content, and useful trade and crafting."

And to build this wonder they reckon to need just $1m.

This begs so many questions, not the least of which is why, if an MMO fulfilling all those criteria can be made for $1m, we don't we have a slew of them already. What's the variable that might allow this team to produce a such a God Game for 1% or less than what it would cost a big-name studio?

The main cost everyone seems to want to cut is the cost of making it look good. Is that really where that 99% cost saving comes from, though? Mightn't it really come down to how much the people making it are being paid? That, and the cost of the environment in which they work while they are making it.

How much of the $100 million in "development costs" of an AAA MMO goes on making the game look (and sound) beautiful rather than on salaries and infrastructure costs?  Is making something that looks beautiful intrinsically more costly than making something that, well, doesn't?

Is it shallow to want this level of detail?

If you could work for a big company offering all the perks and paying you the big money, why would you choose instead to work for a fraction of that somewhere far less comfortable? Won't indie studios always rely on new up-and-comers who'll be out of there as soon as a better offer comes up, on-the-slide devs just glad to get the work and mavericks who think they can do it better than anyone, regardless of the evidence to the contrary?


Or am I misunderstanding the way the industry operates? Does someone coding or 3D Modelling an indie MMO get the same industry-standard wage-and-benefits package he or she would get for doing the same thing for Blizzard or ANet?

I grew up with the punk ethic. "It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it" as The Desperate Bicycles declaimed at the end of their 1977 non-hit "Handlebars". And yes, it was easy and cheap to make a punk 45. Whether you can make a sustainable, satisfying  MMO as cheaply and easily, that I'm not so sure. And, really, $1m dollars isn't all that cheap and two years in development isn't all that easy.

Or to look at a screen as though through a window?

Hugely commercial video games can be produced by small teams. In the 80s that was the norm. In the 21st century Minecraft hammers the point home beyond argument. We've had MMOs for more than fifteen years, though, and if there's been a large-scale, commercial success from a tiny team operating on a shoestring budget I must have missed it. How many people work for CCP? How much did EVE cost?

Like SynCaine and Keen, I hope we are at that watershed. I hope the next few years will see a stream of well-designed, well-executed, stable, commercially and aesthetically successful MMOs emerging from a plethora of independent developers. I hope we have choice coming out of our ears. I'm more than willing to live with the problem of having too many good MMOs to choose from to be able even to try them all.

For the moment, though, this brave New Wave isn't much more than a ripple far out at sea.

So They All Rolled Over And One Fell Out... : GW2

Just a very brief comment on a quirk of GW2's current World vs World ranking system:

Three weeks ago Dragonbrand stormed Tier 5, finishing top. They remained in Tier 5 for the next match.

Two weeks ago they had a much narrower win but this time were promoted to Tier 4, the Tier where our server, Yak's Bend currently resides.

Last week Dragonbrand  struggled in Tier 4, came third and were promptly sent back down to Tier 5.

This week Dragonbrand utterly destroyed their opposition in Tier 5. They'll end the round tonight with more than four times the points of the second-place server.

Tomorrow, Dragonbrand will not only re-enter Tier 4, they will leapfrog over all the teams currently there, push everyone down a place and start next round in first place. Yak's Bend, who will win this week's match comfortably, will begin next week in second place and Maguuma will slip into Tier 5.

Am I the only one who thinks this is peculiar?

(Full match information can be studied in mind-numbing detail at this excellent site)

Room For One More Inside? : GW2

It's the last day of December and I have just over eight hours left to finish my Monthly. All I need are two Fractals.

Yes, I finally got my teeth gritted, my loins girded and stood in the Grand Plaza yelling "LFG Fractals 1!". 10 seconds later I had a group. I introduced myself.

"Hi! I've never done one of these before".

"Neither have I"

"Nor me!"

My first toe dipped in the GW2 Dungeon pool and I find myself splashing around with a full group of Fractal Virgins. Moreover, not only had no-one ever done a Fractal before, not one of us had more than the vaguest idea how they worked. No-one had even watched a YouTube video or read a guide. Perfect!

We muddled through. When we ran into something we didn't understand we talked to each other, offered suggestions and experimented. We worked out what we needed to do as we went along and while we died quite a lot, we got there in the end. No-one got angry or disheartened, no-one ragequit as we wiped yet again. No-one even mentioned that one of us was only level 40 and spent most of the time dead.

It took over two hours but in the end we completed all three fractals put in front of us. I now have one character qualified to run Level 2. Which she duly did a couple of nights later. This time the group was more experienced and if anything chattier and better-natured even than the first. Naturally, things didn't go as well.

The second group struggled through the first two fractals, could not finish the third and had to give up. That fractal was the same one the first group of complete novices got as their opener and they got through it, so experience clearly isn't everything. DPS is, at least for that one, and we didn't have it, especially not after someone bailed. We tried it once more with just the four of us but it was never going to happen. We agreed to call it a day and I returned to Lion's Arch still licensed only up to Level 2.

