Welcome back to the generic version of Star Wars, a.k.a. The Massively OP Podcast. episode 512 and yes um justin i am a little too short to be a stormtrooper and with me so that's fair but a little bit taller than the ewoks so you know Averaging out. I think that might be able to take me. I don't know.
And the Ewoks did kind of stomp all over the stormtrooper. You're right. I was actually exactly Carrie Fisher's height, and I didn't see any Ewoks taller than she was. So you're right. Ewoks have got us beat. You remember at the end of the original Jedi when the Ewoks are playing the bongos on the Stormtrooper helmets? I always imagine that there's still heads inside of those. It makes it so much more macabre.
Yeah, they could have done a lot more with the Ewoks, but no, they had to be childish. And the Ewoks were ready to eat Han Solo. Yeah, no, they totally were. I don't think that makes them cannibals, but, you know, not exactly your Martha's... Well, I guess Martha's... stewart i don't know anyways taking a turn we are all right we're not even at the two minute mark and we're already down into the depths of cannibalism and and uh all sorts of shenanigans here but
We'll pull ourselves out. We usually do. We will pull this nosedive of an intro and we'll turn it around and talk about MMORPGs for the next hour. We've got so much news. New games we've got to talk about. Plural. plural people kickstarters and what's going on with all of your money that you're just thrown away like you you're
Just going on a spending spree, but you're throwing it away to imaginary future games that hopefully will be amazing. We've got some other really interesting news. Patches. Let's talk about patches. Let's talk about Dun Dun Dun. Sunset set. probably don't affect you but uh you know we never know
So we got all this and coming in so much more on the Massively OP podcast. But before that, the question has been burning on your mind all week long. You're waking hours, you're sleeping hours, gnawing on your fingertips going, what is. replaying at this very moment. I hope no one cares. Honestly, it would make me feel so much better if absolutely nobody cares what I'm playing. That would...
You don't understand. I don't want to. Don't pay attention to me. Wait, wait, wait. Luke Skywalker. I care. No, I've been playing Lotro still. I'm having fun. I know we got some letters over the weekend that said that Lotro was just absolutely unplayable, but I don't have the best computer or connection, and it's very playable. I've been playing it a lot. I haven't seen any problems.
at least i'm pippin but it's it's a little laggy like but it was a little laggy before so like at least i'm not crashing anymore i was like every five minutes for a while there yeah it's at least a lateral move with like you know over a thousand people it was like over to 1200 1300 people last night just in the non like you know how you can like anonymize yourself that's just people who weren't
Putting Anon on. So we don't really know how many people were actually Anon on the server. That's huge! I can't believe a server can actually handle that many people. Yeah, I think they talked about how it's like the old servers could handle 1,200 at their best and the new servers are at least 2,400 now. At least, yeah. And so that's cool. Like for Lotro.
It makes it feel more packed and more busy, and World Chat is certainly hopping. I'm about to turn off World Chat. It keeps getting worse, and people are doing it on purpose at this point, and now there's been infighting between... Glammy and Peregrine. I don't know how your servers are handling this, but now there's like these rivalries, so there's lots of, you know. It's basically Thanksgiving dinner, just extended.
The whole thing is very dumb. Family numbers coming together. And then, of course, this week's going to get even more insane with the housing. Yeah, people are already trolling. Like, people will ask, like, when's the housing? So there's, like, people who will have, like, a whole script that they'll post, like, complete with color.
coding and other people are lying about it like trolling them on purpose trying to get people to like not show up at the right times i guess to leave more houses for the rest of us it's it's not going to go i know we're going to talk about this later so no let's talk about now we might as well roll it in yeah
Yeah, they're kind of staggering the releases of the housing system. This is on the new 64-bit servers, if you're wondering what the heck we're talking about, by the way. Yeah, so they're staggering it out over the course of the week. They were going to have them on like day.
one and then the transfers were so bad they're like how about day 30 you know right and actually day 30 and then 31 and then 32 and then 30 so depending on the type of house you want the neighborhood it's going to up at different times this week and the server like everything is staggered so like today i think like the very first one is the european one
right they're going first right because they were trying to hit their prime time so they may have already started for us like the first one is tonight at like six ish for if you want belferless housing if you don't then don't even bother don't like don't even stress it you're not on yet or maybe you want to log in and see how it goes i want to log in and see like how many people are piled up at the door like what the best technique for getting the exact house
in the exact neighborhood you want is, or whether it's even going to be a big deal at all if people are making a mountain out of a mole. It might not be. I've never actually seen a land rush in this game. Yeah? Yeah, I mean, even on new servers, people have been pretty chill.
about it i think they're less chill now the most tension i've seen is because some people want like specific kin halls or yeah yeah the really fast and like the geode house and the water the very expensive houses yeah right those will go fast because people want them for prestige but then again like
ssg has said like we can just keep respawning like spawning new neighborhoods so it's not like final fantasy 14 where they just run out at some point so right i'm not sweating it too much um i'm still gonna show up at the right time yeah sure i'm not gonna wait i'm not leaving it to chance that's for sure because i don't want to end up in a neighborhood that has a dumb name i'm gonna be honest i want exactly a house and i want it in it doesn't have to be i don't think i've ever once noticed
the neighborhood name was some of them are really dumb but hey you do you that's fine so what were you doing anyway yes i've been playing my minstrel and i've been working my way through i guess like
lower Rohan. I don't even know what to call it. Rohan is so confusing. It is like Rohan makes minds of moria look organized rohan is like this massive landmass tons of maps and they're all like overlapping and you know how in like older parts of the game and even some newer parts of the game like the zone boundaries are like really
condensed like you know where the crossing is right that's where you're crossing rohan is not like that it's like the whole map like just bleeds over into the next map so like you'll be fighting and suddenly you're like oh i'm not even in the right zone anymore and i didn't even know it looks the same and trying to figure out which ones go where and like you're clicking through the maps going I don't know where the heck I am. This keeps happening to me.
So I went back and I look, and I've now made it through the Wald, and I've made it through Norcrofts, and now I am in toward the end of Entwash. Entwash? Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. Okay, so that's where I am, and I finished up climbing... yesterday and i i guess i'm heading to sudcroft's next i'm not 100 sure like how like where i'm going no actually that's not true because they sent me northy
they sent me north to some other place where the king is like wandering around in the wilderness and their whole town is gone so i'm in entwash right i guess cliving was at the top of norcroft see what i mean this is confusing there's so many little zones and they're sending you all over and I am doing my best. You know what it's like? Yeah. What? I can't think of a single game like this. It's like back before they had GPS and you'd have to buy those books.
of maps you're like which which state are we in oh no which part of the state are we in because really good well i still i still buy a road atlas and keep it do you really dude i lived in new mexico for a long time before gps was fully online and if you didn't have a roadmap, you were getting lost. 100%. Fair enough.
There were places where there was no phone reception. There was no, you know, what's 3G? What's 2G? That's not a thing. We followed the North Star. You were in the wilderness and the back roads were like, you know, unpaved. and unmarked and you needed to figure out where the heck you were you needed that but anyway sorry
I think it's an important skill. Everyone should know how to use a roadmap because sometimes your GPS or your phone might be dead. And it's amazing to me how many people can't do this, especially like Gen Alpha. They have no idea how to actually function with a map. It just seems like... An important life survival skill to me.
