Welcome to the launch of Massively Classic Podcast. We're bringing you a podcast that's going to take you all the way back. to 2011. Hey, congratulations on the birth of your first child, by the way, Brie. Oh my god. Do you know that was like one of the worst years of my life? Yes, I do.
I was sick for so much. I couldn't play games. It completely ruined. Was that cataclysm that came out that year? Was that the year you were on the couch most of the year? No, that was the year after that. After I had the baby, I started having horrible back problems. And that I was on the couch. I couldn't move. I remember there was a couch here somewhere in there.
But that's the future. You don't know about that yet. Right, right, right, right. The future is full of walking around possibilities and non-pollen allergies. Oh, yeah, it was nice. It's glorious. Yeah. And we're going to get to talk about it. California back then, it was, yeah. Yeah, this cool game, Guild Wars 2, it looks pretty promising. I can't wait until that comes out. No, that was bad. Okay, so that was 2011, right? Because that was the sunset of Star Wars Galaxies.
Oh, yeah, but it was the rise of Star Wars The Old Republic, the greatest MMO. It's going to totally knock WoW off the charts for a month, but it'll be a glorious month. And then the year after that, the Guild Wars 2 launch was kind of upset by the whole city of heroes abruptly, you know, sunsetting in a couple of months. But we don't know about that yet. That year sucked. Wildstar's going to be amazing.
That was 2014. I know, but we knew it was coming. Oh, that's true. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. There was some good stuff, but there was so much bad stuff. I honestly did spend a little time trying to find like a week in review from back like...
10 years ago but the search function isn't working anymore yeah that aol has messed everything up everything is now a static html page instead of like it's really you can find it but you have to like it's easier to use the wayback machine but yeah we started
we can review like middle of 2010 that's how old that goes so it does exist somewhere it's out there yeah okay i'm really proud of it honestly i think we probably have a copy of this podcast from that long ago oh yeah no i have everything i i downloaded all of it
Why? I got up on the joystick servers and downloaded every last one because you never know when you might need them, right? For what hypothetical situation would you need a copy of our podcast from 14 years ago? Someone out there will listen to it. There are people out there who really just like to go back and they like, I don't know. It's history. And even if I don't look at it, I want to own it.
i just yeah we'll repackage it and it'll be like three the couch years and uh yeah all that so anyways okay well you're back in the present this is the massively op podcast episode 490 here the last week of november it feels like 2024 just began i don't know what the heck happened but suddenly We're all the way at the end of it. And we're actually in Buffalo here. We just set a record for the latest snowfall in the year. You know, like.
We have never had a year go by this far without having snow. And we're supposed to get some this week. So we'll see. Snow. It's a novel idea. We'll roll with it. But I'm okay with it coming because that means I get a hunker.
down hibernate play some video games yeah and oh my goodness brie i was just starting to tally up everything coming in december and it's so much got lotros uh mines of moria expansion coming for the progression server so next week that's not even that far off yeah that's next week and then like two days later is path of exile 2 which we're going to talk about instead and then um siren isle patch 11.0.7 for world of warcraft and i mean that's just the stuff i'm personally interested in but
It's just like there's a lot of like end of the year stuff they're going to be cramming in. Pantheon is. Pantheon. That was the other one. Pantheon is. I forget which day it is off the top of my head. But that one's coming. December 24th. No. Yeah, it's packed. Get ready. Well, before we get to that, did you have any calm, cool, collective gaming time for yourself this week?
Not really. I played some games, but I would not call it calm or cool or collected. Guild Wars 2, Godspawn, which in my head I keep saying wrong. At one point I typed Godspell, but fortunately I caught it. that before it actually went to the front pages. I will do that at the end of the podcast.
I don't even like Godspell. There's a couple of good songs in there, though. But in general, I don't really like that musical. It's kind of formless. I don't like it either. A lot of those 70s. It was back in the 70s. It was very 70s. They don't have, like, scripts. And you're just supposed to, like, kind of, like... improvise around them like Pippin and whatnot anyway like I like the idea but they they usually suck anyway this is me nudging you back
Oh my gosh. Yes. I've been playing Godspell. And actually, that's not even true. I've been playing Guild Wars 2, but I've barely touched Godspell. Godspell. Godspell. All right, we're just starting a podcast over. Welcome back to the mess. God's sworn. No, that's not even right either. What is it called? Heavensward. I give up. For whatever reason, I'm having a really terrible time. The spirit patch is what's in my head.
it's just the spear patch no that was that was janthier wilds we already got spears spears like wasn't there like a legendary spear that came oh that's true it actually does have a legendary spear i don't care at all and it's not even cool looking
Like, that's true of most of the spears in the game. It's so weird. Isn't that true of most of the legendary items in that game? I don't disagree. It's one of the reasons I kind of decided I just didn't really want one. It's too much work, and I just don't think they look better than some of the, you know, the cash shop art.
offerings or i guess really it's the black lion chest offerings but you can buy them out of the cash shop from other weirdos who grab them so anyway i i have been playing guild wars 2 though i did i did my dailies i did my weeklies because they reset the um
the season for um the wizard vault which means i can get a bunch of stuff that i i was already tapped out of because last time i was out of i had like more more stuff to buy than i could possibly know what to do with so i'm finally back i'm back so back and i spent my first chunk on um you can get like an ascended item and three pieces of ascended gear every quarter basically with your points so that's kind of what i'm doing first it just seems like the obvious thing to do
to gear up you know a new character so i got myself an ascended rifle and next we'll be doing uh the rest of her gear set and then she'll be all pinked out which is pretty cool honestly because i've never had a character who had all ascended and everything way too lazy for that it doesn't really matter that much but i'm doing it anyway because i'm a little extra now so
uh let's see the other thing i did was oh i i i may have accidentally purchased a tremor armadillo from the cash shop um this weekend i i made a pact with myself no accident there no i it wasn't it was so not an accident
accident i literally had it on my calendar and i've had it on my calendar for months because they when they bring these things back they often like it's kind of random if you go to that shaman's website that shaman he's a like data miner creator for guild wars 2 he does all kinds
of cool stuff and he's got this big long list that shows like what's coming back to the cash shop when and i've used that all the time because there's specific thing i don't want just a mount i want a specific thing and if it comes back i want to know when it's coming back because i'm probably going to pick it up
So I didn't have a roller beetle before, so I never purchased this thing. Now I have a roller beetle and now I have, it's literally an armadillo. It is the cutest thing I have ever freaking seen. And when it says tremor, it's when you, you know, when it drives, it kind of.
