I'm Justin with me is great. And I'm not even apologizing for what I just said. I'm just making it up. You know, when you use slang, I have to go and look up every slang on the Urban Dictionary just in case. This slang has been used for nefarious purposes and no longer means what I think it does.
So thanks for that. I'm going to have to. I looked it up. I know what it means. I'm just saying. I keep finding these things and I look it up going. Wait, when did it start meaning that? Oh my God. We can't use that. But I think sometimes people just troll Urban Dictionary. So, you know, I don't. they could probably make a board game like a party game out of that like is this really in the urban dictionary or is it just
Anyways, you guys don't care about slang. You care about the real 411. That's right. We're going to be giving you all the news about massively multiplayer online role-playing games. That's a mouthful. More pigs. More pigs. Abbreviate that, maybe. I should not have put a really sour mint in my mouth beforehand because now I'm drooling and trying to talk at the same time. That is just not a good combination.
I needed that laugh, Justin. I think that might be the first time I've laughed in two days, and I really appreciate it. That's what I'm here for. Court jester. Bree, however, before we start our show, we're going to have to have a solemn little moment here. Bree's got a caveat to share with us.
Oh, yeah, no, I need to warn you guys. I am back on my old headset because my kind neighbors with whom we share a wall because we live in a duplex, they have decided to renovate their attic. And by renovate, I mean turn it into a room with.
stairs and it's right by my head and I have I think they're out to lunch right now so we should really hurry up because the noise can be a little crazy and I don't really have another time or place to do this Because my daughter is sick and I have to stay here and help. So you're going to also have to remind me to sit my butt back down because I normally can't pace when I've got the desk mic. But I can pace here, and that's dangerous. I can use the raise your hand button, I guess. There we go.
Hey, sit down. All right, I'll sit down. So I apologize in advance if it sounds a little weird. As they told us, it's only going to be for a few months. So, you know, it's not like I work here or anything. No, I'm kidding. They're very nice people and we'll probably do as bad or worse them in the future. So it's all fair. When you build your underground lair, that takes time. Yeah, yeah, dungeons down there. I never know how these masterminds have the time to have all that made.
Oh, well. Come visit the Maslow EOP offices. We have all sorts of dungeons and dragons as well here. Because, of course, we cover online role-playing games, and they have a lot of both. So did you get any time in between life's hectic scheduling? I did. I've actually been playing Lotro. Shocker, I know. Yeah, I kind of have been jumping back and forth between a couple of characters. I've been playing my minstrel still.
I kind of picked her back up when I returned, I guess is the right way to phrase that. And I have to thank you, by the way, for not spoiling me because the last time I talked about her, I was talking about how I was going into... That area in the north of the Sitcrafts? No. It's whatever the zone above the Sitcrafts is. Antwade? Antwade? That one.
No, isn't that the next one? Anyway, whatever it's called. I don't remember. And I was joking about how dumb it was, but it eventually led me back to going into the old forest. Not the old forest. shoot i'm so bad at like fangorn thank you yes that's where we are obviously since we're talking about rohan and doing all of the quests for the trees and i i kind of got stuck doing quests for trees for like a really long time I gather this was like content they added after like.
You know, in the, like, time between. Oh, here comes the pounding. Dang it, they're back from lunch. Go eat lunch longer. No, like I think SSG must have added this like after an expansion to like give people something to do. So it goes on for freaking ever. Yeah. A lot of people don't even get in there enough to do that. Well, I didn't know any better. I had no idea what I was getting into. I was like, Quest, point me here. I'm just going to do them. So she is now 85, I think.
And last night I ran her down. She finished that area and it sent me back. And then I was like, oh, yay, it's finally sending me to Snowburn in Sudcroft. And I was like, yay, finally, I've got something to do here. And I got there and no one will talk to me.
I don't know. I'm going to have to look this up. You're a likable enough person. I thought maybe they'd have a quest or two. They are, in fact, surrounded by flaming orcs. So I thought maybe they would want me to take care of the work problem. A prerequisite quest that you haven't done somewhere? That's not very normal. It's possible. But I think I'm going to leave instead is the problem. Yeah, well, Rohan is a mess, so.
I think I'm just going to leave the stuff unlocked to go to Wildermore. I don't know if I'm going to do it again because I did it all the last time, but maybe because it was like nice and smooth and linear and just a really easy kind of grind.
Um, and I kind of just, that's why I play Lotro. I know that sounds crazy, but I really like getting in the zone and hub type questing is just really good for that for me because I don't have to think about it too hard I don't have to look stuff up I don't have to stress I don't have to map it out you just play And I've also been playing believe it or not, I've been playing my hunter. I finally got back to her.
forever ago it must have been last year when I finally got and I couldn't do it anymore because I had gotten into the quest chain to get into Gundabad and I had I must have realized at the time how long it is and gone oh hell no i can't do any the dwarves we're done i'm done with dwarves i just i'm gonna move on Because when I came back, I was still in there. The phrase in our family is, I can't even. I just can't even. You can look that up in Urban Dictionary too.
I'm sure it's something awful now. No, anyway, I looked it up and I realized, oh gosh, it's a ton of quests. It's hours of quests back and forth with these dumb dwarves. I get it. I understand. So instead, I found a thread that explained how to get in through the back door of Gundam and skip all of the. Outside questing I didn't want to do. I just wanted to get into the stupid doors. Oh, yeah. Don't do the War of the Three Peaks. I don't think it's actually War of the Three Peaks. It's the...
Because I found a whole thread of people like really mad about this from when it came out. They were like, I'm fine doing it once. It's just books. It's like five books in a row or something. And it's like meant to take a really long time. And they're like, I don't mind doing it on my first character, but I got 30 outs and I don't want to do it every single time. How do I get in?
And one of the devs was even in the thread like trying to explain to people he hadn't really thought about that. He didn't really understand that people didn't really want to do all of the questing all over again. They just wanted to get in and get through it.
So I don't know if they fixed that along the way, but I don't feel like I couldn't get in any other way other than going around the back door. So I did the thing that the trick apparently if you don't have stuff unlocked and you don't have somebody to port you and whatever. is to run up to whatever the zone right above that is called. Car something? Don't remember what it's called.
Get one of the horse master unlocks up there and then you can pay one Mithril and it will literally run you into Gundabat, like the very first hub in Gundabat. I was like, yes, I'll pay the stupid Mithril. I no longer care. Just get me in there. I want to get. I want to get underway. You know what I mean? I really want to play Gundabad and I don't want to play the pissy stuff ahead of time. I just don't care that much. I want to actually see what I know you love.
Because you had rave reviews for Gundy when it came out. On the questing and stuff. And the cool zones that are inside, outside. And, like, that stuck with me. I really want to do it. So, now I'm there. I did, like, the first couple quests. And I was like, yeah, I made it. Screw you, Dwarvey. so found a way around yeah i know yeah but they're different dwarvy guys they're the guys i wanted to hang out with all along so i actually had a pretty good time and i'm like set up to like
Continue having a good time, which is why you play an MMO, right? That's right. Yeah. What did you do?
Well, I mean, in Lotro, I did a lot of... various adventures but i spent a good chunk of time working on my house you know still going room by room through it and the problem is a lot of these you know bigger deluxe houses have like a giant room like here's just a massive room and i'm like i i do not wish to have a massive room i do not know what to do with the massive room i divide mine i should show you my pictures yeah that one big room we are talking about i have
I use maybe a quarter of it for my kitchen and dining room and everything else is blocked out. Yeah, I guess I could put some like the screen separators or fake walls or something. That's not a bad idea whatsoever. I did actually, I made it into a really nice like scattershot dining room. tables at angles all over the place you know just kind of fill the space but um no I'm I'm very I'm very happy with my my Christmas room the Christmas room is
Where I want to hang out and get the good vibes here in April. You know, it's the Christmas season after all. Yes. But no, I actually in World of Warcraft is where I probably spent most of my time because I was going through the entirety of the main campaign quests and undermine.