Anyway, totally unrelated. Lord of the Rings Online. Speaking of not being able to figure her way out on a video game map, I find it very confusing, but I am working my way through it. I think I made it to 82 last night. Nice.
interesting because i haven't done these maps like i remember bringing my hunter through and i remember kind of skipping past most of it because she was leveling so fast and i was just kind of en route to the next high you know a spot that would actually give me good level and i remember coming back to what must have been the world because i think that's where i was i got my mounted your um comet mount what do you call it
Is that right? Yeah, you're a war horse. So I had to backtrack because I didn't know that skipping that was a big mistake. But then I remember skipping all of this. So I think I did climbing and I don't remember any of the rest of this. So really, this is new to me. This is fun. I did do...
Rohan stuff later like I know I did like all of Edoras and all of that stuff but I don't know where exactly I stopped so I don't even think I've done Sudcroft so that's going to be a treat because as I understand it that was like the like the end point for that I don't know if it was an expansion or a patch, but there was like a big grind there. I've kind of been digging around trying to figure out.
yeah hit ball that okay that that's the one there was like a big grind there for rebuilding it right yeah and there's some nice rewards if you want to do that i'm not gonna do that but It was nice to kind of like mentally truncated in my head. So like, oh, OK, this was the spot. And then then you move on to the next expansion slash patch. So that's what I am working on. I also got my lore master up to speed last night. I sat down and I like did.
bunch of research i haven't actually played her like seriously and so she needed a new spec you know they redid lore masters was that last year
I can't even remember now when it was. It might have been the year before. I wasn't playing a lot at the time, so I didn't really worry about it. And when I was playing, I wasn't playing her. Now I want to come back and kind of try her out again. And so I respect Redline. I don't know if it's going to go well because it doesn't have pets anymore, right? It just has. like hotkey pets where they just pop out like briefly i guess i haven't gotten to use it yet
So that's my next, I'm going to work on that this week. I just want to test it out, see if that's still functional for me or if I just hate it and I end up just not playing her anymore, which would suck. And I got a bunch of... crafting done, actually. I did a bunch of farming. I haven't done any farming since I've come back this time, so this was my first...
crack at actually getting all of the Gundabad farming taken care of on both my farmers and also my cooking. I hate Gundabad cooking. It sucks. And you suck, SSG.
putting it in that way but that's all i'm glad you said ssg there i was like sorry no it's like everything it they made everything very drop based which is very unusual for the system in the game so like there's a core like goat shanks fish pairs of fish fillets or something like that or with their crab legs and they all like drop in um like i guess in um bar did i say gundabad i meant umbar
Whatever, you guys knew what I meant. The last tier, whatever the current tier is, I think it's 15 or 16, whatever that is. But all of that stuff has dropped, so I'm just having to buy it off the auction hall, which sucks. It's just, I don't like that. What would you else want?
what i want to see is i want i like the way the early game crafting is set up right where it's easy to level but like to make really good stuff that requires drops like shards or something right or recipes i love that system actually i think it's really good and it allows people to
engage in the crafting system without necessarily engaging in anything else. But it also means that if you really want to be good at it and you want to make money off of it, you're going to need to put in extra work or spend extra money. I just feel like that's a good tiering system. This I was disappointed to see this. I hope it's not all like that. But at least crab legs are not that expensive. I'm just grumpy. Don't mind me. I do those skills for like fun and like.
you know, outfitting my characters and like very lightly making a little money here and there just because it's nice to be able to make money off of something you actually enjoy. So I kind of, I was annoyed seeing it change so dramatically, but. Anyway, I guess you're right. It's not really all that different. Like, Loveling Scholar requires all kinds of drops. Like, so it's not the end of the world. I'm just kind of grumpy. Anyhow, I had fun, actually, for all I'm grumping now. I think...
I'm having a lovely time back, honestly. It's been a very cozy feeling, and I really needed that this quarter, this spring. How about you? Yeah, I mean, I kind of feel you because I've been...
poking around at trying to work on some of my older engineering tiers in World of Warcraft. And that does require me to go back to... previous expansions unless i want to drop a small fortune on the auction house and i do not want to do that so just you know kind of going back and like i'm gonna be the only person in nagran for the next week because who the heck is in outland right now
So actually that's pretty good because I'm not... stressing out not that you know we you know compete for nodes anymore but um no uh wow is actually it's gone well i i got a bit of um undermine questing in the other day was the story continues to be good they actually had a a segment of it that sent me for whatever reason back to battle for azeroth like one of the maps i'm like well at least you're reusing the maps that's not a bad thing like why not right And I continue to dig the...
Just the whole goblin thing. Like, just the high-tech, but also the explosions and the lack of refinement, the Mad Max-ian style world, the glitz, the New Jersey accents. Everything just kind of works. me it's it's weird but it's fun and um i'm liking it i i did push the uh the new car system to the side i don't really want to mess with it anymore it was fine but
You know, it's the same thing with like the sky riding or the dragon flying when they added it. It's like, no, I just would rather have 100% full control rather than just having an out of control vehicle that's going super fast. don't like that on the highway i don't like that in my video games so that's what i'm gonna concentrate on but probably most of my time is spent in uh low trail actually Really good week, like a lot of progress. I got my Mariner up to level 50. Wow.
Yeah. You're going to Moria. I'm in Moria. Oh, okay. I'm in the deep descent right now. Okay. I'm killing bugs left and right, taking pictures, having fun. Yeah, it's not bad. I thought I'd have to take a look.
a lot more steps to to gear up and stuff but no i mean the early quests gear you up pretty well so i didn't even have to sweat that too much and just kind of going through all the quest lines and revisiting some really old places that i haven't been in a long time so that's kind of fun not a rush still experimenting with my build still tinkering around trying out some different stuff it's just a new class you kind of kind of have to feel out like what's the best for you so
I'm still kind of experimenting with that. But in any case, it's yeah. Nothing too extraordinary in terms of either game, but having a good time and doing a lot of delves in World of Warcraft. I feel like there's a list in the making, some of them that are much better than others. way more enjoyable. The newest one that they made was Side Street Sluice and that is...
An awesome Delve. It is nice and compact, so there's not a lot of travel. It really reminds me of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sewer set. You know, here's your play set. And you're just, you know, so you got your green slime and you got your ladders and you're just kind of going to different tiers. And it's a little bit of combat, but it's nothing too out of control. And I don't know. I just dig it every time I go there.
And because of the whole goblin theme, one of them had me fighting a gold golem. A gold elemental that they had summoned up. And it was just all these gold coins that had formed a big Scrooge McDuck gold abomination thing. And it was kind of fun to fight that. How many doves are there now? Yeah.