plows up the ground it's freaking adorable i got that and i mapped a couple things in ascalon actually because of the because of the weeklies they've changed the weeklies a little they used to have one of those big meta meta was it a meta event or a world boss i can't remember what it was but they've changed it and they kind of made them a little bit more grindy like maybe they thought we were
having too easy a time last last quarter i don't know but my husband and i basically said well you know i think it'll be faster to grind out the events in ascalon he says no i think it'll be faster to try to find somebody doing the meadow which is dragon standers
something I don't remember what it's called that last thing in Heart of Thorns no one's ever there so anyway I beat him let me just tell you I zipped through those those events but while I was doing it I just mapped out those zones while I was hanging out there one of my plans for next year
that i have already put into our article on like you're talking about what we want our goals and like resolutions for next year i've already written mine one of mine is to map everything on this engineer may really make her my main because it's one of the reasons i didn't want to give up on my berserker
because she had so much done if I do it on my engineer it will it will make it less make me feel less like I'm giving up on my original girl so anyway I've been having fun but I didn't really do much in God's God sworn You're laughing at me, but I know it's God spawn see I keep doing that wrong. It's not even God sworn. It's God spawn I had to look it up
I didn't really do much in it because, again, it's not for me. We talked about this last week. It's for raiders, for people who like convergences. I don't do that. My guild isn't even playing this game. We'll probably... actually do the storyline at some point. We just haven't actually done it. The next one will be more for me when it's actually got a map. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to play. I'm still having fun. It's good stuff. Awesome. Yeah. What about you?
a little game called wow classic launch some fresh servers oh and i am gaming fresh let me tell you i was i was so ridiculously excited about this and um Yeah, Thursday kind of rolled around and I was sick as a dog because everybody's sick around me. So, you know, I get my twice a year cold. I have to get that at least twice a year. So... yeah i rolled that night and my my wife she's like holy are you gonna take the kids over to youth group i'm like
She's like, oh, I'll do that for you. I'm like, yeah, sweet game. Go click, click, click, log in. And so I get some some nice day one gaming time. Of course, it was like the first. 15 minutes, I was just laughing my head off because they, whatever reason, had not turned on the layering technology. So it was just everybody in the universe suddenly spawning into the newbie zone. And of course, you know, what happens is everybody...
pictures of this right i want to see the chaos but i didn't i didn't save him because you know i don't know it gets a little old showing like here's i never get tired of seeing that all the little gnomes just no way that's the best so many and everybody's like camping like They're, you know, like 10 people are trying to camp a single spawn location. Just trying to get that one hit for their, you know, you're like, whatever. After 15 minutes of layering.
kicked in and everything was fine from that point on so and now but it just gave everybody kind of a common like you know we're not going to get anything done let's just run around let's laugh at it let's have some fun um yeah it was it was nuts it was it was such a good
weekend of gaming to the point where i was having a hard time ripping myself away to go play wow retail and play lotro i have like a rule when i start getting too sucked into one game i force myself to you know say okay you gotta play a little bit like at least three quests of each of these other games before, you know, eat your veggies before you get to your dessert, right? Doesn't it make you feel resentful? Nope. No. That's good. It actually works out really well for my psychology because...
if i'm getting too sucked into one game then i'm trying to juggle these other games i know like a week or two down the line i'm gonna feel like really bad like oh i should be playing that lotro expansion and i'm not but if i'm like okay three quests a day you know that's 21 questions a week that's 90 quests a month that's a good chunk of that expansion you've just done in a month just by three quests a day and that doesn't take too long so at least there's like there's a minimum i need to
anyways that's that's just what i do so other than that i just kept like okay i'll put in my three quests here three quests there all right back into wild classic and jump right back in i've been I had such a hard time settling on a main. I mean, the whole week leading up to it, I was just debating back and forth and going through videos. He really was.
And the problem is, you know, like you just know it's such a time investment that you're not going to be rolling up like 500 characters. You know, you got one character. It's going to take you three or four.
days worth of in-game time minimum to get them to 60 and so you want to know you've made the right choice and you got to pick your professions and i mean we're almost cursed by having so much hindsight in these mmos like 2004 you didn't know you just yeah you just kind of like whatever now everybody's like got it down to a science a lot of these people they have These add-ons that are basically GPS for...
like they actually have arrows showing you here's where you run here's where you go here's i don't have that i have i used to use those in wow toward the end those were really nice honestly especially for alting like when you've done this 5 000 times You just want the most smooth. Yeah, it's not a problem.
So, no, I actually was bouncing, even on the launch weekend, I was bouncing back and forth between three different characters I made. I swore I was only going to do one, and I ended up making three. But in the end, I settled on my Dwarf Hunter. I really like her.
Dwarf Hunter, okay. Yeah, it's my tip of the hat to the very first character I ever made in WoW back in 2004 was a Dwarf Hunter. And it's just so laid back and so fun. And I honestly love... the pet system that they had back in vanilla where by collecting different pets you've got to train their skills and then you could take those skills oh my god i hated that didn't you have to we had to level them is that that the system they have you still have to level them by like manually
once the pet trains up or levels up to a certain amount they get certain training points and then you invest those into the amount of time i spent leveling up pets when i changed my mind and decided i needed a different i need a turtle today would take me weeks of grinding well no yeah did they even have a stables back in classic i can't remember yeah no i i got i get a wolf his name is kyle kyle
He's pretty awesome. I got to tell you, those first 10 levels are brutal before you have a pet. Before you get one. Oh, yeah, I remember. It's slow. It's trying to get as many shots off as possible before they hit your dead zone. I mean, the dead zone. Do you remember the dead zone?
yeah well that's back and yeah we're just having a blast and it's the guild i'm in is super helpful everybody's bending over backwards like i found this who needs bags who wants this um night one our guild leader organized like a photo shoot for each of the major races like go to this place at this certain time and you know go to stormwind if you're human or go here if you're dwarf and we'll take a picture with the guild and we'll post it on the the discord and stuff so cute yeah i'm
I don't know. I'm just I'm only level on my dwarf. I'm only level 14. So, you know, I know I think as of. This morning or last night, there was a level 47, and that was the highest we've seen over the weekend. And that's somebody who's like a mage, obviously, like power leveling as fast as humanly possible. You mean in your guild or like on your server? On the server.