The fractal dungeons themselves are beautifully designed. Visually and aesthetically, like everything in GW2, they are true works of art. I would love to be able to stroll round them in my own time an appreciate them fully, without swarms of mobs trying to rip my head off. There seems to be some kind of thin, overarching narrative based on Asura Anthropology and each fractal has its own storyline as well. Hard to follow or appreciate either when you never stop fighting, jumping, running, dodging or falling.

I found the gameplay challenging, to use a popular euphemism. In plain English I found it annoying, irritating, fiddly, irksome and downright infuriating. Rarely did I find it fun. A lot of the concepts are great - running down a tunnel with a giant flaming boulder chasing you, smashing the chains binding a 500 foot high giant to a mountain, following mysterious footsteps through a blinding blizzard - great to watch in a movie, not so much fun to replicate through keyboard and mouse.


The best bits were when I could stop and look around - some of the scenery is breathtaking - and the fighting. I like fighting in MMOs. I like playing my character and using my character's abilities and at least I was mostly allowed to do that as I saw fit. We had some very fun fights. I would personally prefer none of the gimmicks and tricks, just the nice scenery with some tough things living in it who resent a bunch of adventurers coming in to take their stuff.

One more run this evening, even if it partially fails, should see my monthly completed. I'm quite glad to have had the spur to go take a look but I can't imagine running these things often, either for fun or profit. Just about anything else I've done in Tyria has been more entertaining. Well, not Orr, obviously. Or some of the Personal Story.

OK, fractals aren't that bad. I did quite enjoy them, in a masochistic kind of way. I certainly appreciate the way that doing them and the Tixx dungeons has bump-started my dormant PUG powers. Not only did my old LFG skills come flooding back but I even found I could still start, recruit and run a PUG. From a social perspective the whole experience was so much better than I'd come to expect from other MMOs of late that it really does put me in mind to do more just for the half-forgotten pleasure of meeting new people and sharing new experiences.

All the same, I didn't come to GW2 looking for dungeon-based pick-up-group gameplay. I still think it goes against the grain of the all-tag-on open world we were sold. Fractals may be a big improvement on the first iteration of dungeons but they are still isolated and isolating instances that remove players from the world. No matter how well it may be done that's not a direction in which I want to see the game go.

Let's hope that the promised addition of fractal gear to other parts of the world puts dungeons back in the special interest box and returns focus to the shared world outside.

Promises To Keep : EQ2

Beginning the day by reading Tipa's invigorating account of her recent adventures in Norrath hardened my determination to make good on my MMO Resolution. It's not even 2013 yet and I've already spent a morning somewhere other than GW2!

First I had a chat with someone in the guild (yes, there was someone online and what's more they even remembered who I was). Next I patched up Legends of Norrath so I wouldn't miss out on my free packs (SoE recently changed things so that  each month you have to log into the tedious card game that I don't believe anyone really plays or you don't get your freebies - it was worth it too because I got a free Prestige House in one of packs this go round). Then I had to re-allocate all 320 of my AAs (plus Prestige Points) for the umpteenth time. After all that it's a wonder I had any time or energy left to do anything else.

Somehow I did, all the same. I ran through the new Frostfell instance set in a confectioner's kitchen in a New Halas house. The sweets were on a rampage thanks to some nefarious fairy mischief (oops! spoiler!) but I soon put a stop to that. Bits of gumdrop and gingerdread man all over! Glad I didn't have to clean up after myself. That's halfling work!

The sweetmaker gave me a pet Gumdrop that follows me about like, well like an amorphous blue glob with teeth. I was very torn between that and the Gingerdread man dungeon activator but I'll get that on someone else. I plan on logging in and doing the instance several more times before it disappears on January 10th.

I also bought all the new recipe books and made myself some scarves. I think the red one looks magnificent with my blue pirate ensemble.

All in all it felt great to be back. A change is as good as a rest to a dead horse as the old saying goes. Next stop, The Secret World.

One Step Forward...

It's the end of the year and everyone's cracking out the crystal ball or counting the cost. We never celebrated this particular holiday in our house when I was growing up and while I did my best to help drink in the New Year as a student and for a fair few years after, it must be getting on for two decades since I last made any special effort to mark the turning of the calendar's last page.

No predictions from me, then, and no looking back. Oh, well, maybe just a glance both ways as we cross the road into the future.

It's Behind You!

I want my beta hat back !

2012 was the year of Guild Wars 2. Beta weekends dominated the spring with the early ones marking particular high spots. I think the first two beta weekends still stand as my own personal high-water mark with the game. The overwhelming sense of a huge, unexplored world just over the horizon was at its peak then and my attempt to reach Lion's Arch on foot from Black Citadel lives on in my memory as vividly as my first attempt to reach Qeynos from Freeport a dozen years ago.

After four months of intense Live play, that particular journey is about as exciting as going to the garage for a pint of milk but much, very much indeed, of the fascinating world of Tyria remains mysterious and unexplored. I still haven't passed 50% map completion on any of my eight characters and in my opinion the points of interest marked on most of the maps don't even send you to the most interesting places you could be exploring, let alone show you all of them.