Enough for a top 10? Yeah. There's about three per zone. Look forward to it, friends. Three or four per zone, and there's been four zones plus this one. So, yeah, there's probably only 10. I don't know how I'd... Yeah, the ranking's tricky because it depends on what rule set. You just randomize it because then you're going to piss people off no matter what you say. It's more like the theme because they could take the same delve and they can do different rules with it.
change how you progress through it i see my favorite there's one where it's one of the the fungi delves and you have to eat this mushroom of course and it's suddenly you're following around a pink elephant that's giving you instructions and it's like you're hallucinating but you're fighting through a whole hallucination the entire time it's awesome it just The humor level on it is really good. So I like that.
Alright, but you don't want to hear about my random hallucinations eating fungi. No! I kind of do, actually. I want to hear about Alice in Wonderland in World of Warcraft. Eat me! Ah, before that meant other things. All right. Well, let's start. Exactly. You want to make a new MMO. You want to set your new MMO apart from the rest of the crowd. How do you do it? Well, you take a dart and you throw it at a board with a whole bunch of different.
different concepts throw three darts see where they land jam it all together your mmo is unique and apparently for craig morrison formerly of world of warcraft and blizzard and fun and funcom yeah there's that little company too branched out on his own started a new studio and uh through three darts and landed on cozy gaming okay we're off to a good start uh murder mystery Okay. And horsies. And just said, yep.
that's the mix we're going with and now we know we actually knew this was happening this is a project we just didn't have the actual title the full reveal we got that this past week and craig morrison's company revealed by the way their studio is Blue Scarab Studio. And they revealed that this game is going to be called Equinox Homecoming. Which also feels like two random words just jammed together. Yeah, I don't like the name.
I don't either. I mean, I don't hate the name. It doesn't mean anything to me. Equine Homecoming would mean more than Equinox. Oh, see, now that actually makes sense. Do you think that's what they're trying to go for? Maybe, actually.
i don't know that's now that now that you point that out that actually but i still don't like it i love chris's article on this because he ends it he says dial e for equine and m for murder and i'm like yep equine murder that that would be good too yeah so it's this is different and it's you know that's not actually a bad thing i'm i like it when
games and books and movies and stuff just swing for the fences i feel like everybody plays it way too safe these days and especially in the mmo field where risk you know it's so risk adverse we gotta copy the leader. Now we're seeing people, you know, willing to take a bit more risk and seeing what happens. I don't think anybody knows what to make of this, Bree. Good. I don't know what to make of this.
because these just seem like completely disparate tastes like cozy gaming that's the thing they yeah there's like a whole like genre of books and tv about like young adult you know Horse girls solving crimes. That's like a thing. Spirit. And yeah, there's a good example, right? But there's like tons more. I know because my daughter has brought some of this stuff home and most of it is probably too old for her. It's definitely young adult stuff. Horses and mysteries. Yeah.
You know, it's overlap. It's something that girls are into. And I don't just mean girls. We're saying horse girls, but I know boys are into horses too. Let's not kid ourselves. You guys have seen the equine, the equestrian events at the Olympics. Mostly men. So let's not kid ourselves. Horse boys, horse girls, we're all here. Have you ever seen that episode of Bob's Burgers, the equestronauts?
No, I haven't seen. It is a brilliant parody of My Little Pony and the whole adult fan following of My Little Pony. And the prodies are awesome. Like, it's the most wholesome thing I can imagine. It is, but at the same time. same time they kind of make the point like it's also scared away a lot of teen girls and younger people because suddenly adults come and we're like this is not ours okay but explain what is what is this game what are we looking at here i i mean
I think they're taking it seriously. If you guys looked down in our comments, Eleni actually linked to the main quest. And if you guys have ever played any horse games, you know about the main quest, right? There's a, it's a whole blog where she does nothing but like. deep dive horse games and like really critique them because she's like a hardcore her hardcore horse girl and i've stumbled into this website ages ago because of the sims because she was like critiquing the this um
What is it called? I forgot what it's called. There's a horse expansion. Horse Ranch. Horse Ranch? maybe i can't remember what it's called anyway i i have it and i read her review and i wanted to see if it was worth it and she likes it she likes some part doesn't like some parts honestly i don't really think it was that great in expansion like the horses are really cool but like nothing else about it is that cool it's actually kind of disappointing so
kind of wanted to hear her opinion on this and Eleni kindly mentioned that she has done a whole like deep dive in this because she's been playing and one of the things she said was that their goal here is to make a serious horse girl game to make a serious attempt at making an online horses game as opposed to one that's just like kind of half-baked and really just meant to monetize kids this is meant for adults this is not actually meant for children
right this is meant for adults maybe maybe even like younger Younger adults maybe would be the right way of phrasing it. People who grew up loving horses but not really having a place to go after the likes of Star Stable. Or younger adults who are super into true crime stuff and are really interested in crossing over those hobbies.
That's the gist that I'm getting out of this because apparently Morrison and crew, they didn't, they're not just slapping this together and going, ha ha, horses make money. Jing, jing, jing. You know, horses go burr, right? It's not like that. They rented a stable and they like.
spent like a long time like mo-capping and like studying horses to make sure they're actually getting the horses right like they're they're like overly doing almost to put put so much focus on like making sure the anatomy and the motions and the animations actually are convincing
you don't need so much to convince children they're like yay ponies but adults are a little more discerning and that seems to be what they're going for so i don't know i'm seeing this as being like adult star stable plus the secret world which to me i want to play that i don't know what it is Like, this is never a thing that I've been into, but I want it.
Yeah, I think that's where I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around. I mean, the horse is okay. I want to know why they don't have like a golf cart on this island. I would rather ride a golf cart than a horse. Wait, would you really? Horses are amazing. Horses terrify the living crud out of me, Bree. No. I have.
been in stables i've been up close to horses and if they learn that they're bigger than us we are done for they're really they're just too dumb to know that and that's yeah i don't like horse i've ridden on horses And it seems like all they really want to do is mash my nether parts into mashed potatoes. And that is not fun. And yes, I know. Grip with your knees and lift, you know, whatever.
You're good. You're good. These horses will not do any mashing, I promise. Are you sure there won't be a little meter where it's just like the pain is too much and your thighs are rubbed raw? Anyways, the thing that I'm having a hard time is like melding... The coziness with dark murder mystery. I feel, okay, that's like, you know, one's a vibe, one's kind of a narrative thing.
I don't know any – I need an analog to understand that. Like what would be that like? I'm not into true crime. I just – there's only so many hours in the day and so many – passion project so i'm willing to learn but i'm willing to learn how to do crime no i'm willing to learn about this genre i just want to know like pastor justin sorry
She always likes to pull that out anytime I get a little bit dark. Oh, it always cracks me up. It seems so wrong and so out of character, and that's what makes it funny. Okay. Yeah. I don't know. I just that that's what I guess it may be this is one of those you just have to you'll understand it once you play it. And I am certainly like a big Secret World fan. So some of these screenshots certainly.
have a little bit of that although they're certainly more colorful and less foreboding and there's less you know um cannibals i guess and scary fish creatures and stuff like that in fact we don't really see they don't really talk about like is this full like this is a fantasy world or is this set in our world i'm not actually sure okay it looks pretty fantasy Again, it's different. So I'm not really 100% sure.
