Episode 565: Happily Farever after

I feel like a hat. Like I've got two laptops. You know ninety you were a automatically a hacker if you had two two laptops going. Give it time. One for each hand, right? It's the uh nerd equivalent of d you know, having two pistols. But you had two laptops and a No, I have'em now. I don't have two laptops. I was gonna say we had like one, but it was like a family device that we traded around. It weighed like five hundred pounds.

Oh yeah, those things are ch my first laptop was twenty four hundred dollars. Our college made us buy it. Whole program thing. Had a track ball. Yeah, yeah, like one of those little nodules right in the middle. I don't even know what you call those. I call it a trackball. I don't think kids today know what a trackball is. Yeah. Do you remember when mice had the balls on the bottom instead of the optical reader? Nope. Well

You might be living in a better technological age. Maybe worse. I don't know. I don't know, yeah, it's it's it's just I think maybe it's always been bad. Just bad in new and different ways. We reInvent. Welcome back to the Mass WP podcast, episode five sixty five. You might be listening to us uh through your Zoom, you might be listening to us on Spotify. We don't know. We don't care. We're just happy you're here. No use Spotify, use title. Title didn't pay me to say this. I I pay for title.

Do you pay for that? But it's so good. I forget, I think it somebody somebody turned me on to title a while ago and I've forgotten who it was. I have to go look it back up on social media. It's really good. Ha ha ha ha. Actually I could probably just burn it on C D, why not? Yeah. Never paid for streaming music, never will. I'm Yeah, I don't love it, but it's what we have. So if it works for you, it's fine.

It doesn't. It's just what we have. It doesn't work. I mean, I would rather not pay for any of it, but you know Yeah. The happy go lucky guy you're listening to is Justin. The uh the the technologically cynic over there is Bree. And we're happy to be here today to talk about MMORPGs and apparently music. Um which would be fine too. I actually did just hit a thrift store and I'm peeling off stickers which is the bane of my existence, buying albums and then having

Is that what you're doing while we're talking? You're peeling stickers off your your second hand? Tell me you don't do stuff while we're recording that's like all Sometimes I do but I'm not today. I'm actually I I'm sitting here with my hands folded like a perfect angel. I'm not even gonna click'cause people don't like it when we Little do they know perfect angel bree. Get her halo for her birthday.

The funny thing is that's literally what I was doing when I said the Now I feel like I should do something productive on the side, but I I want to concentrate on this one. Oh it just helps when I'm like fiddling with something with my hands. That's true. Yeah. I sometimes have silly putty because that's so much fun. Uh what episode is this? I don't know. Five sixty five. I might have said that before.

Let's talk about what we've been playing in MMOs before we talk about the MMO news and then we talk about things you want to talk about. That's how we normally do this. So what are you... We can do whatever we want. It's our podcast. No, I I've tried to do it. Yeah. What have you been up to?

I have actually I sort of fell into a Star Wars Galaxies legend hole. Um. Yeah, I wasn't entirely expecting that to happen, but it did. We we talked about this last week where they added um a farther May fourth um extravaganza. They had you made the made the foyer with the Star Wars Day thing. They came out with a new deco tool and I was like, All right, this week I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna try it out. I wanna give it give it its you know

Yeah, I think it's really neat that that they put it in and I'm really excited. I mean, it's a really freaking freaking old game and I'm just really glad that they're still like finding ways to innovate on it and you know, bring the housing it's not like it was bad. It just needed to be it needed some tools that like modern MMOs adding housing have. We just needed that to like bring it back up to the You know, up to par as far as I'm concerned. So I think it did that. Um

There's so many things I could say about it. It's it's one of those tools that I think somebody who's really good at this already, who's already mastered moving things around and putting them just where you want them, it's gonna be a tool in your tool bag and not the tool and not the only tool. Does that make sense? I am still finding it significantly faster and more efficient for me to use many of the old tools, my old macros, my old systems, um and then using this for very specific things like

moving ad heads because they need to go in three different directions and i it's complicated to get everything to like yaw and roll and pitch in exactly the right way. Um but a lot of If you're not using Fortran to to program your house, you're not doing it the real way. Sometimes though it's easier just to hit a make row a bunch of times that just goes for ten spaces, ten actually I think it ends up being centimeters in the game. It's something it's something like that. So you just Okay.

Tick tick tick tick and then it's done and you don't have to like fiddle with it back and forth. It's actually faster to go that route. But like for other things, yeah, super useful, and I can definitely see how this would help novice. Decorators who don't have like lots of practice with maker don't even have the macros, so

That's pretty cool. It it needs a couple of other things. They need to like um it they need to have a fast way to get to it. Right now you have to radial menu and then slide down. It's too many it's too far away. It's like a nested radial menu to even open the thing up. It's like no no no no no. Where's my macro?

This is a game built on c like command lines and macros. This is just what people are used to. It's weird not to have that. I hate dealing with the radio menu. I think that will really help. Um but overall Radial menus are the worst. They really are. I remember um There was there was a Troika uh Dungeons and Dragons game like Temple of Elemental Evil and they it was a D and D game that used a radial menu and it was just it was like such a deal breaker for me. So I have my sympathy.

There. See, I'm not wrong. It's just annoying when you're I don't know how you would do that for every single item. Like that would that's that's driving me crazy just to Am I misremembering that? I've only been in Albion online like once. Why can't I remember? I thought there was something that maybe it was like the skill wheel or something like that I'm thinking of. Maybe I'm talking out of my butt. I don't know.

Palea does. We're not I don't think we're gonna talk about Paleo today, but they've got like all of their tools on a radio menu, which I don't like. It's very annoying on Switch. I like to to fuss with stuff like that or not switch. I always do that on my Steam Deck. It's just really annoying. Anyway, I'm not a big fan. But I ended up playing. Like to to test all that out I kind of

you know, one thing leads to another and like pretty soon, like three days in and I'm like cooking in my factories and I've switched out my house. I I literally deleted a bunch of my houses and Uh bought a new house, I plunked down a hundred and twenty five million credits'cause I decided I really had to have the Jedi Meditation Room, which I don't play a Jedi and I don't really care about the Jedi, but I really like this building.

And I love it. I love the whole setup of everything I've got going so much more. And then I kinda spent all yesterday decorating this building to really give the test give the tool a a serious test because I think that's the only way you really learn, right? It's one thing to just take it in your existing house and like fiddle with it. But I was like, no, no, no, I really, really need to use it like a serious business you know

consumer of the tool to actually see whether it's gonna work for me and how other people can use it. So yeah, I got I got I fall in really, really deep just I don't even wanna like we have two big things coming up this week. Um or I have two big things bet between Paleo's launch and uh Guildwarse Two. Is that Paleo this week? That's tomorrow. Yeah, they're both on the same day. So I'm sitting here going, I should not be getting into something random right now. What am I doing? I don't know. I d

I really did. I decided I okay, well my vendors are still empty, I'll fill them back up'cause I I screwed this up at Christmas time where I realized I had let my my vendors go empty and I lost all my stock. which represents months and months of work and I've kinda ticked it myself. So I had left them like that'cause I just didn't have the heart to do it. This week I was like, All right, I'll I'll get some stuff back up there, so

I kinda I kinda'm having fun. I don't know what my problem is. So I don't know. I don't know how I'm gonna navigate this. I'm about to get super busy in real life again. My husband is out of school for the semester and once his grading is done we start summer projects and the kids will then be off school and I know I'm just not gonna have time to play. Um But I don't care, I want to, so that's what I'm doing right now. That's how summer is man. Less. chaotic. Alright, well what did you do?

