Music Music You've heard that it's a federal crime to read somebody else's mail, but that is exactly what we're going to be doing today. We're reading your mail here on the Massively OP Podcast. Hi, I'm inmate number 1211612-A. justin and with me is my warden brie how are you doing wait i'm the warden why am i the warden because because you're in charge and you're cracking the whip yeah
I don't know. I think the metaphor works better. You could be in here with me and we'll tunnel out or something like that. I like that better. Yeah. I'll bring a little spork and we'll... A little plastic spork. There are a lot of MMO prisons. I know I did a top 10 list a long time ago of famous prisons and MMOs, like the Ziggurat and City Heroes.
Yeah, there's stockades right there in World of Warcraft. Oh my gosh, yeah, stockades. I may need to dust off that list and redo it because that was a really fun top ten. It's such a weird concept. This is not a thing that should exist in MMOs. And yet every one of them has one. Yeah. And in these worlds where people are just rampantly running around with weapons, killing whatever they want, but we're going to have a criminal justice system. Jail will hold like.
three people it's like no it's gonna need you're gonna need a bigger jail you don't like what the lawyer is saying kill him ludus corpse start over again anyways why are we talking all about this when we could be talking about what you guys wrote in which is exactly what we're gonna do here it's a 400 99th episode and it is our mailbag show that we like to do at the end of the year yeah in fact so let's see this is coming out on the 31st
Yeah, we're recording it in the middle of the month. So, you know, we're just gonna assume that Christmas happened. Merry Christmas. The drones did not kill us all this year. that story is killing me it's absolutely killing me and you look at the pictures it's like no that's venus guys no that's just orion guys no that's actually a plane i'm so embarrassed i'm just embarrassed for everyone. Please, please read a book.
Get a telescope. I think the killer drones, they're all killer drones are coming for. So if you guys hear this, you are the lucky few survivors of the great drone incursion of 2024. And we wish you. I'm sorry. On behalf of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I apologize for the drone idiocy, okay? It's our fault.
We are getting so off topic. I'm sorry. Prisons and drones and we need to. OK, so what we're going to do is Bree's lined up. You guys have been awesome in sending us in a ton of mail. And Bree has lined up a bunch of them and she's given each a numerical value.
and I apparently have control over or I don't really have control but I have the RNG button so I'm gonna hit that and we're just gonna see which pieces of mail we get to today hopefully we'll get to as much as we possibly can anything that's left over we'll just tackle it in the new year and you'll just yeah we'll get to it like i will prioritize the ones we don't get to and there are two i held back because they'll be better off for the round
because she hates you no all right here we go ready yeah Our first one is number three. Number three is from Brazen Vondar. She says, developer Clockwork Throne recently took Shadow's kiss offline and opined that going into early access without a commercially polished product is a trap for an indie developer. I love that quote so much, by the way.
she says i do wonder whether early access can also be a trap for players in the sense that it has worked players understanding of what a game in development should and can offer the example i use is paleo often when the game is mentioned on mop it is with worried concerns so folks were
surprised when Daybreak prioritized the game. The paleo population is relatively healthy, because not everyone plays on Steam. The developers are active in terms of providing information. They continue to squash bugs and add snippets of content, announced a new area for next year, and the game is free. and yet people still complain about the pace of new content and the cash stop.
the game is free no one is required to buy anything it's a cozy game and yet people have spreadsheets on how to do everything as fast as possible and then they complain when they finish the content too quickly it's a cozy game it's not final fantasy 14.
It's not supposed to have the kind of content you can spend years doing. What are you guys' thoughts on why players have such outsized expectations for free games and early access? Have we been just as damaged by the early access bandwagon as the small developers are? Yeah. Are we broken? We're broken, aren't we? Yeah, there's...
There's a lot of different angles to this question. It's all really good. It's a great question to ask. And the answer is yes. I mean, if you've been listening to this podcast, we've had some stern words for early access and not... Kind, but necessary to say. I mean, early access, we understand why developers are doing it. But, you know, take a step back. Let's take a step back like a decade, decade plus, you know, a decade and a half ago when MMOs.
Did not have this step, right? It was just, you were in development, you might have had an alpha, but it usually was an internal thing. There was no... I don't almost ever remember like an open alpha or an alpha test that a lot of people opted into. Usually it was beta. Beta was the thing we looked forward to. And chances are you didn't even get closed beta. You were waiting for the open beta test.
If you had my kind of luck and then the game launched and that was how it went. I mean, that was kind of and we were used to that. It was a very nice set formula. And suddenly you have people not suddenly, but gradually you have people kind of shoving in additional.
steps so now we've got pre-alpha and we've got open alphas and we have alpha one and alpha two oh my goodness they come up with the most ridiculous names i'm looking at two ashes of creation uh you know different different levels of alpha and then you know we don't and then we go to early access that might be an alpha but also
might be in beta might be a hair's breadth away from launch also might be a game that's not even started development and shouldn't have ever let the public in whatsoever so early access is like this giant unregulated spectrum of people playing a game of actual game development you have you have no like idea of where this game is so the expectations i think this this question is really good because it's talking about
ruined expectations. And I think that's something also Chris was talking about in the previous episode about Pantheon is it's so important when you come into an MMO, especially when it's in a pre-launch state.
to know what you're in for. If you're coming into a game and you go, okay, it's only like halfway made. Some of the systems are in place. It's going to be really super janky. But, you know, hopefully the core is there and hopefully the core is fun. Or maybe this is just something you're just... You're just going to noodle around him for a day or so just to satisfy.
some points of curiosity but it's definitely not something you want to play right now because it's not even functional like it's not it's just not it's it's kind of a playground for developer ideas and they're going to tie it together at some point and make all
this stuff click like we need to know that because otherwise it all goes back to like first impressions and your first impression of a game are important and then they're lasting and those are the the impressions not only do you keep to yourself and inform you whether or not you want to play this game
again in the future or ongoing but also how you relay this game to other people how you evangelize the game or you you share your impressions and if you know somebody says hey i want to play you know paleo let's just keep yanking paleo as an example if i want to play paleo and you go oh man that game stinks man i played it you know on day one early access they didn't even have group chat and they didn't you know they didn't have
this he didn't have that and suddenly that person's like oh no i don't want to play that game like you don't think right that's that we're I think not only do we have a lot of blame, I mean, a lion's share of the blame is on the developers, but there's a bit of, not blame, but of... We are kind of damaged in terms of the MMO population. We're not willing to be as lenient and patient with games, new games, as we used to. And because we...