I've never seen a mo-capped horse before, and it's really interesting to see the pictures of that. Yeah, I'll link you the main quest article. I'm reading it. Anybody can look this up. This is not just for Justin. It's a really nice article. She has a really nice interview with some of their motivation.
here but I think it's one of those things you kind of need to play it to really get it because it's so out of left field for mmorpg players who are used to like wow clones now you know i don't think this is going to be anything like a wow clone this is going to be like
I don't know, like a darker paleo maybe. You know what? I'm looking at the whole horse thing and it's just making me think a little bit. The one MMO that I really got super attached to my horse in a really good way was Fallen Earth. You know, they had like that was horses. Yeah, that was like your first mode of transportation. And sure, you could get motorcycles and doing bunkeys and stuff. But.
horses were like they're they were persistent so if you got off of them they were always there and you had to be cognizant of like where it is and you had to feed it and it would carry inventory for you so it felt like it felt important to you it didn't feel like an accessory or speed boost so much as like this is my journey companion and so if i get a little bit of that from this sure
I would rather ride a golf cart again, but I'm sure that will come in the expansion. So yeah, this is, we're starting to learn more about this. That's kind of really interesting. We don't have any timing of.
how far along this is or say i mean they've been they've been testing it for a while we've known about it for a while right we've been we we just didn't know the name i'm not sure they've put down any kind of gosh i can't remember if they if they gave us a time they do have a steam page which we should also say that's that's a good sign of like they really want to get it out in front of people now
And they were taking test signups earlier this year, too. So, you know, they're clearly taking in smaller groups of external testers. That's, you know, that should give you an idea. We're probably. I don't know, a couple of years out, maybe? I don't know. It depends on how early are they going to access that. You know what I mean? It could go a couple different ways. Well, I'm adding it to my list. I'm adding it to my list of games I'm genuinely intrigued about. I might have a...
I might have to do an article about this for Hype Train. Hype Train. Hype Horse. Yeah. Get off your high horse. I'm so glad. Like you said when you first started, I'm so glad we're just getting something different. We're getting something where they're like...
We're not even going to acknowledge that there's a mold. We're going to do everything outside of that mold. And we're going to do things our own way and see what happens. And I think tapping in underserved markets like that is a good idea. Absolutely. and that's what mmo is like there was a period of time they were exploring all these different genres all these different ideas and it was like the sky was the limit and
Then it just stopped being that way. If you're new here, you don't remember this period because it was a very long time ago.
But maybe, maybe the pendulum is swinging back. In fact, we got another new title to talk about. You just kind of threw this in my face two seconds before the podcast. Like, we got to talk about this. So RuneScape has a new... runescape game yeah it's not runescape it's something else it's not an mmorpg so don't get super excited or slash don't get super worried if you were worried they were going to make another runescape that would actually compete with the core mmos uh it's an open world
survival game and it only takes up to four players you can play it solo but it has online co-op with up to four people these games always assume i have three friends and i'm very affronted at that or what if you have four friends that's the worst like what do you do with that guy that extra dude
Go sit in the corner, man. I would actually rather they scaled up a little bit more than that, you know, just to handle the basic, you know, MMO group size. And then it wouldn't feel so much like, oh, yeah, don't tell don't tell Bobby.
about about the game we're starting up so this is a runescape dragon wilds yes that is what they are calling it it is basically based in runescape lore and theming and crafting and all that but it is an unreal engine game so it's fully 3d it's not that isometric top-down look um that's not really isometric but you know what i mean it doesn't have that kind of scrolled back right to it um yeah i mean it looks like a stock co-op survival game i mean i hate to say that like it's a bad thing i don't
actually hate these games i like these games they're they can be really enjoyable and comfortable but yeah you're going to be going through you're leveling up you're working on tons of skills it is runescape after all it is very skill oriented um lots of crafting of course in fact i saw
somebody calling it a crafting co-op game. So I guess maybe it depends on how you're looking at this. And then, of course, doing combat, killing mobs and working your way up toward this sort of major embossed dragon. Of course, it's a dragon. It's got Dragon Wilds in the name. That is the vibe. So kind of like I'm getting a strong Valheim.
Yes, that's one of the games that Steam says is most like it. So I think you are hitting it. Although it looks a little cutesier and fantasy-ish than Valheim. Valheim is a little kind of like a dark, almost gothic liking look, right? This is not. quite like that this is this is more like runescape honestly but it is a totally different graphical style it's going to be very interesting to see how the runescape community reacts to this
particularly because we literally just wrote this. So I don't know yet. Yeah. Just announced this right before we went on.
It seems like there's different camps, right? There's the old school RuneScape, the new RuneScape. Things different groups go for. Sorry. And every time they talk about what other projects... jagex is working on everybody has their ideas like this would be amazing that would be horrible and so this i don't know i yeah maybe maybe it would be not even Like, it won't draw off either.
groups of those players you know like unless you're such a runescape diehard it might just really be trying to fish for a completely new market you know jagex is just going yeah let's let's grab some of that sweet valheim cash and yet you know ours is a little bit more flashy and high fantasy and you know we we got the we got the big money so um again we just found out about this unreal engine 5 is you know it's powering it um they are going to be you'll be able to play it soon
actually early access yeah this spring the pr said soon but the steam page says spring so okay that's both that's really are we technically i guess we're technically in spring now yeah we are I saw snow the other day. And then they're talking about running early access. So we're saying launch, but it's early access early next year. But they're like the Steam page is like, but if we need a lot more time than that, we're taking it. So don't count that. Don't don't etch that.
date in the stone or anything it's jagex so like they have a history with new games that uh is kind of messy so keep your expectations in check but also get hype Yeah, but putting this much out there like that and then saying we're going to have it in a couple weeks or whatever it is, that's better than some of their...
past projects that just kind of evaporated. Yeah, I agree. I don't think it's actually going to be a piece of crap when it comes out. They've already been testing it for months. So I have a feeling. But I wouldn't expect, I don't know, weekly updates in early access. I'm not really sure. It's going to be that kind of game. These kind of games don't... Go ahead.
No, I think you were going to say what I was going to say. Yeah, these kind of games don't seem like they get a lot of frequent updates. More like a quarterly patch here or there. We've been working on this biome for the last two years. you go.
You're absolutely right. Valham is like that. V-Rising is like that. My gosh, what else? There's all of those. I was thinking of Terraria because I just wrote up that. Oh, Terraria is a whole nother case. I know it's a whole nother case, but they've been waiting for that update for like two years.
But also, they basically have been like... dragging like i shouldn't even say that i don't mean this in a negative way i mean like they said they were going to stop working on the game a really long time ago and then they keep putting out updates anyway so i consider every game from terraria a gift we call that a stardew syndrome right yeah yeah
There was something from like, and Shrouded was the other game I was trying to remember. There's been a whole bunch of these large scale update, large scale survival boxes in the last couple of years. People love them, but yeah, you're right. They might get a quarterly update and usually it's further apart than that. They don't make a lot of progress and shrouded made some pretty good progress this year, but I think.