Oh man, it was a weird week. Uh yeah. It's just a weird, weird week that I still feel like I'm in a gaming limbo. You know, some some World of Warcraft is fine. I you know, d was kinda starting to think about rotating through some of my alts and starting to work on some alts, like on a on a rotating daily basis. So like day one, my main and then day two, one of my alts. And then

keep flipping back and forth as I slowly get my alts up but I'm also not neglecting my main. And so I might I might start doing that'cause it's just a little bit of

I don't want these other three characters to be completely completely left in the dust. I do like them for different reasons and yet time, you know, like I'm not even through the expansion on my main yet. There's so much I've yet to do and Those people who just like blew through it all in one week I'm I'm in awe of I don't know how they did it, but it's Why you guys play that way. It drives me crazy. They do not have my hand.

Yeah. So I'll I'll be enjoying you know like the base patch of midnight all the way through the summer, I'm sure, as you guys are like on two twelve point oh point five and twelve point oh point seven all the They're gearing up their eighth alt and Justin's just rolling into the station. My little gnome minor onesie. Actually it can be kind of fun to do that because those guys have done it all five million times and they're already decked out and you can just ride along.

Yeah. Yeah, it's all good. It's there's there's really no no pressure except what you make for yourself and what and and then the illusion of pressure when Blizzard keeps releasing stuff way too fast. But I I wrote a whole column on that and I'm not gonna rehab it. You guys should read it, it's a good column. Not it was done off the cuff.

That's a good column. I think we got some good agreement, um, especially on Blue Sky with it. So I don't think I don't think you're wrong. Not everybody agrees, but a lot of people did. I I I think it's worth pointing out that it feels fast, even if there are people who can keep up with it, right? Yeah, and there's there's the devil's argument where, you know, people are going, Well, do you remember the content routes? And yeah, I remember.

Taught everyone how to spell the world drought. We're drought for that matter. Like w we how do we even teach this anymore when we don't get to use that word? It's like How do you how do you know? Exactly. This from MMOs. Yeah, I would rather have too much content than just months and months of nothing, but mi you know, just just for the sake of QA.

So um I did kind of dabble back in Final Fantasy 14 and this is like my weird tech tech story. So I'm s I'm still waiting on a computer. We're I I'm hoping in the next couple weeks. But I'm like, oh man, I kinda miss Final Fantasy fourteen'cause we talked about it in the expansion and FOMO and all that stuff's happening right now, all my friends.

who are big into uh Final Fantasy came back from FanFest and they're all jabbering about it and so Yeah, it was infectious and I just felt like, okay, I w I kinda wanna be playing The only way I can make it work, since both of my laptops just have two way too small hard drives to handle more than one MMO, is that I got out an external hard drive. And just installed Final Fantasy fourteen on an external hard drive plays just fine.

Wow. Yeah. So it wa you know, start a new c start a new character and start going through that again and then I'm you know, I do the same thing with the same pattern of every time I play, I start going mentally All right, how many hundreds of thousands of hours will it be to catch up? Is this something I really want to do? It is fun for now. I don't know. Maybe it's something a little just kind of feeling it out. Uh I think my gut is probably telling me, probably not, just because I'm

I'm feeling a little bit more called to get back into ESO. I'm I'm holding off on that until the new difficulty levels come out. what is that? June? June

Yeah. So there's that and then uh the other thing I just want to mention really quick is uh as we're recording this on Monday, uh Outbound finally came out, early access on Steam, so I I I treated myself. We should we should I don't think we did a post on that. We did a post over the weekend, but we haven't done one that's saying it's live. It's less. You can do that tomorrow. Yeah, see how the numbers go and all that. Yeah.

Um I'm sure they have a trailer and stuff. So yeah, I'm I I bought a copy. I'm wanting this podcast. An M M R P G that's that's the only reason it's not top priority. But it's still, you know, it It's a bit of co op if you want it. Carlos Carlo said he he joined me in a van down by the river.

Eating shrooms, he said. We'll eat lots and lots of shrooms. I'm like, Carlo, you and I just live in very different worlds, but you know, come t come to my van anyways. We'll hang out. So so I'm anticipating Playing that as soon as we're done with this podcast, so can we be done already? It's Sorry, sorry, we'll have to talk faster. All right. So that that's pretty much, you know, like

Very, very little bit of Lotro. I need to I need to be investing it a bit more into Lotro. I just had so little time to play last week and Um, we'll have less time this week. So yay, I get to go to the doctor and get knocked out for a few hours this week. That's fun. Have a camera shoved down my throat. Yay. And up other parts I'm not gonna talk about in this.

Oh no, I don't like any of this. No I'm gonna have them take a picture and then I will use that as the header image for next week's podcast. Oh, it's not very exciting, I I'm afraid. It it ends up just kind of looking like I've had it Magic School bus decides to go spillunking inside of you and it's like not pretty. Did the magic school bus ever cause somebody to have like a blood clot or stroke? Because There's a liability right there.

Wow. I remember watching a video they were they were doing a mock thing like the school was talking about the sheer amount of liability that the magic school Like last year she took a bunch of students to to Saturn. To Saturn! What if their heads imploded? What what how do we write that off? Miss Frizzle is the the world class OSHA violation. Seatbelts. She makes them wear seat belts, you know, so there is that. There you go, never mind.

Seat belts everybody. We're gonna get on with the podcast here uh and talk about some MMO news. Um hey, if you want your Guild Wars two brand new zone to sound like a retirement home, boy does Arena Net have the zone for you. Eternity's Garden. I thought it was kinda pretty.

I'm not saying it's not pretty. I'm saying it sounds like a retirement home, but it's fine. It's Tell me about Eternity's Garden. We talked about this this new update, the only way that's actually coming out, you said today, uh on the twelfth. On the twelfth. It includes a new zone so we know more about

The zone. Yeah, they dropped they dropped a video. I mean, it basically picks up where the last one left off, blah blah blah, Kistora, blah blah blah magic, blah blah blah Vlox is the sister of God. I mean, like, listen, I don't I don't dislike the Guild Wars Two storyline, but it is definitely at times not really my the driver of my attention. So I'm glad it's there'cause it gives an an arc, you know, to the to what you're doing.

But mostly I just like to explore the zones and see all the cool stuff that the world designers have done. And this zone looks really pretty. I love all the pink. I love the it looks like on a honestly it reminds me of like Arborstone but out more outside, not so enclosed but more open. But it's all mixed in with that really cool, um like it's techno, the Asura evil techno sorry, evil Asura techno stuff.

