Beyond Good And Evil : EQ2

A particular quirk of EQ2, one that stems from the very beginning of the game and which stubbornly persists while other underpinning concepts lie long abandoned and forgotten, is that players must ally with one of two opposing factions. For the sake of tradition, or so it always seemed, they're labelled "Good" and "Evil".

It's worked well enough across the years. Although the initial, onerous factional restrictions laid on groups and guilds were quickly scrapped, along with many other of the poor design choices that made pre-Hartsman EQ2 such a dour and difficult game, the background of two opposing cultures competing to reclaim a shattered world provided a functional, easily understood setting for adventure.

Originally each of these factions was clearly and specifically attached to a single starting city, Qeynos for Good and Freeport for Evil. Neither was an especially close match to its supposed philosophical or ethical outlook. Qeynos seemed prissy rather than pious, tidied to whithin an inch of its life and overly concerned with vanity and rules, while Freeport resembled a once-powerful mercantile city-state, now down on its luck and running to seed.

It was easy enough to fit into either without feeling you were making a heavy, moral choice. I always felt comfortable in Freeport. Yes, Overlord Lucan D'Lere does hold frequent public executions, which he conducts personally and with relish, but for the most part "evil" in the great maritime city is confined to venial and corrupt guards, weaselly sneak-thieves and a widespread belief in self-interest above all else. In the immortal words of The Shangri-Las, Freeport is good-bad but it's not evil.

Over the long years, however, there has been slippage. When the dragon threat was at its height a couple or three years back, Freeport and Qeynos even entered into a semi-formal alliance. The lines were blurring.

Internal Neriak politics. Nothing to do with me. I hope...

Well before that unthinkable event, something more ominous had occurred: Neriak was found. The lost city of the Dark Elves resurfaced in Update 35 back in May of 2007. On that fateful day Freeport forever lost its crown as the urban embodiment of evil. Lucan just didn't know it yet.

I have never liked Neriak. I don't believe its possible to like Neriak although it can be admired and, certainly, feared. When I first encountered the City of Hate in the original Everquest I found it daunting and disturbing. All those dismembered dwarf carcasses hanging from butchers' hooks like so many sides of beef. The eerie, subterranean neon glow of it all. Disturbing.

Neriak redux is sharper, neater, cleaner. Evil redefined, repurposed, yes, but still, unmistakably, real evil. It was inevitable that Queen Cristanos, chilling psychopath and would-be godling, would ultimately outmaneuver the pompous, self-satisfied Lucan.

Possibly it was Lucan's dalliance with Queen Antonia Bayle that sealed it. Freeport lost status as the Lodestone of Evil in The Shattered Lands. And after all, Lucan may be undead but he's still human. The two above-ground leaders at least have that in common. Cristanos is a Dark Elf. There's not much more to be said after that.

All of which brings me to current content. Terrors of Thalumbra, like most EQ2 expansions, has a through-line: a meaty Signature Quest that sets out to explain where you are and what you're doing there. In the old days much of that narrative would have been gated behind group and raid content but for many expansions past the whole thing has been democratized.

Hang on, run that past me again? I hope that's prudent self-preservation I'm hearing, not the result of some kind of Dark Elven mind-magic.

Consequently I've been chipping away at the storyline, learning a great deal about the ancient pre-history of Norrath as I go. It's fascinating stuff. I've really been enjoying it. Only there's a problem. Somehow I appear to have been seconded, or more accurately suborned, into working directly for House Thex.

And when I say "directly" that's just what I mean. At first it was the relatively affable (for a Dark Elf) Virun D'Xyafin. We first met a while back in the pre-events and it all seemed quite in order. There I was, or there my Berserker was, a Freeportian in good standing, investigating a problem common to both Freeport and Neriak. It's not like The Overlord didn't have an interest. It's not as though I'd, y'know, signed anything. Especially not in blood.

So how is it that a few months later I find myself reporting not to the familiar and largely nonthreatening Virun, nor yet to his extremely disturbing, apparently deranged replacement, Zintra D'Oziana, but directly to The Queen of Hate herself?  I am, to put it mildly, NOT HAPPY about this.

Backing away now.