I think people expect more because we're used to MMORPGs. We're like, we're expecting updates, like a lot of them. But that's not how these operate. So the other question I had, maybe you can answer this because you just wrote it up. Is there any hint at transmitting? Synergy. With the other RuneScape titles. Like, hey, I go play your co-op game and I can earn some stuff for RuneScape. They did not say that, but I wouldn't put it past him. It is Jagex after all. So I wouldn't. Yeah, I wouldn't.
Just a thought. I wouldn't be surprised at all. I mean, they've done that kind of thing before. I mean, heck, they've done weird crossovers. It wasn't, was it Fortnite or Destiny they did? I mean, it was Smite.
they did a crossover with smite and they put runescape like outfits and like character templates and despite it has to have been smite one yes oh somebody tell me if i'm crazy i'm pretty sure it was anyway this wasn't a dream you had one night and it just now i feel like i have to look it up because they've done some weird stuff I'm kind of excited for this, honestly, Justin. I actually would consider playing this, even though I'm not really a RuneScape person.
Why not? I would like to see what Jagex can do now. It is Smite. I was right. 2023. Smite and RuneScape. Actually, the first one was in 2022. Probably not my cup of tea, but most of these survival. games aren't but that's okay Fallout 76 is probably the closest I'll ever get to any of that but that's okay I mean I kind of get what I need there and I see the appeal I see the gameplay loop
So yeah, another project we're going to be keeping our eye on here for RuneScape Dragon Wilds. And I'm going to completely mess that up and just call Jan... runescape janthier wilds or dragon end of uh runescape dragonflight you know some of those two path of exile too i do this a lot these we've had at least two expansions in the mmo space
with Shadowland, Shadowbringer. Yeah, okay. Let's talk about a game we do know a lot more about. It's still on the way, so we're still talking about upcoming MMOs. In this case, Star's Reach. finished its campaign, its Kickstarter campaign wrapped up this past week. And yeah, did horribly. They failed, got about 20 bucks tops. No, they did wonderful. This was actually really good. They got over 700 and... $50,000 and
It kept inching up. It rudely inched up after I put out my first post. It rudely. I know. I know. We liked it. It's 762,164. Wait. It really did keep going up. It inched down. a little bit it was 739 when the actual campaign ended but you know how there's like wiggle room people can move their packages around and yeah so it keeps going and i think they can take
They can take pledges afterward. I'm not really sure why Kickstarter allows that, except they like money, so I guess that's why I don't even know why I said that. Yeah, 762. That's pretty good. Yeah. Not bad. Not too shabby. Considering, I don't know whether you or Chris won in the office pool. I think Chris did. I think I said it was going to settle around $600,000 and he said $700,000. So, I mean, technically shop-ass both. And the price is...
Price is right. He gets to go to the stage and spin the big flashy wheel. And I just sit there looking disappointed with my life. Closest without going over. That's the rules. Three quarters. You guys both beat me, honestly. I did not actually think it would go over.
500,000. I really didn't. Wow, you've got such an optimistic outlook on these things. I'm definitely the pessimist on this one. When it comes to money, I am. No, but pleasantly surprised. And as we talked about previously, so happy that this went well, that this is not backfiring there.
face like we really were concerned it might i mean this this is something that was a bit of a risk at this point in the development cycle and especially after we've been following this and they've had investors and suddenly coming to the players with their hat in their hand and saying me please and you know some people get just like nope but no they said yes absolutely i think the first thing this tells us is again what a strong sign
of hunger in this industry in the community there are for new mmos and really well done mmos good ones with vision and some different twists on it and some real you know expert uh developers behind it there's people i mean you can tell like oh yeah it's a new mmo but there's just there's nothing there it's just it's just a cheap cash grab
This is not a cheap cash grab. This is a real genuine project. Might not be what we end up hoping it will be. I do hope it'll exceed and go beyond the vision and our expectations, but that's always tricky. For now, this is what we know. They got three quarters of a million dollars to help them kind of get across.
from here till finish line but also a lot of stretch goals i mean a lot of stretch goals unlocked with this uh we're looking at like four different races were added including vampires with big ears why not they're like bad people Bad people, sure.
They sound cooler than they look. I don't think they're really. Honestly, I hadn't been paying attention past the face species. And so the last couple kind of went by me, I guess, a building system upgrade. I don't know what that's about. Yeah, they basically.
committed to like revamping it so that it, um, it's more like customizable is the wrong word, but like, there's there's like very simple ways of like putting together houses and like chunks and whatnot and then there's oh here's like a whole bunch of like weird little fiddly pieces that you can like turn into something crazy that no one was expecting they've basically committed to making that kind of building style to make it way more
intricate and customizable for people who don't want to just plop down a box. Now you can build every little last piece and put your little corbels at the top and you can get crazy. So that actually sounds really cool. I'm not mad about that. Plus there's some like...
quality of life stuff in there I think it's one of those things that's hard to sell as like a huge benefit to the game but it will be like for builders that's just that brings in a whole nother class of people who were like oh really really I can I can really deck this out okay i'm in um they added that they added some more shield stuff honestly it sounds just like star wars galaxy is only like fleshed out so if you like
PSG is in Star Wars. You're going to like this. What was the last thing they added? I can't even remember. Maybe that was it. The shields. I thought they were saying that, yeah, the shields just came in under the wire. So really quick, what are your takes on how this all ended up? Oh, man. Yeah, like you said first, it's like, yay, people love MMOs. And yay, Koster did it.
And my second thing was I was flipping through looking at old Kickstarters from like the last 10 years and looking at what they pulled in and going, huh, because, right, Crowfall pulled in like over a couple million dollars, 1.5 or so. something yeah there was some insane ashes of creation was a couple million 2.2 they got more backers too it wasn't just how much it was the number of people and
So that's just, I don't know, that kind of made me sit back on my heels to really consider where we are as a genre. I don't really think it's any particular reflection on this game or on Raph Koster. Just in terms of how...
One, it succeeded, but people still don't really trust Kickstarters all that much, and there's a lot less enthusiasm for... pre-ordering and pre-backing mmorpgs that aren't finished which i don't think is unfair not specific to this game just for the genre and in general so yeah kickstarters have definitely changed like the landscape for kickstarters even like the really super well done ones with, you know,
playable demos or playable testing with all kinds of videos, like nonstop videos and emails. And it was actually kind of over the top marketing at the end there. But that's what you see out of these really high quality Kickstarters. And even for all of that, they're still pulling in, you know. know, a third, a quarter of what MMO Kickstarters were able to do, you know, eight or nine years ago. Sure. But I mean, just devil's advocate here. It's also a science fiction title.
I mean, there's some elements to this that are a little bit more out on a ledge than would be in a very safe, understandable, comfortable. Kind of project that people go, oh, I understand what that is. I mean, what Rafa Koster and the crew are trying to do here. Yeah, I mean, a lot of us know Star Wars Galaxies and kind of the general idea of sandboxes. Those are obscure now. That game is 21 years old. Yeah, exactly. How old is it now?