There's no 60s. Wow, I'm actually surprised nobody's 60 yet. I was a little surprised too, but it does take an awfully long time, even when you're AOE grinding. But I'm sure it'll happen by the end of the day that we're recording this. I'm sure it'll be there. So, yeah, I mean, it was a smooth launch. We're having a good time. The technology is really good. The new looking for group tool is nice. It's a really good compromise between the super crappy old one that they used to have.
back in actual vanilla and the wrath one which i personally like but a lot of people have some problems about so you know it's it's a very easy way to kind of organize groups for dungeons and questing and stuff like that so it's nice you don't like to shout in iron forge oh no they they have a channel if you want
Yeah, some of the conversations were just like, oh, I'm turning off general chat. We're going down this rabbit hole. Or people, of course, think that they're being so funny by resurrecting all these old jokes. And you're like, dude, I don't need to hear another Chuck Norris. worst joke it's just not ironically funny anymore it's just yeah just let's move on new jokes new jokes let's find something new to laugh at i don't know
So it's been such a good time, and I'm resentful I'm doing the podcast right now because I'd rather be. I'm sorry. Well, let's hurry up. We'll wrap it up. Let's get to the mailbag. No, because we have so much news. Let's get off of WoW Classic. out of Blizzard's ecosystem here and scoot over to Daybreak and find out that Daybreak's actually talking about EverQuest 3?
It's not really EverQuest 3, but they are talking about what this next iteration of EverQuest is going to be. Possibly. They're working on something. We know that they've been working on something ever since that they canceled EverQuest Next. R.I.P. Really wish you had launched. Same.
But now they're talking about EverQuest 3. What is this? Is this something you get excited about? Or is this something that's so far in the future that only our grandchildren will be playing it? How about both? No, I do think it's very far in the future. the future if only because even Jen Chan is being very cagey about this and because we already know that their next thing after Palea is H1Z1 and that's even been delayed now so this is at best queued up behind that.
I wouldn't expect this anytime soon. We're talking many years away, but that's okay. They give them time by the time they actually develop it. Maybe we'll be in a better place in the MMORPG market in general and we won't see games trying to not call themselves MMORPGs while borrowing all of their content from MMORPGs because that's really annoying.
That would be great. I don't see Daybreak doing that personally. Daybreak embraces that kind of tradition and like I would like to see them reinvent the tradition and I think EverQuest 3. Or whatever they end up calling it. Because it sounds like, like you said, they don't really want to call it EverQuest 3. They're afraid of what happened with EverQuest and EverQuest 2. And I get it. I understand that. They should call it EverQuest Next Next. Or something.
I don't know what they're going to call it. EverQuest Reborn, EverQuest, I don't know. They'll come up with something. But it'll have the word EverQuest. I 100% guarantee it. There's no way. They're not going to capitalize on that. I'm kind of excited.
this is like a reboot they're they're sort of yes i mean oh my like kind of lifting what you sort of loved about everquest back in the day but modernizing it that that grand dream that everybody always right players always say like i love this whole game if only they'd bring it up to a modern level which i mean
To be honest, that's what they did with EverQuest 2. So... yeah i mean everquest 2 it's the same world it's the same religions it's the same races it's the same you know basic concepts they just put it in something that looks more like wow instead of like you know something that was just one step up from ultima online so
it was kind of funny like they they evolved forward with everquest 2 and they they also deliberately evolved backwards with everquest online adventures yes so you could just see all different branches happening yeah i i
I was a little disappointed to hear it was kind of far off. I thought that they would have actually had something more than just being at the concept stage. But I get this feeling like Daybreak is so gun-shy about... what to do about everquest maybe i mean this is also tied into just lack of resources they're still pumping you know their money maker is just pumping out these expansions and new time lock progression servers every year right
Man, they have been dragging their feet on the next EverQuest for way too long at this point. And talking about it, you know, like... when they canceled everquest next they're like okay we're canceling it but you know it's because we just don't think this was going to work and we're going to go in a bold new direction and we're going to try something different and it's like all right you know i guess but you Oh, well, I do. I like the idea of them not.
of trying to look back at everquest and saying like what really works here like what are people super nostalgic super attached to you know not necessarily the mechanics but the the concept of the world of you know how do you bring that up into a new iteration that
isn't going to immediately cannibalize or destroy the previous versions of the game, which is something that's very much on their mind because, as Jen said, that's kind of what EverQuest 2 did. They tried to compete with EverQuest 1, and EverQuest 1... weirdly won out in that war over the long run. It is kind of weird. But also, I mean, you could say that that's because a lot of the kinds of people who wanted something like EverQuest but do were in WoW.
because while and everquest to launch right on top of each other maybe that was always going to happen maybe if world of warcraft hadn't come out maybe world of maybe everquest 2 would have taken off more it's really hard to say like i don't know that you know we can't detach this very variables yeah I mean but you know look also at like Asheron's Call 2 which Turbine really thought was just going to like
All of these players were just going to hop right over. It was such a mess, you guys. It was going to be new and beautiful and cool. And everybody kind of went like, no, we're just going to stay over in the thing we know. It was kind of messy. Yeah, it was very messy. It was not right. for primetime when they launched it and they knew it. That's always a bummer.
But, I mean, EverQuest 2 didn't suck at launch. EverQuest 2, I don't even think is in the same ballpark as Asheron's Call 2. I didn't hate Asheron's Call 2, to be clear, but it wasn't really ready. EverQuest 2 was a pretty solid MMORPG. I played it for a couple minutes. World of Warcraft was going to win. Like anything that came out that year was just going to get bowled over. So what would you like to see in an EverQuest 3? Oh, man. I think just pie the sky.
general ideas. What would make EverQuest players excited and happy? I thought they had some really cool ideas with EverQuest Next. I really like the idea of mixing, matching, like collecting class.
classes and then i forgot all about that yeah that was one of the things that drew me to that whole concept more than anything else is like you only had a small handful of classes to start with but out in the world you could go find and kind of collect those classes and then create mix and match class of your own, which I'm sure would have been a balanced nightmare, but...
i still think would have been pretty cool and never quest next week's gonna have all like the landmark building stuff right i mean yeah a lot of voxel destruction they were really big and talking about that see i like that stuff i like that stuff a lot and honestly what i was about to say is like
Like, Stars Reach, but EverQuest? And... i mean to be honest costar's kind of doing a lot of the stuff i would want to see in everquest and i don't think that's an accident like they're clearly he was around for you know the story brick stuff like i don't think it's an accident that
He's trying to take the AI ideas that they had and actually put them into his, you know, more Star Wars Galaxies-esque. These games all came from the same source, you know what I'm saying? But... you know there's something nostalgic even to me even though i i have a lot of negative sentiment toward everquest one specifically like the world is still really nostalgic and i would really like to see like that take off i'd like to see just the very simple fantasy world again
I'd like to see open world content, open world dungeons. open world housing you know all that that's the thing that made everquest unique to me compared to some of the games that came after it where everything is very instanced off instancing is very convenient it's very useful when it comes to dealing with huge inflexes of players But the lack of instancing meant that they could, you know...