I'm not happy about it on both the meta and non-meta levels. In role-playing terms, my Ratonga Berserker is very much the Captain of his own soul. He's pragmatic, unromantic, forceful. He likes to solve problems by hitting them hard with either a blunt or a sharp object until they go away. He's not big on thinking or forward planning and certainly not on politics. No-one would claim he's an altruist but he has his own conception of both loyalty and fair play and he lives rigorously within them. Selfish, certainly. A psycopathic, lack-spittle zealot? I don't think so.

As a player, I have deep problems with the Dark Elven race as it's widely and consistently portrayed in both EverQuest and EQ2. The levels of sadism and the apparent glee with which sadistic Dark Elven practices and customs are described and detailed are often disturbing. I like a bit of grimdark as much as the next non-crazy person but there's a wealth of difference between the moral complexities of The Secret World and Innoruuk's particular vision of hell.

I don't play Dark Elves for a reason. I find them unplayable. I am not at all comfortable about having my Ratonga converted into a quasi Dark Elf by default. And yet, if I want to complete the very interesting and intriguing storyline, I have no choice.

My Queen? She's not my queen. I'm a frickin' ratonga. We don't have queens and if we did they would certainly not be Dark Elf queens. What exactly is going on?

Except, come to think of it, I do. I could Betray. In all the years I've played EQ2 it's something I've never done even though, if I remember rightly, it's been an option since the game began. Once, it was a very lengthy and arduous process but I believe that, like most things in the game, it's a lot easier and faster than it used to be.

If things go on this way, if this questline ends with my Berserker falling even deeper under the sway of the House of Thex, if, most importantly of all, all future access to new content for we "Evils" is to be contracted universally to Neriak, then I may have little choice. The sheer effort and time involved in getting a character up to matching gear and skill level precludes any chance of simply rolling again. I go cold even thinking about it.

Well, we'll see where this road takes us, my Berserker and I. Perhaps there will be a twist in the ending. If not, though, we hear that, if the streets of Qeynos are not exactly paved with gold, then at least the guards wear gold lamé. We'd fit right in.

Full Steam Ahead: Project:Gorgon

As I may have mentioned about a thousand times before, I don't much like tutorials in my MMOs. I've always been a big in media res fan. I like stories that begin with a conversation between people you don't know talking about things you don't understand and movies that start in the middle of the plot and don't go back to explain what happened before you arrived.

In essence, I like creators who trust me to work things out for myself. In that context, if in no other, I prefer not to take the easiest path. And, of course, for me it's not that hard a path anyway. I've read a lot of stories; I've seen a lot of films; I already have a rough map to the territory, coming in.

I feel a plot coming on.

When I step into a new MMO, then, I really don't need to be told which keys to press for forward or back, how to open my inventory (let alone that I have one and what it's for) nor all the rest of that crucial stuff (although some indication of which arcane combination of keys you expect me to press to hide the UI and take a screenshot? That would be nice...) but I understand that other people do. Every MMO is someone's first and, by many accounts, where most fail is in those opening minutes.

While you and I are tutting and head-shaking and feeling patronized, all around us new players are throwing up their hands in frustration, logging out and uninstalling. Or so the story goes.

Anyone got a torch?

Well, that's not a narrative that fits any more. In the lost days of Big Budget MMORPGs chasing the WoW dollar every launch hoped to open the floodgates to a fresh demographic. Or at least grab a chunk of the one that believed the genre started and ended in Azeroth.

Old school, Kickstarted MMOs like Project Gorgon don't need to worry so much about things like that. No-one's going to be uninstalling after the first session there because the game didn't explain how to get a quest or click a hotbar. We hope...

And yet, first impressions still matter. Just because you can trust your customers to work out which end of the sword is pointy all by themselves doesn't mean they won't still be making snap decisions based on what there is to see and do in the first few minutes. Which is why Project Gorgon's original opening in a dark, claustrophobic cave was always going to be a problem.

Head towards the light...

It seems odd that the experienced Elder Game team needed this pointing out to them but they did. As Eric explains in the latest Kickstarter update, " we've created an all new tutorial area, because lots of people told us that our old tutorial cave was distractingly ugly". Well, duh...

Now it's gone and good riddance. "The new tutorial is outdoors, on an island. The island is in-game now, so if you're interested in seeing it, just hop in and make a new character" says Eric. Which is just what I did.