Too old. So they're having, they're basically selling, they're having to sell this game and a really big concept to people. So I can see why some people might be pretty reluctant to jump on board. I'm not saying players are wrong to just say.
i'll sit back and i'll wait to see what happens and then i'll buy it when it's ready i'll buy it when it really does hit early access if they make their was beta by the end of the year early access next year that's their plan okay like people are like i don't need to give you you know 30 bucks or whatever it is now i'll wait i'll wait i'll do that on steam no big deal um
I will say part of it, part of their funding that they got from this wasn't just the Kickstarter. And maybe that's where some of the difference actually is. Like the day or two before the Kickstarter ended, they sent out a newsletter that said they were getting some very specific like actual investor backing but like
From players as opposed to from the large investor groups that were considering investing in the game. They already have obviously lots of investment or they wouldn't have gotten this far. But I kind of wonder. They made it sound like it was roughly equivalent to or slightly more.
the amount they were hauling on Kickstarter, which would actually put them more like $1.5 million just from the Kickstarter. You know what I'm saying? But that's real investment, so that's not Kickstarter money. That's not donations, right? I don't know how they're going about that.
know whether it's a group I don't know whether it's one person I they didn't really give a lot of details or figures so that's that's one thing that makes me wonder maybe I'm wrong maybe they did make as much money but those people are more inclined to invest invest now to do like equity crowdfunding or whatever, however it's being done, as opposed to, you know, buy the $10,000 package or whatever it was. I don't know. I'm...
Glad they got all this investment like one way or another. They need they needed money They needed a couple of million dollars caster said to finish the game. This Kickstarter was not supposed to really represent
really all of it or even a chunk of it they weren't going to turn down the money but this was mostly marketing and they were very clear about that right they were trying to get people to test they were trying to actually get the you know exposure on kickstarter that would you know bring it to a lot more people who are interested in developing games but that they were really doing this to prove to the investors they already have waiting in the wings that this game
actually has people that will pay for it that want to play it and that their investment wouldn't go to waste so i'm assuming the rest of that investment is now coming to you but we haven't had any announcements to that effect they haven't always told us about all of the investment money in fact caster has never
given as a full accounting past that very first round. And they're not legally required to or anything. I'm not... that's i'm just telling that's how it is so we don't really know how much money this thing has pulled in in total and how much it's actually costing nor exactly how much they need still to go and whether they'll get it but it looks pretty likely at this point this is a
fairly successful Kickstarter for an MMORPG in 2025, I don't think they could have hoped for better. Not this year anyway. Maybe eight years ago, but not anymore. Well, we got to move on. We got some other stories to talk about here, but good on them. And let's move over to... You Final Fantasy XIV players, this was a really good week for you because you got a meaty patch. You got a nice new content update, patch 7.2, Seekers of Eternity, the second big patch of the whole...
Shoot, now I'm drawing a huge blank. It's Dawn Trail. Dawn Trail. Yeah, there we go. I know with the Final Fantasy XIV, it's always two words that they smush together. And there you go. Dawn Trail. So the second part, second major patch of the Dawn Trail expansion cycle. Seekers of Eternity arrived. So, you know, I probably could cut and paste most of my comments from every single Final Fantasy XIV.
patch that comes out because really it's a lot of you know here we're continuing the main story we're adding some new dungeons we're you know kind of doing some class balance you know these are not bad things at all adding a new trial it's just you know I don't know, like you can definitely get down in nitty gritty and parse this stuff out if you're very much into the game. And if you are awesome for everybody else, you just know that, you know, nice new content update. What might be.
more interesting is that on the heels of this are going to come two smaller patches with some new game modes. And that's going to come at the end of April, one at the end of April, and one at the end of May. And so both of these are something to keep an eye on. On April 27th...
They're going to have something called Cosmic Exploration. Already sounds pretty awesome. This is going to be... crafting gathering experience to explore uncharted stars oh my goodness they don't go small in this game there you go And then they're going to add something at the end of May called the Occult Crescent. Oh, wait. Crescent. Mmm. Crescent. Yeah. And some more Hildebrand adventures there. Yeah. So this is good. Actually, I like that kind of staggered.
we've got a little bit of something for you every month for the next three months and that's good that keeps engagement uh high because i know this patch has been uh or this uh expansion's been a little bit uh
Oh, a bit of a content drought. I've heard that mentioned once or twice. Yeah, but I've also heard some people, and Elliot doesn't really jump on this bandwagon, but I've definitely seen some people say that... this is like the first step towards being so back you know what i mean like this is this is good and people who are grumpy about dawn trail might actually like it i will say
elliot has his piece out on it today where he's just talking about the content so if you are looking for a much longer deep dive than what we just did here his wisdom of nim column came out on monday on the march 31st it should already be out and he goes into like i said all of the
the trial stuff and the raid stuff and all that stuff without spoiling the story. So story spoilers are coming next week. But if you just want to know whether the content is worth your trouble, he's got that already up. Definitely check that out. And finally, let's go over to Black Desert's area of the MMO sphere, and actually more specifically, Black Desert console.
I don't know about you, sometimes the console versions of these games and the non-console versions, I have a hard time keeping them straight in my head. It's fair. And especially when they don't have parity with the PC version, it's hard to keep track.
I'm sorry, I'm just dying over here, but you keep talking. Oh, sorry. The one time I can't count on you to keep talking, Brie. I thought you were sick or something, and I didn't want to just talk over you. You're like, anyway, Justin's dying. I'm just going to keep talking. No, you ever have your throat just absolutely...
sees up and i was like oh i need to keep talking this is bad when i need to keep talking anyways black desert console yeah is that that version of the mmo uh that's out there for both xbox and playstation That's really great. There's some good news and bad news that have come out of the studio for both of those. So the good news is that, yes, both of these versions of the game, I'm sorry. Black Desert Console will be updated to Xbox XS and PlayStation 5. So it's going to run...
Great on those. The bad news is that they're going to be retiring the version that was running on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. So... If you've had the MMO on one of those older consoles, then you have until June, the end of June to be playing that. And at that point, update your console or...
Get the heck out of here! I don't know. There's a thing called PC, too, that you could get and play a version of the game on that. But it's something worth mentioning. It's kind of sad, and I think it's an example of how... console MMOs kind of have a very unique danger involved in them in that you know sometimes the
the console itself gets too old and so the studio stops supporting the console or just can't anymore or there's just no space left on i don't know like really old versions like why they stopped supporting um everquest online adventures i just wrote a piece up this morning so that's why my head's kind of in that space right now but yeah sometimes the the console itself can actually be a detriment to the game and that's it looks like that's the case here
So, yep, you got the end of June. And I'm sorry. real sunset i mean that that really is a sunset like it really is if you weren't already playing you know the enhanced version and don't plan on buying buying a ps5 or an xbox xs yeah you're screwed that's just it's sad they can't figure out like maintenance mode for like to pause okay we can't update the game anymore but we can just work i don't know
yeah i'm not a developer they have to silo everybody off on separate servers like here at least like there there's no siloing because everybody gets to keep their characters like your xbox account you know it's still your account you can play all you really need to do is
only a couple hundred dollars for a new console so yeah but at least you know at least you're not losing your characters if you don't want to but yeah i agree this it kind of sucks and there isn't a lot of time here like this is happening in june so you're only a couple of months away I don't know. I see what you're meaning. Maybe without maintenance mode, maybe there could have been a longer landing strip there for...