We're used to fully formed games. We have so many available that if we don't like one, we can just take a quick taste. Oh, I don't like that. Spit it out. Try another one. Spit it out. Try another one. And we may be hopping around way too much back in the days.
of subscriptions you kind of invested yourself monetarily into a game you know for at least a month you know maybe maybe two games but at least most of the people i knew it's just one or two and you were kind of like into it so you you were at least willing to give the game a fair shot and i don't think there's as much of that anymore and so you combine that with a half-baked game and nope it's just people are gonna bounce off of it so hard and so Is it worth doing it?
And the studio might go, well, early access, we get a little bit extra money. We get that money when we need it. You know, maybe start building up the community. And we've seen some early access success stories because it's not all failures. There are instances where games come. long and they present early access and it does really well but almost all of those are nearly fully formed games
And that really should be calling themselves like open beta. Instead, they say, yeah, it's early access, but we're not going to wipe. You know, here, come in, play. And that gives us a little bit of wiggle room to do whatever we want to make some oopsies and still get to say it's open access. What do you expect? So, yeah, it's just not good. I would love to see the industry step back from Early Access as a whole. We don't need these games out as...
You know, it used to be we were everybody was chanting the same chant, which was. Get the game out when it's ready. Ship it when it's ready. We want a fully polished game. Now we've got this instant gratification thing, which is like, oh, I heard about this game. I need it yesterday. Give it to me now. Whatever state it's in, you know, I don't care if it's just.
dough in the oven now it's barely warm i want to eat that pie i don't want to wait for it to finish cooking i need it now and then you get you know e coli poisoning there you go um okay that was that was my extremely long winded rant what are your thoughts i don't have anything to disagree with in your rant though honestly like i i think we're pretty much on the same page on this it's it's the developer's fault it's also the publisher's fault and yes it's it's
some to some extent the players fault for like rushing the whole experience the whole mmorpg experience and wanting it now now now palea is a tricky example because i think the reason people were worried about it was because they went through all those layoffs like multiple rounds of layoffs and so when it's seemed like the content slowed down people were like oh no it's because they laid off all their devs now they don't have anybody to do content
I was actually relieved when Daybreak bought it. Dead serious. Like, I've seen some commentary from our own readers who are like, gosh, this was the worst thing that ever happened to Palea. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is the best thing that ever happened to Palea. Like, Daybreak is motivated.
to make money off of this game whereas before it was like an indie company that didn't have any resources i was concerned now i feel a lot better about that i still don't like their their the way they've done early access this the patches did slow down they are smaller and yeah
they're really heavily monetized. But like Brazen says, it's also a free to play game. They didn't like charge $50 just to for you to come looky-loo. Anybody can just go look. So that to me takes some of the edge off of the early access.
and because it's cute and because it is relatively decent i don't think that it has like a horrible stack of reviews you know what i mean i don't think that when it finally launches people are going to be like oh yeah that's crap i think it's actually going to have a little renaissance i cannot say that about early access titles most of them will never recover just like shadows kiss didn't and that's
I don't think there's a good way out of it. Like, it's nothing any one person can do. It's not even really something players can do all by themselves. We're not all going to suddenly decide never to buy early access again, especially when sometimes early access is good. like it's on a case-by-case basis some people are just taking their preconceived ideas of what it should be from their past games into the new ones
you can't really stop them from doing that until the industry moves back to a more publisher-centric, you know, not trying to get every last dollar out of it early and use players as QA. That's really the only way it's going to...
gonna turn around and i just i don't see that happening which means it is you know incumbent on players to make their own determinations ahead of time when they're when they're choosing to play early access or not maybe don't play the ones that are you know obviously problematic
it you're not helping yourself you're not helping the game you're definitely not helping the industry because the developers the studios are not going to stop they don't have any reason to stop as long as we're doing it you know what i mean as long as we're showing up to be q a sorry q a Don't show up and be Q&A. That's weird. As long as we're showing up to be Q&A, they're going to keep doing it. And that marks the last time we will ever mention Shadow's Kiss on this podcast. I'm sorry.
It was such a crap game. It's a good comment, though. I really like Brazen's pieces. Her comments are always some of my favorites. Okay. Pick another number. Roll them dice. Twelve. Oh. Wait, I think this is the... Yeah, this is the roundtable. So we were going to put this one at the end if it didn't win, but it's instead winning. So a long time ago, Matthew sent in a rapid roundtable round three. Are you ready? It's five questions.
okay number one best and worst crafting system or profession in any mmo ever don't care I don't. I'm sorry. That was like, okay. That best fallen earth. I've always, I liked that. That was probably the most I ever I've gotten into a crafting system.
um the worst at least the the most frustrating that i've ever gotten involved with would have been wildstar's weird bullseye target thing it was trying to do with some it was weirdly yeah you go back and watch some of those videos you had to you know like move a little piece around on a the the better you could get toward the bullseye the
into the middle the better the quality piece sounds like old school everquest yeah it was just it wasn't games they were trying to make it more of a mini game and it just wasn't fun All right, well, I just picked profession instead of system. I went with droid engineer in Star Wars Galaxies just because robots are cool. Because I really like that profession. It's not particularly intense compared to some of the other professions.
crafting skills but i just like it i love that you can make little droid companions and they actually do stuff and they actually matter um and then for worst i picked the cook in ultima online because their cooking in that game suck like it's a huge grind it costs a ton of effort and clicking and then you get to the top and you can make stuff and nobody wants it there's like no point
you're gonna make like what is it like bowler recharges or something it's not even food that you're making it's just so disappointing if you're interested in food boo All right, next one. Matthew actually had his own answers too. He picked Elder Scrolls in general for good because he can craft legendary gear and worse, also Wildstar. It took Star Wars Galaxies crafting and completely screwed it up. So he agrees with you. Oh, good.
Number two, name your favorite character name of your characters and why and then name one other player's character name that you loved and why. Yeah, so I usually use the name SIP or some variation thereof, but a while ago I was in... World of Warcraft, and I decided to just kind of really sit down one day and come up with a lot of fun, interesting names that weren't too common. And the one I ended up with my main character for a long time was Photopsia. Oh, that's cute.