Where it's like all you know, the black cubes and all of the red sparkling energy and it's just I don't know, the juxtaposition of those two things, it looks really cool. I think it looks fun. I can't say a whole lot more because embargoes, but I can say that on Tuesday we will have way more information than I I'm able to spill from the trailer that's public. So stay tuned. I'm excited, honestly, because

This is like this is my bread and butter for Guild Wars two. The last update was nice. Um I w actually I maybe I should say not nice because a lot of people were very grumpy about the way the um Oh, what do you call it? The costuming what did they even call that darn thing? Trans Mm. Yeah. I f I forget what it's called. It's just like a wardrobe kind of system, but they like changed it all around and gave you gave you like templates.

the idea was really good, the execution kinda fell flat and they're still function you know, fixing it and stuff. So that patch just kinda went over like that should have been my thing and I was like, Eh it's fine, but I don't love it and the rest of it was not for me. This is for me. So

I'm here for it. My husband and I are definitely gonna play. And you know what, I didn't even mention it, but I did play some Guild Wars too last week'cause we were still we were basically doing um our Wizards Vault stuff'cause that rolls. Like it rolls I don't is it tonight or tomorrow? Now that I say that, maybe it was yesterday. I don't even remember when the new season like sets. I think it's tomorrow.

So like everything goes away and then tomorrow you can start buying the new season, which is really fun. Like all of the rewards. I don't mean you buy the season. I mean you buy the rewards and they refresh at the beginning of the season. So you can like bring over all your old currency and like apply it to the new stuff. So It's worth it. The wizard's fault is like one of my favourite things. But yeah, this is gonna be really exciting. There's good stuff coming.

And we've said it before, we'll say it again. This May is crazy in the MMO space. There is so much happening. And yeah. You're gonna I'm I'm excited like actually to get to the end of the month and to look back and maybe kind of make a list like all the stuff that happened this month. Because it just feels huge. I don't know why. It just feels like they're Every everything's kind of converging on this month the way that You know, June used to be like a big release month in the past.

Yeah, it'cause people would line things up for for E three. Yeah. Right?'Cause that was always like the first or second week of the of the month, so people would aim for that. But now if you really want to get out get your stuff in before the colleges and the high schools like let out for the summer and people have more time You kinda wanna be out in May so that you're ready to go. Like college, they're out now. Like most of them are in exam week right now, so Thank you.

Or cruising. Alright, Guild Wars two, you guys, your players have a new zone to explore. You guys go have fun frolicking in the garden. Don't mess up things. Stay off the flower beds and have some fun there.

We'll go over really quick to uh E Eve Online and its parent company C C P got some rebranding. If th I always thought, you know, like I always had the association with um CCCP, uh, because you know, growing up in the Cold War and everything like that, and I thought, I don't know, I always thought they were going for something like that. I know this is actually a Hm I don't think they were.

No, come to think of it, I don't actually know what C C P stands for, but it's probably something Icelandic and they probably I mean, don't want to use that'cause people wouldn't know you know what I mean? A very, very tiny number of people on the planet wouldn't even know how to pronounce that, let alone know what it meant. So but I don't actually know what it means. Well now we know we we can pronounce a new Right. Oh creation.

Cringe, but uh okay, we'll we'll accept it. It I'm guessing Fenris Games might might have been taken. I don't know. It's creations. And so uh We're gonna talk about AI, aren't we? I can feel it. Yeah we Word creations kinda s leading me that but I yeah, I don't I don't actually know if that's what they had in mind, but maybe.

Hilmar Patterson basically came out and said that part of the reason they were like, Well we're we're being bought we're we're buying us our buying our company back out, right? We're doing this. This is already a moment of transition. And there's still a lot of people who look at C C P games and go, Are you guys in Shanghai? And like it it causes confusion. I know it causes confusion because it's caused confusion with our readers before, definitely with mainstream gamers who don't

really even know who makes Evon Line. This has been a long standing thing. Really it has been for twenty five years. So I'm not super surprised they changed the name and I kind of actually do understand the rationale. I'm guessing it's only getting more complicated and tricky to navigate. in the, you know, geopolitical financing scheme of things when people just assume you're another you know, another Chinese

Company and you're like, no, no, no, we're we're those weirdos from Iceland. Please give us money. Um, that's probably a problem. And it wouldn't surprise me if Google made them do it also. How we start wonderful. One of the hardest jobs must be those lawyers who have to kind of a approve like new names for company products and stuff. Like they have to Yeah.

Go through all the different languages, all the thing like does this mean something obscene in some other language? Then probably we should not do it. Massively OP by the way in uh certain South American companies is uh countries is A pretty pretty obscene swear word. So don't don't go down there and say, hey, have you read massively op? They will bury you. Wow. Amazing. Yeah. This is not true. Yeah. It could be. You don't know. Have you been to South America like?

Uh not uh not in the last decade now. Isn't it crazy like Brazil the fun little weird fact, Brazil's still really big on the original Sega Master system? Like that's their biggest selling console of all time. Is that true? Yes, it absolutely is. It's a wild story uh because It was imports were so expensive for consoles, but a local company called Toy Tech or something in Brazil got the license to create their own version of the Sega Master system. This was like their eight bit

Console, right? And they have been producing it since the eighties and they still do today. And they still create new games for it today. And it is by far the most popular console in Brazil. I kinda love that, honestly. It is bizarre and amazing and it's uh I think it has like the uh the status of being the longest running uh console that's been cr uh continually developed for.

Brazilian games industry is is really fascinating in general. I didn't I didn't really know about console stuff, but even just from the MMO or PG perspective. The games that catch on there, the games that are marketed down there They're totally like you you'll suddenly one day pop up and you'll be like, What is this game? And why does it have three million players? Like it'll be one of those.

But it's like, Oh yeah, well it's been running and it's it's like a huge hit in Brazil and it's been going forever and y'all just aren't paying attention. This happens so many times that the West doesn't really pay attention to what's going on down there and There's a lot of money in it. Like the A lot of people and a lot of gamers. Yeah. They're building up their internet infrastructure really well. So

All right, let's move on to Path of Exile too. I cannot remember the last time we talked about Path of Exile on the podcast. Because they are plodding along like like plotters. Well, maybe maybe all that plotting has actually resulted in a content update because we're getting a really big one at the end of this month because of course everything's happening in May. Uh repeat after me. On May 29th, we're getting a return of the ancients.

And that means, of course, MJ is over the moon, excited about it. Uh so I'm gonna read this. This is her words describing what's in this particular patch. It's a big end game patch for the game. Uh, so in a nutshell, this update brings five new storylines, 15 new new bosses and pinnacles. Oops. Over. Yeah, whoops. For over forty uniques, thirty new endgame areas, Genesis tree crafting, a new Atlas passive tree, Atlas Ascendancy classes.

Um and so on. And rewards multiple leagues. And a new league, I think, is also happening. So if you've been waiting for stuff to happen in Path of Exile too, y you might be in for a huge treat uh at the end of the month here. Unless of course they delay, which hopefully they will. I don't think they they're actually G G G is usually pretty good at sticking to their plan. When it comes to these kinds of launches, I obviously they delayed the original

original early access and stuff. But I mean like when they come up with the patch, by the time they're announcing the patch and showing it to press and doing the interviews, they're pretty confident that it's happening, right? Yeah, I think though the interesting thing the thing that jumped out at me when I was proofing, although apparently I didn't do that great a job of proofing, but was the endgame stuff. Because

I don't know how far you read, Justin, but they're it it's not just end game, this idea of a circulating end game. It's basically an end. They're they're giving an end to the game so that people can feel like They finished it and they accomplished something and then they get the satisfaction, dopamine hit, and then they're done until they want to come back. Instead of feeling like they're just being tossed into the, you know, endless churn bucket.