Eric and the team have plumped for the genre-traditional "You wake up on a beach with no memory of who you are or how you got there" opening. It may not be original - okay, it may be the oldest cliche in the RPG book - but it's a classic for good reason. Starting as an amnesiac on an island simultaneously provides motivation, structure, boundaries and freedom of expression. You'll want to explore but you won't want to stay. You'll know what you need to do but be free to make your own choices.

I'll just hang around here until the sun comes up if that's okay with you.

To a degree, that is. There's a narrative structure rumbling, reassuringly, along in the background. There probably always was although I don't remember it from my previous and only run through character creation almost exactly two years ago. There's even a hint that the much-derided title, "Project:Gorgon" (something else Eric must have heard plenty of criticism about, criticism that he has, so far at least, chosen to ignore) might actually mean something.

I won't go over the entire starting experience. It will be familiar to anyone who's ever played an MMORPG before. Kill skeleton, loot skeleton, wear skeleton's pants, repeat until fully dressed. See NPC, talk to NPC, follow simple instructions, profit, progress. It's an MMORPG starting zone after all.

Okay, now you're just taking the mick.

It's also compulsive, entertaining and paced just right. There's a straightforward questline that needs to be completed before you earn the ability to leave the island for the great, wide world. Again, it's not in the least original but it's smart, fun and satisfying. I'm not quite convinced that Eric's as funny as he thinks he is and there may be tonal issues down the line if this is all heading where it looks as though it could be, but those are small problems, easily overlooked, when the gameplay itself is so satisfying.

The game as a whole seems to be progressing furiously even without the great, unwashed hordes from Steam. The general chat channel was scrolling too fast to follow at times. The starter island was heaving with badly-dressed, confused adventurers picking their way between the hundreds of tombstones of their fallen comrades. The channels echoed to the eternal, plaintive question, repeated so often it rarely received a reply: "How do I get off this island"?

Can't imagine why but I just get the feeling there's something significant about this place...

It wasn't that hard. It took me about an hour and a half, most of which was exploring and getting lost. The map's not much help. The island looks great, at least in terms of art design, which is one P:G's many strengths. We may be back in the early 2000s when it comes to graphical quality but good art design is timeless.

Overall, the new island starting area is a vast improvement on the old cave. Some of the more interesting content has been retained, transplanted whole to a fresh home in the open air. A lot more is brand new.

Hope you like pink

The key indicator that this revamp has worked exceptionally well is that, having made a new character and got him off the island, that's now the character I feel motivated to progress. Somehow I feel more connected to him after just these two, short sessions than I do to my original catgirl, even though she's racked up many more hours in game and has history (not to mention much better gear and skills...hmm, maybe I need to rethink this).

The one barrier I used to worry would put people off - starting in the cave - has been removed and along with it any slight hesitation I ever had in recommending curious parties try it for themselves. Just be aware that P:G does have something Syp will approve of: a relativedly convincing day/night cycle. If you happen to log in for the first time at around midnight game-time, as I did, you might think you're still in a cave after all!

School's out. Forever.

With that in mind, if anyone's still on the fence about Project: Gorgon, now would be a good time to jump down and kick the wheels. Eric had said they were going to close the doors after the successful Kickstarter, when the whole affair moved to Steam, but for a while yet it's still in open alpha and free to all-comers.

That's not going to last forever. The New Player Experience is part of the final polish push to get the game up to Early Access specs that will satisfy even the Jesse Rapczaks of this world, or so it's hoped. As Eric explains, "The Steam early access launch is probably our last major opportunity to earn money to improve our art. (The Kickstarter money is more than enough to get the game to the finish line, but $75k can only buy so much art, no matter how cleverly we spend it. So the Steam launch will help determine how good the game can look.)"

Which begs one question: how come, visually, the game looks so much less spiffy now than it did when I first saw it, two years ago? Look back at those screenshots in the linked post above from 2013. It doesn't even begin to look like the same game. The textures seem far more detailed, the colors deeper and richer. And that's not all.

Keyword: gorgon.