Yeah, it's apparently like the weird little... light squiggles that you get in your eye sometimes when you like squint or you rub your eyes and it's called photopsia and so i thought that was fun it was a little bit different and i knew everybody would just call me photo anyways and that's okay all right what about another player character's character another player character's name oh i mean all the really cool ones that like always get grabbed right away like echo or echoes or harmony or
melody or you know like uh you know especially as a hobbit minstrel you wanted one of those names and so fresh start server comes along you're like melody harmony you know grab any music whatever name you could possibly jump on and so i I think I get really jealous when I see those because I'm like, oh, they didn't even have to like torture their name to get that. They just grabbed it back in the day. And oh, well.
all right well i picked some city of heroes characters because of course i did my my favorite one is probable claws as in c-l-a-w-s And her sidekick, my husband's character, is named Bro Bono instead of Pro Bono. It was a character set we made a long time ago. Yes, I am Claus. Yes, he is dressed like a lawyer with the money.
particle effect floating around him and it's it's just like a whole thing i want to see you guys do this like for an actual halloween party that you go to that would be really funny and for another character i picked um there was a guy i took a picture of a million years ago in city of heroes
number two pencil and he literally had an outfit that made him look like a number two pencil with the eraser like his hat would look like an eraser and then the stripy face and then it was spectacular I don't know how people come up with stuff like this the costuming was just chef's kiss it was so good that was one of my that was my favorite thing about city here is the sheer creativity not just in the costumes but the the concept and the name and how it just all came together
Let's see. The two that Matthew says he picked out Charles and Char from his Guild Wars 2 character. And then he saw an undead priest in WoW named Bones McCoy. That's terrible. Okay. All right, number three. If you could remove one feature from all games forever, what would it be? Remove one feature? Yes. Oh, my goodness.
i want you to go first because i need okay because i wrote down i'm cheating i saw the answers ahead of time so i picked black boxes except that he picked black boxes so i can't pick that instead i picked dps meters i feel like dps meters completely ruin like all of the social fun of grouping and i hate them don't tell people the numbers don't tell people who's metamaxing i just don't want to know it doesn't solve anything and if the game requires that the game is already a problem like
no get rid of them all right i got one i'll level boost chuck them out i don't i'm not i'm not like i don't have like a crusade against them i have used them once or twice in the past in very limited capacity i think that they really do hurt games and they don't really help um long term every everybody i've talked to even people who buy them there's a there's a heavy amount of buyers regret when it comes to
level boost because you just haven't spent a lot of time with that character and suddenly there's this giant learning curve and trying to get into it it's there there's better ways to get your community together it's a very lazy way for developers to go oh we've got you know 90 percent
of our players at end game and we need to you know engage these other players come up with better sidekicking systems and stuff like that don't don't just negate a huge portion of the content of your game especially if you're a leveling based progression game
i just it it wrinkles me and i wish it was not there what about making a character make it so you have to have one character at max before you can buy them yeah i mean that's an unhappy compromise and i'm not going to be like again digging into the dirt but i just would you know the question was what i i would just want it gone i just would yeah i i think the games would be healthier overall i'm glad we're not in charge because a lot of people are mad right now at our answers
I don't care. All right. Number four. If you could create an MMO of your choice, what would be the background and graphical style and name of it? That's a huge question, Matthew. That's not a little. That's not a quick question. You need to sit down with a spreadsheet now. I wrote down that Raph Koster is already building the game. It kind of is. And that's part of why I'm so scared because...
You know, I'm terrified that it won't come out exactly the way I'm sure it won't. And I just want it to be so good. And I'm more scared that it will not. get finished and then no one will pick up this torch again while i'm still alive that's why that's the optimistic yeah exactly a glass half up the glass is broken sorry just dropped it on the ground i'm going with the same answer i think that he has yeah because
I love colorful sci-fi spaceships. A lot of things to do. A lot more player agency. A lot more classes and ideas. Um, I've been just so hungry for a really fun space sim, but you know, I'm, I'm willing to like make some compromises if you want to be more of a sandbox, but still have some semi aspects. Yeah, sure. That's fine. I just, I don't want a sci-fi setting where it's like super.
grimdark or super sterile, which I think is two different... like the eve online and uh star citizen kind of go in that direction which is fine for some people but it's not i'm kind of more of the super colorful star wars or space quest you know kind of Yeah, Firefly or Farscape. They have that retro sci-fi feel, but they also have like Hope Punk.
and i really like it like there's nothing i don't know i don't feel like the ending of these things is necessarily everything is doomed and give up whereas a lot of times some of the more sterile sandboxes that's how i feel anyway All right. His pick was he wants a future sandbox, I guess, where criminals are transferred to a planet called Kimlor and vanilla. The vanilla release is based on establishing colonies and cities on the planet to divide. Wait.
Game format is close to Star Wars Galaxies, where it's a sandbox with specific rules. Come on, this is just RavCost. Everybody wants RavCostor to make a freaking game. We all have a slightly different vision of it, but this is what we all want, apparently. Number five, the world is ending. You can put one MO and your characters into a capsule and save it to survive. What is that MMO? Like, I'm not surviving, but the game is and my characters? I'm not actually sure. It doesn't technically say.
Are we saving it for other people or saving it for yourself? Like as a posterity, like, you know, alien civilizations come across it. So the one I picked, I picked for saving from it. Like, I'm assuming I'm also in the cast.
Which doesn't make sense. Playing the game forever as a solo game. But I picked City of Heroes because I was... The reason, though, I had a good reason. It wasn't... Because it's not necessarily my all-time favorite MMO, but it has a little bit of everything. It has an incredible building community. It has really customized... customizable characters and power sets it has really customizable um like difficulty when it comes to combat i could just do that forever
And on top of that, it's got, you know, the character creation and auctioning. Like I could play that for a really long time and get a good sampling of the things I like, even though it doesn't necessarily have the best of everything. Does that make sense? Yes. What about you? Are you in the capsule or are you not in the capsule? I don't want to be in the capsule. There's not like really good Wi-Fi there and playing MMOs solo is not going to be. So I kind of just view this as kind of a memorial.
monument or something that they stumble upon and learn learn from our civilization so in that case i would want it to be lord of the rings online because i i i like the themes i really the more i go through the stories and where i you know we interact i like i know it's not especially realistic but i do like that it is always looking for the best in humanity and hobbit vanity and uh that
That even in a world where a shadow is formed over all of it, there's a significant population really working so hard to bring about good. And that good doesn't need to always be like saving the world huge.
be very small, like helping a little kid or hobbit retrieve some pies. Even the smallest creatures, right. Exactly. So I think that there are just a lot of wonderful little... written moments in that game that just i i kind of give a big thumbs up thematically too and the message is usually on point so yeah
And also you can see, so you're not alone. Matthew agrees with you. Yeah. And I, you can see like my little hobbit who's overcome so many odds to, to go on this long journey and help tons of people. okay yep that's it that was only five all right roll away and our next one is two Two. From Jeff. Jeff says, of all the MMOs you're playing, pick the most mediocre of them. What do they do really well and what would you change if you were writing its sequel?