Which I thought was really interesting. We don't usually get M M O A R P Gs or any kind of O A R PGs that do that. They want you in the churn bucket, because th while you're in the churn bucket, you're buying things. Shut up and buy things. So I thought it was really interesting that GGG is taking a different tack here. Are they are they um incentivizing like re rolling or reincarnation or anything like that? I'm not sure. Just curious.

It doesn't really say that. I mean I guess you are supposed to re-roll if you want to keep going. I mean it's not like you can't keep playing. It's more like there's just like There is an end. But I guess that's true. I mean if you're if you're the kind of person who's just gonna play Diablo until you finish the storyline and then be done, then then it's done. Or torchlight or Titan Quest or whatever it is you're playing.

But I guess maybe Path of Exile 2 didn't really end like that before, probably because it's not really finished. It is still in early access, right? I don't know, I'm not really sure what the what the rationale is there. I thought it was interesting. Okay. Like like maybe it's like part of a a bigger shift that we're seeing towards these online games where

They're more w like you know what I mean? Like sometimes if you let people go they're more likely to like come back. That's what I'm kind of wondering. If you leave on a high note, that peak and rule, right? Instead of always leaving when you're burned out. Will you come back if what you remember is the burnout instead of, oh, I remember finishing that and I loved it. I don't know. All right. So Return of the Ancients there for Path of Exile 2 at the end of the month. I think that's on the 29th.

Two games off. Did we manage not to actually pick on on Eve on C C P for the AI thing? You know what? You didn't go into it and I'm like I'm not even stepping into No, no, no, we should at least mention it because. I know. when I got distracted I was making fun of the Fenrest creations thing'cause it was kinda cheese ball. It's kind of cheese ball. If we all know it's cheese ball. I I'm gonna forgive them but Yeah, so part of what what

C C what Fenris did here was bury the lead a little bit. The announcement they gave to the Yvonne Lion player base just talked about, you know, rebirth and blah blah blah. With it's rooted in an Icelandic mythology. Okay, it's really cool. Fine. Take your name and but they didn't mention the part where um Basically one of the lead investors here that's facilitating the buyout from Pearl Abyss is Google Deep Mind. And they're clearly doing it because they are in deep in this AI partnership with

with C C with Fenre oh my god, I'm never gonna be able to do that right. With Fenriss. So while they lightly mentioned the AI connection in the the Eve blog, they didn't really talk about the fact that Google invested in them and that that's why they're interested in this because now they They have a whole new, you know, a whole new... World. Yeah. You fantastic point of view. It's it's one of those like it almost didn't leap out at me because

I'm so used to Ilmar Predition doing stuff like this and I feel like Evan Line players are too. I I should have gone and checked the mood on the actual subreddit. A lot of Eve players are really against this stuff. You would think that sci fi fans would be like super, you know, techie dudes and a lot of them are, but a lot of them are just also really tired of C C P games.

doing a new thing like constantly. There's always something. It's always gonna be VR, it's gonna be NFTs, it's gonna be blockchain. And a lot of times they riot when this stuff comes up and Hellmar gives up on So I don't think there's gonna be a whole lot of rioting here because I don't it's not like they can change the investment of the game.

But it's still something that's worth pointing out. It's not entirely clear. I mean it was it was filled with all kinds of jargon and that meaningless jargon and probably A written. It's just impossible to tell what they're really going to do. But Google didn't just hand them money for free, they obviously want something out of it. So th stay tuned for whatever

whatever their latest boondoggle is going to be. Because that's what they're up to. So again, remember we were talking last week that I wasn't entirely sure that C C P no longer being under the watchful eye of Pearl Abyss. I wasn't sure it was necessarily going to be the best thing for Yvonne Line. This is the kind of nonsense I was talking about because you just knew it was gonna happen. I you just

You just knew it. As soon as they get off the leash, they're back to doing some some kind of nonsense. And here it is, so

Stay tuned. So today's theme of the podcast is Brie taking us back in the podcast. So we've gone back to the Look everyone. Actually past Bree is actually right about something. This would have bugged you so much if we hadn't talked about. I really would have because you know what, it's gonna come up again later in this podcast. I don't even think you know why yet, but it is. I don't want to go forward. I there's a monster at the end of this book. wanna go there. I wanna talk about forever.

Oh okay, that one's a good one. We can talk about that one. I woke up I this has barely been on my radar, but I woke up this morning, I was doing my Reddit scrolling and there was a funny one of those funny little memes where a bird's eating a cracker and he's really angry and he's like he's eating the cracker called forever and he

It's like ah I don't like this. Uh it's not well designed. Oh there's there's performance issues. Oh there's you know, it's not fully fleshed out. And he's like, but I can't stop eating it. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, Oh, what what is this thing? And then like an hour later suddenly I'm realizing, Oh, we're gonna be talking about this on the podcast. about this on the last podcast. I didn't remember I Ha ha ha. Sometimes I'm peeling stickers and you're

I that's fair. That's that's honestly that's I I really don't remember you talking about it. It was one that I had actually tested, so I I didn't talk about it. I talked about it like in the beginning in the what are you playing part and you probably did tune me out'cause I had like four games. It's fine. I don't even think you were awake that morning. You had just gotten back fr from your vacation. Talk about left, yeah. All right, so forever. It's out in early access.

Yes. And it's sort of an MMO ish. I mean... They have it flagged as I it's complicated. They have it flagged as an MMO on We're gonna hedge here. But one. But I don't think you like if you're expecting five hundred people in the zone, you're not gonna see it. Then again

I don't know of a lot of MMOs that actually do that. So most of them don't do that anyway. I think a couple dozen is what you'd be looking at. But it feels like an MMO. It's way more people than I was expecting. I was expecting your stock survival sandbox.

And it's really not. It's designed more like an open world. Um, where there are lots of other people, like Paleo, but less of a mini MMO. It's a mediumly multiplayer. We really need terms for this because that's what it felt like. And that's what apparently it is, so It's like when you go to those Buffalo Wings places where they t give you a chart telling you how spicy their sauces are. How much of this is an MMO? It's right here on the chart.

Yeah, uh this kind of does look like it might hit the spot for some people who are looking for just that kind of medium experience, nothing Super in depth, you know, sometimes getting in on the the cutting edge means you're not getting into a super complicated MMO. You're getting to something that's very bare bones and maybe just a simple gameplay loop and um

I don't know. I'm I'm hearing some lightly good things about it since this morning when we I wrote about it and I did some quick Googling. Yeah, no, I I think it's really cute. I think uh last week I said it was like a cross between Minecraft Dungeons and Paleo, and then when I by the time I got around to writing this piece

I was like it's more it reminds me more like Trove. Like the actual game loop reminds me of Trove, but it's not exact it's not like as blocky. It's not trying to be just a Minecraft clone or anything like that. And it the gliding aspect makes it feel like a loft. There's lots of those gliding games out there now. But the honestly the other game that it was um

Oh, Wylands was the other one that kinda came to mind, but like way more like twitchy. Like I feel like the combat and the movement are like significantly more modern than Wylands. Wyland feels somehow more like a little more dated. I don't know how dated it really is, but it feels more like

toward the worm online direction as opposed to toward the everybody's got a glider paleo direction. I don't know. I really liked it, but I don't think I really got to talk too much last week on the podcast about the performance problems and Um yeah, by the time I got around to writing about it, I was like, Yeah, okay, we really should probably point this out because I think this is the thing that stopped me from actually buying the game. Otherwise, I probably would have bought the game.