The town of Serbule, as I observed back then, looked so convincing I felt someone might be using photo-reference. "The walled, medieval village is one of the best I've seen in a game as far as spurious authenticity goes. I've been in that village several times, in France, in Spain, in Portugal" I said. It doesn't look like that now. It doesn't look anything like that. What happened?

And so we say farewell to the island. Anagoge.
Wait.. is that its name or is that the day of the week?

Put it down to another of those "better in beta" things, I guess. Or, in this case," better in pre-alpha". I'm not expecting any amount of Steam money to put things back to how they were. I'm just grateful I was able to see Serbule in its glory days and take some photos to remember it by.

No matter how well it turns out, how good it looks and how well it plays, I guess, being realistic, it isn't all that likely that Project: Gorgon will ever end up being my main MMO. That said, I think it has a very good chance of remaining one of the MMOs I play, for a long time to come. It's quirky, fun, satisfying and full of potential.

I still don't want to play as a cow though. Even if they do get their own town.

Well, That Was Unexpected! : Warhammer Online

Thanks, Smed!  Tweeting your respect for the EMU folks who bring dead MMOs back to life gave Massively OP the opportunity to start a conversation in their comment section, which, of course, like most sane people, I never read.

Only, for some inexplicable reason, this time I did.

And thanks, also and more so, to BritoBruno, Massively OP commenter, who popped in near the top of the thread (just as well because I didn't get much further) to mention the existence of Return of Reckoning, a Warhammer Online private server running under an ongoing WO emu project.

As BritoBruno says, "It's an alpha, so, a lot of broken things", but it works!  Registration is minimal, the files all download and unzip properly, the Launcher opens the game and there you are. Back.

I made a Squigg Herder, one of my top five all-time favorite MMO classes. I fiddled with the UI a bit and then wandered out and started plinking. The place was heaving. The server holds a thousand players and I was in the mid 900s when I logged in.

All the RvR action is in T3 if the lively global chat is anything to go by. Be a while before I get anywhere near that. I managed Level 2 in about twenty minutes. I was rewarded with a Pack Mule, possibly so-called because he was already in my pack when I opened it.

Really, all I want to do is work out how to do Scenarios so I can Squigg Herd in Nordenwatch again. That was the best instanced PvP ever, pranging Order off the walls into the sea.

Never say never again.

Did That Thing Just Move? : GW2

Sometimes I catch myself wondering why I still spend 80% and more of my gaming time playing GW2. Especially when there are so many other MMORPGs I want to play.

Surely after almost four years, counting from Beta Weekend One, there can't be anything new to see or do? Not in the Old Lands of the original game, the place we now know as Core or Pact Tyria, anyway.

Well, stuff and nonsense to that. In the first week of this New Year, while standing around rummaging through my bags on various Tyrian street corners where I've rummaged many, many times before, I have been amazed to overhear several NPC conversations that were completely new to me.

Is someone adding these as we go along? Is there some secret team at ANet busily recording fresh small talk and seeding it across Queensdale and The Black Citadel? Or, more likely, are there rare and ultra-rare one-liners and exchanges that fire only when certain events play out to an unusual end?

Speaking of events, I'm still finding new ones even in maps I've completed on multiple characters. Only a couple of days ago I discovered a hidden cave I'd never seen before, complete with trolls and a Veteran Troll with his dynamic event flag proudly flying. I bet he doesn't get much trade.

The real capper, though, happened last night as I was doing the Ascalon Vista daily in Plains of Ashford. As I was standing there, about to click, a flurry of movement in the lake below caught my attention.

It was only the frickin' Charr submarine going on manoeuvres! I have seen that submarine a hundred times if I've seen it once. I first saw it way back in beta. I've done the annoying event involving fighting separatists bound on sabotaging it at least half a dozen times. I have never, not once, until last night, seen that darn thing move!

I was so taken aback it's astonishing I had the presence of mind to snap a couple of screenshots. If I hadn't I'd doubt my own sanity. It makes me wonder how many other apparently static objects may harbor a secret motility. I'd dearly love to be there when those giant Charr war-wagons in Iron Marches roll.

So, in essence, that's why I still play GW2. Anything can happen. Okay, usually it doesn't. Usually the same thing happens. Repeatedly. But it might and that's what matters..

And, in fact, come to think about it, that applies to all MMOs. Which is one of the many reasons I enjoy them so much even after all these years.