You could spread out across the world. There was a reason to go to all of the places because you were always looking for places where there was nobody else so you could go camp there. And then there was a reason for the devs to add lots and lots of overworld dungeons to the game. I kind of miss that. I don't miss... Camp checks. I don't miss sitting in Tiger Room for three hours. I don't miss any of that stuff. Dream to zone.
I do miss like the Overland dungeon stuff that you get from more classic MMOs like UO and from like games that are aping them. Like Albion Online has a lot of Overland stuff or like non-instance like group stuff. You go there and there's like tons of other people just there and it's just constant. spawning I just like that I don't want everything to be locked away in an instant so if they took that as like the kernel like everything should be open-world I would be super interested in that
because really my problem with everquest one was more about the way certain you know uber guilds and toxic griefers were like totally prioritized they didn't just exist but they were like given the king the keys of the kingdom i've written about this at length in my own column so i won't i won't do it again here but there's no reason that had to be the case day uh ever sony so we always could have stepped in and changed those mechanics to make sure that didn't happen and they didn't
This is a totally different group of devs. I don't think those are their priorities at all anymore. So I'd like to see what they can do. And I don't think that... that we should panic at the idea that maybe daybreak is strapped for resources and that's what that's not why they're working on it they jiham just tells investors over and over again they just don't want to overstep they don't want to spend too much they don't want to over invest
and then you have everything collapse i feel like they're being very careful or at least they're trying to project an image of being very careful that they take a step and then they make sure they're on solid footing and then they take another step right without going too crazy so that paleo thing was kind of when they bought
paleolat this past year it was kind of out of the blue and it changed all of their priorities they're still doing them they just can't do them all at the same time i don't i mean i realize technically that is about a lack of resources but to me it just seems like a wise use of resources
It makes me feel better that they're not only doing that but willing to say that they're doing that because that's just so totally different from the usual tech bro, you know, shoot for the moon stuff. I feel better about that. It makes me feel more comfortable in the future of the games when they behave that way. Personally, maybe you guys are different. Maybe you guys want to see risk-taking. I don't.
I don't want to see risk-taking. I also don't want to see a glacier that never quite... That's true. No, I understand that. But no, no, no. What you're saying is... In our lifetimes, please, daybreak. Yeah, so...
It's just nice to hear Daybreak actually just out and out talk about... everquest 3 even if they're saying it's not happening just admit it yes any just say the words just stop being behind closed doors on this all the time but all right well in any case you know you don't have to wait forever to play everquest obviously there is everquest 1.
and everquest 2 and in fact everquest 2 launched a new expansion this past week and we at least want to acknowledge that scars of destruction the 21st expansion came out for everquest 2 and that was on of course it's 20 anniversary. So it's really nice that EverQuest 2 is getting
Even though WoW is really still hogging the spotlight, EverQuest 2 has its fans and its followers, and a lot of people love this game. And it's really nice to see that year after year, they have been delivering expansions for a long time now. So, yeah, this expansion comes out. It's basically like a frozen northern wasteland with dragons. There's a dragon necropolis, which sounds like a totally fun place to visit. Level cap increased to 130 and some other.
fun stuff you can pick it up for about 35 bucks so that's not too bad yeah that's a cheapy version right yeah no you don't want to buy the 250 dollar one and you and me can play yeah Do they bundle everything? I think they do. They bundle all the last expansions in the new one. For a while they didn't and I think they do now. I don't want to say that. I don't remember. I'm pretty sure they do though.
So, I mean, it's not as bad as all that. It's always a good time to go back because of the way they do that. I wish that was just standard across everywhere. It should be. One of my gripes against Lotro is like, yeah, Lotro should have been doing that for a long time now. Yeah.
you can get all the way through helms deep which is good you know for free but you know charging everybody for the last like six expansions is a little like people just aren't gonna go back they just won't do it no and yeah that's the first question everybody asks when they start a game it's like how much money do i
I need a drop in this to own all of the content. Oh my gosh. That should never be a question. Yeah. It should be either. No, you know, you maybe just have to buy the latest expansion or just sub and you got everything or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, let's move on to this. The EverQuest story took me off guard this past week in a good way. And then this other story, Final Fantasy XIV, coming out with a mobile game.
Took me off guard. Oh, there's been rumors about this for a while. I think it's more like you just don't care. Yeah. I knew that Final Fantasy XV had a mobile game. Oh, I see. And there's a mobile version that had been out there. And I'm like, oh, okay. I downloaded it. I'll play it sometime. And, of course, I never get to it because you always end up playing the same three games that you always have on your mobile phone.
and i have all these games read like so many games on my phone i've never even opened they were just like recommended at some point i needed like taking a couple hours at some point just sit down and evaluate them but
I probably won't. But will Final Fantasy XIV Mobile be one of them? So what is this? It's an upcoming project. We don't... have this yet they they're going to launch it in china first so that's where ground zero will be for this right and which is kind of surprising it wouldn't be japan but okay it's not i'll tell you why i can answer that it's actually because it's
Tencent that's developing it. Yeah, I just saw the Tencent. Yes, they're flagging it as their Lightspeed Studios because you all know that Tencent has a bunch of these studios that it uses to kind of... you know, soften the idea that Tencent is involved, but it's Tencent. So that's why it's in China first. That's why they, you know, Tencent saw an IP that was left unattended and snatched it up because that's what Tencent does and turned it into a mobile game. That's just what they do.
Now, we've got to stress, this will not be... This is not Final Fantasy XIV. Like, this is not a cross-play. Right. It is not the same exact game. That's correct. Kind of a stripped-down version, at least what we're hearing. Like, five races, nine jobs to start with. They're going to be obviously aping a lot of the content and a lot of the world, and they definitely want you to feel like this is Final Fantasy XIV, but it will definitely be different.
We don't have a lot of specifics about it, but a lot of people are very excited. There's a trailer that you can check out. that goes through Yoshida. I showed up for this one. Everyone calm down, he says. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. The world is not ending. Oh my gosh. But you know, I think it's kind of a good move.
Final Fantasy XIV is one of those MMOs that's getting a little older, and anything it can do to kind of, you know... keep it and it's you know a franchise like grow the franchise of final fantasy 14 is not a bad thing i'm sure there's a lot of cross promotional options that they can do with this so
That's kind of cool. And sometimes, you know, you're on the go. You can't play Final Fantasy XIV wherever you're at. But hey, you guys got phones, don't you? You can play Final Fantasy XIV. If I had a stripped down version of Lotro or a stripped down version... of a wow yeah i totally would be playing yeah my phone absolutely
Yeah, you guys should check out Elliot's piece he put out on Friday where he was talking about how he doesn't really want this all that much. You know, he doesn't need to take the train on a commute three hours a day. He doesn't need that, but he's really glad it's going to exist. It sounds like it's going to have like a...