And so I just said, that's what I kind of want to accomplish this week. I just want to focus down, just do that, go through the whole storyline. Not going to spoil anything. I know some people still going through it or haven't done it yet or whatever. It's pretty good. It's not bad. It's very abrupt. There's some phasing that happens. There's some story development that all of a sudden, like, oh, okay, now we're doing this. There's very little lead up. It's just like all of a sudden.
boom, big events are happening left and right. And it ended in, you know, kind of encouraging you, like, for the rest of this story, go check out the raid. And I'm like, okay, you know, like, you know, LFR is a thing, so I'll go do LFR for a couple minutes. And it wasn't actually that bad. It was seriously like 10 minutes. I jumped in. It was this particular wing was just the boss.
So you just go in with the big group and you down the boss and then you get the rest of the story beats. And it was like, oh, okay, cool. So, you know, got that done, and now I'm kind of twiddling my fingers going, now what? I guess I do all the other quests in the area. I guess I start mopping up stuff. I don't know. I'm kind of worried of getting through stuff too fast and then kind of hitting that wall of going, what now? Like, what do I do? Like, there's always stuff to do.
But is it profitable stuff? Is it useful character growth? Or is it interesting stuff? If it can't answer yes to either one of those, it's usually not worth doing. I don't know. We'll see. I don't want to outpace the content. I know I'm always really slow on content devouring, but at the same time, Blizzard is slower than I am. So we'll see.
what happens i know they got another partial smaller patch coming out soon yep so uh we'll see how that goes i'm glad you're having fun though still i am i really am i i really like my warlock much better play style I was kind of evaluating the different pet class play styles and the warlock is probably the most laid back like just Send my dudes in. Go be awesome, man. Go tank your little heart out, you Felguard. You're amazing. I'm just going to send some guys to help you out.
I'll be all the way over here not getting hit once. And that's exactly how I like it. It's the coward's way to play an MMO. And I'm all for it. There's nothing wrong with that. Pep glasses are comfy and cozy and chill. There's no harm in that. Sometimes you want to be up in everybody's face and doing tons of personal one-on-one damage, and sometimes you just want to be like... Eh, here, minions, go. In fact, that was something else I was doing this week, is playing Diablo 3.
And I'm dedicated. I'm, Bree, I'm going to get through the full storyline. I've never once done it. You've never finished it? Not once. Oh my gosh. In fact, I always peter out in act two. Because I don't know what it is with every ARPG in the world, but Act 2 has to be dull as dirt. It has to be a desert somewhere. It has to be... To be fair, it's Diablo. They're all like that. Their jungle is dry as dirt. Their heaven looks brown. Like it's all like.
act one's always super interesting and gothic and halloweeny and you're like yeah and actors like hey you like brown right no no i don't oh well here's some have some fun So I've been playing my necromancer and that is also a, here, have all my pets. I'll just hang back and throw some bone spikes at you every now and then and feel like I'm doing something useful with my life. It's a really... I was writing about this last night. I said...
It's never a game I go, ooh, I just got home. I really want to play some Diablo 3. Like that thought really never comes across other than seeing it on my blog posting list. Like, ah, I should probably write up something. But the second I'm in the game, I'm having a good time. Like, I really am. And I can play it for a good half an hour, hour, and feel like I get a good session out of it. And I'm like, yeah, that's pretty decent.
It's fun while I'm doing it. It just doesn't have the come play me. Right. But maybe to be fair, right now I'm kind of hitting a spat of gaming blahs where... nothing's really screaming at me like i i keep doing that evaluation of like are there some other games i should play right now anything calling out to me and it's just like nothing not a peep no peeps no prior mmos going play me play me there's some things coming but i can't tell you what they are so clear your schedule
That was vague, wasn't it? Wow. Cryptic Bree. I like Cryptic Bree. There's a thing coming that you personally will enjoy. I thought we were friends. I thought you would have told me before now with more information, but okay. All right. Well, that's good to know. I would not mind. You know, I was kind of looking longingly. I know this is really out of the blue, but they were doing some streaming of that out. What is it that the camper van?
Oh, outbound? Outbound. Outbound. I think that's it. Yeah, that one looks really fun. I'm pawing the screen and going, I want, I want, please give to me now. I don't know why that's so appealing, but it really is. It just... is because I don't have the money nor the time nor the freedom to be able to do that in real life but you know give me a video game where I can just go
chill and camp yeah and out of my van i'm down with it all right let's get to the news this week we got we got some fun stuff to cover including a really big announcement that we knew was coming from elder scrolls online And we knew that this was going to be a different year. They had already kicked chapters to the curb. Get out of here. We don't love you anymore. Go away. And instead, they were going to replace it with...
Something. Fill in the blank. TBA. And now TBA is TBK to be known. I don't know. Anyways, Bree's all up on this. She's got all the details. How about TBC to be confusing? Because. I read this post and I just was scratching my head. Good, because I did my best to make it clear. But the truth is, there's so many things I didn't understand because they they didn't give us complete information and complete answers, even when we asked for them, that I just felt like.
I knew when I posted it, I guess is what I'm trying to say, that the people were going to come away going, I still have questions because I still have questions. All right. So without going back to the beginning of time. Walk us through what the heck is going on. Justin knows me too well. Okay, so what they've done, like Justin said, they've gotten rid of chapters. Instead, they've kind of, it seems like to me they're trying to split apart their content from their money, kind of.
So they're doing content in seasons now. The seasons are not necessarily going to be any one length. They're going to be varying lengths. Sometimes they'll be less than a year. Sometimes they could cross over and be part of one year and part of the next year, whatever. Those seasons will have whatever content they think that they should have. So it might not be.
you know, all condensed into one chapter. Sometimes it'll be like a medium zone kind of thing and then it'll have a couple of smaller things like a big event. The one they're doing first has this big zone and then it unlocks kind of Guild Wars 2 style, honestly, where like part of it opens and then you have to do this big world event and then the second part will open, right? And each one of those comes out kind of in a staggered fashion.
They're also still doing dungeon DLC. They've already done one this year that's part of the whole thing. And I think they mentioned they were doing one more. Is it one more? Don't quote me on that. I'm not 100% sure I said that right. No, I'm right. It is in Q3. There's one more dungeon pack coming in Q3 that's like separate from the wall event, the busting down the wall thing. And then they have one more.
The finale for this season will happen to come at the end of this year, but don't always count on that. thing about it that's weird i think that has confused people is the way they're structuring the monetization so you're going to pay instead of paying for a season you're going to pay for all the content that comes out in a year so
To maximize how much money you get out of it, I guess, you'll pay in January and then you get everything that launches. The dungeon DLC, the... and all of the season stuff that comes out in that year, even, I guess, if it spans multiple seasons, right?
That's confusing, first off. I mean, the way they said it is fine, but when you actually think it through, I think that's confusing because they were not very forthcoming about what happens like if you... don't buy the 2025 season pack they're not season they're not calling it season packs or they're calling an annual content pack
Wink, wink. Just to be clear. So if you buy the 25 annual content pass, which you can do right now, you'll have all of the content I just described for the Seasons of the Worm. But it's not clear what happens if you don't buy it. And then 2026 comes around. How do you get it? Because at that point, you would be buying the 2026 content pack.