And you guys know me that I do not like early access games and I do my best not to buy them, but I really enjoyed this one. But the performance, you guys, like even on my machine. It was chugging all over the place and I saw on Reddit this giant thread of people, like every other person was complaining about it. Like it's not just me. And I was like, oh okay.

It's not my medium rig. It's it's everybody's rigs. This this really does run like crap. Shiro Shira really does need to fix it. And that's the kind of thing that I would say. Definitely temper your expectations. It's

really early in terms of optimization, they've got a lot to do. And I think they really need to do it because the combat is pretty fast. Like I said, there's a lot of movement, you're there's a lot of vertical movement and like if you don't have full control over your character, you're gonna fall in It's just gonna be annoying, right? It's it's not gonna be your Guild Wars Two type flight experience. You're just gonna be frustrated. So but otherwise I really liked it. I tend to like these very

I don't wanna say simple because it always makes it sound like an insult and that's definitely not what I mean. I mean just like everything is brought down to a level that's very, very accessible without having depth. There's always depth beyond that if you're willing to go into it, but you don't have to. And those games really appeal to me. They bring in a lot of different player types.

And if you get really hooked, you really could. And apparently some streamers have made this thing popular, so it's kinda blowing up. I looked this morning, I meant to refresh it here. Yeah, eighty seven, almost eighty eight hundred of people playing and they peaked yesterday around fifteen K. Which is crazy for an early access game that I think that outside of like people like us, people who literally have been writing about this for a couple of months, nobody's ever heard of before.

I just it kind of came out of nowhere for the vast majority of the industry, which is really cool. Not Shiro, I mean forever. Shiro's been around forever. They make all kinds of weird games. Honestly, this is a very out-of-character game for them, except in that it's like all of their other out-of-character games. They don't make the same game twice, which is really interesting.

But yeah, it w it kind of was an unknown factor and I it's got it's got some appeal. People are looking for simplicity. I that's why I think Palea kinda blew up, but Palea is missing that intense combat factor. And I think this kind of scratches that itch for a lot of people. It's got both. It's really interesting that there seems to be like a big schism in the gaming online gaming uh markets right now where some of these games coming out are like

angling for super, super hardcore. You know, let's just throw everybody into a meat grinder kind of thing. And then you've got over here a lot of these super cozy or soft nerfy have fun What do we call them? They're they're not cozy exactly. You are killing stuff. Yeah. It's not super cozy but it it's definitely like on the lighter side more Just come and just have a blast and you know, you're not gonna be you're not

Friendslop. I keep hearing people use Friendslap. But this doesn't seem like a party game or anything. This is more like a Like an OARP G but like open world I don't know. It's Minecraft dungeons. It really does remind me of Minecraft Dungeons, except that that one isn't quite as open world, right? You you're never gonna see strangers there. You're only gonna see your own friends that you've agreed to to join up with.

And honestly that one's not very that's that's where you're it's not open world. It's'cause you're going into like specific map instances when you do it. But it has that feeling of just almost being like an overland dungeon crawl. Kind of, which is why it kinda leans in the OARP G realm, but it's way too open world for that. You really can just fly around from you know, from Mesa to Mesa. Very strange.

Maybe having a hard time putting your finger on it is a good sign. Like it's it's not you know, treading over, you know, the same old, same old thing, but it's kind of a new blend. that's just I think it's medi a medium MMO. A med mediumly massively. That's really confusing. You guys can check out forever if that's if that's your thing. It definitely is very bright and cheery. And, you know, sometimes it's just the d the graphics are

Oh yeah. What you need to, you know, pick up your mood and go with. So yeah, there you go. Um

What was the second movie of the uh the Star Wars trilogy? The John Smedley Strikes Back. He's back people. Well he's he's never been truly away, but he's he's more back this month because May needs more things and why not bring out John Smedley's new sci-fi shooter extraction extravaganza there. Can we call that that extraction extravaganza? I think I think that's a good thing. Can I create a term? I never get to create terms. Create a term, I will allow it.

Yes, that's mine. Alright, Reaper Actual. A horrible title. Sorry, man. I think it they they got it I can't remember where it is, but it actually comes from something. Like they didn't just take random words. Sure it does. I can't remember what it is now off the top of my head. It looks like somebody got the words backward and that's not Okay, well actual Reaper is not cool. Yeah, you shouldn't be stumbling over the title of a game. I d whatever. Reaper actual.

Look, they were they really wanted Planet Side Three, but it was taken, so Global agenda. Yeah, I feel like it does remind me more of Global Agenda than Planet Side. Oh that's that's good. That's a good uh good. Not said those words in a while. Uh. Anyways, that's coming out. Uh what do we got? May twentieth, early access. is coming for you for actual uh is this a pay into I believe s oh actually now that I see that, I know it ha I'm not sure Yeah, twenty bucks is your

Yeah, but I'm not sure you have to pay. Like a lot of these will have bundles. I'm gonna double check. Sorry to the guy who doesn't want us to type. It's important. La la la. I just wanted to see if if he said for some reason I have in my head that it's free to play. Can I just drum on the desk? Okay, maybe you're right. It is anyway, it's not super expensive, even at the the cheapest it's twenty bucks, so Ooh, I'll get my guitar down. I can't play, but I'll strum.

You have the keyboard, I'll have my control. We are we are calling this an extraction game, but hi it's also an MMO. It's it's kinda weird. Like I said, there's a reason we keep uh you know, equating it to Planet Side Two. A lot of the dev the devs are Planet Side like what should be Planet Side Three, the the Planet Side spiritual successor if you don't count arena and no one does. Um

R I P arena. But yeah, uh it's got it's got a lot of MMO elements to it and I think it's properly flagged in both. So I wouldn't necessarily expect one of those little tiny uh extraction games that you're probably used to. Most of them are very small in scope. This one is bigger in scope, in my opinion. That's that's my take on it. Uh'cause I really think I mean he didn't he didn't hire all those planet side devs for nothing. You know what I'm saying? He he ha clearly had a A purpose there. Um

As long as they don't work in blockchain, they'll be fine. I I have bad news, Justin. Yeah. We we need to say that here. So the game is basically funded heavily by um blockchain NFT oriented well, I don't actually think they're doing NFT. So blockchain oriented venture capitalists, um, who have given him the money to do this. He has two versions of the game. One of them is blockchain d driven, one of them isn't, which is why the one that isn't is on Steam,'cause otherwise it wouldn't be allowed.

on Steam. So, um, yeah, g you can technically play this without dealing with the blockchain. You get to decide whether it's too close to the blockchain, um You can also look at the other. you know, the historicals here that a lot of the games that try to split like this don't do very well. We ha we've only had a couple, um, and they none of them is

still alive or the ones that are still alive have basically been partly abandoned. So hopefully that doesn't happen happen with this one. I was thinking of Arya because I mean that's been abandoned so many times. Right? They they Yeah. Did several versions and then they sold it and then they said they were coming out with one and then they came out with a classic version and then they folded those and then they came out with another version.