More of a focus on things like life skills, although I forget what Final Fantasy calls them. So like more, you know, focus on crafting and socializing and the golden saucer stuff. Right. So like you can almost see that they're almost aiming it as. more of a social experience and that that will be kind of like the gateway drug for the real game so like what's there's nothing to complain about here especially since it's not really taking resources away from square enix this is all 10 cent so
Everybody wins. Everybody makes money. Everybody gets a new game. Everybody gets more players in the base game. There's really nothing to hate here. Now, one of the fun things about doing the podcast, recording it on a Monday afternoon, is sometimes often studios come out first thing Monday morning and they like drop a bomb on us and suddenly we're rewriting the podcast on the fly. And that's what happened.
And today, Monday, as we're recording this, like an hour, half an hour before the show, Pri's like, oh, crap, we just got a roadmap from New World. We've got to talk about it. I know.
So I don't even know what's in the roadmap at this point. You didn't even have time to read it? I believe that. I'm pulling it up right now. Why don't you talk and I will read you. They dropped the roadmap and they dropped a 30-minute video. So I know you didn't have time to watch that. I was like sitting there trying to speed listen, like zipping through everybody's. It sounded like Mickey Mouse, zip, zip, zip.
But yes, we've been begging, like we, and I don't just mean us, I mean like the player base, convergently, independently, and then all of us together have been begging for a roadmap, and Amazon is not giving us a roadmap. After the launch of Aeternum, like we wanted to know what's next. Right. We barely got any real like...
future looking info, even in the lead up to Aeternum. It was all focused on Aeternum. They just wouldn't talk about anything else. And then Aeternum came and went and we still weren't getting anything. And it caused panic. People were like nervous. What's going on? This is the kind of thing where you can snowball and kill your own. player base by accident just by you know having them lose faith in you i'm going to be honest i didn't think we were going to get a roadmap
I literally wrote down some of my predictions this morning, and I was pretty convinced that, you know what, I think they're going to throw in the tell on this. And I am so happy I'm wrong. We have a total roadmap. Well, let me clarify. We have what they're... calling it they're calling it as a living roadmap which somebody else did this last week too do you remember who it was justin
No. Because you were making fun of them. And I was like, yeah, that is a really dumb phrase. And here's another studio doing it. Living Roadmap? I didn't put it at. Somebody. No. I think it was. Maybe it was Chris, but I thought it was you. Anyway, it's foolish. This looks like a Trello development.
It kind of does. All roadmaps are living roadmaps. They're always getting changed. Anyway, what they're basically saying was don't hold our feet to the fire if we don't accomplish any of these things. That's what they're up to. But they've laid it out, so they're showing us what we're getting.
getting in the next season specifically. Then they're talking about the things that are coming in the next couple of seasons over that that they're like actively working on. And then they're talking about like things that would be nice to have the nice to have list things that people have said they wanted. And they're considering doing it, but they're not making any promises. But if you pull this up, this is not like a month by month, quarter by quarter. This is just like...
They said next season, in development, in exploration, and that's it. There's no actual time frame here. Well, to be fair, the season actually launches in January. Okay, so we know season seven. So it's November, December, January. Yeah, it's kind of like a, but they don't.
They didn't actually like lay it out beyond that. And they didn't actually phrase it that way. But that's what they meant. So the next season is see the seventh one. And what they're doing, the cool thing that they're doing here, they're not adding a zone or anything like that. What they're doing is adding something called seasonal.
worlds. They're pretty much temporary servers. This is something that tons of MMOs have been doing all the way back to Ultima Online. Diablo does it all the time. Lost Ark has done this. Black Desert has done, like, everybody does this, but they're three-month servers.
They're literally only the length of that season, right? And they all have a different theme and a different rule set. You guys know what I'm talking about because it's the thing that lots of MMOs do. This is clearly what they're working with. So the first seasonal world we're getting with season seven is PvP.
oriented and i was listening through the video a little bit and they talk more about it and basically it sounds like a free for all pvp experience with like like crafter crafted loot being very important i'm not sure if it's decaying loot or like
being lost on death i didn't catch that part but it sounded like you know looting is happening and everybody's it's like not just you know in the battlegrounds or like when you're flagged it's like all the time everything is pvp it kind of sounds like the way
alpha worked before they decided to turn this into a pve more of a pve theme park so that's clearly what they're doing they have a lot of other stuff pvp oriented things um some expedition stuff they're doing um they're adding i think they said three new daily solo trials um obviously they're tackling combat balance because they never stop doing that it's it's that kind of stuff so this is clearly the introduction of
this new server template that they're doing and then beyond that there's way more good stuff i was really excited to see the barbershop that's i was just going to say the barbershop Because that was like one of the number one most requested features. Isn't that silly? But yes. It's not because if you've ever played New World, do you know how easy it is to make the most incredibly ugly characters? Oh my gosh, they're all so awful. This is a game where you want to wear the helmet.
It's kind of stuck with them. And I cannot believe it's been this long since they rolled out to this point that they've rolled out a barbershop. But it's really nice to see that. And also global storage, which is... Again, what you think would be a day one feature, but no, if there's different talents and each town has its own like storage chest, which is really nice when you're in that zone, but not when you've like suddenly.
have you know seven zones and you've planted stuff all over the place and it's like you've made a scavenger hunt that you really don't want to play i know that was really annoying i mean it made more sense for the kind of sandbox they started out as right right when you're holding territory and it actually matters but I think it's probably outlived its usefulness for the kind of game it's become now where they're trying to make it yeah
i'm sorry it does seem like they are kind of focusing like shifting trying to invest more in the pvp scene you're seeing a lot of you know territory you know pickup wars pvp modes you know this you know trying to look for for content that players can kind of generate and do and in a way get them invested uh because i'm not seeing as much in terms of like hey a new zone
oh wait it's all right all the way over in exploration exploration with new weapons new raid you know that's the sort of they're not promising that stuff one of the things they did say in the video is they're talking about upgrading some of the old zones not every zone that exists in the game actually got brought
properly into line with the new leveling system so they're kind of talking about revamping some of those i don't know if that counts i think it would count but not everybody would count that as a brand new thing um But I don't disagree with you. A lot of this is very focused on PvP. They clearly have a lot of people play Outpost Rush. A lot of people are interested in that kind of gameplay. And like you said...