So that hasn't been clarified at all. It's not clear what happens to old content. And I think... I think they kind of scared people a little bit because they were talking, somebody asked a question about FOMO and they kind of basically said, yeah, there's going to be some FOMO here, but they didn't really clarify whether that means.
whoever plays it first is going to feel like they play the real thing with the real server, you know, the real push to do things as a big server, or if it's FOMO and you can't do it at all.
That's not clear right now. I suspect the former and not the latter because they're not going to just add a bunch of content and then delete it and make it never accessible again. We had that. It was called Guild Wars 2 and it didn't work. So I'm hoping they're not doing it that way. That's confusion number one. Confusion number two is the fact that they still have a subscription. They're not getting rid of the subscription. which kind of surprised me because
You guys know in the past, the subscription unlocked a bunch of things, but it also unlocked all of the non-chapter DLC. In fact, that was a sticking point with the origination of the chapters themselves, is because they were created so that...
they could extract more money out of you because they didn't have to count them as DLC and give you to give them to you as part of the deal that's part of the subscription rather so the chapters were always controversial and now they just got more controversial in a weird way now that they're gone because you're still paying $50 a year for chapters and chapter S content, but now you're also paying a sub.
that also covers things like the dungeon DLC. So you don't get the season content with your... See what I mean? This is confusing. You don't get the season content with your subscription, but you do get the dungeons with your subscription and you get the dungeons with your season, with your content pass. So it's possible to end up paying for the dungeons twice, which sucks if you don't even want the dungeons.
And you can see why I think this is like more confused. Like there was a beauty to the old system. Like they launch a thing and then you buy it. It was like really transactional and people understood what they were getting and when they were getting it and what was in it. And if they didn't want to buy it now, they could wait.
You know, half a year until it went on sale and then they could get it at a discount or whatever. Casual players love that. I'm one of them. So that's how I bought most of mine. But this is very different. It's what I call the drive-through test. If you're driving through and you can see something on the menu and it's very easy to understand what you're paying for, what you're getting, and they can quickly explain what that is.
What you just said is a crazy person's wall of text. Sorry. It's not your wall of text. You did a great job trying to explain it. I'm looking at ZeniMax going, why? Why is this? better than chapters unless it's just giving you wiggle room in the future to do weird experiments and you're floating possibilities but i have no idea you know like devs do this all the time like they always
say, well, we could do something crazy in the future and then enough outlets repeat it. But then they don't have to do it because that was just a hypothetical. That was hypothetical. I think they are going to do different stuff. So that was definitely something that Fire was talking about during.
They really wanted to break away from the chapter thing because it obligated them to stick to a schedule. And, you know, we complained about it, too. We liked it, but it was also problematic because it got boring. They were finding it not boring, but like it locked them in so they didn't have time to like fix things. They were constantly having to put everybody all hands on deck to make the content that makes the money happen.
And so they didn't have time to like stop and like fix something like Cyrodiil or fix, you know, the combat system or whatever it is they want to fix. the UI, the tutorials, they were sneaking those things in, but it was taking freaking forever. And I think ESO players will agree with that. They could really use some fundamental overhauls if they want to get another 10 or 15 years out of this. And I think they do.
So I understand like the philosophy or at least the stated philosophy on why they want to do this. But the end result is it's extra confusing and they get more of our money than they had before for either the same or slightly less content. You can't really be sure. If you're going to pay for it up front, you don't even fully know what you're getting, which was not really the case with the old DLC and chapter system. Can I finish it?
No, I was going to add one more thing to this is they have said they're going to add to the subscription. They would not tell us what they're doing to sweeten the subscription, which seems super weird to me. You would have thought they had this planned out and they were willing to talk about it, but they were not.
And so the kinds of things they wouldn't talk about or didn't have an answer to like added to like player frustration over this because they don't know whether they're being swindled or not. I don't really think that's the intent, but they are definitely making more money off of. dedicated players now whether they will lose casual players you know more casual players than they keep dedicated players i don't know I really don't know. That can make another horrible metaphor. Oh, no. It's new Coke.
We knew Coke was really good. I'm not saying it wasn't good. I remember it. I'm just saying it comes along and people are so used to the old thing and the new thing, you know, even if it's better, even if it works in their favor. I almost guarantee you in two years they're going to announce, yeah, we're bringing chapters back. They might. But I don't think they will. Because here's what I think they're doing. Again, Fireware was kind of hinting at this.
He implied this year looks a lot more like last year than future years will look, right? Because he kept calling it a transition year, right? So it kind of looks like that first, you could almost call Seasons of the Worm Cult the first part.
the chapter and then you're getting the third quarter dlc and then you're getting the fourth quarter dlc or you could almost look at it that way and you could see oh well it just feels the same as it used to but i get the distinct impression future seasons future well seasons that's the right word are not necessarily going to look like this so
But they still want to get their money. So they want to make sure you're still paying for it at the beginning, at the top of the year, whether or not they're actually putting out a new landmass. or whether they're adding a class or whether they're fixing some fundamental system, whatever.
The way I look at it is that's what a subscription was for. Like a subscription was supposed to be paying for the base game upgrades. You know what I mean? So I'm kind of, again, I'm kind of like, I like the old system better and I don't know that this is really comparable to other MMORPGs. the way their payment systems are set up. I don't know. My other worry is this lets him off the hook on doing a yearly expansion and gives him a lot more wiggle room to start.
throttling down on content because they can just simply say yeah our new season is going to be like three and a half years or it's it's in the making or whatever like they're no longer really on the hook for keeping a production output of a certain amount of content. I mean... I'm not saying that's what's going to happen. No, I think they'll have to put out something. I mean, otherwise people will stop subscribing and or not paying for the past. So I guess, but yeah, you're right. It's a little.
It's one of those things that will trail. It will take people a couple of years maybe even to decide whether this is a worthwhile venture or whether they're getting fleets. And sometimes it's too late. If you decide in June, you're like, this is all our...
It's too late because you already paid your 50 bucks and there's no incentive there for, you know what I mean? For ESO to like, oh yeah, maybe we should, you know, kick it into high gear here, but it's already too late. They already got your money. So I feel like they're getting a lot out of this. I'm not sure what we're getting out of the change so far.
Because we don't have full information. I wonder how many people are just going to hold back until they see this in practice. Oh, yeah. No, definitely don't buy anything right now. Although I will say the stuff they have planned for this year sounds really cool. It really truly does. Subclassing. This is the thing that really caught my eye. Out of all this morass of words and explanations. It was complicated. I had to read for a while here, Bree. Yeah.
The second I saw like, oh, hey, we're subclassing as a way to let you kind of mix and match your class with all of your other unlocked classes. And they're talking like 3,000 possible combinations. That's interesting. I would love to see the math on that. But I think that's interesting. That's kind of cool. Suddenly...
You no longer need a whole fleet of alts. You could just have one, you know, as long as you've unlocked all these other whatever, you know, classes, you could just have one class that has potential to be anything. Kind of. Yes and no. There's a couple of caveats there. So you keep your like your appearance and your like gear appearance. I'm not sure what the right word is for your original class. Right.
So you're pretty much just like you have to have one thing from your original class. I don't play enough to remember what the terminology is, but they're like skilled lines, I guess is the right word. So you keep one from your main class. And then you can pick two from other unlocks. And like you said, it can either be stuff you've unlocked.
Or you can actually, they made it sound like you can just buy this stuff out of the shop, which I'm not sure whether I like that or not. It's probably fine, honestly, because not everybody wants to grind and grind and grind and grind and grind on all these characters just to make a different character. So that's why they're coming up with that 3000 number and why it's not exactly, you know what I mean? It's all the skill lines, but you're still stuck to the first one.