January Sales : GW2

In all the time I've played GW2, three and a half years, many thousands of hours, I've hardly spent anything. As form of entertainment it has to be about the cheapest imaginable, short of cloud-watching.

Odd pricing history.
Why no gem total against the two bank slots?
They certainly weren't freebies like the rest of
the nonsense down the bottom there.

Let's see, I bought the original game and then a second copy for a second account, both at full price. Much later I bought a third copy when it was on sale at 75% off to give me three accounts in total.

For more than two years I ran the first two as equals but eventually the game's slippage from character to account-based play pushed me into choosing one as a primary and focusing on that. Currently I play the first and third account actively with the second coming out only to do dailies.

The reason for keeping the third active is that it has no characters at level 80 and I plan on keeping it that way. It means I get a different selection of dailies, which I find both refreshing and entertaining. Also it's on a different server which means I get to see WvW in a very different context from the #1 NA experience currently available on Yaks Bend.

As a result of this consolidation and stratification I have only bought one copy of Heart of Thorns. I imagined it would be the only copy I ever bought but because I enjoyed the expansion so much more than I expected there is an outside chance I might one day buy a second copy for the dormant account.

I'm keeping that as a fallback option in case it takes another three years before the next expansion and we get another major content drought. I am already thinking, very much to my own surprise, that I'd quite like to start HoT again from scratch. Opening all the maps and finding all the Masteries and Hero Points was really good fun and I'm a little sorry it's almost over.

However much you spend you're never going to look better than when you were level ten.

Other than buying those four "boxes" in getting on for four years, though, I've spent nothing. Not, at least, in real money. I've made a number of purchases through the Gem Store over the years but every one has been funded by exchanging gold earned in-game for Gems through the Black Lion Trading Post.

I'm aware that, somehow, theoretically, that means someone, somewhere paid ANet some real money but it wasn't me. It's not because I'm averse in any way to spending money on my hobby, either. For the entire time I've played GW2 I've also maintained an All Access account with SOE/DBG, for which I pay $14.99 a month.

Even though I've had All Access since it was Station Pass I haven't even bothered to take the annual option to save money. Paying a sub never makes me feel I need to log in to get my money's worth. I just think of it as membership dues to a club.  If ANet required a subscription to play GW2 I'd have been paying it without hesitation these last three years - although probably not on three accounts.

And here are just a few of my skins that I'll probably never use...

The problem, when it comes to GW2 separating me from my money, is simple. There's almost never anything added to the Store that I want. I am not very much interested in changing the look of my characters, for example. I like to level them up in whatever they happen to find along the way and then, when they hit 80, choose a look that will be theirs forever. I get confused if I log in and my characters don't look the way I expect them to look.

Sounds tempting...

What's more, I like either quasi-realistic and/or understated appearances. I like armor that looks wearable, weapons that look practical and clothes that look ordinary, a look that's available in game for next to nothing. There are exceptions and I'm not averse to a bit of dressing up but I'm certainly not interested enough to pay for it, or indeed make any substantial in-game effort to acquire it either.

Whoaaaaa, Nelly!

I'm fond of vanity pets in MMOs but GW2's minis are simply too small to be really desirable. Also there's a huge selection available for a few gold each on the Trading Post. Even most of the practical options, things like the unbreakable harvesting tools or the harvestable nodes for your personal instance, seem completely pointless to me.

Then there's the pricing structure. There are things I might buy - I like some of the toys - but they are just too expensive. In real money terms I am not going to pay £5 so one of my characters can run around with a kite. Especially not when the process of accessing and using the kite is so awkward and fiddly. If I could hot-key it for instant access then maybe.

Other potentially interesting acquisitions are locked behind the RNG of the game's lockboxes, Black Lion Chests. Once again, I actually don't get all hot under the collar over the concept - I quite like a Lucky Bag - but the pricing, at around £1 a key, is insane.

Best. Bargain. Ever.

Over the years mostly the only objects I have bought have been toys, when they go on sale - the Magic Carpet remains one of my favorite things in the game - or when they are very, very cheap - like the Ear Muffs that appeared this Wintersday for the irresistible price of 25 Gems. I bought those for every account and a pair for Mrs Bhagpuss as a gift. I'm nothing if not generous!