They're trying to get people to stay. They're trying to focus on their endgame content so that when people hit that cap very quickly, they actually have something to do. And PvP is one of those things. They can actually make that work if they keep enough people in the game, actually. wanting to they have to actually have you know a critical mass of pvp players to actually make that work but which is why roadmap is a good yeah exactly that's why roadmap is um
We said it was a must-do before the end of the year. They had to tell us what was coming next because Aeternum, while it might have been very important and now you've got console players, PC players are nursing all sorts of bruises and wounds.
this point and you're also you know got all these new people and you need to be able to tell everybody like here's what's next like we are invested in this game we are we have a future we have a vision here's where we're going forward with it if you leave us in limbo far too long then you know
I would have probably written the same thing you would have in your predictions, which was, you know, like they haven't really talked about it. This is not a good sign. Maybe they're really just kind of going, we didn't see the numbers we needed. Like there was a certain. milestone that needed to be hit and if we didn't hit that and didn't sustain it then you know that's game over that was our last shot but no this actually is it's encouraging
This is what we want to see from a game like New World, where it is, as we've said, a solidly good MMO. It's worth your time. It's not a bad game to play, even though it has problems. And, you know, retailers call them. He will tell you the good and the bad, and he'll unvarnish truth. That's what you need. But it's a genuinely good MMO, and we've certainly seen a lot of very disposable MMOs over the last couple years come out that you go like, oh, okay, that was interesting for a while.
week new world has kind of it's had a it's had a really troubled history but at the same time it's dug down and you kind of made those steps forward and tried to reinvent itself tried to grow itself had a couple expansions and a console launch and so yeah that if it's to survive in the long haul it's really got to keep reaching and stretching and this is a good sign that they want to do that yeah
I hope you're right. I got to say, I made a noise when I saw this. I kind of shrieked. I'm really glad no one could hear me when I did it. With your new mic? No, no, no. When I first saw the thing come across my feet, I was genuinely... shocked. I literally wrote those predictions this morning that I thought not only would we not get a roadmap, but by the middle of next year we would find out that all of the team had been moved to the new Amazon.
lord of the rings uh mmo and i that we're never getting that was well the new new one yeah i i just i had such an awful pit in the feeling of my in the feeling in the you know what i mean in the pit of my stomach just i didn't like it i don't like it and the thing is it doesn't seem like the numbers are that bad if you go to steam chart was 26 26 000 just on steam concurrent like at the time like in the middle of the week last week when we were looking i was like really i didn't expect that
that's kind of a lot of people that's pc that's not even like the the heart of of the eternum that was aimed at other people that was aimed at consoles so i don't even know how many they've got stack that on top that's that's not doing badly
Like we found out that EverQuest 1 has that many players. You know what I mean? Concurrently playing it. That was one of the other things in that video from that last segment that we didn't even talk about. EverQuest 1 is doing great too. So like these games aren't in trouble.
This game should be doing a lot better than it is. It should have and appears to have significantly more resources than something like EverQuest 1, and it should be getting more content. I would like to see more than just Season 7 laid out. I would like to see... what those other seasonal worlds are going to look like going forward. But also like 90% of what I wanted to see was Scott Lane and Katie Kay and Dave V on screen smiling.
confirming that they exist and still have jobs and are still working on the game. And they are. And that honestly makes me feel... Nobody's holding them hostage from just off camera. I felt so much better hearing their voices when they were talking about what's coming that, okay, Amazon didn't... Didn't shut it all down behind closed doors. Okay, we're good. Keep going. Now make it grow, please. Yeah.
Because you got competition coming out, which is my horrible segue here to Path of Exile 2. But as we said earlier in the show, December is a big date. December 6th. Everybody who has been following Path of Exile 1 and looking forward to Path of Exile 2, which honestly they've just been talking about for like two or three months. Oh my god. Or two or three. We've been talking about this game since... COVID first of 2020. I think it was originally prototyped back when assembly language was.
de facto standard and people were using punch cards and one of the punch cards was path of exile to alpha alpha believable believable yeah so anyways december 6th that is the new date that is the day we reported on a couple weeks ago they did delay it slightly in another universe path of exile 2 would have already been out but in this universe it has been delayed to the 6th which is not too far away and people are looking forward to it a little bit with
this early access um i'm want to be there i don't know if i'm going to be able to rip myself away from all my other stuff but this this project looks really cool and we do have some more details on exactly what's coming with the early access release here on December 6th for Path of Exile 2, which is what we want to talk about today.
If you jump into this, you're going to be getting more story. This is a big thing. You're going to get three acts of a new story here. So if you've gone through all of the acts of Path of Exile 1 so many times that you can say all the lines by heart. you go now you've got new story you also have six classes that you can check out and play and i'm sure those skill trees are going to be just as ridiculously complex as the other one um
They're actually not going to be doing as much in terms of an endgame, right? No, it's just the opposite. I mean, it's not completely finished, I should say. Can you explain this to me? I will explain. Because MJ does a really good job. It was MJ who did this. She's the one. They flew out to California and she got to actually do the press thing. And then she was so excited and giddy and came back with both. of these articles so basically what she said was that
They know that they have to have an endgame. Like, you wouldn't necessarily do this in an MMORPG because people are playing, you know, they'll play, you know, the Tortage Loop. They'll play that 20 times because MMO players are weird. But in Path of Exile, like, most of the players get to endgame.
and stay there like you've rushed through the acts and then you do the challenges at endgame and they're like we can't just not do that people will get to the end and quit and we want them to keep playing so that we can keep developing right so they're giving them the kinds of endgame that they will like
that they're expecting from Path of Exile 1 is definitely going to be there from day one in Path of Exile 2. So it's just like one of those things where they're just trying to accommodate the kinds of players that they actually get, even though you and I will still be there in the first act, you know, a couple of weeks in because we're very slow.
about this other people are like nope this is all about you know my my gear score and maximizing my build and getting all my gems and all that stuff so that is their thinking on that it makes sense honestly it's just very different from mmorpgs All right. Are you going to check it out? I am, actually. The fact that MJ is so hyped about it and the fact that I didn't get to do the Diablo stuff because I'm not doing Blizzard stuff, I feel like I've missed it. I really like... ARPGs in general and I
kind of want to get back into one i may as well jump at this right i might as well pick this one while it's sitting in front of me grinding gear is a really nice company i really like to support them i didn't really like path of exile one but path of exile two looks like way better i don't know if you're looking
the screenshots but i am and they've brought over some of the other things like the housing system the hideout system um that's like all they brought all that stuff over so it's like all the good stuff and then more stuff like this this seems like a really good time to jump in at least
to try it and see if it's the kind of thing I want to do. I'm not really an endgame grinder, though. I'm not going to live in that endgame. I know myself. I don't do that. But I think it would be fun to play through. We'll see. Yeah. It's cheap. The bottom, the base one, the base early access one is like 30 bucks. So not a big deal. All right. All right. We got, we got a week and a half, a couple of weeks there and we'll be.