I think they said you have to get to level 50 on one character before you can do this. I don't think you can start that at level 1, which just makes sense. Otherwise, you just make a bunch of alts and just take all the lobby lines. Again, it's one of those things that we're probably going to need to see it in action first. But it honestly sounds really cool. I mean, they're coming up with ways to like, I don't want to call it like.
cross-accounting but like like letting you bring in more stuff from the rest of your account like there's a benefit to having alts but there's also a benefit to just playing one character because now like you said now you can play it as if it were it reminds me a little bit of um final fantasy jobs maybe um there's probably some other better cognates but I don't play a lot of MMOs that really do this.
Because usually they're so focused on class fantasy and stuff that they don't want to do this. They don't want to break it like that. Yeah. No, that was actually something a lot of people brought up during the QA I was in, where people were like, how are people not going to just pick the obvious lines? And I'm trying to remember which dev it was. I don't think it was fire.
I think it was Lambert, Rich Lambert, who actually came back and said that, you know, that the combination, there are so many different combinations. And since people haven't really. played any of this yet they probably haven't even found the really good like they think they know what the good ones are going to be but he's like that's definitely not going to end up being the good ones there's a lot more better combinations out there and that's the kind of thing they'll just bounce
So I wouldn't panic about that. You know, maybe if you're a PvP or panic about it, but... It does seem like a lot of the classes are so... like just very equal to each other i mean all the lines like you got the tanking line you got the dps line you got range stuff i mean so i could see the mix and match working in this game probably better than a lot of mmos and that's cool like if they can do this that's that's a pretty big selling point for this
they seemed really daggone proud of it i'm not gonna lie they kept coming back to talk about it so i think they're like super excited and I don't know. They've done a lot of progression type stuff. They've added new classes in the past. I think this is a good way. Gilberts 2 has kind of done this too. found ways to take existing content and make it more accessible in a way that makes it feel new. That's really smart.
Are there anything else really quick from this presentation that looked really interesting? Yeah, I mean, I touched on it earlier a little bit with the wall event. I'm making that sound mundane, but this is actually the first time that ESO has had anything like this. It reminds me of like the combination of like the... uh what was it called the plague event in wow where like the whole server is like working toward this thing that will actually matter this like massive dynamic
quest line in stages like a cross between the wow plague thing and like a Guild Wars 2 meta map somewhere in between there is how this sounds And I'm not exactly sure how this is going to work out. Again, Lambert is like jumping out of his seat with excitement over this thing and how they've been able to implement it.
I'm a little nervous because they made it sound like every server is progressing at its own rate. You're not just waiting for the slow server or like going along with the fast server. And it kind of sounded like it might be possible to fail. which made me nervous maybe maybe i shouldn't be because we're talking about mega servers here right so like there's a ton of people playing and hopefully there will be enough incentive to get the hardcore end gamers to like really push this thing through
But I thought that actually sounded really fun. I'd like to see more things like that in Elder Scrolls. I love them in Guild Wars 2. And I somehow didn't realize that didn't already exist. But I guess maybe a lot of people play Elder Scrolls Online more like a single player game that happens to have other people in it, not necessarily having to work together with those people in a large group.
That doesn't really happen very often. So that seemed really neat to me. I'd like to see where that goes. I'm not sure I want to pay $50 for it.
And you would have to pay $50 for it. There is a way, some way to participate if you don't want to pay for it. But it's not clear what that was. They didn't tell us exactly the details on that one. So again, stay tuned. Don't buy anything until... we get further information and i'm sure that will be coming over the next month or so because this the first this season what is it called seasons of the worm call actually launches in june did i write that in here who wrote this crap
There we go. June 18th. No, June 2nd. It's the 18th for consoles. yeah it's really not that far away where it's less than two months away and i'm like flabbergasted at how little we know but normally we would have gotten this reveal a lot earlier in the year so that might be part of it
They haven't had as much time, right, to unpack it. Well, I'm glad that developers seem excited. I mean, sometimes that's a really good thing. You want the developers to be genuinely into their own game and not feeling like it's just like... oh, fine, we've got to do this. But if they're like, yeah, you know, their passion is leading the charge, then that can benefit the players. Yeah, and I know a lot of people are like, oh, the devs are just being greedy. Guys, watch the video.
They're not being greedy, right? But they do need money. Let's just understand that they have to make money somehow, and you can debate whether they're doing it the right way or whether they're doing it in a fair way, but calling them greedy for asking for a little more money is a little over the top. They obviously have some passion for this, and if they didn't want to be here, they could make a lot more money doing something else. So give them a little grace, please.
Yep. And of course, you know, you're the customer. You don't have to buy anything if you don't want to. Wait and see if you're nervous about it. There's no harm in that. All right. So, hey, Guild Wars 2 is not what we're going to talk about right now. Let's talk about the OG. Guild Wars 1 and its 20th anniversary. Cannot believe. Already, yeah, 2005 was the year Guild Wars Prophecies came out. And it's just...
Started a revolution. From then on, gaming was never the same. Well, it was. But over there in ArenaNet, they were doing things their own way. And this game, I cannot believe, is 20 years old. And Brie, I remember reading articles about this, like in real physical paper magazines. yeah, we got this new game coming out. And I'm like, oh, I'm already playing World of Warcraft. And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
no subscription i'm like what you can't do that that's illegal if you're an online role-playing game you have to have a subscription they're like no we're just buy the game and play it you know Maybe for the next 20 years. I'm like, you're crazy, people. You're crazy. But no, they're straight bussing, man. Don't do it. Gosh. You got to put us after this, man. We're going to...
I have it in my notes. I'm going to use that five times on today's podcast. Yeah, they came out and at first, like, there was a whole huge tide of excitement. over this game like it was you know again we're talking about mix and match make your own class combination, gather skills, equip whatever skills you want, and also explore this really gorgeous world with a gorgeous soundtrack.
Don't get too attached to that pre-searing stuff, by the way. And it's kind of persisted. Three big, I want to call them chapters. campaigns campaigns and an expansion and then they kind of moved on but guild wars one has been supported ever since we've seen
you know, this game that went into quote unquote maintenance mode, continue to receive patches. And for the 20th anniversary, we at least know that they're adding a whole bunch of new weapons and mini pets and stuff that used to be very exclusive. Now you're going to be able to just go out there and loot mobs and get some of these rewards that have been denied to you for two decades now.
Yeah, when this news came out last, well, originally they announced it, and then they announced, they posted a list last week. And I went through, I was clicking on everything like some kind of nerd. But like, there's a bunch of stuff in there I didn't recognize. Like, I never saw anybody. have some of this stuff or try to sell some of this stuff and I guess that's because it was all pre-order stuff in other countries and
So the way Guild Wars 2 is set up is like when you log in, you play, you're like automatically filtered into your own district with like other people from your region, right? And to like get to the other regions or the international region, you had to manually move yourself there. It was really unlikely that you were going to randomly come across somebody with, for example, that cool Japanese pre-order shield or that kind of stuff. Not that you would have been able to see the shield in the...
In the, you know, whatchamacallitany, but whatever, it doesn't matter. I'm just super excited that we're getting anything. Like, I wasn't necessarily expecting this. Yeah. And some of the mini pets are cute. Some of this stuff is just random drops, but the mini pets are basically just from the grind in... I forgot what it's called. The beach. The beach grind. What is it called? Emory Bay? Ember Bay? Something like that. Embark Beach. That's the one. Whatever!
