Hey, you know what we should do, and it's kind of a missed opportunity for Massively's, OP's 10th anniversary there, is we did not give out free fireworks to everybody. I think we need to rectify this and start mailing explosive fireworks. works yes to all of our patrons four packs to every single character that you've ever made in a game and they're gonna clog your inventory in every single game
You have to carry him around in your backpack all the time. You'll get stopped. TSA won't be too happy with you. But you go, you know what? It was Mop's 10th anniversary. I could light him off right now. They'll say, please don't. That would be a crime. But, yeah. Everybody else is over there hitting Alt-R to turn off the sounds for the fireworks. Does anybody else do this, or is it just me? It's just in real life. I don't want to ever hear them. They're annoying.
The whistling noise, like when a bottle rocket goes up. Oh, my God. It, like, literally drives me. I am available for sound effects. Thank you. You need some for your game, but you're too cheap to pay for a sound library. I do really good. Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. Noise effects, too. I don't know. Maybe that would actually be... Wasn't there an MMO that they... I swear that sounds familiar.
Like they replaced some of the sound effects for April Fool's or something. And it was just the developers making sound effects. And it was like the best thing ever. Oh, we need more of that. Hey, welcome back to the Massively OP Podcast, episode 516. I'm Justin. With me is the fireworks-hating Bree.
And we have a lot for you this week. But when do we not? I don't know. Just weeks come, weeks go. Yeah, a couple of weeks. That's not even true. The mop-up proves that we've always got more than we can actually touch. And that's just the stuff that makes it into the newsroom.
That's not even the stuff I see in the feeds, and I'm like, eh, it's not even worth putting it in. It's not even worth throwing it in Justin's mop-up. There's not a day that goes by, I don't curse the fact that I came up with the idea for mop-up and presented, hey, you know what would be a good idea? To give me work forever.
all these tiny but you know what it's a good thing to do it's a good service for the community i think it would feel bad to have all those stories not be recorded and you know people some people do care about the little stuff and you're doing you know there's just There's only so much time. Yeah, and that stuff, you'll go searching for it, and you'll be like, oh, we did cover it in the mop-up. Okay, well, then we can link back to that instead. It's useful. Yeah.
Back in the days when there was like three MMOs, we had a handle on the news, but now there's five, so there's a lot. Well, yeah, we got stuff to talk about today, of course. our own narcissistic needs need to come first. So let's talk about us, us, us. So what have you, you, you been playing? I have been playing Lothro. I know you're all shocked.
I've been taking my hunter through Gundy. We've been talking about this for a couple of weeks now, but I made it through all of Matterguard. I'm done. I'm out. I didn't actually finish everything. I kind of just decided I was finished because I finished like the fourth area. You say that, but Motro's like the godfather. Once I was out, they dragged me back into that zone.
so i've got you know the last remaining dregs of the zone and then they're like oh here's some more in those places you already went to and i'm like you know what i i need to be finished i need it to be over I'm just leaving. And so I had a moment of truth. Do I go to Deep's grave or do I go to Stone Jaws? And Stone Jaws was faster. So that's where I went. This was a really good decision. I really like Stone Jaws.
And then I read this article from this guy named Justin Olivetti, who did a review, not a review, but an unreview of. Gundam Bad and he did not really like the zones that I was in so I wasn't surprised at all that I didn't really like that first zone it was just very uppy and very downy and very backtracky and those are the kinds of zones that drive me crazy
It's got like a grade to it, like it's hilly, but it's still inside of a big cavernous thing. And I feel like I'm a little bit outside, even though I'm totally not outside. All of the questing is very like chunked together in little hubs or they'll send you to the spot. And then at the spot, the dwarf has four quests for you. And it's like, yeah, this feels good. I'm having a good time. This is how I will get into the zone.
So I am, I think at least half of the way done through that. I guess it depends on how much it gets dragged out. It's a nice open, it just was more open and it was less. tight corridors and ups and downs and you you had multiple paths to get somewhere that's what you know one of my all-time big bugaboos in MMOs is like when you have navigation that's incredibly finicky and there's only one way to get to someplace and it's usually obscured.
I'm like, dude, give me a ton of ways to get someplace. You can still make your zone look the way you want it to look, but I shouldn't be punished because I missed a left turn and suddenly I've got to backtrack. Right. Yeah, and I don't usually mind going to, like, the wiki and be like, does anybody else know how someone else has had this problem? How do I find this guy who's clearly above me or below me, but I don't know how to get up there or down there or whatever?
And even the wiki doesn't even know half the time because it's still fairly new. It's only a couple years old. So anyway, I'm over it. I just moved on. I'm 135 now. I feel like I'm zipping along in levels and I'm out leveling as usual everything way too fast, which is wild because the earring doesn't even work anymore.
so this is all like regular just vip level you know what i mean sorry just to be clear vip does not mean vip so it's a subscription you get when you subscribe to the game you get like a slight bonus i don't even know what it is to experience so that's all it is and it's still kind of a lot it's moving very fast I don't know I'm not really complaining so I need to finish that and then I guess I'm going on to gloom something glitter something
What's the one after Deep's Grave? I'm going to skip Deep's Grave entirely. It's been a while. I don't remember what it's called, but I guess I jumped to that one and then I go to the one that looks very green on the map. So I think that's the one that you like. But we'll get there. So yeah, I did that. I spent a whole evening working on my legendary weapon because I realized... About level 133, I realized that my legendary weapon stopped working at like 130, and that's why I was slow.
I mean I was still killing and not having problems but it was slower than it should have been so I upgraded everything and now i'm killing in two hits again so that was kind of fun i really enjoyed getting my uh my full strength back and then i spent last night going through the whole damn cash shop every instrument i looked at it i clicked on everything to try to decide how best to like decide my money going forward because i had been saving so i have about
7k 8k something like that points i know this is nothing compared to justin justin saves them up and has nothing to spend them on and won't spend them on his wardrobe for some reason But I was trying to spend thousands. I know you have them. You have them because you have the life. Don't you have a lifetime sub? Yeah, but I use them. Wow. I buy a lot of Milestone online. Yeah, I have a bunch of those, and you know how I am with them.
What are they called? Carry-alls. I go a little ham on the carry-alls when they go on sale. But still, I had sort of been saving up because in the back of my head, I was like, well, if SSG opens up the Hobbit bundle, whatever it's called, the coffer, is it homestead coffer?
It's the one with the stable and the really cool ponies. You know the one I'm talking about. The one with the Clydesdales? Yeah, the one with the Clydesdales. And it's stupid. I shouldn't buy this. If you work out the numbers, it's something like $80. worth of points now granted you have already paid this Less than that because of the way the stipend for your subscription works.