We'll be knowing this. We'll be on the other side of this launch, and we'll see how that goes. So this could be a fun game changer for the end of the year here for the MMO industry, and I'm happy to see it. totally um so back when um i know last week when we were talking about the world of warcraft housing announcement and uh my guild was just over the moon for the most part sorry i was um
So everybody was kind of talking about their wish lists in guild chat. And the one game that kept getting brought up more than any other game was Wildstar. and that a lot you know that's not a surprise probably a lot of wild players played you know dabbled in wild star but everybody just has such a great impression of the wild star housing system and a lot of people are like oh man if it could be just like a
quarter as good as the wow or the the wild star housing system that would be great well you know what i was kind of thinking of that exact same thing this week when i looked at another game that's talking about its upcoming housing system which is raf costers Stars Reach. And I'm very impressed with myself that I didn't just say Star Reach. But...
Yeah, it's a confusing, it's growing on me, but I really did not like the title Stars Reach when they first announced it. Stars Reach. But I'm kind of over it now. It's fine. Yeah, they're... They're actually not just talking about housing, which they're calling homesteads, but they're getting ready to test it. Yeah. And so this kind of shows you like they're serious about this game. They're serious about its progress and they're moving along. And it sounds. Very Wildstarian to me.
Yeah, where you've got like a patch of land or even Rift, you know, where it's not just a house, but it's a house with surrounding land that you can do a lot of Lego style building shenanigans, you know, like a little game called Star Wars Galaxies. Brown Costner might have had his fingers at one point in time. And you owe two, honestly. How many times are you going to bring you up in this episode? But it's the progenitor for so many things. Like, if I really want to go back to the beginning.
Almost everything was done there first in a good way. I feel like the other games are just building on what came before it, which is how it should be, right? That's a good thing. Simpsons did it first. Simpsons did it first. Yes, exactly. What did you think of this homestead?
I mean, I knew it was coming, but I kind of agree with you that it feels like it's moving a lot faster than I expected. They clearly have like a lot of these systems like ready to roll behind the scenes and then they're just inching them out one at a time into testing.
The initial testing over the last six months or so has made it seem, five months, I guess, has made it seem as if they're really unfinished, that they're way, really far away. But like, now that they've actually started packing a ton of stuff in, we're getting skill systems, we're getting housing systems, we're getting... All kinds of stuff. I don't know that it's as far off as it looks. Does that make sense?
That makes me really excited. And then I get excited and I'm like, oh, no, that's a bad sign. I shouldn't be excited. No, don't get excited. Yes. I need to take that hype meter down. And then I'm like, no, Justin, you have a whole column about hype. Maybe channel that into a.
column for your editor at some point actually it was kind of funny because this this particular article is written by a guy named dave georgeson yeah he picked him up a while ago yeah everquest 2 and whatnot i don't think i could like i said Buster is, you know, no stranger to the whole story. Rick's AI stuff from EverQuest next. Calls these guys up like, hey, I'm getting the band back together.
Let's roll. I think they all know each other for sure, especially in the SoCal area. It's a very incestual community of developers. In a good way. I mean, we don't want to lose these guys to other genres or to other industries altogether. I want to keep their brains in their MMOs. knowledge here serve us right but they have this luxury and this wonderful opportunity to make the game
that they really want to make. And this could be their lasting legacy on top of all their other achievements. So I just see a lot of heart in this project, which is really good to see. A lot of ambition, which is both good and... makes me a little bit nervous but that's okay i think i think probably anything an ambitious sandbox is going to announce is going to make me nervous in some way that's fair i'm glad that they're putting housing like right out front you know blizzard of 20 years ago
take note put housing right out front get that on on day one i think this is good it tells tells players like when you come into this game we got a place for you like you you have a house here you have a home here we want you to stay here this won't just be
a fleeting thing that's that's one of the things i absolutely loved about wildstar is because back in the pre-launch days they made such a big deal out of housing like almost to the point where i never saw another mmo before that really promote the game.
so much through the housing system like i mean they might have mentioned like here's a one-off blog post or whatever but wildstar was like week after week after week like here's here's what all the players have done with their housing system here's some other things and you were just kind of salad over i can't wait to have my barbie doll house oh that's gonna be amazing and it was it was so amazing so yeah they said um
I just want to read a little bit of this. Sure. It said, Homestead is a patch of world that you can claim as your own. You can set up a camp, register the camp, and it's yours. Now you can build on that land. You can create a home, a shop, a manufacturing facility. A farm. A giant robot. Whatever you desire. If you claim a homestead in space, you can build a starport or hollow out the interior of an asteroid as a smuggler's base and more. Okay, I'm sold.
Right. I mean, yeah. Giant robot. You had me a giant robot, Raph Koster. I think it definitely builds on stuff Koster has always done, right? You all had housing from day one, like literally 1997 and Star Wars had it. There was just, you couldn't really do a sandbox without it. You can do a theme park without it, but you can't do a sandbox without it. Like you said. There's no buy-in from the players. There's no ownership otherwise. But like, boy, I don't know. This seems so much better.
Then both of those. I love the plot idea. I realize UO had a plot idea, but I'm not sure how Koster was still working on the game by the time they actually turned that into buildable plots. Star Wars doesn't really have that. Star Wars is prefab buildings, prefab structures, and you can kind of organize them, but it's still chaos. This seems like a nice harmonization of both, where you can have a really big plot with all of your different structures.
and for whatever it is you're going to need. I really love that. You can see how this could be the nugget of how city structures, player city structures are going to work, which is going to be so much better than what Star Wars had. That's all I really wanted. I wanted Star Wars.
galaxies 2 i did not just want the same game over again i wanted something that took the the nugget of the ideas the things that made it socially fun and like updated them for 2024 when we really well or beyond when we actually expect so much more out of games when we to be able to build like every freaking wall and every freaking window and our steps and our you know our ranch and our whatever we're building our space castle our space asteroid castle apparently
I love that. I love that we're going to get that kind of like fine control over it. I'm sure there will be prefab stuff for people who are like, no, I just want to plop it down. Boom. That's fine too. But yeah, I'm sure this will be skill based too.
Because he had an architect skill in Star Wars. They mentioned a lot of skills in this. Yeah. So I would not be surprised at all if your architectural skills will come into play with what you can build and where you can build it. I just can't wait. This stuff makes me so excited.
to look so pathetic it's gonna look like somebody just threw some sticks at each other well no but see you could you could hire somebody who's specialized in architectural skills to build your house for you this is what people do in those games so you know that's what's gonna happen Yeah, I already paid way too much to have a plumber in my house because I can't fix my dreams.