So that's like, I know, but I don't remember what anything is called. I have it in my head and that does you guys no good. But yeah, that's just a basic hard mode grind. That's like easy stuff. So somebody go get me a panda, please.
Well, with all this new loot and the 20th anniversary being here, a lot of minds and nostalgia and... attention is all turning back to guild wars one right now there's even a community event that's going to happen over the next month where they're organizing on discord they're getting over a thousand people so far signed up to go through the original
Prophecies campaign together week by week. It's really cool. I think that's pretty awesome. It reminds me of that old MMO book club that used to be a thing. I remember that. I wish somebody would bring that back. Yeah, that was a really cool idea. So anytime we see like player led.
movements like this you know sometimes people are just waiting to do stuff with other people and they just want somebody to take the lead on it so it's really cool to see this happening so this is one of those games where that really works too like i used to play it like that with guildies where we would just do you know one mission and then uh
you run to the next mission and be ready for the next night just that we just do that in chunks and it takes a while but you'll make it through the whole thing It's really fun. It's way easier with a group of humans. Well, some of it's easier with a group of humans than it is with heroes. But you can always use heroes and henchies to fill out if not enough people show up.
It floats, it expands really nicely to accommodate whoever is actually there. I think if you were interested in playing it, this would be a good time to jump in. But I will say that ArenaNet tends to run sales for its games around the springtime anniversary happening. So maybe wait to see what they do. Also, I want to say that they teased to keep, this is a direct quote from last week, you'll want to keep an eye out for some other rare drops.
So I guess that means we're getting more stuff. So probably by the time you've heard this, that's old news anyway. But I'm guessing there's more coming, and this is just what they're, you know, whetting our appetites with so far. I don't know what it's going to be. I did see some crazy people on Twitter who were saying things like, That was kind of a lie. I do know what it's going to be. But I can tell you what it's not going to be.
It's definitely not going to be Guild Wars Classic. I saw some people saying, they're giving us Guild Wars Classic. Guys, this is Guild Wars Classic. Yeah, it never went away. It's still there. It's still playable. still what it always has been and but yeah people are just funny about this stuff that they were like honestly whole remaster like it's It's not a remaster. They're not giving us a remaster. Chris Rurik has been given lip syncing.
I would hope they're actually not even considering that. I love this game to bits. It actually holds up pretty well given its age. Like, it really truly does. But I would rather see them expand the franchise than put a whole lot more into Guild Wars 1, especially knowing that the difficulties in expanding Guild Wars 1 were part of the reason they did Guild Wars 2 in the first place. Knowing that, I would rather see continuing expansion and not try to...
There was a reason they were having to do all the re-skinning back in the Guild Wars one day, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, the effort that they put into some of these patches over the last few years for Guild Wars 1, you know it's not because they're making money. It's not because they expect some sort of groundswell return. It's because they just love the game. Right. really what it boils down to so
When did you first get into Guild Wars? Was it right at the beginning? At launch, yeah. I had guildies who really were into it, and I remember reading just the same stuff you said, where they were not saying it was an MMORPG. They were positioning it against World of Warcraft. specifically but they were trying to say it was more like a like a card a collectible card game
They were making it sound like that, where the skills were going to be like these collectible cards. And we were like, ooh, that sounds fun. And then, of course, when you get in there, it's like, oh, no, this is just an MMO, which is fine. I like MMOs. I'm not mad about it. But I remember it being very challenging because...
There were no heroes back then, and the henchies were terrible. I mean really terrible, way worse than they are. They got an upgrade later. In fact, they didn't even have henchies the very first. No, I was going to say, I don't remember them at launch. Yeah, it wouldn't have noticed because I was playing with that group of four people, and I'm pretty sure the first, like, all of Ascalon and then, like, what's that called? The Shiver Peak?
Sure. Whatever it's called. Those were all like four people only, I think. So you wouldn't have even needed henshis. I can't even remember. And then we quit for a while. We made it to, who knows, I don't remember. I don't think we finished the desert our first time through. But I do remember henchies, so we must have made it to there by the time they added henchies. Does that make sense?
But they sucked. It was really hard. It was very challenging. And we kind of just quit. We went back to WoW. We were playing other stuff. And then we came back. When Eye of the North, not Eye of the North, Nightfall, Nightfall went into this beta where they were letting everybody play it for free. And we were like, oh, I remember Guild Wars. Let's go back and play Nightfall. Let's see how. And so my same group of people went and played it. We were like.
wow, this game got good while we were gone. And so after that beta was over, we went and bought factions. And then we started playing factions. Then we went and played Nightfall when it came out. And then we played for a while at that point. It really just needed more, more juice. That launch was okay, but it had so many problems. It was not solo friendly. It was very grindy.
Once Nightfall came in especially, I feel like it just kind of blossomed into something I played even when my friends weren't around. I played a lot. I did so much farming. so much farming justin i was like a hardcore trader on the the big um it wasn't guru what was it called there was a trade a couple of trading auction like auction websites because they didn't have auctions in the game
So I would do like all of these trades. I was farming stuff. I just had so much fun. Why was I making money? I don't know. It's not like I was a hardcore end gamer or anything. But I just enjoyed the heck out of it. It was really relaxing. Awesome. I miss those days. I still love Guild Wars 2 and all, but I definitely have... There's a part of my heart that belongs to that original game. It's not the same game at all.
Yeah, it imprinted a very specific memory, especially from those early years where online games were so sparkly and new and wonderful. Yeah, so good on Guild Wars 1. We're happy to see the 20th anniversary, and if you're interested, maybe check something out that you might not have been in for a while and played for a while, or maybe you've never played Guild Wars 1 at all.
And you want us to go see what all the fuss is about. It's a bit of a different experience, especially if you kind of cut your teeth on Guild Wars 2. In some ways, it will be a bit shocking to go back. But it is very interesting, and I think it's worthwhile to go through the entire campaign at least once. Totally. Okay, let's talk some Lotro, a game we never, ever talk about in this podcast. So sorry we have to talk about it.
There's a new server we got to talk about, Grond. Yeah. And the second I saw that name, I called my kids and I'm like, you guys remember we just went to... to Universal Studios last year. December and there's that King Kong ride and you're walking down the queue and every so often all these animatronics come up and they start going Kong Kong Kong Kong And I'm like, there's a new server. It's called Grand. And my kids went, Grand, Grand, Grand, Grand. And I'm like, yeah, you get me.
So, yeah, so Grand. It's a new 64-bit server. It's one of two new ones that they are planning to roll out. The other ones, what? sting sting not quite here yet right but but they opened up this uh it's eu by the way grond is over there in eu to take some of the pressure off The other regular servers, so many transfers, so many new people coming in that they just kind of overflowed these two. The two non-RP servers, because I guess nobody wants to hang out, rub shoulders with us. Yeah.
What I was going to say is I don't think they should have added these servers. I think they should have added some incentives to get some people to move from the big servers to the RP servers, which aren't full at all. It seems weird. I know. That's what I mean. I don't think. Yeah. There's no actual rule enforcement here. You can take your guild and go raid or do whatever. It's so weird. The distinctions are meaningless. I'm on Glamduring and I see people role-playing and playing.
instruments and running bands like all the time like it doesn't really that part of it doesn't really feel any different from from Landy to me honestly it really doesn't Because, I mean, some of the role-playing groups were on Ark and Brandy and whatnot. And they moved and they went to where their big guilds went. And so that's why it ends up like that. It just seems like a waste. I feel like it's one of those. I don't know why SSG would help us divide ourselves further.