But I still had it in the back of my mind that maybe if I had the 10K points when it came back around again, because they bring them back like every year or so, maybe. And then I did the numbers again. I was like, Bree, you are not doing that. You cannot do that.
that's it's it's just a pony okay get over it and you're not going to use any of the rest of that crap you know you're not you're just going to want the pony and you're going to be bored of it in five minutes and move on to the next pony because there's always another pony so I've talked myself out of it but now I have to figure out what I am going to buy
with the seven to eight k points i've been hoarding so that's what i was working on was trying to decide how to spend it because right now mithril is on sale and i was thinking about maybe ferreting away some mithril So that when the Rivendell housing comes out, I'm prepared. Not that I need another house. Like, I realize these are all.
these are first world hobbit problems like let's be real nobody needs any of this but since my subscription is paying for the the stipend anyway i still have to decide the smartest way to do it so now that i have them to play with i haven't really i made a big list and i made it of course i did i turned it into a spreadsheet Hi, I'm Bree. Nice to meet you. But I kind of sort of have it set out now what I'm going to do. And the next time they have one of those crafting blasts,
You know, when they give you like a free like bonus crafting like experience week. I don't even know what those things are called. The VIP. Bonus something, something bonuses, whatever they are. Every week they change. So the next time they do a crafting one, I think I'm going to go ham on.
Finally grinding out a metalsmith. I just need to figure out where it's going to be and it's probably going to be on my main character because it just seems like it's worth it to spend a K 1,000 points to actually move that to a character I actually play and play a lot of. so that i actually get the recipes i don't like the way lotro has done that but lotro has done that so
Anyway, I had a really good time playing this week. I know this is very ridiculous, and a lot of this was very meta, especially spending a couple hours trying to relearn Legendary Weapons again because it's been, I don't know, a year since I needed to fuss with this. Back to that grind. I'm loving Lotro so much right now. And you may notice I didn't actually play any of the new stuff that came out.
last week they they came out you're probably going to talk about this but they came out with the anniversary stuff and the the festival is back i haven't touched it i went i looked and i was like don't need any of that and left again so at least i don't have to grind that out Yeah, I actually, I don't usually do a lot of anniversary stuff. I went through all the anniversary quests one year and I felt like I had my fill.
It's just like, okay. Got all those horses. Got all that armor. Right. It was cool. Yeah. But nowadays, I just kind of ignore it. I was really happy with, we're going to talk about Update 44 in a few minutes here. But I was happy to get a new batch of quests for high level. So my minstrel could actually do stuff again, which is nice. Okay. So I'm starting down that road. I've got three Lotro characters I cycle through. I've got...
My high end all the way at the end of all the questing minstrel. I've got my lore master I'm taking right now through Corsairs of Umbar, but I'm only doing... the epic with her and it's kind of it's bizarrely how fast that goes like you're just zipping along just doing the epic
And then I've got my Mariner going through Moria, but she's doing like a full completionist everything. So it's very, very different flavors. And it's kind of nice. Like every day I get a bit of a different scene, different.
type of gameplay um but what i really want to talk about actually two other games yeah wow wow classic i kind of got more back into that this past week and had really good just like it's so relaxing just playing the hunter like back in vanilla it's it's dumb everybody plays it i understand that but just it's really relaxing that they
The Hunter is really well built in WoW. It has always been a really great class. You can make fun of Hunters all you want, but it just works. It works so great. Yeah. I like the collection aspect of the pet skills. I wish they had kept that, but... When I got back into it, I was like level 41, and I realized I didn't have my mount yet. I wasn't able to afford it. I was only at like 86 gold. So I made that my goal this week to kind of...
Keep questing, but with a goal of trying to get some extra money on the side. And yeah, I got my ram, my dwarf. Yay, finally. Yeah, I'm at that awesome 60% go speed, which is cool. But I totally forgot that back in classic era, when you mount up, it disables your... the hunter has like different buffs that they can put on themselves like the masteries and so it disabled my like run speed buff
So every time we mount up, that disables. So I have to kind of get into the habit of re-enabling it. Oh, that's annoying. Can you get a plug-in or something that will automatically detect state and change? Like if not on mount, then turn on blankety blank. I don't know. Maybe. I bet that's a thing. I bet people are just as annoyed by it as you are.
I mean, it'll change when Burning Crusade comes out. That's true. That's all we can, you know, our whole guild seems to talk about. Oh, we can't wait, at least for the pre-patch. Hope that it comes. But it's probably still several months away.
Actually, the other game I wanted to talk about, just to get some more variety in this part of the podcast, I'm happy to say I am back in Elder Scrolls Online. I saw that. You did a daily grind on it, and I was like, really? I didn't even know you'd gone back.
Yeah, and not because of the news. Actually, the news is not really super compelling. I'm still very dubious on the whole seasons and what Zenimax is doing. I know that the community is very, very divided on this, and it's a huge talking point. But it was a good reminder like, oh, yeah, I haven't been back in this game for a while. Kind of miss it.
miss the stories at least it just sometimes you get the idea of returning to a game and you just kind of let it percolate in your head for a while and so after about four or five days i'm like yeah i'm ready let's go and it was a good decision so i'm actually going through No, I never subbed. So no sub, and did you buy the thing?
I didn't buy the thing. I'm actually in the middle of... I bought Gold Road last... Seasons of the whatever. Seasons of the Worm Cult. No. I bought Gold Road last year, and I had just started it. when I stepped away from Elder Scrolls Online. So I'm just starting to go through that right now. And it's so gorgeous. West Weald is just a beautiful zone. It has like a big weird dead streak in the middle, but oh my goodness, I miss the stories. There are so many good stories.
Every day, just getting into it. And it really reminds me a bit of what I loved about Secret World is just getting a meal of a story rather than what MMOs usually do, which is to give you like... hey, go do this thing. There's not really a story in the middle of your quest. There's at the beginning and end. It's like a bookmark.
bookended thing, but you don't often feel like you're accomplishing a story or part of a story. ESO does a really good job with all of its tools, scripting, NPCs, dialogue, all this stuff. And oftentimes they're really good about setting up a mystery. And so at the beginning of the quest, there was one I did just last night where I went to this really nice estate.
And I was supposed to touch base with the leader of the soldiers there. And she got there at the same time. She's like, where the heck is everybody? Like, nobody's here. And so it becomes this mystery, like, where did all the soldiers and all of the servants go? And I genuinely, I'm like, I can't log off until I know the answer to this question. As it went on, it just got weirder and weirder. And I'm not going to spoil anything if you haven't played it. I'm not in the business of doing that.