It sucks. I haven't seen a lot of complaining about it though. So it makes me wonder if people were already using the non-native, you know, tools and the client, what do you call it? You know what I mean? Like when you're backwards, is it backwards? No, it's not.
Forwards compatibility? What do you call that? I don't know. I don't play a lot of console MMOs anyway, so this doesn't come up for me. You know what I mean? When you're playing on the old console, but you're using all the benefits of the new console. The opposite of native support, whatever that's called.
That's what I'm talking about. Anyway, it sucks. Sorry, dudes. All right. There you go. Don't say we didn't warn you. You are warned. All right. Let's go on to the mailbag. We didn't get to touch on that last week. And so I'm glad we got to it.
Okay, I love this question. It is from Brazen Bondar, and she says, the answers to a Daily Grind question a while back, asking players whether they track the money they spend in free-to-play games were interesting and raised a question I've thought about frequently. Some players are adamantly against spending any money...
in a free-to-play game even if it is their main game. It's like a point of honor for them. I'm wondering how the MMO community thinks its games are making enough to stay alive. No one wants ads in the game itself, so how are we supporting game developers if we don't want to spend money in their games? Oh my God. Brazen would like to know why y'all are so cheap. She's not wrong. Frugal is the word I would use. I'm frugal. I don't like to splash a lot of cash around. I am frugal, but I still...
I don't know. I don't know why people do this. I don't want to waste money, but I'm not going to begrudge every penny they ask for. You know what I mean? Well, obviously the answer is to sell auction house brontosaurus because apparently I just read like Blizzard made something like $19 million on just those belts. Oh my God. Because apparently like 20% of the, or 18% of the user base.
bought one of those i didn't realize it was that high i don't know how they came to the conclusion of that number but that's an option i guess yeah you got to be really careful about selling stuff that actually adds a ton of utility and shakes up pay to win yeah that's a phrase yeah so yeah this is
You know, and this is kind of funny because one of the reasons why I, in the first place, started to get into MMOs was because I was just spending way too much money buying every week a new game. Like, I really wanted to stop. buying new games and i really like the persistent worlds and the updates and just
Kind of settling into these games where I don't have to buy, you know, drop $60 every couple weeks on a new title just to feed my gaming habits. It's just like I got MMOs. They're always my comfort landing ground. i can buy a game here and there that's fine but it's not i've always got you know this to eat up my time so i'm not not in the crunch but at the same time like i recognize like these are
These are businesses. This is not a charity. These cost a lot of money. Even if you took the developers out of it, it still costs a lot of money to run the servers and the tech and the engineering and all this stuff on the back end. You don't even think about it. There's marketing departments and payroll and accounting and all this stuff.
It adds up. People are not cheap and resources are not cheap. So games require money. So how do they make them? And this is the big question that they've been trying to answer with all the different business models over the years and trying to... I guess always playing an escalating game of...
I don't know what's the phrase I'm looking for. I don't know, just kind of going back and forth with the players and saying, okay, well, you guys don't want to pay for it over here, so we're going to try to get you to pay for it over here. So, you know, back in the day... It's just there was just one model. It was just subscription used to be by the minute, then by the hour and then by the month. I think we can all agree by the month is vastly superior to.
people dropping thousands of dollars back in 1995 money towards these games. It's crazy. Like, the stories of some of these kids, like, their parents didn't even understand, like, how much money. Yeah. Anyways. So, you know, then, like. Okay, but then they figured out, oh, well, you're only playing one game at a time, and we have a rapidly expanding field, and you don't want to pay for more than one subscription. Of course, that's kind of laughable now.
the age of streaming where everybody pays for a bajillion subscriptions and probably shouldn't but that's a different topic so they started exploring you know free-to-play hybrid models premium which just makes my shoulders shrug up and i hate that term
so much and I hate those models but okay buy to play which i think generally we like a lot here at massively op uh we certainly like a lot of the titles that have done it right i think you can do like all these i've mentioned except maybe freemium we can just kick that outside and it does
doesn't get to come back in the house ever. But the rest of the business models, we can like say, hold up like this is a really good example of you're getting your money's worth. Like they did it well. They're not trying to scam consumers out of their money. this is fair like that's kind of i think that's something we respect
I'm willing to drop money on something I feel is fair. With Star Wars The Old Republic switched over to free-to-play and suddenly they're nickel and diming me for basic system features, that didn't feel like a fair system. That felt like they were... torturing me for not paying them a subscription and that that just felt mean so there's there's right and wrong ways to do these so i
No, I don't think anybody wants ads. Absolutely not. We don't want to go to ads. We don't want to be selling our personal information to get free games. I think, I mean, personally, I would always say like... I'm always willing to buy expansions. And genuine, like...
Big chunks of content. Yeah. Quest back. Sure. Like if you put in the effort to create that, give me some free stuff on the side. Sure. But if you build up that much goodwill and I really like your game and I will pay for more stuff to play.
your game for sure um you know cosmetics and like some of the microtransactions they're not offensive they don't feel pay to win they're really on this the peripheral on over here and i can completely ignore them they don't change one bit of my gaming experience So I'm okay with that. I do care when suddenly there's a bazillion brontosauruses rampaging up and down, and I feel like I'm the one person who doesn't have one. Yeah.
Then I start to care. I start to care when you start charging for early access to certain expansion packs or games and not for others. It does seem like they do a lot of... they have to compensate that was the word i was looking for compensate there they have to compensate for the
frugal people out there by really fishing for whales. And so that starts to create an unbalanced business model where they're not really trying to get your money. They're trying to get Bob's money because Bob's money is going to cover 10 of y'all. who are really cheap and so that kind of like on their spreadsheet kind of balances out in the end but that creates a less healthy game environment the more healthy would be like we all would want to spend money on your game
But not in an unhealthy amount. Not in a, I'm addicted, I'm pulling that slot machine lever. Suddenly I'm dumping my life savings into your gotcha, whatever. I don't want to see that. I know this is just like a random word salad. No, it's not.
This is very nuanced, Justin. I'm having a hard time coming up with something you said. It's just not an easy answer. This is something that they've been, as an industry, for the past 30 years, have been trying to figure out how do we... best make a financial profit because if they don't we've seen all these games shut down and that's something we absolutely don't want to see and suddenly a game become unprofitable and everybody goes like well
how is it not making money? You have like thousands and thousands of players in them. Well, they're, they're not charging anything for anything like, or they're not making money the smart way. Their revenue streams are too limited or they're just not appealing to most people. They're not pumping out new content to sell. They went away from the expansion model for a while and that bit them in the butt. So they came back too late.