When it was trying to consolidate everything. Yes, right? We were getting consolidated. It was working. And all of these people aren't going to stay. They're not going to stay. And they've been talking like this past week about how their engineers and their team. are expanding those servers that are already increasing the capacity on these. So it's getting better. It's just like...
Yeah, a lot of people wonder if this is just going to be a case like a few years ago when they opened up the first legendary server, Aenor. And a lot of people are just so super popular. So like day two, let's open up a second one. And 10 people went over there and suddenly it just became. you know, like an empty server, and they had to kind of merge it back over. And that's just not good optics sometimes.
I don't know. I don't feel like they're going to shut down these third servers, but I guess it makes it six servers total of these new 64-bit servers instead of four. Already we're inching back up to the number of servers we just had. I don't know. Yeah, I don't think that's a good call. And I don't think anybody should move to those servers. You're right that SSG will probably – they're cheap, I'm sure, to just keep up.
But they're going to be small, which means the economy is going to be really, really depressed. I just don't think that's worth it. We already we left servers like that. Right. We left small servers for big servers. I don't know why you would then move. And I don't think people who have now gone through the transfers.
Dealt with all the pain of the last month and a half. Got in a freaking house. Decorated it already. Got their guild set up. They're not going to move now. And it didn't seem like a lot of people had moved to the new European one. People were talking in Glam during this week, I guess, after the original launch, that it didn't have that many, like a couple hundred people, as opposed to, you know, the huge influx of people on, for them, it's what? Orcris. Yeah, it's Orcris.
Anyway, I'm sure SSG has it well in hand, right? Right, guys? Well, they're Figammies. We're only a month and a half into all the transfers and new servers. So it still seems like this is just going to be a continued process. But we're still waiting on some, like, I wish they would, instead of doing this, I wish they were dealing with cleanup from the mess instead of.
expanding the maps at the other end right we're still we still don't have a new date for the the dark worlds those got delayed at this point or a month past when the first dark worlds were supposed to open and they didn't So we don't know when they're happening. Yeah. And yeah, we're still waiting on some of the transfers. So if you're on like if you're on Pippin now, you can't transfer to Glammy.
Right. Or on Mary, you can't transfer to Orcrest at all. So you can transfer from the old servers, but you can't transfer from the new servers, which was supposed to be a thing they were going to alternate for a while, like every week. So you could go to the server and then I don't like that one. I'm moving the other one. No, you can't do that. You can move from the big one to the little one, but not from the little one to the big one.
right sit down you told me I'm not even I'm getting worked up and I'm sitting down in my chair that's how worked up I am over this and then you've got all the problems with The housing inventories, the wallets, all the stuff people are missing. It's real bad. Oh, yeah. The kinship is just a whole other thing because a lot of people move.
and their their kinship names were taken right so they got the little one at the end but ssg i guess isn't processing them right now and they're like yeah just hold tight until we add a kinship renaming system in the game it's like uh how long is that gonna be because my my guild name is really dumb i i just it really felt like they were hoping it was going to be a one week experience by the end of the first week we'll have everything figured out
I think we're going to be well into the fall by the time this really slows down at this point. Which is funny because that was originally like, right? They were going to. keep these server transfer things going until august like come on they won't even have the housing writ stuff cleaned up by august ain't no way i love you ssg i know everybody over there is working overtime for this but It has been, it has been a lot.
But meanwhile, they are looking forward, like there's still content coming and events coming. And so update 44 just went into the test server. And if you're curious, like what the next. major patch is going to be about a new six-player instance that's kind of the big crux of it it's going to go on to um kind of flesh out the recent Legacy of Morgoth expansion. They're redoing, they're calling it a refresh. I don't know why they, I hate that word now. Lelia's Market.
Lahlia's Market? How do you pronounce? Lahlia's Market, right? They're redoing that market where it's like you go in and you can spend your mithril coins and pretend like you're not shopping at a cash shop, but you totally are. They're just expanding it to show more housing items, which I actually think is a great idea because the Lotro... store won't preview housing items the way it will. Oh, I would never buy that stuff. So it never occurred to me.
I don't either but somebody might and you just want to know what you're getting right I could see buying like the crafting stations like i bought a farm but i didn't really care what it looked like so i'm trying to find the the roadmap because i know we didn't talk about this roadmap From the second, maybe we did talk about it and I just forgot. Oh, when Orion came out and he was talking about the next few months and it really was just. There was a ton of stuff in there.
There was. I looked over it, but none of it seemed like super headlining or really, really new. Yeah, that's fair. I'll look it up real quick. Oh, yeah, the kinship overhaul is coming. They said that was like in the next month or two? No. Well, they said the first part. They're still pushing that down the road pretty hard. You too. I see what you mean.
But they are talking about like the anniversary is this month and they're going to have new content for the anniversary, new quests that are going to – They're keeping a lot of that under wraps, like what it's going to be about. But they're very excited about what some of these quests are going to do. They also were talking about the upcoming Midsummer Festival. Oh, yeah. That's what it was. Yeah, they're going to.
create a new um new area for that its own instance area and they're moving it from minas tirith which everyone hates except for me i think i'm the only one who likes it you know it you've got it like down like the back of your hand at this point but no one else loves it at all They created a new tropical island that they're going to take us down. That's going to be fun. To the Shield Isles, which I think is a great idea, especially if...
Like you're you're very far away from Corsairs of Umbar. You you have a long time to go and you feel bad like you're missing out on getting to see some of that. Well, here you go. You know, like once a year, you'll be able to go and hobnob down south with the rest of us.
It's actually pretty cool. Like, I love the visual style of Umbar. And I think that they can do a lot with kind of creating a nice little summery vacation spot. So, you know, why not? Why don't we put on Blue Sky Hobbit hot pants or butt? Like, make it happen, SSG. We want to see some leg. Yeah, they did talk about, I'm reading through this, the roadmap here. They did talk, they're confirming the next expansion is in the last quarter of this year. They are raising the level cap.
Four new zones, raids, stuff like that, but nothing else. No more complaining about the lack of level bombs. Yeah, no, now you're going to get the crowd that complains there's too many levels. Right, now I've got to regrind it on all my $500. Right, they can't win, it's fine. It's all a number. It's a journey. You just go on the journey and your numbers get higher.
Yeah, Kinship Overhaul, I'll believe it when I see it. We've been talking about this, honestly, so long, and now they're kind of chunking it up into, yeah, maybe we can start getting some stuff in. I know I listened to a video that they were talking about this, and they're like...
Yeah, there's so many different things we want to do, but we need to get some of the groundwork in for it. And it's taken a while to get there. So they need to do this. They're absolutely right in identifying like in every MMO. social bonds, the social structure of the game. That's the sticky point for so many people. And if you really neglect that, you're going to be doing that at your own peril.
Yeah, we'll see. That makes me nervous. I'm going to be honest, Justin, because right now it's like pretty easy to get a one person kinship and you just wait a while and you can. get to the cap and yeah and then get yourself a kinhall and that's the only way to do it and i could i just i'm sure they won't keep that and it's gonna grandfather a whole class of people in
I see this coming right now, and I really hope I'm wrong, but it's going to make a lot of people pissy. All right. I don't know. Yeah. I'm not complaining for myself, by the way. I don't want a Kinholitz. They're too big. I want a little Hobbit hole. Hello, hello. I need friends, friends, friends. The yards are nice. Don't get me wrong, but it takes you five minutes to run across the whole yard. Oh, Bree, the yards are street bussing, man. They're amazing. Three. Bing. You're the worst, Justin.