ESO tends to take these quests in a very unexpected direction, so I'm always really interested to see where the quest writers take things. And it was good. So yeah, that's actually been a really good time. I'm still playing my warden. I feel like I need to get through all of the content, at least on one character, before I tempt myself with an alt.
And also, you know, ESO is talking about maybe introducing a higher difficulty settings optionally for Overland. And if that comes along later this year, that would be a wonderful opportunity to go, okay, now I'm going to have my challenge character. So what that would be, I don't know. Khajiit, obviously. I don't need a Khajiit at this point. I'm not sure if Necromancer or something else. We'll see. It's been good. I feel between those three games right now, I have some good variety.
Stepped away from Retail Wow for a little bit. Again, not for reasons we're going to talk about, just not really feeling it right now. Feeling like Wow Classic more fits the bill. So, you know, you kind of go where your interest leads you and you don't have regrets about it. I don't think you should.
If nobody else is guilting you over what you should play, you definitely should not guilt yourself over what you do and do not play, right? There's my little talk. You're the one who's got to sleep at night, right? You know what I mean? Nobody else is. paying your rent or paying for your self-care you take care of yourself I used to think people cared way more about what I played than they actually do People are just happy to hear us talk about it or.
read about it on my blog but i used to be super self-conscious like i'm stepping away from this game and they'll be like, aha, you had plans and you said those plans and you didn't stick to the plans. Do you remember at the beginning of the year, Justin, when I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to do a new map in Guild Wars 2 every week this year. And then I stopped playing Guild Wars 2. I told my kids that and you broke their heart. Yeah, I know. Exactly.
No, I feel bad about things like that. But you're right. People don't notice. And they shouldn't. They should have their own problems and not worry about us. You know what I mean? Like, we're not that interesting. Nah. All right. Well, you know what is interesting? It's the news, and we've got plenty of it to talk about. So let's get into a bit of a surprise. I mean, 2025 has already been chock full of very interesting, surprising MMO news.
By the time we get to the end of the year, I don't even know what we're going to pull out for biggest surprise at this point. But I'm delighted to see them continuing to come. Yeah, Defiance is a real contender. That would be my first. Sorry, I didn't mean to be real. To actually answer your hypothetical question, I went ahead and answered it.
So far, Defiance seems like it is a good, heavy forerunner. But there is another one. Of course, we talked a couple weeks ago about Equinox Homecoming, that horse, cozy, mystery, MMO. Put those three. adjectives in any order you like it's okay it's it's that interesting project that's coming out and it's going to be you know ride around a horse on an island solving crimes doing fun stuff
petting your horse? I don't know. But you know what? We're going to know way sooner than I thought it was even possible. I saw this new story come out, Bree, and I was like... Huh. Like, both an interesting and a curious huh. Anyways, the story we're talking about is that the studio says it's going to be putting this game out into early access May 8th. Is that next week? No, two weeks from now? It's next week. It's next Thursday. Holy crap. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So here's the deal. As far as we know, I mean, again, they just started talking about this game, at least in terms of, like, here's the official title. We first learned about it at the beginning of this year, wasn't it? I thought it was just a couple, several weeks ago when they did the full reveal of the name and the trailer and all that. Yeah, that was March, but even before that. We knew something was in the works, but this was. I'm trying to look it up.
Okay, so last July. Last July is when we found out it existed. Long before it had a name. Oh, I forgot it was backed by NetEase. Wouldn't want to be a Netties game right about now. Maybe that's why they're pushing it out quick. Dang. I've long since forgotten it was being partly funded by Netties. Anyway, so yeah, July. That's crazy. That's crazy.
But yes, May 8th is when they're going to be pushing it into early access. It does look like it is a very early, early access. It is, if you want to get into it. It's going to be $25, but that comes with what they're saying, a lifetime subscription to the game versus having to buy content down the road. I might actually nibble at this one. Yeah, I want to look that up. That sounds good. If that's what that really means, you know what I mean.
$25 is nothing. $25 to satisfy some curiosity and maybe pave the road for... some future content that might be interesting. Yeah, sure. I don't have anything super pressing on the horizon. Thank you, Dune Awakening, for shoving yourself all the way to June at this point. And Elder Scrolls Online for not doing chapters. So I'm not going to go broke this year. So why not buy into a horse thing? So yeah, they're saying it's going to come out early access.
Here's a caveat. This is what really caught my eye. They're saying right now it's going to have about 8 to 12 hours worth of content, worth of gameplay, stories, whatever. So I wouldn't really base your expectations. Like you need to be setting it. Go in, do some stories. Maybe there's some repeatable events. I have no idea how much of an alpha this is going to feel, but it does seem pretty early, all things considered. I'm still astounded like they would go this fast.
without hyping it a bit more. Yeah, this makes me really worried, honestly. I don't like being worried. I really want this one to do well, but... So just putting it out there. There you go. Equinox Homecoming, May 8th, $25. Or you can just hold on to your $25 and buy two eggs. Actually, eggs have come down. A little. A little. Not enough. Not enough. Don't worry. Gas is up. Three eggs. Three eggs there. And you can just see how it goes for the rest of the year.
I don't know. My curiosity, I think, might get to that. I want to see how far that's going to get them in a live service game. They are still calling this an MMO. I just want to point that out. That we're not just using that word casually because, you know, if we cover it, therefore it's an MMO. That's not what we're doing here. They're still calling it an MMO. In fact, I thought they had actually called it an MMORPG at one point.
But now I would have to actually go back and double check that. Are they calling it an MMORPG? Anyway, I don't know. They called it an MMO. That seems so weird that it's like so limited. I don't know. We're just going to have to see. I wish we would have had a chance to test this ahead of time.
So that we even can tell you guys what's happening. You know what I mean? That's not really. Well, you know what? Here, it's an opportunity at least for one or two of us to get into the game and come back and bring a report. So if nothing else, I won't feel like that's a loss. You know, time or money, if I can turn it, spin it around and benefit the site in some way. All right. So what Justin is saying is come back on May 12th and we're going to talk about Han.
It's going to be all about the horsies. All ponies all the way down for the entire show. uh that and star stable we i don't think we've ever done a star stable piece on the show probably should someday it's like i've played it a little bit um It was very... Old timey. Trapper Keeper, Lisa Frank.
See, that doesn't bother me. I like that vibe. No, I'm not saying. I'm just asking. It felt like a kid's game. It played like a kid's game. It was a little janky. But you know what? That's okay. My only experience is the soundtrack, which is actually really good. It's just not a game you would think of for a really good soundtrack, but they've actually done multiple releases of albums and stuff.