Is it me or is there a Julius Caesar vibe going on here?

Apart from that I have paid only for services and upgrades, namely Bank and Character Slots. I'd love to buy Bag Slots too but again they are ridiculously overpriced and they never seem go on sale except in an annoying pack with some boosters I don't want.

Part of the original thinking in buying a second account was that it was much, much cheaper than adding storage and characters to a single account, which remained the case for a couple of years. Now, though, it makes more sense just to add capacity to my focus account.

There's currently a New Year's Sale going on. I almost missed it. I just happened to notice a news item on Dulfy's site. There was no in-game notification that I saw and of course all my GW2 accounts are attached to unique email addresses made for them that I never look at so any promotional material misses me entirely.

Luckily I caught the sale in time to buy extra Bank Slots for the focus and junior accounts. I also added a tenth character slot to the main account even though I have no plans on making a new character and indeed have both a Mesmer and a Revenant leveling up already.

Let's go fly a kite. Oh, wait, not at that price.

Jeromai and Liore have been talking about de-cluttering and hoarding, virtual and real. As I get older and ever more aware that there are books I simply won't ever have time to re-read and movies I have already watched for the final time I find myself becoming more sympathetic than once I was to the concept of letting physical objects go. I can't see any reason not to keep adding more imaginary storage space hold more imaginary things in a video game, though.

ANet don't agree. The storage isn't imaginary to them, after all, it's an overhead. At eleven Bank Slots I am now one short of the most I'm allowed on the main account. Lucky I have two more accounts then, isn't it?

And, well, I guess, if pushed, I can see one downside. I do spend a very, very large amount of time both organizing my storage in each MMO I play and trying to find things I've stashed. As a rule that's considered core gameplay where I'm coming from - check the title of this blog - but even I have my limits as to how much bag-sorting I can find actively entertaining and my recent eight-hour stints have pushed at the boundaries a little.

For now, though, I'm very happy with my bargains. It's nice to be able to find something in the Gem Store at last that I'm excited to buy. And I have to do something with all that gold.

Please Sir, Can I Have Some More?

With the coming of a New Year the blogosphere, or this small corner of it, at least, is filled with the sound of wonder. Wondering what games we'll play. Wondering why we play games to begin with. Wondering whether we should play them at all. Wondering how we'll write or talk about what we play. Wondering what will happen to the games themselves.

I could link a dozen more speculative, ruminative, wondering end-of-year posts. As I write this, the blogroll to the right is filled with them, some exuberant and positive, others thoughtful or uncertain.

All of this leaves me feeling a little adrift from the mainstream. We don't celebrate New Year chez Bhagpuss. When midnight rolled around three days ago Mrs Bhagpuss was in bed and I was in the bath reading a book. I was at work on both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day just like any other ordinary working day. The changing of the year passed me by as it always does.

As it has to be for everyone, there are a lot of things going on in my life that have little or nothing to do with gaming. Last year was more disruptive and awkward in a number of ways than any year has been for a while. This year has the potential to be even more so. That may impact my ability to play games, the choices I make in what games to play and how much I want to or am able to blog about either.

Life is just a series of photobombings

These things will be what they are. I'll deal with them as they come. The change of a number at the end of the date doesn't signify any substantive change beyond the numeral.

So, I won't be making any resolutions, in or out of gaming. I won't be laying down markers that I'll try to hit. I'm not even going to ponder the past or rake over the coals of the year that's gone.

Of all the New Year's posts so far the one I feel most affinity with is probably Azuriel's. Not the part about not playing "ok" games to conclusion. Since I pretty much only play MMOs playing anything to a conclusion is hardly an issue. No, it's the general feeling that life rolls on, stuff happens, things change and it's not that big a deal. And even when it is that big of a deal there's nothing much to be said or done about that.

When the date changes we all hope that we'll be able to look back and say with satisfaction, like Liore, that it was "finally the year when things really came together" but that suggests an ending. While we live there is no ending. Just more to come.

When it comes to gaming, which is what this blog is supposed to be about, I'll settle for more of the same in 2016. Heck, I'll more than settle. I'll grab the same with both hands.