And then that one has already since been folded. Like it it just didn't go very well. Now you could say that was just that game, but I was also thinking of things like Ravendawn. Is it Ravendon? Is that there were two of those too. It's also got Yeah, yeah. There's there's a couple of other examples. Again, I'm not really sure Um you can you can go read Elliot's articles on this. I'm not really I'm not personally convinced that blockchain is really like a benefit here, except in that

it convinces blockchain tech bros to invest in games. So like I'm kind of on the one hand like I don't want it and I don't want to get anywhere near it, but at the same time I really like devs getting paid. Especially when you're pulling money from from guys I don't want to have money and giving it to guys I do want to have money. So I'm like kind of torn about this, but I can understand why players um might be kind of uh over just over it, right?'Cause we can Yeah.

Yeah, what are you confessing? Oh god. I don't fully understand what blockchain is is and at this point in my life I don't You don't care. I don't really wanna spend time learning. I know I could Google I can know I can ask AI to explain. I'm not going I won't. I it's it's not it's not worth it. Um like I said, Elliot's Elliot's piece literally talks about the kinds of games we already have that do the same functional things as blockchain.

And I realize that Smed is not literally saying you must have blockchain to do these things uh even though we're ribbing him a little bit, but like uh to me it's like if If we've already got them, I'm not really sure why we would want it in a different way that maybe doesn't even work as well and has all of this extra overhead in terms of investment. Like I said, it's complicated because when when it comes down to getting games funded, I've I've

just not super sad about sucking money away from venture capitalists. Whatever whatever flavor of venture capitalists they might be. So like I I w I just want I want guys to be paid, but at the same time I don't wanna buy those kinds of games. It's I'm torn. I'm torn on stuff like this. So I I think that if you're interested at all in Smedznek's thing or if you're interested in extraction M M O R P Gs, not just extraction

survival sandboxes that are trying to be like mini Fortnite. If you're looking for something that's more like Planet Side 2 with extraction mechanics, I think you should at least look at this. And decide whether you can tolerate the level of blockchain babble and AI babble coming out of it. Um Your SMED y a lot of people don't like SMED. Like let's just be honest about this because a lot of people blame SMED for literally all kinds of stuff.

that was never his fault. I'm just gonna say that right now, that like people were are still grudging against Smed for, you know, Star Wars galaxies. Maybe part of that was his fault, but not all his fault. We know there were like five million things going on there that coalesce to make things like the NG and the sunset.

you know, he also does did some good stuff, right? He also brought together a bunch of games. He kept the this the company going even after, you know, SIE didn't want it anymore. He refounded at his daybreak. He kept some stuff going for a good long time.

And he is dating games. And this is one of the things that I think we should always consider when we're looking back at veteran game developers, even if we don't like everything they've ever done or everything they've ever said,'cause if you've been around long enough, you have definitely said something dumb, including me. Everybody's done it. But like Not Justin. Justin is is It's pristine. If they're still in games, if they're still in MMOs, it's not because they were, you know

desperate to make their fortune. Like I don't know how better to say that. This is not where you go if you're trying to make as much money as possible before you cash out. This is where you go because you really, really, really like long term, full size and like multiplayer games on massive scale.

And if you're still here, that gets my attention, whether or not I like what you're doing. And I I think people should at least give him that small amount of grace when considering whether this is the thing they want. Okay. There, I said my piece.

You said your piece. Okay, well speaking of people getting paid, what about EG seven? Are they getting paid? Um Palea is getting paid. Palea is getting all the pay. No, yes. You're you're Justin here is talking about E. G. Seven's uh first quarter Um financial report which we finally got last week.

Uh, it wasn't actually bad really. Daybreak actually did pretty well. There's a couple of other segments of E. G. Seven's uh catalogue that weren't doing very well. I think uh was it Fireshine and Petrol? Um, and and piranha actually. But Fireshine will probably bounce back. Uh we talked about this or did we talk about this? Did we talk about Far Far West last week? I don't think we did.

Right, that's that that cowboy survival sandbox that I don't think we've really talked about very much. But anyway, that that's them, that's Fireshine. That just came out. It's actually doing really well, which they talk about in this this report, but it's not actually counted in these finances, so expect that to like perk back up next quarter. But in the meantime we mostly just care about daybreak and daybreak is doing okay. Jihum

Name dropped a bunch of games that you guys will care about. He said um Paley was doing great. Of course Paley is doing great. Uh, Everquest was doing okay and by that he actually meant EverQuest one and two. DCO got a a head nod. Um he mentioned Lord Lotro and Dungeons and Dragons online and specifically said they were stable.

Even though he basically y maybe you guys can decide what what he said here. He said they're stable in spite of competitive pressure from external launches. And I'm not really sure like Who's launching against Lotro?

I'm not yeah, like I I thought about that, like did he mean like wow stuff? Would did that kind of sit on their Q one? Like it would be, you know, like January through March. I'm not really sure like But you got Lotro over here like right now selling these new houses and this new coffer thing. Yeah, they're gonna be fine by next next quarter. So this is all just the first three months of the year. So that was a little confusing. I'm not sure a hundred percent

what's going on there. And of course we've talked about Mech Warrior Piranha games. They actually had mass layoffs at the beginning of the year, but they are still making, you know, Mech Warrior games, so don't panic, but it did definitely shrink quite a bit. Uh in fact I think the only um MMOish game that we would really even look at is Magic the Gathering and that's the only one they said was

underperforming. So I don't know what's like how do you make Magic Magic the Gathering a game literally built on selling cards like candy. Uh I don't know how that's underperforming. I don't know what what the problem is there. Um it doesn't really get that much attention and press, maybe? I'm not really sure.

Um, but yes, Palea is definitely the jewel in the crown of daybreak right now. Um, they said uh uh the game had grown a hundred and twenty two percent since the same quarter last year when it was already doing hugely well. Um you know, a year ago they were basically saying, Yep, first expansion's coming out, game's blowing up and here we go. A second expansion is coming out literally this week.

It's the one with mounts. So it's it's gonna keep blowing up. We already knew that. And he also mentioned Everquest Legends, but he doesn't really say anything interesting about it. I didn't have time to listen to the whole Um, Spiel. So I'm not even sure if maybe he talked about it more there, but I I didn't have time to listen to the whole hour or whatever it was.

But yeah, mostly he basically said, Is comin' and didn't really expand on it. I don't know what maybe they just don't want to promise too much'cause I don't know that they know how well it's going to perform.

Or maybe they're just gonna bundle it under EverQuest, who knows. The other interesting thing we could point out with Daybreak is that we finally got uh confirmation that Project Avo is Aliens Fire Team Elite 2. Hm. Finally, like we've been talking about this for like a year because well, longer than that, because it's gone through at least two

code names and we were like th it has to be that, right? It's it's you know, it's got a famous a famous IP and it's a sequel to a it's like, okay, well this is like obviously the next aliens game. And it's coming from Cold Iron Studios, which has been around for years and years and years at this point. It was originally Craig Z's company, right? Um, but I don't even know if they're still there anymore. But interestingly, apparently, according to the investor stuff

Daybreak is going to buy cold iron and you're thinking, Wait, didn't Daybreak already buy cold iron? And you're not wrong to think that, because Daybreak came out and announced that it had bought cold iron in twenty twenty eighteen. Um, but that did not happen because if you guys remember that same like later that same exact year

Daybreak itself got bought out. And so I guess at some point in between those two things the original deal fell apart. But Daybreak kept publishing and keep working with Coldiron. So now I guess now that they've poured this extra investment into the company and they're gearing it up for lunch or I guess officially launched, maybe it's early access, I'm not sure. They didn't actually say and sometimes they conflate those names. So that's coming in Q three and now daybreak is

I guess final stages for actually buying that company out completely. That has worked really well for Daybreak. The last couple of things it's bought out, so I can only imagine um that is that is what EG7 is thinking here because Daybreak didn't like originally own Singularity Six. They bought it, and it was a very, very wise investment because Pele is making so much money.