That's neither here nor there. Equinox Homecoming May 8th. We can check it out in early access or just hold on. But if your tastes are going more toward Dune Awakening, you also will have a chance to play this May 9th. filling up with things to do next month. We're just throwing them right at you. They're running a large-scale beta, May 9th through 12th.
So you can get in there, check out the game if you haven't tried it yet. I know you've been able to read some reports. We've posted some first impressions on the site. But if you need that, you know, your impressions, you can go ahead and do that. That'll be a nice long weekend for Friday through Monday. They're in May. And there's no NDA, so you can get there if you like to stream things or talk about it.
It's about time we actually start talking about the game and have people give some really honest feedback, especially considering that the game got pushed back because of apparently tester feedback and some things that Funcom was not happy with. So, yeah, Larry posted some first impressions. You're going to want to check those out as well. A bit mixed. Yeah, I would say. So we actually had Chris and Larry in.
in the test. And I think it was last week when I said we couldn't really tell you what they thought yet because it was still under NDA. I guess that embargo is down and Chris didn't like it at all. He was very grumpy about it. He had technical problems left and right. He was not impressed. And, you know, he plays a lot of survival sandboxes. So I was kind of surprised by that. So Larry, I was like, OK, well, if anybody loves it, it's going to be Larry because, you know, Larry is like a hardcore.
survival sandbox person like he literally plays more than than mj does he's like hardcore into like conan exiles in those games this is this should be his game right he was not super impressed like you said he thought it was
Clearly an MMORPG, but not a very good one. And then a lot of the survival sandbox stuff that they had put into it was insufficient like it just it didn't meet anywhere it didn't really satisfy either end of the mmo to to sandbox to have a feed in both pools but kind of really fully committing And, you know, a lot of people are not going to agree with that because it's going to depend on like what you were looking for and what you were expecting and what you wanted out of it.
you know what you're used to but here you know this was somebody who's got a lot of pedigree with both of these games both of these templates anyway these types of games for decades and yet he felt kind of disappointed. So that actually worried me more than anything else I've seen or read about this game because I was absolutely convinced Larry would be blown away and thrilled that this was just going to be Conan Exiles with a dune, you know.
sticker placed on top, but it really doesn't seem to be. Which also surprises me. You know what I mean? I guess when Funcom started calling this an MMORPG, it wasn't full of crap. Who knew, right? I didn't necessarily believe that until actually an MMORPG player had gone in there and looked. It kind of really reminds me of Fallout 76.
especially in the first year or so. When that came out, Bethesda was trying to do the same thing. Two feet, completely different genres, trying to bring it together into a single game. Got some of that survival gameplay also.
sort of MMO-y and sort of RPG and trying to put it together. And they didn't really have a super clear vision. They were trying to get pieces of both pies and i know i'm mixing metaphors it's okay it's what i do um i have a license for it but it took some time for them to kind of gel it and and figure out like what
the angle of the game like they scaled down the survival aspect they scaled a little bit up on the social interactions and how the game was going to function and they and they found their they found their groove but it took time and it really
That's kind of where I'm landing on this. I feel like this is not something Funcom is going to lightly abandon because it's a pretty huge investment and the IP and all of that. It's got potential, but... needs a bit more it sounds like it needs a bit a lot more work and they need to figure out that balance between survival and mmo and i i've seen that even in just how they talk about the game yep because sometimes they're just like oh you know just really front presenting it as
A survival game and almost not talking about the MMO at all. And then you'll flip to another interview where they're like, yeah, so the crafting was deeply inspired by Star Wars Galaxies. And your head whips around like, wait a minute, what are we talking about again? Yeah, it's really weird.
Yeah. And then, yeah, I'm going to watch them. I'm really interested in this beta. Again, it's May 9th through 12th. I'm going to be interested not to participate, I don't think. I really want to watch some streams. Here's some other voices coming out. Not that I don't. distrust Larry and Chris. I absolutely do. But I want to hear more perspectives on this. Funcom might be updating the build and seeing what they're doing. frantically doing here in the last month before launch.
So they got a big task ahead of them. This is not something that they can really afford to fumble that large. And of course, Funcom is pretty familiar with fumbling launches. I'm sure I don't know what you mean.
There's this game called Age of Conan, I guess. It's going to be the next Warhammer. I was thinking of Anarchy Online. I know, I'm being facetious. What about the time that they launched Secret World and then a whole bunch of the important people at the company got arrested for insider trading? I don't remember that one too much well you don't remember that one look it up guys I didn't make that up
Funcom has had a fun history. Let's just put it that way. I realize nobody involved with that is still at the company, but still. Yeah. This is a long time ago. As we said earlier, Lord of the Rings Online came out with an update. Update 44 this past week. And kind of bundled in with that was the game's 18th anniversary. So this is their first big update of the year. And usually there's about three or four of these updates over the course of the year. They've been building toward it.
Probably. And you can correct me if you have a different perspective, but I would probably call this like a bit of a kitchen sink. update a little bit of everything yeah sample platter you know it's it's got it's got a six person dungeon it's got as i said a new quest pack so there's like 50 new quests to keep your high-level Umbar character adventuring for a bit more. It's got some new missions. They're expanding their reputation system for VIP players account-wide.
I almost can't be bothered to care about that because it seems like the boost to it is so low. I forgot to look it up. That's still not bad. It's nice, yeah. If you've unlocked it, it's nice if you have a lot of alts. It certainly will benefit some people very nicely. It needs to be like 50%. It needs to be like double. Everything needs to be double. Stop making us go into the cash app for this stuff. Come on.
They reworked their Lelia's Market. It's actually pretty. I don't know if you got in there. I haven't. Oh, hold on. I'm writing it down so that I actually remember to go look. I don't ever go in there except when I teleport. Go look at Lolly's Market. It's bigger. It's more spacious. It's easier to figure out where you want to go. I did find the one vendor all the way at the end that will sell housing bundles for homesteading coins.
I have not purchased any yet. I have not done anything with that. I'm still trying to set up my house. It's taking a very long time. I'm almost done. I'm almost done. I'm almost done. So there's all that. And then of course the anniversary came out and they, this was all kind of. Day one anniversary came out. There's all these new anniversary missions. And I'm like, cool, I'm going to do those before I get into the new quest back.
cannot for the life of me find them and i was told on you know fibro jedi's blog he's like oh hey they're in the prancing pony because i saw that on the test server so i go i'm i'm exploring every nook and cranny of the prancing pony i have looked in rooms that i haven't looked in for years i cannot find this guy And I'm like sending him a note on social media. I'm like, what the heck, dude? He's like, they're not in the game. Like they yanked.