I don't feel like there's any really good, solid, proven, long-lasting models that work. universally i think it all depends on your product how you structure it it's something you should have a very show up to play it yeah And you have to have a very good idea of how you're going to monetize your game going right into it because shifting course on that can...
often be too little too late i mean look at wild star look at that should have been free to play day one it really should have the whole environment the whole everything instead they went i know that wild star had other issues and that's that's another topic but shifting to free-to-play like months into it just was a hail mary that at that point you knew like their finances were not good they were laying people off they suddenly shifted over to free-to-play and they thought oh there's
is going to you know i think it was a year or so and this is going to change our fortunes it was just too late it was just too late at that point and they didn't have the the the leeway to really figure out how to best implement free to play in this game that wasn't designed for it in the first place so to be retroactively fitted with that. So that's another whole element of how do you change business model streams in the middle?
you know a game that's been subscription and suddenly we had a cash shop world of warcraft how far is too far how much do you charge at any given time do you start testing the waters to see how deep you can go before your player base pushes back on you um I think a lot of people, I'll say this and I'll shut up. I've seen a lot of people express, like, I do love my game. I don't mind spending money on it. I just don't want it to be frivolous. Like, I don't want it to be, like...
Me throwing them a tip. I want to get something out of it. I think that's fair. If I'm playing your game, I don't mind spending money on your game because I want to support you and the developers and everything like that. But I'm also not going to...
I'm not going to blow, I'm sorry, $100 on some cosmetic armor I'm never going to wear. I'm just, I'm not. I'm going to, it has to be something that's worth something to me. Now, everybody's getting, that answer is going to be different for everybody, but there's more.
widespread like again an expansion is more universally accepted than a very specific set of cosmetic armor so there you know you need to be pursuing these and there are people who complain about the expansion price too for sure they almost can't win Yeah, I don't think you're wrong. And I think I think the reason a lot of people end up in that position is that they're just super scarred from decades of being abused by. Yes. Yes. You know what I mean? Like at this point.
They're like, free to play has screwed me over every time. They have been screwing us over for years. I've put money into them and all of these games and they still shut down anyway. Why should I care? Like nothing I do is changing anything. Why should I care?
about the longevity of games that i can't really influence anyway at this point screw all y'all i'm just gonna see what i can get out of it for nothing i'm gonna maximize my fun while putting absolutely nothing in and then i'm gonna treat all the indie games exactly the same as i would treat something like blizzard a mega game you know revolution i just i think that is the thought process because i can
Yeah. Even even for me, though, I would divide them between like I feel much less bad about getting something for nothing out of a big megacorp that's got tons of money and doesn't even know I exist. Then I would like I wouldn't want to screw over Project Oregon or even or even.
like I consider those more like boutique you know bespoke experiences and I'm willing to pay a little bit more even though I'm not getting as much out of them although I kind of am getting some you know what I mean I don't want to screw those devs over I don't really care
that much about other devs like you know i don't even want to name studios but like larger studios that make lots of money and have never shown any scruples so why should i show them scruples back but i think a lot of people just don't have that distinction in their head anymore and they're just like screw all y'all
i got mine you know what i mean i think that's what's happening here and why some people will come into our comments like i won't pay anything for anything and that's completely separating out the people who are like i am on a tiny pension and i'm just trying to play lotro for free and you know
grind out my lotro points on you know what i mean that's a totally different thing to me like actual frugality from from people who don't have a lot of money that's a totally different game or people in certain countries where things are way more expensive than they should be because of
you know the balance of the the local economy and i don't really feel bad about them trying to get what they can either but like that's not what brazen is talking about brazen i know the people brazen is talking about in our comments who are just like adamantly opposed to spending even even
a nickel or a dime, right? Because they've been nickel and dimed for so long and now they're just like, done, they're out. But they don't want to quit the games. Yeah, but they create such unreasonable expectations for what they want in an MMO and a business model. As you said, the studio just can't win at this point.
It's tricky. I'm sure that the people listening to our podcast who care that much about MMOs, they're listening to our podcast and are probably contributing to an MMO website about...
their favorite genre, do not really think like this or they wouldn't be here in the first place. But I definitely know there are some folks out there in our industry who... really are just that they've got they've taken this super extreme position against the idea where that people are dropping hundreds of dollars like you said on a cosmetic and now they're like fine i'll do the exact opposite i'll put nothing in
It's not a healthy way to approach like trying to avoid consumerism, trying to avoid feeding the problem by. Just taking and not giving it all, especially to worthwhile indies, that doesn't really solve the problem, but I understand why it might solve people's conscience. It's really tricky. I don't have a good answer to this, I guess. Sorry, Breezin. All right.
Continue the conversation there in the comments. You guys let us know. What do you think? What are good business models? How should the industry deal with such jaded? Players, people have been beat up by past abuses and create a business model that feels fair and yet can support the studio while also giving the best possible value. to the gamers and yeah good luck figure that one out if you figure that out you can sell it and you will be a very rich person i don't know who knows
The Pulitzer Prize will go to you. In the meantime, we're going to continue to take stabs at how to fix, report, and cover the MMO industry. That's what we do here at Massively OP. We've been doing it for a very long time. Pushing that boulder up a hill. right here we go sisyphean task it's fun keeps running us right over but we know grind and so we're willing to keep pushing and so hopefully actually it's not that bad it's it's fun to cover this sort of thing because we do get these exciting
you know, out of the blue reveals like Equinox Homecoming and Dragon Wilds. And that's, that's fun. You know, it's fun to see how the industry, you know, might be making a comeback or might be growing and growing richer. in in terms of content and offerings and so we want to see more of that
And so before my throat completely dies, we're going to end this podcast and we're going to encourage you check out our Patreon program on the right hand side of the site. Follow us there on the social medias and yeah, keep on reading, keep on listening, keep on watching our streams. And yeah. I do want to kind of just put in a little plug there. Our stream team is awesome. If you're ever curious about MMOs, yeah, you don't
you kind of want to really lightly dip your toe in the water and you want to just kind of get a feel for the game without having to actually install and create an account and see, like, is this something for you? They're very entertaining, Chris and MJ and all their friends. They have a really good time. time they cover a wide variety of games and check those out we always have you know usually about one or two day most days yeah there's always one on um
Chris does it on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, and then MJ does it like all of the other days, but also on Wednesday. Sometimes there's two. Yeah, there's a lot. And then sometimes, actually, Larry has been popping in on Wednesdays. Cool. Yeah, they do a lot of Survival Box stuff. larry it's a nice range and if there's stuff you actually want us want them to do
Holler. They're more willing to do things when they get asked. Otherwise, they're just going to play the stuff I make them do or the stuff they actually play. If they know people care, they'll do it. Yeah, that's probably one of the biggest questions we ever see on Reddit and stuff. Help me find an MMO. What best suits my personality or my experience or my past gaming history?
We're here to help you do that in a variety of ways. I mean, I would also say, like, check out what are you playing every Saturday. People share their own experiences, and sometimes I can give you some ideas. But definitely the stream team, I think, is a really good way to kind of...
led to experience a wide range of MMOs without clogging up your hard drive all at the same time. And I really mean that too. We lose money streaming. And I say that because our streaming is not there to make money. Our streaming is there to test out games. do what our community wants. So that's why I'm telling you to tell us what you're interested in because literally that's why we're doing it. Otherwise we wouldn't bother. We would stop losing money on it.
All right, y'all take care. Have a great week and we'll catch you again next week. Hopefully it'll be another amazing news week here at Massively OP. Until then, have fun gaming wherever you find yourself. Later, everybody.