I'm sorry. It's such a good question. I mean, it's hard. I wrote down Gorgon, but I wrote down Gorgon and then a frowny face. That's all I wrote. but i don't think it's mediocre it's just the most you know unfinished the smallest the least polished the most indie of all of the mmos that i play i don't really think it's mediocre i think it's great which is why i play it you know what i mean like that's the reason i've got it installed but
But it's got such a great like old school throwback feel that doesn't like alienate me somehow. Some of these other games seem to like be. desperate to emulate everquest and they hate me whereas this one just feels like kind of weird and alien and like wow i didn't what the hell is that a spider on on roller skates like what the hell is happening in this game and i just i freaking love it i love the way it feels like i'm exploring the old school sandbox and yet
it doesn't it you know it doesn't get in my way the way some of those games do and it doesn't necessarily make me feel like I have to group or give up that drives me crazy the only thing I'd really want to change is give them piles of money so much money so that they can actually you know finish policy it up finish i just want the devs to be safe first off but like yeah marketing and better art and better everything more everything finish all those unfinished systems that's all i really want
I'm easy. Just money. I think my answer to this would probably be Rift. I think Rift is, again, it's generally excellent.
well-rounded MMO it has far more features than it often gets credit for yeah in terms of like checking every box that I would want out of an MMO usually Rift has almost all of it uh but where it where it lags is unfortunately some of the things that kind of took it out of the public mainstream other than what happened with the studios and everything like that, which is one, it tried to set itself up as a wow killer.
And it really kind of stepped into that early on. Sure, it felt good and kind of taking a swing at the giant and maybe setting yourself up as this scrappy underdog, but it didn't really work out in the long run. And all it did was invite... unfortunate comparisons, especially because a bulk of your game, you know, your design was so World of Warcraft-y. And yet, I think the...
Part of the game that's very mediocre would just be its story. And it's, in a way, it's visuals. They were... decent and there were moments that were good but it would almost never a standout and this game needed to be a standout um and i think if those things were corrected this game could have Could have been something amazing. It was still one of my favorites. Alas. Okay, one sec.
Just shut the door. Sorry, my whole brood came home, so you can either cut this or Merry Christmas again. There you go. As we listen to Bree, I will roll. The brood will come. I was trying to hide it, but no. it happens we were just talking about that a little while ago you know these things happen okay i got number nine how about nine scrolling down here from scott i wanted to oh this one is a hard one are you sure you want to do it i guess
You did not give me any of these in advance. I didn't. This one is hard, though. I wanted to toss a thought experiment your way. Imagine signing up for an actual university course called...
com 499 massive multiplayer online games taught at usc by douglas thomas back in 2005. this is a real thing he sent us the the website for it but you can just google for it you'll be able to find it this class apparently explored mmos from three perspectives, designer, player and critic, and then covered the online identity, game culture, ethics and how virtual worlds build community.
The coursework included firing up Star Wars galaxies and readings like Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds, the book. So here's my question. How do you think you would have approached this class back in 2005 as students living through the MMO Golden Age? What insights would this course have?
given you during star wars heyday and now with your experience as an mmo journalist how do you view star wars as a teaching tool considering its highs and lows do you think it works well as a teaching tool and if you were teaching your own master class on mmos what if anything would you do differently
I'd love to hear your take on how this course might have shaped your perspective back in the day and how its lessons might still resonate today. And would it have changed the way you write or approach MMO journalism? See what I mean? This is not an easy question. No. I have that book. This is challenging. Do you really? Yeah. Have I read it? Nah, parts. I should get that in my Kindle. I mean, I thought that was really fun.
because he picks 2005 apparently this course was run in 2005 which for those who weren't paying aren't really remembering and memorizing the stuff that was the year the nge came out so i don't know if the course came out probably before Like I'm guessing if he ran it, if Dr. Thomas ran it at the beginning of the year, 2005, 2006, the NGE would have happened in the middle of the first semester. And I can only imagine how amazing it must have been as a teacher, like to watch.
the whole meltdown like because you would have gotten to cover it live like as it was happening and like it would have completely upended your entire semester syllabus i'm kind of laughing like how hilarious that must have been because but also really cool also like a really cool teachable moment like okay so this game was a really great sandbox yes right because it would have come he would have been talking about you know
world of warcraft's impact on the sandbox and how the entire ecosystem of mmos changed in 2004 like it just didn't look the same anymore the trajectory was completely different I'm fascinated by this and I kind of wish that we knew how it actually went. Just to see what that impact from the NGE would have been.
Yeah, that's something I get a little scared of. And I'm glad that people like Bartle and Koster really spent a lot of time writing a lot of this stuff down to pass on to future generations. Because I don't really think that a lot of... a lot of people are that interested in game theory and game design and especially in the mmo field we just kind of have firsthand experience or we kind of know of of the games but we don't know the theory behind them we haven't really engaged with
that, and definitely very few people have taken any sort of courses or whatnot. And there was a period of time, and that would have been around 2005-ish, I would say 2005 to 2010, where the public's interest in MMOs had definitely spiked up enough that it was a genuine phenomenon. Suddenly millions of people were playing these games. And so, yeah, there were classes that suddenly popped up, not just about game design, but especially MMO.
design and sandboxes and theme parks and business models and all of these things that are, you know, we nibble at here on the podcast and on the website. But there are some people who were genuine experts in these things because they were the ones. making the games they were the ones who were there making the game since you know like borrow since 1980 or 1978 1979 around there oh you know back when back when i was just a little tyke so
Yeah, I think – I don't know. It would have been a very interesting class. I think it would be still – I would be fascinated to like sit at the feet of some of these designers and just listen to what they know, what they've learned. I have a feeling a lot of it would be grousing about where the state of the industry has become. But at the same time, you know.
of these developers have still stayed in in the game so to speak like they still are not just engaged playing but in making games so that it's not like they've given up on it and so there must be some things that they still do very much like or they see that's worth preserving and worth enjoying So, yeah, it would have been very interesting.
I would have wanted a class like that to be a little bit more diverse. I would have not wanted to just be Star Wars Galaxies or just be World of Warcraft. Even back in 2005, there were a lot of different interesting examples to kind of pull from. Sometimes we want to narrow it down, zero it down to a game so that you can specialize, especially if that's your speciality. And did I give you enough time to resolve the chaos? You did. Chaos has ended. Thank you.