And so SSG, apparently something happened with these missions. that are anniversary-focused, and they yanked them all, and they're going to bring them out, I think, in about a week or two. Okay. And so they are coming back. They'll technically be here for the anniversary. But, you know, not until Justin has to tear his hair out looking for. Of course. so and then all this is coming with like their their um the previous Angmar and Mordor.
64-bit servers that are kind of those progression servers they launched last year, they're progressing them into Mirkwood with kind of a revamped Mirkwood endgame that they're doing just special for those servers, making it a little tougher to do both. Overland content and dungeons. They're going to be progressing Treebeard in about a week or so to Mordor.
And what was the other thing? Oh, yeah, they're launching the new server, I think, this week. The new Sting server should be coming out on Wednesday. Okay. Yes, I saw your article on that. So Sting Wednesday and then the Dark Worlds next week?
Yes. I think that's what they said. Now, they're like, you know, things could happen. Things could change. And that could invalidate part of this podcast. But it sounds like they're pretty confident. They're a month and a half late, guys. Just turn it on. Come on. If it would have been ready a month and a half ago, it's ready now. Come on. Yeah. Make it happen. They need to get a pregnancy test. So, oh, I'm sorry. Did I misinterpret what you just said? Yes.
Gotcha. You did. All right. Anything else you want to talk about for Update 44 here? No. In fact, I'm sorry we keep talking about Lotro. I just love Lotro so much right now. What do you call that? It's my thing right now. Lotro loves its weird little symbols over letters to make things look super. I don't know that little carrot. I'm not sure how you pronounce it. I was wondering that too. So it's not Hamat, right? How do you really pronounce it?
I heard Hamat. Yeah, that's kind of Hamat. I don't know. It seems like in Umbar, it's over every other A. They really love it. How do you, the internet does not know. Maybe it's just the A holding up an umbrella and it's just like, it's going to rain. It's almost like this was made up. I don't know. Somebody will tell us in the comments. Somebody out there has made this their Conlang study and they will tell us how to do it. Games are already hard enough to pronounce. I don't need this though.
And not to be overdone, overshadowed with a patch here in World of War, or Lotro, World of Warcraft came out with its own update this past week. Update 11.1.5, becoming almost immediately one of the most infamous patches that have ever come to the game, at least in recent history. It is a hot mess. If you couldn't tell by the numbering system, it's not even like...
11.2 or 11.3. It wasn't important enough to be a hot mess, so it's going to have to calm down, okay? This was kind of more of a tidying people over, like... We need to put some content in the game to tide you over for a couple months while we get the next big update, you know, or the mid-tier update. This is even like a kind of a quarter tier.
And they just like broke all the things. There's so many broken things. They were like touting this cool down system. It is just botched like crazy. Nobody's going near it. People do not like the time gating on content. Don't tell us all these new systems, all these new features, and then say, now you've got to wait two months for it. It's not happy. Wait two months?
Well, part of it, the Dastardly Duos, isn't coming out until June 3rd. So I guess a month and a half. Oh, so they're just staggering the content. yeah, they're staggering the content. Some people are okay with that. Some people not so much.
I'm sorry, far be it for me to defend WoW. Sorry, continue, please. No, I want it. This is a new side of Brie that I have never seen before. You know what? You know what? It popped into my head because I just finished proofing and putting out Elliot's piece on the... final fantasy stuff that came out like a week and a half ago and all the people exploration yes and all the people who like rushed that it was like it sounded like a world like a server wide
event that people just pushed along like real fast so it was like done on like half the servers long before half these people even got home from work to play i guess that was that's what the griping is about so i mean there's There's sometimes a reason that the devs will put gates like on things like this so that people don't just rush through them and ruin it, like make it impossible for other people to play. That's just the only reason it popped in my head. Sometimes time gated content.
But maybe not here. I don't have a big problem with that. I'll make that clear. I don't. That's not a bad thing. There's still so much happening. And there's different types of people, right? Different types of players. Some who just gun through content as fast as possible. And then they're just sitting there drumming their fingers waiting for the next hit. Oh, they're not waiting. They're complaining on the forum.
that too it's worse and then there are people like me like i'm always going to be a couple patches behind so i'm never really starved for content as it is it's a good place to be yeah Another problem they have with this update, and this has become kind of a low-key furor over in the forums, is that... Blizzard had been promising, had been teasing and promising, especially around the reward track for this season, that there's going to be these catch-ups.
this catch up gear, uh, token called dinars that were going to come out and it was going to allow people to like buy raid level tier gear. And people were, like, very excited about that this was going to be part of the reward track. And Blizzard yanked it from the reward track shortly before it went live earlier this year. And so, but...
Blizzard also said, oh, we're going to return it in some other way. So don't worry, you know, like the DNRs are going to come back. So now like everybody's expectations on this. been ratcheted off. You dangled it in front of us. You took it away. You promised it back. So they came back with this patch and they're like, here you go. You have to do mythic raiding to get access and you have to kill an insane number of bosses to get these tokens.
And that is just like a small percentage of the entire population of this game. Like for most of us, we just want like, I can do a reward track. That's like, everybody can do that. This is just. shutting it down for most people. That is a slap in the face. It is a huge slap in the face. What is that?
hell were they thinking is it really this bad oh my god i had no idea how bad videos that came out like the day of you know like all these content creators they're normally just like fawning all over blizzard and they're just like what the what Like this is, and Blizzard's not just doing this bad thing, but they were defending it and saying, hey, this is a great thing. We're giving you what you want. And the community's like, no, you are not. So this is all to say that 11.1.5.
Should have just been like, hey, here's some nice new content that tied you over the month of May. And instead has just become this horribly buggy mess that no doubt Blizzard is just scrambling behind the scenes. It's a PR mess. It's a bug mess. And it's just not a good look, especially... As the game has kind of promised this really accelerated roadmap, I think that's where a lot of people have kind of landed on one of the reasons why this happened. Blizzard kind of has committed itself.
to pumping out content maybe a little too fast at this point and where it maybe should throttle back and do a little bit more quality assurance testing perhaps Far be it for me to suggest those things. Oh, wait. I can't suggest those things. I'm a podcaster. Exactly.
QA stuff has been going on for a while, and I don't mean to dump on QA testers themselves because you know they found this stuff and reported it. If they were given time, they found it. It's just a matter of did anybody have time to listen and take care of it before it rolled out to life.
That's always the forever answer. And I remember we were talking about this last summer when they, right before the, was it the expansion, I guess, or maybe the pre-patch and everything was super buggy and then they lost everybody. Guild vaults. It was just a mess. Just like every week it was another mess coming out of WoW. This just seems like an extension of that. But boy, now I understand why Elliot was up in arms over the weekend because he was like...