And you shall know them by the trail of dead

I'm very, very happy with the state of MMO gaming at least as far as it provides for me. I thoroughly enjoy the MMOs I'm playing, I have a long and growing list of MMOs I'd like to play more - or at all. I approve of most of the trends in the genre, which seem to me to be evidence of the maturing and codifying of a kind of entertainment that will please and persist for longer than I'll live to enjoy it.

The future for those of us who love MMORPGs for what they offer that other genres of gaming and other forms of entertainment cannot has never looked brighter. MMOs were never the future of mass entertainment. They were never even the future of online gaming. The further that phantasmal prospect recedes the happier and more confident I feel.

MMOs are and need to be a specialist interest, a hobby, a pastime for a self-selecting group of off-trend individuals. Societal and technological developments are stripping away the clutter that weighed the genre down for a decade. No-one needs to log in to an MMO as quasi-proxy for a social life any more. We have Facebook and Twitter for that.

Get in. Let's ride.

The shape of the genre is, once again, showing through. Adventure, exploration, monsters, living vicariously in virtual worlds where meaningless activity feels strangely satisfying. That's why I came here in the first place.

When it comes to gaming, in 2016 I expect to carry on as I did in 2015. I hope that's what happens but I'm not counting on it. The future will be what it is. It will have its way with all of us, like it or not.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have dailies to do and airship parts to earn. As I always say, those ten rats won't kill themselves, now will they?

The Crew's All Here : The Crew

So, I got a late Christmas present today. The Crew. According to the box it's "the first MMO driving game" which I'm sure would come as a surprise to Need For Speed World.

I have zero interest in cars or car culture and I'm unbelievably bad at driving games but I love driving in real life. When I first heard about The Crew and it's open world implementation of the U.S.A. I thought it might be something I'd like to try.

How it was supposed to work as an MMO I had no idea but I didn't really care all that much. I just liked the idea of driving around a semi-convincing recreation of a real-world space alongside other imaginary real drivers.

Installing the thing from DVDs was clunky. The first disc was fine but the second disc kept hanging and it wouldn't let me do anything else on the PC in the meanwhile. It's an MMO, though, right? And it's been out for a while so it's going to need to patch anyway, so I had the bright idea of just starting it up (the launcher had installed and seemed to work) and letting it download the rest of the game.

I had to register an account with Ubisoft's Uplay, which was painless and quick. Took about two minutes, 90 seconds of which was thinking of a username and password. That done, the patcher connected and immediately began a 25GB download.

It was downloading at a good speed but clearly that was going to take a while...except it only needed to get 5GB in place to make the game playable. By the time I'd made a coffee and toasted a cinnamon bagel it was ready to roll.

The first few minutes were confusing. I just wanted to make a character (or choose a car) then head out on the open road. Cruise around, see what the world looked like. The game had other ideas. Like a compulsory tutorial. With a plot.

The controls were simple enough, especially once I'd swapped the arrow keys to WASD, but there was no character to create - apparently I'm Alex taylor, a 20something guy who looks quite disturbingly like I might have done if I'd been insane enough to grow a beard and wear heavy black plastic spectacles when I was rising 30.

I careened and crashed my way through several tutorial Missions and watched a few not-bad cut scenes until the first genuinely MMO-like event occured: I leveled up. After a while and a very unexpected plot development that I won't spoil just in case anyone reading this ever plays the game I did get to choose a car.

As I said, I know nothing about cars and care less. Just so they don't break down is the limit of my interest and involvement. Since cars in The Crew appear to be indestructible that's not an issue. I picked a Ford Mustang and had it done over in blue with a kind of lizard-scale finish. Looks okay but my copy of the game came with a Mini Cooper option that I can't access until I leave the tutorial so I'll probably end up using that. I'd prefer a smaller vehicle.

The visuals are great. I can already tell the most frustrating thing is going to be not being able to get out of the car and walk around. Until I can beat my handler, Zoe, (don't ask, it's too ridiculous to explain) in a race I won't be going anywhere of my own volition anyway.

A couple of hours in it feels like this is a toy I might play with quite a bit, on and off. Can't imagine getting into the "game" part but that's not why I wanted it.

Maybe I should put one of those driving wheel accessories on my Amazon wishlist...