I was running out of things to say. I'm like, crap, if she does not appear soon. But I didn't want to cut you off either. I think it would have been interesting. If I can just say it from my perspective now, the interesting thing to me here is that... Star Wars galaxies and Bartle, it's all still relevant.
Like it was relevant in 2005 and it's relevant now. And I don't think the theory has changed because people haven't really changed. We want the same things out of games. We want the same things out of experiences. We might want slight adjustments to them. But overall, you know, even like the Bardo quotient.
like that stuff is all still fairly true you might be able to like specialize and spin it out and like break it all down and make it much more distinct but like the concept of people both mostly being there for social things or most mostly being there as achievers or as killers or whatever that's all still accurate and a lot of the stuff that costa is bringing into stars reach is all
just star wars stuff and he didn't pull it out of a hat it was stuff that he had learned from ultima online like there's a progression here of like people like showing what they actually want and then developers putting it into games and then letting it spin letting the psychology
of it play out letting the social systems actually do their magic and then build better into the future that's right you don't have to reinvent the wheel if the wheel works fine just innovate and iterate and that's what a lot of these people are doing exactly
And it would be fun. I think maybe I'll dig up this course and actually look at it because I bet it's still teachable. Although I've got to know how the NGE impacted it because that must have been hilarious, but I'll stop talking about it. All right, roll them dice.
all right seven it's from respin who says i've listened to the podcast for a long time since the massively days and ever since your episode on crafting i've been wondering how you feel about more interaction from the player with the game's crafting mechanics let's say there's a spectrum starting with choose a recipe obtain the ingredients, click craft and then done. The spectrum ends with an intricate minigame or multiple.
I'm not sure, maybe multiple roles or multiple interactions. So where on this spectrum do your personal preferences lie? And as a bonus question, what game would you say has involved crafting processes without going too far?
this is a question for justin obviously yeah because you know how much he loves speciality no actually you know what ironically you are the right person to ask about this right like what would suck me into it yeah what actually would make somebody who doesn't love crafting what's too much because nothing is too much for me like you know what i mean i can't answer this question um
Yeah, I think there's some obstacles that keep me from getting involved in crafting a lot of times. The biggest one, the biggest factor that presents a problem is that... A bulk of the stuff you make with any crafting profession is not... usable by you it's not interesting to make and because you're you and thousands of other people are also producing this in bulk uh it's not really even that profitable to sell in the auction house so i go well okay you know like
kind of doing a time analysis like how much time am i going to sink into this and what am i going to get out of it how much space do i have to set apart from it a lot of times crafting is It's actually a bit of a gold sink. It's taking some money out of mine that I could just be saving up to buy the stuff I want anyway. So why am I doing this in the first place? If you can answer that question, make me genuinely want to make your stuff.
And answer, you know, make me say, this is why I want to play it. That would be good. And, you know, having tantalizing rewards is really good. He's more talking about the system of it. And so here's a thought. Why can't crafting be an ongoing process for an item? Say I want to craft a super cool new rifle that my character uses. The typical MMO...
format would be, okay, I have to have the recipe and then gather all the resources together. And then once all that happens, I can suddenly sit down and work on it.
you know in real life you don't necessarily have to have everything in place to start working on so you can have part of it so why not have like an ongoing like hey i want to start working on this rifle i only have a few parts but i can start working on it i'm crafting as i'm going and as i continue to pick up new items from different mobs or whatever i can break those down and look for components and now i can
start adding them on it makes the looting from mobs a little bit more interesting that's another thing i would love for way more crafting materials to come from combat than from oh i'm mining again oh i'm chopping a tree down again i don't want to do that again i'm already engaged in your craft your combat system tie combat into crafting and i guarantee you i'm going to show up a lot more than i would have previously um yeah if if there are more interesting rewards
end of that or if i can take an item that i've already made and then continue to modify it through crafting as i'm leveling up and so you know like this idea of like legendary weapons or whatever that you have for like a long haul like let me continue to refine a thing i made a thing i'm really proud of thing that's benefiting me but i can it can kind of grow with me through crafting That would also be kind of interesting. I don't know if I was exactly answering the angle of that question.
That's where my mind. I mean, I think that would work for a theme park where crafters as a thing are not really important, where they've decided this economy is nowhere and we don't really care about people who want to specialize in crafting. Instead, we're going to.
loop crafting into the combat street you know loop it into like what we expect everyone to be doing but that's not my preference that's all i would prefer a game where crafters exist and there's an economy that people are crafting into i do like the idea of giving more resource more resource drops to combat characters so that they also tie in like they have a reason to sell things to crafters who now have a reason to make things with those things
and sell them back you know what i mean i like those those game loops where you're constantly trading things back and forth and aren't just existing in the same game but actually you know overlap a little bit in gameplay so if i had to put myself on this um spectrum i would say i am the whole spectrum because even though i personally prefer to do really involved crafting i want to be in a game that also has really simple like dead simple crafting
ideally that's the kind of stuff that newbies can do and new players new folks in the in the economy so that they're making like easy stuff that somehow feeds into the high-end stuff that that kind of system really works really well for me it gives them a reason
to make stuff instead of just to like make it and throw it away just so they can scale up or whatever and gives me a reason to focus my time on high-end stuff because they're making the low-end stuff as they're leveling up as long as the game always has people leveling up that works so well and i really prefer it that way but not every game is gonna do that but that's just me we could do another crafting episode sometime but i think justin would kill me
We haven't done a theme episode in a while. I have a whole list. Two different people sent me lists. Oh, we need to get back to that in 2025. We can pick a couple out and tackle them. Remind me, because maybe it's just a memory thing. I just kind of forget we should do those. Roll the dice. All right, here we go again. And we're bumping up one to eight.