So, yeah, if I could have a wish list, it would be if they get this like this idea running really well. I would love for them to pull a landmark and just like release. like a building module to fans and just like have fun with this play as we continue to work on the rest of the game just
Wait, I love this. Build what you build and then they could even work it into. Yes, it needs to be an offline housing builder so we can build our blueprints and then port them back into the game. If you know what, he's probably already got this cooking.
I know you're nervous about this, Justin, and I understand why, but I don't think that if this game fails, I don't think it will be for a lack of creativity or implementation. It'll be because the players aren't there or the money isn't there. It won't be about.
the ideas i'd rather see games swing for the fences they've been playing it way too safe way too long and we need some really awesome ideas now but we also need some really experienced hands at the controls too because it's easy to make these promises and these ideas you know i can make a ton of ideas but you gotta have people carry through and i think that they've got a team here that could do that i do want to mention they're going to be testing this year um here in early november or december
Sorry, they just sent another thing. Actually, I can find you the exact date for the next one. This week's playtest scheduled Tuesday, November 26th, 9 a.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Pacific. So while you're sleeping, if you're me. Or working. about the update that this is coming with oh i see what you mean december and they're gonna they want to start running some longer duration tests but they said this i do yeah that will help
They said the game now has a lot of features, even though we're not even close to feature complete. And despite the fact we're going to need to redo the onboarding many times in the future as things continue to change. They just want to work on it now as well. So I just want to say that they said right there, it has a lot of features, but they're not close to feature complete. No.
No, but they're further along than I imagined when they first started showing, oh, and here is how you blow up the terrain. And I was like, oh, no. And now they're like, oh, but we've got the housing system and here's the skill system. And like, oh, OK, you just weren't showing us everything. All right. I see. I understand now. As long as I keep talking about it, I cannot tell you how much I love the art style of this game.
I really, really love it. Some people still are grumpy about it, man. Boo hoo. Don't play your boring brain. green you know medieval mmos and that's fine if that's what you like i love when it comes to science fiction i want colorful and stylized i want more no man's sky then and star citizen i don't even think star citizen's visuals are bad but they're they're very much more sterile and sports car versus children's playground you know this is juicy this is cartoony i like it cartoony
Yeah, this, again, you know, Wildstar keeps popping back. But also like Landmark, EverQuest next. That's... That's not a bad style. And, you know, Pantheon even has a bit of that, too. I like to look. That's something I wish, you know, if we could send a message back in time to a lot of these MMO studios that were looking at their art style for their games is to, you know, advise them like, wow.
was on to something here you need to make your games more stylized and something that that would last longer don't don't just try to go for high fidelity high polygons and it's that's not going to really do you know like final fantasy 14 is gorgeous but it has its own it's slightly stylized it really does have its own style and its art and it really works well with that and it's very very colorful and people just they
It just draws you in. You either vibe with it or you don't, but it's so easy to get. turned off by visuals we're we're basic at least us guys i don't know about you girls but us guys you know like sometimes we're just all about the eye candy and um this game has a lot of really good eye candy that i've seen so and i'm glad
I'm glad they're talking about housing. This is cool. Yep. Moving along. All right. Footloose and fancy free. And that's the end of the podcast here today. We hope that you enjoyed listening to us. And yeah, again, we're going to be rounding out into.
december here not only do we do we have a ton of mmo stuff that's going to be happening and we'll be covering all the news the launches the patches everything that's going to be happening at the end of 2024 here but as brie has told you and we'll continue to tell
you we have a lot of stuff happening here at massively op so what can people expect like the first week of december oh let me look at the calendar let me bring up the big giant calendar because you know i have a calendar for this all right so let's see This week...
Oh, actually, our very first thing comes out Thursday, doesn't it? We do our very first holiday overthinking comes out this Thursday, but then then more starts to happen next week. We get our first biggest surprises, not the award, but the roundup that comes out next week. We tally our awards on the 5th.
And then we actually have our awards discussion fight slash debate slash fight on December 6th. So that gives you some ideas. I don't even know who is winning just yet. But then our first award starts coming out on December 13th. And then it treks on through December. I'm just saying I'm willing to take any bribes that you guys want to send my way to make a certain award happen. But, you know, that could be easily overridden.
i think you guys could probably guess some of them pretty easily i think i could probably guess but other i have no idea who's going to win like best expansion or game of the year because we got so many Like big budget AAA expansions from MMOs this year. It's all going to come down to who played what. This was like the year of expansions. Yeah. It really was. So yeah. So that gives you kind of a little bit of a teaser of what's coming here at Massive EOP in December.
We have a lot going on with the podcast. Even in fact, we do want to reiterate, we need some more podcast emails. This is we got a whole mailbag show coming up. And the more mail we have for that, obviously, the better. But I would never. Never be sorry to have more because we always need more. I think we're recording that show on the 16th. Yeah, we like to pre-record these to give us a couple weeks off. Yeah.
Yeah, if you could do that really soon. If you have a topic, you have a question, anything you would like us to read on the podcast and then respond to. In a funny voice, we could do that too. I don't know. Sing songy, whatever. Just check out the show notes.
and that's where we have a link it's really simple to do if you're all over there in the show notes anyways yeah you might as well just gaze over there to the right hand side of the site and there's a little thing called the patreon program and that is how people continue to support here uh massively op 10 years into brie can i tell you i'm gonna pause right here i was doing some research trying to find that you know thing from 10 years ago and I saw
a link to like yeah you have a link to like our very last post on the massily that was and i read it and i like started to get all weepy again why am i sad about this it wasn't even a good post i was still like angry sad when i wrote it and i just kind of wanted to be done and then i went over and i read luddy's post and his was like so much better i was like well imposter syndrome right at the end here
I did remember that so many people wrote about us that there were a lot of people genuinely sad that we were going away and they had no idea what was coming up. And we had no idea because we were running on like 90% adrenaline and 10% original. idea. And anyways,
The Patreon program. It's been running for a while. If you're interested in jumping on board with that, maybe in 2025, things, if your finances look okay, whatever. It's a great way to support the site financially. Keep independent MMO journalism up and running.
the new year we're very excited about all the things that are going to be coming out next year not just in games but in terms of the content of the site we put out a lot of art news articles we put out columns we do streams we do this little amateur podcast hour that you know variety hour that we like to do every week and uh it's all you know it's it's largely thanks to you guys keeping us up and running and we really appreciate that so
That's about all the time we have for today. Check us out on our social meds. We're on Twitter at MassivelyOP. We're over there at blueskymassivelyop.com. bluesky.social and we're on that mastodon i think we're still on mastodon and we're we're still on facebook technically but I don't know if anybody uses it. And if you go over on our official Instagram account, we'll tell you how to bake the perfect Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. Our recipe is.
chef's kiss all right you guys have a great week later everybody happy thanksgiving