So this will be interesting. I don't have any interest whatsoever in aliens or Fire Team Elite Two, just don't personally care, but I really I I know a lot of It's my favorite movie of all time, by the way. Is it really? Oh yeah. I didn't know that. Well good, then maybe you will like this game. I know a lot of people who listen to us and like read massively love these games.

So I'm sure people are gonna be super excited by that. I'm I'm mostly excited'cause I liked I didn't want anything bad to happen to Coldiron and I'm really glad to see Daybreak continuing to buy up small studios and make them sing. I'm really excited. Do you remember back in the late nineties, uh Mythic Entertainment had an alien online alien shooter? I did not remember this.

Yeah, they had a whole bunch of these odd projects and I remember talking to Mark Jacobs about it because he was talking about getting the h how thrilled they were to get the license to to put this on and yeah, it wasn't the hugest I was it was called Aliens Online. And it was a thing for No, I don't remember this at all. Have you done it? Have you done a game archaeologist on it? You have? Yeah. Of course you have. Is there any game out there that you have not done a game archaeologist on it?

Yeah, unfortunately some of the bigger ones that just always I went like, Oh, if I'm gonna have to touch these like, you know, um or EverQuest or Star Wars Galaxies or something like that, I would it would just be weeks and weeks of You've done it. Writing. 'Cause you split it over. I've done like MGA, that's true. But not the actual form.

And and and sometimes it's just like well I could do it but other people have already done it so much better that it would just be kind of a cliff nosed version of what they've done already.'Cause sometimes people like I the the runescape. crew, you know, somebody's written out like a gigantic book on the history of RuneScape. And yes, that would that I don't know. It just uh that kind of saps some of my enthusiasm. So

I try to I try to argue this with with Elliot sometimes. He's like, I already I'll give him an idea and he's like, Yeah, I wrote about that. I was like, Yeah, you wrote about it in twenty fourteen. Do you think anybody remembers that? Write it again. Write it with the the benefit of twelve more years of experience and ideas and games. Gooder words.

I didn't write it again. No one remembers. It's fine. I don't remember. I don't remember what I wrote last year. Definitely no one else will. It's okay if you repeat yourself a few times. We've been here a long time. I don't know. If I reuse sermon illustrations, oh people read. They call me out on that. You used that story five years ago. I'm like, you know how hard it is. They're not just, you know, surfing the internet looking for for entertainment purposes.

All right. Well there's that's the news. It was a whole bundle of news, but you know, that's a good sign that things are afoot here in the MMO industry and elsewhere. So do we have some time for some mail? Let's do let's do the the one from M. The sorry M. M is the one who doesn't like our clicking. I'm sorry, M. So as the as a sorry, uh we're gonna answer your question. M says, How come y'all never cover UO Outland?

And the answer is because Ultima Online still exists and is still being run by a legitimate company that owns it and that's why. Um Sad emulator. Yeah, UO Outlands. There's actually a ton of UO emulators. I have played some of them, not all of them. I mean we're talking about dozens, probably a couple hundred over the course of the last twenty seven years. Um That doesn't work if you can't see me cover my mouth, does it? I smiled.

But yeah, they they started out, these emulators started out with like an aura of legitimacy because back in the day, you know, it was EA, it was origin, OSI, that was giving out. the code. Like they even would like do things like run contests. You were like designing houses. in the emulator that you ran on your own computer and then like sh uploading pictures, right, of like the cool stuff you could build if you had access to all of the same tools as as the GMs and whatnot.

So like there was a lot of legitimacy there and then these servers started cropping up'cause people were like, Well I can make my own game and then people would play on them and then they would be advertised legitimately on the official forums. Like the idea of this, like honestly, should stagger.

stagger a lot of players who who weren't around back then or paying any attention. So that's why I I've I got my own start there messing around'cause I really loved modding modding that stuff. And over the years some of the the like emulators that came up were amazing. Like honestly better than the OG game.

Some of them had nothing to do with Britannia. They would just go off in their own direction. Role play games, uh pure economy crafter games, total hardcore sandboxes where everybody is just there to kill people. And then, you know, yes. unlegitimate games that were basically there just to like extract as much money as possible out of the player base

and then screw off into the wind and one day the whole server was gone and you're out of luck. So like there's been this mix of like savory and unsavory um servers throughout the decades. Um Obviously they're not as friendly friendly. They're not they're not looked upon as as uh warmly as they once were by uh Broadsword itself as the actual game has

slowly shrunk down. It's not nearly as big. It is run by um Broadsword, which is not technically owned by EA but is definitely working with AA EA uh for all of the old mythic games Um, yeah, duh, when when they are down to what it was six six workers, six devs a couple of years ago. I don't know what it is now, but I would guess it's probably now more than six devs. and their content cadence has had to slow accordingly, it starts to I start to look at those emulators and go, Oh

You know, those emulators, even the really big ones, maybe especially the really big ones, um, I know they're good and I know they have great ideas, but they are directly competing with a live MMOR RPG. A live MMORPG that has

some of those servers, like if you really wanted to go play Gangbox UO, it exists. It's called Siege Perilous. Right? They they've been running it almost as long as the original game. Like it it has these little legacy servers. Um I had Legacy Servers before any any other game that I know of, which is wild and so I I personally don't think it's particularly ethical.

um to like promote those kinds of servers over the original game. I'm not saying you're a bad person for playing them. I get it. I understand why people do this. But like we've had this come up like over and over and over again with World of Warcraft.

of why we don't cover most of the World of War we don't really cover any of the World of Warcraft emulators unless they're like being sued or like doing something crazy or like going to Blizzard's offices with like t a truck full of signatures because everybody's trying to make Blizzard do something, in that case, make classic wow, right?

And yeah, Daybreak is the next EverQuest is is the other big one. These these games that are super old that have gone through so many changes over the year but are still alive and lots of people just wanna cash in on that. They either think that a specific time was like the best time and they wanna recreate recreate that or they just want to make money off of it. There's lots of reasons that people do emulators. Sometimes they just want to mess around.

And sometimes, you know, they figured out, Oh, there's an audience here and I can I can make some cash off of it. And I don't feel ethical helping them take money off the professional developers plates. I just don't think that's right. It's one thing when it is a dead game. I don't feel bad even a little bit playing

Star Wars Galaxy's Legends because that game has been dead longer than my children have been alive. Um m longer than my daughter has been alive. Maybe not as my son, right? It's it's gone. It's not coming back. No one's ever bringing that back officially. And that's why even the devs do things like leak the code and show up on streams and wink wink wink because everybody knows, you know, it's dead game.