Jimmy says, I was only really hooked on two MMOs, Earth and Beyond and Lotro. I've tried others like Black Desert, WoW, Guild Wars 2, Secret World, Elder Scrolls Online, but nothing has really hooked me. I've played a ton of Lotro for years. I had Altidus where I had every class.
and crafting profession covered, and I tried to level them up simultaneously. In retrospect, that probably caused burnout in addition to my job. And I think when I stopped Lotro, I'd maxed out at a... level cap of 75 on my main so that dates it right on his guardian and captain and the crafting alts were at 50 ish now both of you guys are such fans of lotro i'm hoping you can help me figure out how to get back to the game now i still re-watched the lord of the rings
trilogy the extended version of course and i love the world but every recent attempt to get back into the game has failed me too many changes legendary items skills class traits that i find it overwhelming to relearn and justin often talks about he could just start a new tune and how much fun it is for him
But my attempts were always trying to pick it up where I left off and not start from scratch. Help, what do I do? Let's save Jimmy here. Let's make him a hobbit again. Yeah, Lotro's not... the the best when you come back to a character that you've abandoned for a while no i've done it and i've done it successfully my main character that is on landerville that i'm in the current expansion so level 150 that was a character that i had to ban
for probably eight, nine months. And for me, that was a long time. So coming back to that character suddenly in the middle of... gondor and i'm like what was i doing i have no idea my inventory is so full i had to spend it was around the time of the legendary item uh revamp that they did so i had to relearn that whole system and really for that i was just like oh
okay, I'm just going to watch some videos and find somebody who can kind of break it down and explain it very simply to me. And once I figured it out, it's not that complicated. It really is not, but it's not well explained in the game. um that's ssg's fault not your fault yeah um so They really did need to make it either super more intuitive or something that's much better explained. Like, don't just give me a one-off. Here's a document. Have fun reading it.
If I have to go to somebody's website to figure out how to play your game, you've failed in some capacity. I would say if you are coming back after a super long break and you're kind of torn between the idea of starting over and...
playing your character again, your old favorite character, and kind of picking up that journey, I would say let's do a little bit of both. Do this. Just commit yourself for, say... a couple weeks maybe up to a month of just playing a brand new character to get your sea legs your game legs back start over it's not complete you know that's as less complicated as you're ever going to get because you don't have all the baggage well unless you have tons of
you know startup stuff but you don't you don't have all you know all the the craft and stuff that's built up over time you can just start fresh you won't even have to worry about legendaries because those don't kick in until level 50 ish and you can just enjoy the game kind of i think that's
the most important thing is just to kind of fall back in love with the game again find out what you really liked about it whatever really intrigued you find a really good guild and then after that point you can decide Do I want to kind of keep this journey going with this character or am I confident enough that I can kind of go back?
be patient enough to figure out, you know, untangle all of whatever my character was doing and where I need to go, and then just kind of pick that back up again. I can tell you it's possible. It's entirely possible. You just have to kind of...
push yourself past some personal frustration and maybe a few nights of going, I'm in over my head. I have no idea what's going on, but it gets better. It does. And you figure it out and then you're back on the journey path again. That's what they want you to do.
there's these quests that kind of lead you down this path follow the main epic story and you'll get to where you want to go I would kind of put some guardrails on yourself if you know that you know you have some tendencies to burn out because you go overboard in terms of alts or crafting or whatever maybe maybe limit yourself or maybe try a little bit of a more casual laid back
I don't know, you know, like whatever you think would just give you the best opportunity for future success. And sometimes that comes with going. I'm not going to roll 100 characters and try to do all the things. I'm just going to kind of read the quest text and do whatever I want. And maybe, yeah, crafting a little bit here or there.
I don't know. You have to find a better balance if the previous balance didn't work out for you. Yeah. Do what Justin said. I pretty much did what Justin said. I don't know if you told me to do this, but when I went back, it's been a couple of years.
first year of covid i guess is when i went back when they gave away all that stuff and then they did the big midsummer wedding stuff and i was like oh yeah i've got to go see the wedding and then i was playing on a bard who literally was dressed in like nothing because all of her jmail didn't work anymore because that's how long it had been since i played and i could not figure out how to get back into that character so i just played on all i had a little
level 20 hunter sitting around and i was like okay well i guess i'll play her i i'm sure it'll be easy hunters are easy to get back into right it's just pew pew
And now that Hunter is in her 130s, like that's the character I ended up sticking with. And then I've played a ton of vaults along the way too. But having like a new character, a new-ish character that... could kind of go through the newbie stuff really really was so much better than trying to make an old character work there's been so many changes that i'm really glad i didn't do that my poor mini is still sitting there she's like what
80 or something she's not very high but you got this you can do this jimmy come back Yeah, it's really disheartening when they do a class revamp. And so now you've not only got to figure out where you were, but you've got to relearn your entire class. Bring back my chain mail. Okay. Roll again. All right. All right. I can't believe we haven't had any oops yet. We have. I just haven't. Oh, you're not telling me. All right. Six.
Six is from Chris. What game have you taken the most screenshots of? For me, it's City of Heroes Homecoming. As you both know, character customization is awesome considering when it was made and the Homecoming team has done amazing work with this old engine, adding all kinds of stuff and customizable power.
facts i may need to buy a bigger hard drive between the cool stuff i find soloing and how many in the many many costume contests i actually looked this up before yeah we came well i did my best i've got like a big hard drive full of like unsorted things like everything is sorted into a game bin but i've never gone back through them unless justin's like i need a picture for one shot and then i go into
But right now, Guild Wars 2 is winning. Believe it or not, Guild Wars 2, I had 2,000 unsorted pictures in there, and that topped all the other games. But if you had asked me like 10 years ago, it would have been wow. by thousands for some reason i have more pictures of freaking wow it's not even the prettiest game ever especially 10 years ago but i just had a lot but it's been surpassed what can i tell you i can tell you my top four
Yeah? Yeah, because I actually have proof here. So on my blog, Biobreak, biobreak.wordpress.com. Yeah, I've been blogging about my MMO journey since 2008. So it's been a couple days there. And I, you know, of course, all these games are in different categories. So I can track which games I've covered the most and I can maybe make... a guess about how many most of these posts these days I take multiple screenshots and they'll go into one post and kind of just
do a little photo journal of where I am and some random thoughts and probably nothing too deep, but it's kind of fun to go back and look at where I was playing. So the one that I probably done the most is Lord of the Rings Online.
written to date 749 blog posts on my personal blog in addition to whatever i've done over at mass play uh world of warcraft would be number two at 549 number three would be star wars the old republic at 343 because i did a lot of those um that was there was several years back in the early 2010s where i was just playing swotor like crazy and number four
The Secret World. Oh, I wouldn't have guessed that one. Yeah, because I went back through the game a couple times and I made a point of doing... like every single quest in the game and doing one post per quest because these were a little bit more involved and i would do multiple screenshots per post so i just kind of wanted to create that for posterity and i did And I was happy to do it. Guild Wars, by the way, would be number five. That would be Guild Wars one and two combined. I see. At 288.
that's cool yeah it's kind of fun to look back then i've got rift ddo wild star star trek online champions on champions online 153 posts on that one fall on earth final fantasy there you go that's like my top 10 Roll, roll, roll. Oh, yeah, yeah, I do this one. And we've got, did I, we just do six? We did six, well, six, seven, and eight, and nine are all gone. Eleven.