I know. I know. But if my wife's not around and I'm not making her roll her eyes, I've got to do that to somebody else. It's only fair, yeah. Last thing we want to probably talk a bit more about this next week, but the last little news item we want to mention just to put it on your radar, Defiance relaunching this Friday. So it's been out of commission for a while. We did a whole piece on it, an earlier podcast.
Fox Games under Gamigo is bringing... No, no. I should clarify. Fox Games is not owned by Gamigo. Fox Games is a totally independent... company and they are licensing it from gamigo so gamigo is not involved at all except for collecting money collecting licensing fees that's it isn't that wild No, I just wanted to clarify, because there are some people out there who'd be like, Camigo, I won't have anything to do with Camigo, and they're not running it.
I don't think it goes that bad, but I'm just saying I don't want to. you know get confused here now fox is a whole nother bundle of something so maybe you should we were talking about them this morning we love their enthusiasm we like seeing the enthusiasm of this company like Super excited to relaunch Defiance. You know, it's this sci-fi MMO, action MMO. It's been out of commission for a few years now. And seeing them bring it back, it's really cool. And their enthusiasm is great.
are they super capable of being able to operate it well? Are they going to handle, you know, like the development? Is this just going to be like what it was? And they're just going to.
sit back and count the cash that comes in or if you know they they've indicated like if it's enough of a success they'd be willing to work on new stuff and do they have the tools do they have the people that can really tackle it that's There's questions I have, but in the meantime, it's really cool to see this all come back.
and um you know officially not as a rogue server which that's fine in and of itself but seeing you know a game that's been kind of mothballed taken back out and i'm gonna just Really interested to see if there's a crowd for Defiance in 2025 right now. Plus, it's a try-on game, and I think there's a lot of, you know,
Nostalgia for Tryon around the MMORPG industry, for sure. Fox has been very clear that they are just kind of doing this to see if they can make it blow up, and if it does blow up, then they will divert resources to it and actually... They've basically said they're going to support it regardless, but whether it gets future new content and that sort of stuff is going to depend on how well it does.
We're just going to have to see. It seems like the testing went well. They've had two large-scale open playtests so far. I don't think they've said how many people showed up. We've gotten a lot of hype for it. Even in our comments, people seem, you know, some of the older posts, especially people were really surprised. That last playtest didn't have a lot of lead time, so I don't think people were as prepared, but we'll see how the free-to-play launch on Friday goes.
All right. I think we have a little bit of time for some mail if you want to jam one in here. All right. But the dude's next door drilling something. Can you guys hear it? Can you hear that? Oil, Texas tea. We're all rich. They find oil in the walls. They can do our attic next. All right. The first one is from Jeff. Jeff says, we're seeing the development of a few sequels to existing big MMOs.
I, as a Guild Wars 2 player, an existing successful sequel to Guild Wars, am thinking of Guild Wars 3, but certainly there are others. I was... Can you hear it? No. Okay, good. Maybe it's blocking it all out and you guys can't hear it. I'm going to content myself with believing that. So, Jeff is thinking of Guild Wars 3, but certainly there are others. I was also around for the launch of EverQuest 2, Asheron's Call 2, Destiny 2, all considered flops compared to their original titles.
So my question is, suppose you're now in charge of a developer company charged by your CEO to create a sequel to your bestselling MMO. What lessons can you learn from the successes and the flops in this industry to craft a successful sequel? And to clarify, I don't mean relaunches like Final Fantasy 14, but more like Final Fantasy 11 to Final Fantasy 14.
You may write your answers in your blue book and with ballpoint pen, and please put your name at the top. Don't forget your thesis statement at the beginning and your conclusion. Okay, so Jeff has posed as a thinker. Dude, I think Jeff's thrown down a gauntlet saying that EverQuest 2 and Destiny 2 were considered flops. I guess compared to their original title? That's what he said, yeah. Do you think Destiny 2 did worse?
um i don't know the numbers on that i truthfully i don't know i always felt like destiny 2 did pretty well there for a while Okay. Until the last couple years. And it's not like EverQuest 2, like EverQuest 2 didn't... flop coming out three weeks before world of warcraft like i don't care who you are you were not going to do that well at launch you know what i mean like
Any game that came out in that period did not blow up. Timing, people. Timing. I don't know what SOE was thinking. Why they didn't just delay. yeah the astronauts call too is a really interesting example and that was right there at the beginning of the 2000s I'm going to speak a little to this because I've covered a lot of these projects, especially in that era for the game archaeologists. And there was a rash of projects where a lot of studios were considering like...
They were asking a question like, what are mmos going to look like like do we just act like all these other video games and just instead of expansions like the expansion model wasn't a given like you know do we just create a new version of the game and keep
every few years like it's a new madden game it's you know new whatever a replacement yes right so like you look at ultima online they were asking that question before the turn of the century they were already working on ashron's call or i'm sorry And then Odyssey 2, yeah. Twice! They had two different versions of sequels that were under... God, I wanted that game.
Oh my gosh, I could taste how badly I wanted that game. Ultima X Odyssey is what we're talking about, by the way. We're using shorthand because we're both weird, but oh my gosh, that game. It looked so good. It did. The art style and the ideas, it was really interesting. And there's still some music out there, and I avail myself of it. They repurpose it for some later Ultima games. Oh, I see. But that's good stuff.
The mobile game. Yeah. So they were asking this question. And so you saw that. Yeah. And so Asheron's call would be the great example of like, okay, we got this game. It's kind of popular. we think it's time for a sequel. And so they had to start thinking through this. And, you know, of course, like We need to make it different. We can't make it the same game. How much are you going to cannibalize?
versus growing your brand. You want to draw new people, you want to provide something for the really bored veterans to play, but you also don't want to kill. the currently profitable game that's already under your stable. And that is a really hard thing for any studio to do. I mean, all these, even today, I'm sure if whatever Guild Wars three is going to be arena net has to kind of be asking itself like how much you know if we do go ahead with this how much are we going to take a hit
from Guild Wars 2. You know, how long... Theoretically, how long could we keep milking the Guild Wars 2 cow? Maybe another good decade or so. It's not infeasible to do that. We're already 20 years into Guild Wars 1. Guild Wars 2 could still have a good lifespan. We'll see. So you have to ask this question. If you push out a sequel...
Are your fans going to come along? Is it too different? And so they'll be like, nope, I'm going to stay put where I am. And that's what it's familiar with. And so your sequel is going to be almost completely new audience. And hopefully, you know, like you get a good balance there where you're going to convince everybody to move over and just kind of
Do the Guild Wars 1 to Guild Wars 2 model where you're like, we're not going to shut the door, but this is where we're going with this. So you can hop over here and we'll be actively developing over there. Or you could be in Guild Wars 1 and 20 years into it, we'll do something for the anniversary. And it'll be cool. Don't mind me. Yeah, it's a tricky question because we've seen – we've definitely seen some examples of them shooting themselves in the foot. But –
Then again, EverQuest 2 has had a couple sequels. I'm sorry, a couple expansions over the years. One or two, yeah. It's made some money. It's had a good crowd. It didn't, you know, to its credit, wasn't immediately sunk by World of Warcraft. No. Like, they did stick it out, and they made some money on it, and some people...
are more loyal to EverQuest 2 than they ever would. Me, that's someone. That was a way better game than EverQuest 1. Sorry, it was. But I understand why people play the original stuff too. Oh, instead of World of Warcraft? Oh, is it a better game than World of Warcraft? I'm just saying some people would, that's where their loyalty flag would fly.
it's more sandboxy it has more sandboxy things better housing right now right now exactly but like you know wow has added so much over time originally though Was it originally a better game? I know which one I played, but I'm not sure I made the right call. Oh, that's hard. Okay, I realize that's not the question, Jeff. You got like Planetside 1 and Planetside 2. That's how he did a lot of sequels here. Yeah.