World of Warcraft, Ultima Online, uh Dark Age of Camelot, there's another one. Even Lotro, there's a Lotro emulator out there we don't cover. Um and Everquest, of course. There there are lots of

if if it's an MMO there's probably an emulator of it. But if it's a live MMO, professionally we generally don't cover it, like I said, unless there's some sort of Snafu unless there's um a court case or um somebody's done something wild like uh made gazillions of dollars or I'm trying to even think of what we could possibly cover it for. uh some there's been a horrible, you know, user account breach and it's leaked all over that's the kind of thing that's like public interest.

that wouldn't be perceived as promotion and I don't feel comfortable promoting like I'm not trying to hurt the live games. I guess that's what I'm saying. And um I I'm not And the live. Yeah, you jump in. Gonna say the live game here, not to disparage it or anything, but the live game is also pretty small, and this is you know, Ultima Online.

As much as we love it and we appreciate its history and everything like that. It's not like it's a massive huge MMO in the industry right now. So an an emulator of a of it is just a very small piece of an already small mm slice of That's a really good point. So Right, it doesn't really hurt Blizzard that much. Turtle Well was not taking a huge portion of Blizzard's incomes. It really wasn't. And Blizzard is owned by Microsoft. They'll be fine. But yeah, you're right. Broadsword, they're tiny.

And yeah, that really it really does take a hit. Um I I just I understand why people do it and there's so many reasons for doing it. I'm just I'm not comfortable helping. Do you know what I mean? If the game closed down

Outlands and all those other em emulators, yeah, we'd be covering them left and right. It'd be so much fun. But we'd be sad because we didn't w we don't really want the game to come to to close down on. In fact I think people should probably be spending their time agitating, you know, pouring money into the OG game and agitating for the changes they want there

But we don't live in that world. So that's actually the reason. It's nothing personal against Ultima Online. It's nothing personal against Outlands. I understand it's really fun. But um Yeah. It's it's mostly just ethically we really we're we're not really supposed to be like promoting things that are like against the law or in violation of you like yeah, it's not really great. But like in this case, you know, it kinda it it's an ethical boundary too, I think, not just a a legal one. I'm sorry.

I agree. And when you're really invested in something and you're excited about it, you You do want to see us. Cover and talk. And I don't I don't blame them, but I I I think some people don't really think that through. They don't really think of what the impact I wasn't gonna pay for Ultima Online anyway. I wasn't gonna give broadsword money, so it's not really taking money away. It's like I know, but enough people do that and it does.

So And we're all fans of games and we're all players, but we're not exactly the same when it comes to just like you going off onto a Reddit post and talking about something and us as an actual site that's a company that has, you know, like r some responsibility here, you know, like a as independent journalists, we have a reputation and, as you said, ethics. So it

I wouldn't feel comfortable if we were doing that. I'm gl I'm glad we have some line in yeah, sometimes it's hard to navigate exactly what we're talking about, but we do try to make that effort. Yeah. And not just, you know, cover everything willy nilly, even though some of it might be Fun as heck. Well, I was gonna I was gonna say some of it might be uh kind of very dirty and Oh oh I see. Just the opposite of fun.

I was thinking of how much like I know you really wanted to like talk about Turtle Well because like Turtle Wow had some really amazing ideas that But We found a way to do it, I think. After the After the fact. I thought that was worthwhile. And there's some some like there is still some gray area. Like, for example, what do you think about the City of Heroes rogue servers that aren't homecoming now. Because Homecoming has a license and they don't. But also the original game is dead.

Yeah, so once the original game is dead, I kinda consider it fair game. Okay, see that's what I mean by great.

Unless unless the stud I would say, but there is a big caveat here. I would say unless the studio really wants to pursue and protect its IP. In which case I would I would just honor that and say, okay, you know, like if it I've always felt like as a gamer, if something's really vaporware, if a a studio's really kind of just walked away from a product and just completely abandoned it and you can't obtain it anywhere and they're not really interested in

uh keeping that license and not IP then I'd say it's fair game. Like you know, preservation on one hand but also just Enjoyment and you know, maybe people can pick up this code and do something really fun and creative. And they have done these things with it. Sure. And I think a lot of heroes. Yeah, and a lot of the original developers of th those games probably look upon those efforts very favorably and even yeah, even help and go

You know, like that's something I really worked on and instead of dying and being lost all of history, you're you're taking it to the next generation and you're doing something wonderful with it and I've I've got your back. It's not quite the same thing when you've got an online game that's

Still around. You're just you're mad about it for some reason. It's not exactly what you want. Yeah, and I think there's other there's other examples too besides just licensed versus unlicensed. There's it still exists on console, but it doesn't exist on PC anymore. Hi Tara. Right? Like Yeah. Do you feel bad about the Terra emulators? I don't. I feel like they're fair game now because there's no other way to play it on PC. So I haven't had too much problems mentioning those. I

I mean what what are you gonna do there? It's not like they're not making terrority. There is terror. But of course there's it's a rule thirty four of MMOs, you know we the right an an emulator will exist. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good question and I'm I'm actually glad, um, that you asked again because every like once a year I think we get asked this question and it's really fun to actually break it down and explain. Like it's not an arbitrary thing, but I know that there's still some

you know, some grey area worth arguing over. And I think from year to year maybe our like impression of what game preservation is changes over time. I'm not personally persuaded yet that it super important to preserve every single build of the game and make that available at all times to everyone at the detriment of the live game.

But I understand that there are some people who take that very principled approach to think that they're entitled to that. So I still think there's And sometimes And sometimes at the detriment of the safety of you know security of the players. Yeah, no whole nother can of worms, right?

I I do I do wanna say this is just adjacent, but I think this is relevant as we wrap up the podcast today, that if there is a game out there that we're not talking about and you're very interested in or some news happens and

Man, massively OP. We dropped the ball. We didn't cover that'cause there's, you know, these five other million games coming out in May. That's why we have the tips line. Oh, yeah. Because you guys are just such a lifeline in keeping us plugged in to what's going on with So many games, and if something escapes our net, and honestly, like every morning breeze out there going through the feeds, and we all like keep looking at stuff.

But things things slip through our fingers and sometimes there are just games out there that we're not aware of or we haven't touched on in a while. You guys can always draw our attention back to that and then we can evaluate like Oh, is this newsworthy? Is this something we need to be talking about? Or have we not talked about in a while? We need to kind of touch base with it. That's why the tips line is there and we just encourage you to take advantage of it.

Yeah, please do. It's very useful because anybody who takes the time and the trouble to send us a thing like that, even if it's just a link or a game name. Like I figure anybody you know, that that's like ten votes. That's not one vote. That's like somebody who really th if you care then a bunch of other people care that didn't even bother. You know what I mean? That's that's really important.

And we look at'em all. So it's Yep. Yeah from the His deep slumber. And never will. Yeah. So all right, well that's the Massively OP podcast right there for you. Seventy minutes of amazing goodness. Well, sixty minutes and about ten minutes of uh. Yeah. That's how it usually goes. Check out our Patreon program on the right hand side of the site or use that link button that's now in the show post. And that's a great way to help support massively OP and our crusade for independent MMO journalism.

Yeah, do we do we have the cool crusade tabbers yet? I I think it just looks like Mo and then it's a picture of Mo wearing a tabard with Mo on it and that Mo also has a tab with Mo on it. Like all the way down. Wow. Oh. Okay. Well there you go. There we have the this year's awards need to look like that. It's like I'm gonna do it. Alright, stop talking so I can go make the van. Oh. Van day. It's van life day. Have fun, Justin.