11. Dylan says, I was curious if any MMO has brought you guys back thanks to a ruleset change server or a challenge run that has been popularized by the community. I found a new appreciation for Black Desert thanks to the relatively new popularity of an Iron Man challenge, much like how an iron man works in runescape the goal of having to be entirely self-sufficient without the benefits of freebie gear and materials has led to my experiencing the game in a whole new way i don't i mean
by the community is the hard caveat there right it has to be community didn't you do this for for wild classic at one point i swear you did this to what they they came up with like they had a plug-in and everything
Oh, the hardcore? Was it the hardcore thing? That's a really good example. I'm going to steal your example because I don't think I've done this. This year has been the year of like... fresh start servers and the the siren call to come back to them for me it's been yeah i mean it's been a lot of fun it's been a tremendous amount of fun but
At the same time, it kind of throws a wrench into my current plans because the second this happens, I go, you know, if it's MMO, I love the call for a fresh start. It's so strong and it's so fun and I want to be there on day one. So Lord of the Rings Online had the new 64-bit servers earlier. I think it was in the summer.
And so that was really exciting to get to do a progression server there again. It had been at least two years since the last time they rolled one out. And I had kind of gotten off of that train a while back. And I'm like, oh, I want to do it again. Didn't really care so much for it. though.
the weird like veil of the nine mechanic that they're doing but the actual just you know being with the community and progressing together that was a huge huge thing and so it was a lot of fun it's been a lot of fun going through that but then there is uh ddo did the same thing um a couple months ago when they had the 64-bit brand new server came out and i'm like i haven't played ddo in so long it's been two years literally two years since i played ddo
So I'm like, I convinced myself over the course of a week, this was going to be like my secondary game. I was going to get back into a hardcore brand new server. I was really hyped just to play through all of DDO's quests again.
And I played like three days and I went... my whole brain went yeah you're not ready to come back and so that was a little disappointing and then of course you know like a couple weeks later world of warcraft is like hey you want some fresh start servers on the classic um yeah i would very much so thank you very much i will
uh definitely this will have no impact whatsoever on my life and now of course it's all i'm playing so yeah those i mean those those are cool things in fact i was just thinking about i was playing star wars earlier today and thinking oh man i've often wished that SWTOR would do a fresh start server for the general community. The closest we've gotten was they did an Oceanic server. Was it a year ago? It was this year. That was earlier this year. I know it doesn't feel like it, but... It's...
I thought it was late last year, but yeah, in any case, that was cool if you wanted to start over, but at the same time, you had to contend with ping and everything like that. But also, when they launched it, it was not a progression server. It was just a...
Here's everything all at once. And I think SWTOR would be perfect for a progression style server. I don't know if that's anything Broadsword ever wants to consider, but... who knows you know i think these kind of gimmicks maybe maybe have like a short return on investment but uh that return can be pretty powerful you can get players back in your game you get the spotlight back on your game there's that day um i remember
remember when the very first lotro progression server came out back in 2018 and they came out and of course we're all excited about it and it was so bizarre because suddenly the mainstream gaming media such as it was was talking about lotro again and it busted all the way to the front page of twitch and so like seeing lotro on the front page of twitch was bizarre and it was awesome Of course, that was such a short run in terms of popularity, but it's proven to be a...
a good model for some of these games especially legacy mmos and just coming up with alternate rule sets and giving us a good reason to go again especially if we I hate that feeling of feeling behind a community that's already trotted ahead or a server that's been established, an economy that's been established for a very long time. Sometimes it's kind of hard to break into that.
Yeah, I don't super love them myself, but I like them for other people and I like them for the game's health. Does that make sense? Like, I'm really glad they exist. I think some people just need this novelty and it really can be such a big boost for the game. But I guess personally, I mean, I'm thinking about it and I just...
i guess i personally find them too gimmicky to they'd always feel temporary and i don't really want to play a temporary mmo so that's probably just a me thing the only real exception is like diablo 3 which is not really an mmo you know what i mean i remember going back for their like specialty seasons and stuff yeah but for the most part i don't really want to do it now if locho came out with one that was tailored for me maybe i would i would change my mind but
Maybe not. I don't know. The only way you can level up is by crafting. You'll never leave your field in the Shire. That's actually, I would probably do that. Not going to lie. All right, roll again. All right. We're doing great here, by the way. We actually are. Let's pat ourselves on the back. Number 10. 10. Oh, this is a long one. It's from Barnaby Magic, which, by the way, is the most amazing Dickensian name I have ever heard.
uh barnaby yeah he says an issue i've always had when i oh i remember this one now because when this one landed in our inbox like half of our team like replied to it because everybody wanted to talk about this
he says an issue i've always had when i tried to return to an mmo the biggest stumbling block is a full freaking inventory i have no idea what's junk and i can't play the game until i've sorted my bags out examples of mmos this has happened time and a time again for me are guild wars 2 and low track
Low Tro I've solved by spending points, because I'm an old lifetime subber, on carryalls, but carryalls only hide the problem. The junk's still using up all carryall space that I want for new stuff. In Guild Wars 2, I log in, my inbox immediately is full of stuff from Rainniverse.
Bags bank are full. Gah. Mental overload. Log out. Now, I could ditch everything, but I worry the grey doodad is now a no longer obtainable thingy that will make me rich or a boar leg from level four I didn't eat because I'll need it later. Who knows? It's now needed for an
achievement for eating all the boar food. I could start an alt, but I'll have alts already in the game, and what I need when I retry an old game is to quickly fall in love again, and the nostalgia of existing characters is a big part of that for me. I don't want to play blank slate the dwarf.
I want to play patiently waiting the dwarf I made launch day and I have fond memories of. How do you guys overcome this problem? Why not give players who return... Wait, is that me? I can't remember who wrote this.
I'm going to read it anyway. Why not get players who return after so much time an unlimited old stuff storage area that contains everything that you used to have in your bags and bank and clean them, clean them out except for the essentials. Make it retrieve only so you can't put stuff into it. No decay. Then you can lock.
Log in, have clean bags, and are able to play the game doing new stuff without bag chores. Clean junk later once it's worth your effort and you've learned what to keep. I think that was all Barnaby. So that's what I mean everybody in our in our team email was like, oh my god, that's so me I'm right there with you, bro Like it was really funny when this when this rolled in because I know this happens to everybody and these are two perfect games that have this major problem
Especially Lotro. See, I never get the complaint about Lotro, and I would really love to have somebody explain it to me, because my bags are never full. I sell almost all the crap I get, and all the questing items are just... They're not actually in my bag unless you're like a free-to-play player. Maybe they are in that case. Yeah, that would be a problem.