Well, they've been around. This is the kind of thing that those companies that were around in the late 90s and early aughts, of course they've made sequels, right? They made a ton of money off of the first wave of MMOs and they parlayed it into a second game. It makes sense.
Except for Blizzard, because we still don't have WoW 2. But that's a different game. You could say WoW Classic is the same sort of game where they were willing to poach a little of their audience, but also try to reclaim some old audience they'd already long since lost. This is really tricky because it's so different for every single game, like you said. I don't even know that.
Asheron's Call, like, Asheron's Call was not a big MMO. It was a small MMO even back then, I'm sure. You know, Turbine made money off of it because everybody was making money, you know, hand over fist back then, but... I think that's why kind of they wanted to do Asheron's Call 2 to make it look more modern. Here's a fully 3D MMO.
you know, hopefully we'll bring our existing audience over, but really they wanted to break into more of the mainstream and it just didn't do either one of those as well. Which is funny because I have some normie relatives who weren't really MMO players who played Asheron's Call 2, so go figure. Maybe it did appeal more to people who weren't the gamers, you know what I mean, than we would think. Maybe that was part of the problem.
You need weirdos like us, right, to actually be obsessed about your game and play it forever and ever and ever. I don't know. And everybody you go up to asking, like, what would you envision as a sequel to your MMO? And everybody will have a different answer. So there's. It's not like there's this giant consensus like this is what EverQuest 3 should be.
This is what Young Guild Wars 3 should be. People do not agree. Yeah. So the studio is really going to have to set the vision. And I think the first thing to answer this question of like, how do you craft a successful sequel is to at all costs. safeguard your current game. Absolutely, yeah. Unless you're retiring your game, you do not. That is a...
Cash cow, people have loyalty to it. They have stake in it. You do not want to send this message of, well, we're done with you. You can either come over to the new thing or not. I would say in this day and age, you probably just have to make something that almost doesn't even compete with your game. Something that's just in a different direction. Just something that has a very different flavor. And again, you could go back.
That's the one thing I think that they did do right about Asheron's Call 2. It was just such a very, very different game that Asheron's Call 1 people didn't, I don't think, felt threatened like this is our game just in 3D. so different that they had the option to ignore it or to jump on board with it and maybe if it was more of a solid game if the timing was better i don't know um i i think like um if odyssey had come out
I think Ultima Online would have been just fine. You know, it would have been a much different experience. I don't know how much they would have. cribbed from the original uo crowd but yeah the reason i wanted it was not because it was like ultima online it was because it was really cool you know what i mean i i think that's
So maybe that's the second thing. Make it really cool. Whatever it is. Don't make it bad. Easy. Easy peasy. No, I think that's relevant. Hit that lever that says be cool and you're game. Right. You have to you have to figure out what the cool things in your IP are. And like you said, translated to a different audience, translated to a different time.
I see a lot of people saying they want Guild Wars 3 to just be Guild Wars 1, but better. We already have that game. Why would we do this again? We already did that. I don't know. This is a really hard question, Justin, because all of our examples, every single one of them has a different story. You know what I mean? Every single one of them.
Sometimes they did get rid of their last game. They did, you know, maintenance mode Guild Wars 1 and barely update it. You know, they've got like one developer who occasionally puts in some tech batches, but he's got a real day job, right? And he's got other stuff you should be working on.
So it's not like it's a weekly occurrence. It is basically in stasis content-wise, right? And yet the vast majority of Guild Wars 2 players don't hold that against ArenaNet. So that's clearly not going to necessarily... you know stymie your chances if you do abandon your old game as long as you keep it online a lot of people were willing to put up with that i think because world of warcraft is so old
right, that we probably wouldn't flip tables if Blizzard announced World of Warcraft 2, an actual theme park MMO, just like the original, but newer. Like, I think we would have think pieces and discussions about it for days but i don't think we would feel like blizzard had let us down or abandoned us you know what i mean because it's been 20 freaking years 21 freaking years how many years there's there's 21 There's another case study in there as well, which is Titan.
project oh so you know blizzard was trying to answer this question for a while like you know we had this super successful mmo but it won't run forever it doesn't have an indefinite you know like all these mmos like you got to be thinking about What's the next step? How do we keep and retain and grow our MMO player base without... absolutely shooting World of Warcraft in the head.
For what it's worth, they were going down, I think, a wise path. Let's make a game that's not a direct competitor. Not even a fantasy game. Yeah. Yeah, not even a fantasy game. But it's still an MMO. But it's a different type of MMO. Different graphical style, different... You can look up the whole history of Project Titan and what eventually became Overwatch and that whole translation.
They were thinking outside of the box. They weren't just thinking like, let's be super lazy and reskin World of Warcraft and make World of Warcraft 2. And again, like a lot of people, when they ask for sequels to stuff and to address what you just said, because I think you really put it well. Asking for sequels that are pretty much something we already have, go back and look at any remaster.
People get really excited about remasters for about two minutes and they'll buy it and they might be happy with them. They might not be. But that excitement is not long lasting. They'll drop it like a... But your money is. Yeah, that's what your money is. But it's not like they'll be talking about it for years after. Like, oh my goodness, the Mass Effect remaster. has kept that game in the cultural zeitgeist for you know it just was like a news flat you know news blip for a month or so and then
So I don't think a reskin is really the answer. We've certainly seen graphical upgrades for MMOs and they have a negligible effect. It really becomes about like... the the core of the game like is the core of the game compelling is it fun if it is you're playing it if it's not you know making it look shiny and pretty isn't really going to draw back millions of players the way that you think it is But yeah, it's absolutely a very complicated question. Obviously, we've solved it.
So, you know, there you go. I don't know. You know, I might actually be changing my mind after I've listened to this. So I'm sitting here saying that Guild Wars 3 shouldn't copy Guild Wars 1, but maybe it actually should. Maybe that's true. Yeah. The skill collection? Yeah, but the skill collection was fun. And I realized we would be doing a lot of the character progression over again. But if they gave us the landmass and new content through the landmass...
And then the business model were set up that way. I'm not sure I actually would disagree with that. So like you're doing a Diablo thing where Diablo 4 was kind of hearkening more back to Diablo 2. Building upon Diablo 3? Less in terms of... Maybe I do mean gameplay. I don't know. I'm way off on a tangent now. I'm just saying we don't have a lot of MMOs where they've got a hub.
And then you go out and you work your way through a single player, small group quest line. I don't know. We don't have a lot of things like that that are very linear in terms of storyline. I didn't hate that, and I really loved the character building. Let's keep this podcast going until we figure this out. Because the Guild Wars 2 character building, it's not. That's not character building. It's something different. It's not bad. It's just it doesn't feel at all like the first game.
And I think there's stuff that's worth mining from there. Like maybe they should take both games and smoosh them together and then make Guild Wars 3. I would play that. I wouldn't even be mad about that because it would be so different from either one of them. that it would feel new. And if they took the best parts, yeah.
Yeah, that's another good pillar, just to go back and do some real soul searching about what elements of these. What worked, yeah. What really worked, what's worth revisiting. Or what needs reinvention, yeah. Yeah, maybe with a modern touch. That no one else is bothering to do, totally. Confetti drop. Yay. Hey, we created a sequel to Massively called Massively Overpowered.
It's been doing okay. We just stole the name right out from under it. Absolutely. You fools. You came along for the ride. It's been the long con for 10 years, but now you found out.
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