Y'all, this is literally, they just offered you. wrath of the lich king level badges like badge gear that's what this is and that's what a lot of people have been wanting for forever and i didn't quite understand the connection when he was ranting about this and now i totally understand it and i totally understand why people are mad because this is just blizzard again once once again lucy with the football right
dangling that out there for you casuals for you non-raiders and then like psych and then give it right back now this is basically what this sounds like is a bonus for raiders alts as opposed to for non-raiders that's how i'm reading this maybe i'm wrong but and maybe i'm wrong too i mean i was kind of wrapping my head around reading a lot of this stuff and just going yeah that that's so bizarre but it's also bizarre to me like
The Undermine release was great. It was largely a very well done. Here's a giant scoop of content. And they rolled that out and there was almost, I'm not saying there wasn't any problems, there were, but it was like this kind of bug riddle mess for a much, much, much smaller pad.
That seemed to have broken so many more things. Yeah, Tyler loved that too. It wasn't just you. Everybody who was playing Undermined seems to have, it might have been short and there might have been stuff in it that you didn't love, but. Overall, it seemed to have gone over very well. It was a good addition. And it fits really well with the expansion.
uh anyway so that that's what was happening it has been happening and continues to happen over there in world of warcraft hopefully blizzard will sort out some of its you know more disarrayed things clean up your room dude Put everything back together because we got housing coming soon and you cannot botch housing the way that you're botching this. In the meantime, I think New World poked its head out of its little groundhog hole and saw its shadow and yet stayed to talk to us.
So what's going on with New World? I was not expecting when was this? This came out on the 22nd. Yes, I was wrapping up work for the day and suddenly, boom, we've got this huge thing. Yes. maybe i wasn't i it was toward the end of the day as opposed to the beginning of the day and they didn't give us any heads up on this which is odd because amazon usually gives us a lot of heads up on their patches and stuff but yeah the amazon team came out with a big like a roadmap
a roadmap with an asterisk because it doesn't actually have any dates or timelines on it but it is a list of things that they are doing in the short term and then the median term and then like kind of like a wish list to dangle out in front of us of no promises at all Along with this, sorry, one sec. Bree is taking a little break for her sanity. No, I might have aspirated some tea, and then I got so excited to talk about New World, I made it worse.
Do you have like mint flavor now in your sinuses? Can you hear them next door? I'm so sorry if you can hear that. It's very loud. Anyway. They came up with a huge video too. It's like a 30-minute video. We used to get these videos, guys. every single week. We get them every single Monday or Tuesday. It was glorious. I always felt like I had a really good insight into what the heck was going on at Amazon and New World.
And then last year, you guys remember, everything kind of dried up. Communications basically stalled out. This went from being a top communication MMO studio, really, truly, I'm not just saying that, to basically being who?
And they just kind of vanished. And then all of the Aeternum stuff, like we just haven't gotten significant, consistent communication out of them so stuff will drop and then we'll be like are they still okay over there were there layoffs are we getting patches is anything happening and then nothing for kind of a long time while these seasons are cooking And now, boom, now we're getting another one. So the next season is coming. It is, what, the 13th? May 13th. So that's...
Two weeks from now. It's called Seasons of the Divide. And I hope you like PvP again because this season, just like the last one, is all about PvP. They're doing all kinds of stuff. There's new hardcore.
seasonal world that's actually called hardcore that was just a word i just the the actual world is called hardcore uh that's coming in june um it's kind of weird because it's one of those where you can level really fast and you get like uber loot as you go along collecting but of course if you die um you are basically kind of done right and you're not you're not part of the hardcore like
leaderboard I don't even know how to phrase this they didn't really give the vocabulary for it but you still play but you're no longer part of like the challenge mode of it anymore so you're not going to lose your character if you die but you're going to die so
Plus they've got, I'm just going to read at this point, there's another OPR map. There's the Coral Divide one that they've already been testing. There's a Capture the Flag PVP mode that they're testing out. There's another OPR map called Bare Bones, which... Honestly, this is probably the most interesting thing that they're doing.
uh for you pvp fans who actually like pvp and aren't just there to screw with people it's basically one of those that like guild wars one style where it flattens all of your gear so everybody's got basically the same gear score i love those so you can't like you know be like an uber you know, raider type and then come in and then wallop the actual good PVPers with their crap gear. No, everybody's got the same gear. I love that.
There's a new arena preview. I saw the barbershop in here. Now I'm double checking. Yeah, the barbershop is definitely coming in season eight. Finally. I know. I was like, first off, didn't they already put that in? But I guess not. Everything got delayed and put off because of Eternum. There's a ton of stuff. There's boss events. There's a whole bunch of quality of life stuff.
Honestly, it's big. I do not know what it will portend for the game's future. I do not know whether it will bring people back. New World Steam Charts. How are we doing today, fam? Okay, not great. They have about 6,000 players in there right now. with about 8,000 in the last day. So, yeah, no, I mean, they've fallen. Yeah, okay. They had 61K peak in October when Aternum launched, basically. Now, to be fair, this is just Steam. So I don't know. I don't know how Xbox and...
I'm sorry, my brain is saying planet side. Not Planetside. Why do I do that? PlayStation. PlayStation. Because they're both PS. That's why I have my head anyway. So we don't know what the numbers are like on there. I have no idea. That's just PC. So yeah, I mean, they've fallen back down. Are they as bad as they were last year? Not yet, but I mean, July and August, we're down to, like, an average of, like, 3,200, 3,600 people. Yeah. Concurrent. That's...
That's panic. I don't know why they're not panicked. That seems really, really low to me. I don't know. So I have no idea. It's definitely been quiet. So it is nice to hear from New World. Exactly. And some of the stuff they have like coming ahead forward, like in their exploration bin. Like, they're talking all the stuff you're wanting. You want new zones? That's in there. New raids, new weapons. Obviously, new seasonal stuff. They're not going to stop doing seasons until they make money.
all instance content available in matchmaking which Today I learned that that's not true already. why isn't that true already the right a territory system overhaul which would be really cool a ranked pvp system company halls so guild halls basically guild guild um like buildings not just regular houses like there's gardening and farming this was popped out at me before like really
That's cool. That needs to be right now. Right now, I feel like they're focused so hard on trying to make PvP happen in this game. I don't know if there's going to be much of a game left by the time they finish that. I don't know. I could be wrong. Maybe they're right. Maybe that's what their metrics show, that only PvPers are left and that's how they should focus. But boy, this worries me.