And if you're a crafter, yes, you're going to be picking up a ton of stuff and that's going to be more inventory management. But for me, the stuff I keep are like a few consumables and some housing items before I... you know go over to my house and put them in there and maybe a couple items that are kind of fun to play around with and some i don't know maybe some essences and stuff for my legendary item that's it and the task items
Yeah, but I don't do Taz. I just do the quests. So I'm just curious to people, like your play style, if that really informs how overloaded your inventory gets. I will say like my... pet peeve and lotros inventory isn't like my personal one it would be housing and wardrobe which tend to fill out really quickly and paying for new space is very expensive and that's you know a whole free to play
monetization issue that I have with them but the idea of yeah it is you know in any case coming back to a game and having like this weird stuff to burden some inventory And not, you know, your first instinct is, you know, to clear it out. Right. And really, that's what you should have done before you left. If you know that you're leaving a game. How dare you?
Yeah, I know. If you know you're leaving a game for a while, tidy up and maybe even write yourself a couple notes. We don't often have the foresight to do that because often when we log out of a game for the last time for a while, we don't realize that.
that was right that was the last time um and and usually we don't want to go back in the next week because we burned out we're just like forget it i'm never playing that game ever again and yeah you know six months later you're like okay i'm back um but Yeah, if you can tidy up your inventory, that's one of the best things to do. If you don't, you come back and there's that anxiety of...
okay, I could sell all this stuff, but are some of these tied to quests? That's really important. And if so, how much do I need to keep for that?
you know have any systems changed because if some of these systems have changed maybe these things that was holding on to i can pull guild wars 2 out as an example because there are some of those maps that have like um those i forget what they call them like those keys that you would get in those desert maps scraps and then there's the little bits yeah i'm like what do i hold on to i throw them in my bank but then my bank gets overflowing and i'm like well i'm never
I guess I could take some time and research all this stuff, but probably the answer is I don't need it. It's not really going to do anything for me. I should probably just get rid of it. Some games are just... it's their fault the developers throw you way too much stuff that does not matter and they they overflow the loot tables with tons of stuff so that you feel like you're winning and you're getting tons and tons of cool stuff but really it's very little
Yes. You know, Lotro, yeah, it's annoying because whenever I... go and sell all my bags i realized most everything in my bag is just like task items or some something to do with crafting very little of it is you know like i picked up random bits of gear or weapons along the way because i always check those out in case there's a cosmetic variant. But...
That's such a Justin thing. I knew the same thing. I'm not really laughing at you. That's the only thing I would be interested that would ever drop from a mob. There's no other loot in that game that drops from mobs that I'm interested in. There's just not. That's how you're avoiding it. Because you don't do crafting, you don't do tasks. That's like 90% of the drops.
Guild Wars 2, you know, I used to get excited running, like, those world quests and stuff, and you get the chests, and they would, like, vomit up all these items, and you were like, I won big! And the game's like, no, you didn't. You won a lot of nothing. And you break some of it.
as crafting materials and maybe you know because you don't craft you'll sell them on the trading post but yeah i would like to see i i think it would be great if games would let you annotate um items in your inventory um i just just in case you picked up a weird random item and you have you're like oh i'll totally forget what this is for and i want to remind myself down the road you're holding on to this because at level 80 there's going to be a special quest and you know you're going to want it
I really like that. Better yet, the game should just tell you that in the tooltip. Or better tooltips, yeah. yeah those are those are two games that i definitely i don't have as many problems with guild wars 2 as i used to since they switched that it was a path of fire when they finally made all of the
The drops, like, they stack so much better than they used to. And you can hit one button and it sends a lot of it to your bank. I appreciate that one that they've always had. But it definitely happens to me all the time in Lotro. I would not be able to survive without, like, five million carryalls.
Oh, I know I'm paying Lotro to stop annoying me. Russian nesting doll. Yes. I'm well aware that they don't really deserve this, but it's fine. I'm kind of over it. But it's definitely a problem for people who are coming back and the spray of...
oh my gosh your inventory when you make a new character it's just there's not enough bag space in the world for all the crap they're about to give you so you just have to not use it or know exactly which ones to unlock that's so annoying it's annoying for returning players i love his idea
of like a i don't know what you call it kind of like an escrow kind of thing you know okay yeah where you could just have all that stuff dump in and trust fund for your inventory we'll give it back to you when you're 18 but you know even as someone like me i love inventory management i consider that a fun mini game that most people hate but i like it i like organizing things
And it even annoys me. So I know it annoys normal people so much more and they should just fix it. There are ways around this and they're just, they're making it worse. Stop it. Stop making it worse. It's a good question. We have time? What are we going to do? Are we done? I think we should probably call it a day. We got to as many as we possibly could. I thought we did pretty good here. We didn't answer. One from Pantagruel, four from Quark1020, five from Scott.
We got nine done. That's pretty good. Yeah, there are four we didn't do, plus the two I'm holding specifically. There's one from Joe and one from Lancelot that I'm holding for the round tables. Right on. Well, that was our mailbag show. Hopefully you got, it was fun to just explore some of these topics and maybe.
Hopefully we did to some of your satisfaction. It was just kind of fun talking about the things that interest you guys. And again, it doesn't have to end. We continue to do the mailbag on every show. So send us in those mailbag questions and topics.
The show notes have a link right to it. I will say that you're going to have to be a little bit patient because we've got a round table coming up that we're not going to be doing mailbag for. But, you know, once we get into January proper, we will be getting back to our normal.
show format and we'll be touching upon some of these other ones that we didn't get to today or that are forthcoming so again thank you to everybody who we did um talk about and um i think you guys had some excellent questions you're deep thinkers on mmo topics and that's cool so you weren't just like what's your favorite color of swords and fireballs dude somebody literally sent us classwork from 20 freaking years ago. That is some serious business questions right there.
That was good stuff. If you guys want to continue the conversation in the comments, we're not going to stop you. Pick up on some of the questions that were really, the topics that were really of interest to you. And while you listen to us, you go like, oh, I have something to say about that. Well, we're not going to stop you.
peace and feel better about it. In the meantime, that's about it. Here, we're closing. We're putting a cap on 2024. That is it here for the Massively OP Podcast. 499 episodes and counting.