I'm in a golem. I said I'M IN A GOLEM!

I expected to spend a lot of time exploring Tyria but I never expected largely to abandon my travels in favor of upholding the pride of the realm. Server! I mean Server! WvW has set a deep hook even to the point of creating a spurious sense of responsibility, so that when I'm not out there defending our keeps or pushing into enemy territory I feel a mild sense of unease, as though I'm not quite where I should be. I'm by no means sure this is a good thing, but the sense of camaraderie as I storm around the battlegrounds in the midst of a crowd of familiar names is undeniably addictive.

GW2 is very far from perfect and I have a post in mind about it's faults. For all that's wrong with it, however, It looks set to last me well into the coming year and probably far beyond that.

Yes it looks nice enough but think of the property values

It certainly pushed Rift out of the running. Despite owning Storm Legion and being paid up to play until next November I've barely set foot in Telara. I did get as far as re-doing my Soul Trees for the umpteenth time (that gets so old - if I have one wish for MMOs for the future it would be that they stop resetting talent trees. Seriously, it's now at the point where that alone is enough to make me stop playing a game I'd otherwise keep faith with). I liked what I saw of the new continents but obviously not enough to get me exploring them. As for gameplay, Rift seems really, really dry after GW2. Staid and ponderous in fact.

Is that sun rising or setting?

The other big success of the year, from my perspective if not from it's producer's, was The Secret World. Again, the beta weekends were first-rate and indeed they sold me on the game, which I hadn't really been following and wasn't expecting to buy. I did buy it and played it exclusively during that short window of opportunity before GW2 launched. Perhaps the launch was badly-timed, since many said they were using TSW as a stop-gap before GW2, but to be honest the relentless grimdark of The Secret World had about worn me down after a couple of months and I would have needed to take a break about then anyway.

It's all in the details

Enough has been said, not least by me, about the top-notch quality of the story, voice acting and writing in TSW. I also very much enjoyed both the combat and the skill system, which weren't as universally popular. The new buy-to-pay model is, I think, the right one and the one Funcom should have started with. Since I have already bought the game it's now just down to me to find time to play it.

And that's the perennial problem to which I have no solution. Too many very good MMOs, too little time: the theme of 2012 and set to continue. Much talk about MMO implosions and the retraction and retrenchment of the genre continues but interested as I am in those trends and speculations on an academic level it remains personally irrelevant when there are literally dozens of MMOs I want to play but don't have time for. A huge winnowing that reduced the number of existing MMOs to a tenth of it's current number would still leave me looking at a choice of far more than I could hope to experience in reasonable depth, so why should I worry? Clear out the deadwood and I'll climb the highest tree left in the forest and see what I can see from up there.

I liked the old sign

The other two games I played most in 2012 were EQ2, from which I am on hiatus but to which I intend to return, if briefly, this very weekend and City of Steam. For all my lauding of the beta experience in general and the new black of beta weekends in particular, CoS is the exception. Oi! You! Mechanist Games! Will you just get on and launch already? I want a permanent character! I want to just get on and play! Your game was more polished in Alpha than most MMOs are six months after launch. If you polish it any more you'll rub a hole in it.

Shapes Of Things To Come

Apart from City of Steam the MMO I'm most looking forward to in 2013 has to be Neverwinter. It takes place in a setting I know and like, it's traditional fantasy with which I am so not done yet and almost certainly never will be, and best of all it offers authorship options. That's the good part; the bad part is, no-one seems very confident about when it will actually appear.

Same story for WildStar, second on my list of anticipated releases. Lots of PR, little hard information. I wouldn't be that surprised to be sitting here this time next year with neither of these even in beta yet.

No such fears for FFXIV's relaunch, which has a very solid timetable for beta. I still would like to play this, although I can't imagine paying a subscription. I'll be signing up for the beta when they begin taking applications and at the very least there's a two-week open beta at the end of the process offering a guaranteed taster before any money changes hands. I'll be there for that.

And I haven't forgotten about The Missing Ink.  I'm just hoping RedBedlam make good on their promise to bring it to Android. It would be just perfect on a tablet.

My MMO Resolution 

Get more variety into my MMO diet. Play more titles, play shorter sessions, spread myself about. I'm happier overall when I'm spending no more than two-thirds of my time in one MMO, making meaningful progress in three or four others and footling around in five or ten more around the edges. Gives me a lot more to write about, too.

My MMO Predictions for 2013

Yes, yes. You're going to live on a farm. A lovely farm! All of you...

• Buy-to Play will become the new Free-To-Play but F2P itself is here to stay. Oh, and Subs aren't dead. Think that about covers it...
• Real MMOs will begin to appear, or at least be announced, for the Tablet market. Arcane Heroes was a good start but much more can and will be done.
• There will be retrenchment in the PC MMO market and some well-known titles will disappear. Not any really well-known ones, though. The strong will get stronger as the herd is culled.
• No matter what happens it will be reported as the End of Days and after the dust settles we will all carry on as if nothing had happened. Like we always do.