I didn't mean to worry everybody else, but the more I talk, the more worried I get. What do you think, Justin? Am I crazy here? No. How worried should we be? I don't know. I don't tend to freak out as much over stuff like that. I guess if I was playing... It would be a different thing, and I need to be sympathetic toward that. Yeah, ever since Saturnum came out, I knew that was their huge Hail Mary, and it seemed to have a nice positive bump. It did.
It wasn't exactly like the giant tsunami of re-engagement and excitement and people talking about the game the way that it was when it originally launched. And so it has kind of very much faded over the past several months. And I just don't hear people talking about this. This does not seem to be... an mmo that's high on people's radar unless people are asking for you know suggested you know i need a new mmo i need i want something that's you know came out within the last five years i'm tired of
All these recommendations of older ones and New World will usually get trotted out. It's fairly decent. It's got a lot of good content in it. It's got some good combat systems. It's got a setting that hasn't been done to death. and it's worth checking out. It's got a really good housing system. It's pretty full-featured, and if that's what you want, it's just for whatever reason, and there are a lot of reasons probably, and that could be the source of a few articles.
Amazon just can't seem to keep this game. They let the PC crowd down. They didn't really, I don't think, got in as many console players as they were truly hoping. So yeah, it's kind of become a smaller MMO. And if they can keep it going financially for a long time, that'd be great.
I'm deeply concerned, I guess, over... the future if amazon gets another game on the market and feels like it doesn't you know it wants to kind of shift resources you know sometimes that happens where they just you know amazon certainly has done that where they gladly shuttered some projects down that looked promising but not as promising as like say new world and so
You know, I don't know that the long and the short of it is I just don't know. I would not if I was a betting man, I would not put a lot of chips on. new world at this point but if they can slowly but surely you know shore up the content again this This patch looks pretty decent. I'm not upset with it. If I was playing with it, I wouldn't be upset. Although not a whole lot for PvE players. That's part of the way their seasons have gone. World bosses and...
Yeah, and barbershop. I mean, that needed to be done. The game just had some of the ugliest. options in your character but almost all of this is pvp that's all yeah it worries me a little bit like they that game has been shifting more toward a pvp crowd
I remember that last year as well. I guess technically hardcore is PvE, right? I mean, there will be PvP on it, but... yeah technically but like if you just wanted to like play content in the game and explore and you know do dungeons and that that's just not really being serviced right now so If you're a classic MMORPG player, I don't know why you'd play this over the games that are giving that kind of content. You know what I mean?
I don't know. Oh, well, I'm nervous. Maybe I shouldn't be. I know there are so many games that have far fewer players in this and no people on console and can still fund a team. Maybe I'm just hyperbolic. I expect more out of Amazon. I expect more out of this team and out of this game. That's all. But as you said, it's really good to see them kind of break this semi-radio silence. Totally. And I would love to see more of it going into the summer.
All right, well, let's get to the mailbag. What do we have? From our listeners this week. So this one is from Jeff, who emailed this in a while ago. He said, I greatly appreciated your coverage of Sandra Power's passing. It seemed tasteful and timely, even though covering the passing of a developer is never a fun topic. Bree remarked that she wished there were something else she could do to highlight the contributions that individual developers do on a team basis.
Warren Spector, for example, is often credited with being the creator of Thief and Deus Ex, but in reality it was a team of developers that made those projects happen. I thought about suggesting even more work for your team, like having a regular interview column spot in your industry news section for developers to talk about their past projects and hinted upcoming ones. Additionally, access to members of a dev team seemed challenging as they seemed to be protected by the money men.
So what about an end of the year award for an individual dev instead? Do you guys remember when we would interview Smed and we would always joke about Smed coming in with his Imperial guards and he would have like two, you know, PR ladies, one on each arm, basically stopping him from talking? That's like a visual I have in my head whenever I think about dealing with developers, especially the ones who really, really love to blab, who just want to say stuff and tell it to you straight and then...
You know, they've got a muzzle and a leash saying, no, no, Smed, don't talk to the next interviewer. And they remember what it used to be like back in the day when it was just more. you know wild wild west yes oh yes i see what you mean yeah they could just come out and talk about it uh yeah i don't i don't know how how well that would work since developers often don't want to talk. There's some that do, like you could get Koster to talk your ear off. You could probably get Jacob.
to talk your ear off when he's not put himself under an embargo you know what i mean some devs really like to talk maybe more than you guys want to hear even and other devs are like no we don't even want to tell you our last name let alone talk to you. So I don't know how well that would work anymore. They certainly know their words once they get on the internet are there for all time and can be thrown back at them.
You guys have phones, right? Poor man. Yeah. Or, you know, any blue post, anything that's even like conjecture almost becomes solid fact. How dare you promise us that? Yeah. Right. It's like, oh, it's just spitballing there, bro. Yeah. So it seems like a lot of the conversations I follow with developers tend to be a lot of...
Well, here's something where a lot of caveats and a lot of – I need to preface this by saying this is just speculation or this is a possibility or this may change. But they kind of know there's a danger of –
saying too much or getting into trouble because they talk about something they maybe shouldn't. Now, what's really interesting is when you do have more muzzled... lower people on the totem pole and they do like streams and stuff and they can't say as much and then you get like the exact i'm thinking lotro here like when lotro's executive producer comes on or the lead designer and they just like say whatever's in their head like they're just
spilling secrets left and right and all this stuff and you can just see like somebody in marketing is like no dude no yes we had a we had a nice timeline of rolling this out but you can't tell the boss no you just gotta be okay with that So what is the question? Are we doing an end of year award for developer? I do like what you said. Like this is. Some developers tend to elevate.
because they, in our consciousness, because they talk a lot or they're kind of the front facing person, the company, but it is a team effort. And there's so many of these developers and people who. put in so much work and are instrumental. to making these games and it does kind of feel weird to elevate one.
over the other side right that's the trick of it yeah you know we should have a studio award oh wait yeah and that's funny because a lot of times the studio award really isn't for the whole studio like even when we gave it to ssg that one year you know we we had a group of devs over there in mind, specific people who have really made, but you know, it's still daybreak and you're still kind of like, okay, whatever, you know, there's, it's not like,
Just because we give the award out doesn't mean everybody at the studio and everything that the studio has ever done has been perfect. It's definitely not that. But you also don't want a single one person out in a genre of thousands of people. I don't know. This is really tricky, though. And you also don't want to wait until after they pass away, which is, you know what I mean? To finally do like a...
you know, full dev profile on somebody who contributed so much to the genre in a whole bunch of different ways. That also seems wrong, but that's kind of what humans do in a weird way. Unless they get a biographer. You know what I mean? And there are, I mean, there's, there's like a historical part of this where some of the old guard were so instrumental in this industry that we don't want to let their achievements and work go unnoticed. Like, you know, you kind of have to educate people.
whether they're living or, you know, take the opportunity when they do pass to kind of share that. I think it's a good thing to do. Yeah, it'd be great if we did a little bit more while they were still live and kicking. But we then know that anytime you do want to mention Richard Bartle, he will show up. Oh my gosh! I forgot. Yes, over the weekend, did you guys see this?
Did you see it, Justin? Yeah, I saw it. He's so funny. He popped into our comments because we mentioned him. It was sort of like almost in passing in the actual Daily Grind. Was it Daily Grind? I can't even recall now. And so he came in at the end and he basically said, well, I in fact do know Dr. Bartle. So apparently he is retiring, my friend.
I did not know he was not already retired. We made a joke in our chat about how academics never really retire. Retire, they have to be dragged out of their offices, kicking and screaming. So apparently he has actually retired and he said he's going to play games, not just video games, though, all games. So, I mean, really, that's goals right there. Yeah, that was really fun. I'm really glad we got to see.
Glad he popped in and said something. Since we had just made a joke, I suppose, about how... Oh, you know how a lot of people don't know who he is. At this point, if you haven't been around for 25, 30 years, you might never have even heard of the Bartle test, which he didn't actually write.
for clarification's sake, but his was the research on which it was based. So it's totally possible. You don't even know who he is, but I was simply pointing out that maybe you should. If you like MMOs and you're listening to our podcast, you probably do though. I was actually reading, I forget where exactly it was, but it was a Reddit thread where...
Somebody was just kind of a very, very low person on Lotro totem pole, but was there for the launch of the game and was kind of working in quality assurance and was doing some other stuff. very down but was sharing those experiences and sharing like getting to rub shoulders with some people or actually having some influence on how the game was created because this person suggested a couple of things that got into the game. And I'm like, yeah, you know, it just.
reminded me like sure there's a ton of people out there that have had experiences and influences on our mmos and they have so many stories and i wish that there was some really cool gathering hole that they all got together. I'm sure they have one. They're just not talking to us.
Yeah, let us know. Where's your secret Reddit? I mean, honestly, if I were there, I wouldn't share it with nosy journalists or annoying players either. Why would you? I'm sure it's some little Usenet group is what it is. I'm sure it is. right no this is this is a fun one and it honestly takes me back because i remember when i first started i'm sure you heard this too when i first started at og massively sean was like
who was the editor-in-chief when I started, he's the one who hired me, was very, very much against the idea of the Rockstar game dev. And he would get very upset if we put anybody on a pedestal because... I don't know. I guess that just annoyed him. Or maybe he, the way I always read it, was that every single dev that you've heard about has like hundreds of people.
propping him up so when we when we see people like chris metzen like bust out you know what i mean and he's like i'm gonna say well he didn't say that but you know what i mean he comes on stage and he puts on a big show and You know, the gist is that he's here to like save the day. When you know darn good and well, there's hundreds of people who are actually doing all of the work. And so picking one person.
to give the award to is kind of, you'd always be making somebody feel like crap, a lot of somebody. And usually just, you know, giving a medal to a famous name. And I would rather just not do that. I don't know. This is hard. Another thing I wanted to point out was I did have... interview gosh it's been it's been over a month now when I actually did it
They were having, because you had mentioned that sometimes the devs will find themselves scooped by fellow devs and screwing up their timelines. But they actually mentioned that to me. With regard to the investor stuff, they were telling me the timeline for the launch. I was like, Okay, but we already knew it was coming because Jiham said it during the investor presentation like months ago and they were like, I know!
I wish he hadn't said that. We all heard him said that. And we just, you know, hit our heads on the desks. Like, why? Why are you doing this stuff? So I know they feel that. Sorry, I just wanted to pull out a real story that we could actually talk about. That poor Paleo team. Honestly, they've been through the ringer at daybreak. Starting and ending on Daybreak, I suppose. Sorry, Daybreak. Daybreak's not really that bad.
Well, thank you, Jeff, for sending us in that very interesting topic. And yeah, I hope that... At least we gave you some perspective on where we sit with devs and everything. One of the things I do want to say is anytime you talk to a developer, most of them, I would say... The feeling I get is they're just one of us.
They're just like a geek. They just love games. They could make a lot more money doing their kind of work in a better company or something like that. But they chose game development and they just want to talk games. They want to play games. They get very excited and they're just very normal. So... In a way, kind of putting people up on a pedestal makes it harder to talk to them. And so just kind of.
The more devs you'd encounter, I think you just kind of get used to, oh, yeah, that's just Bob. Okay, what's up, Bob? Let's talk. You know, let's talk games. It's cool. You kind of rub shoulders. I've had those moments where... bump you know i've had interviews or i've met people at conventions and they're fairly famous in their small circles but After you kind of get over that immediate shock of like, oh, holy crap, it's, you know, whatever their name is.
it's like it's just kind of cool to just hang out with that person and and i i'll tell you that's how they want to be seen too i think most of the people they're not really wanting to be worshipped they just want people to talk with them about the thing that they love.
so very much. And so it's kind of cool to have those opportunities. So if you ever do find yourselves, you know, getting an opportunity to talk with the developer, somebody who works at a studio, you know, just treat them like you would a friend. I think that they'd appreciate that. All right, well, send in your own podcast email like Jeff did here, and you can ask us questions on any subject. Just know that if it's really too complex, then I'm just...
Not going to know how to answer it. If it's really hard, I put it down at the bottom of the list and I pretend I can't see it. And there's a couple of those. It's not that they're bad questions. They're just hard questions. Quantum mechanics. Probably outside of our wheelhouse. I'm just saying. I'm kidding.
Yeah. No, ask whatever you want. Ask us to talk about whatever topics or games you would like us to talk about. There's a form there in the show notes, and you can just click that. It's very easy. You can fill it out. Zip us off a podcast email really, really quick.
You can also, while you're on the site, why not check out our Patreon program. On the right-hand side of the site, there's a big box right there, and you can just find out more information about... what the Patreon program is, how people like you have been supporting Massively OP since its initial launch back in 2015. and continue to do so on a monthly basis. There are some nice little perks.
But really, the biggest perk is just keeping indie MMO journalism alive here in 2025. And we really do appreciate all our patrons. So get a little shout out there. You guys are pretty awesome. And I would be absolutely star-studded to meet any of you. So I'll be like, oh my goodness, sign my book. I don't have a book. I'd find one so that you could sign it. Any old book. Any old book.
My wife's like, who's this guy and why has he signed my cookbook? I needed a book, man. Alright, that's it for the Massively OP podcast before we go to Loopy. You guys take care. Have a great time gaming this week. Later, everybody.