The 500th episode and writer roundtable

Hey guys. Oh my goodness. It is the 500th episode of the massively OP podcast. I know you've been counting it down and then we were torturing you. By just drawing it out over the break, we took a week off of it. We kind of did. It made you really anticipate that. And now we are dropping the mic and then picking the mic back up again, because how can you talk into a mic when it's on the floor? I don't know.

it was a mistake too because this was the worst day ever to record because it's like the first day back after the holidays and everyone's a mess like everyone's like oh my god and so we're kind of messy i love not drop the mic i'm sorry my bad I logged into Lotro this morning. Here we go. Okay, there. That's better. I logged into Lotra this morning and I said, happy, happy Monday. And one of my guildies is like, nothing happy about it. I'm back at work. I'm like, oh my gosh. Okay. Sorry.

There's Elliot! Yay! There's Elliot. Okay. We were supposed to have MJ. Maybe she will be here later. I don't know. If not, we'll have her on another time. Hooray! I'm the... backup plan no you were we were bringing him in later anyway we were just gonna trade it's a long story i know i know i know i know i'm just being i'm being intentionally ridiculous

Well, we're going to cram a bunch of things together on this podcast. It's a very special one, not just because it's our 500th, but also we like to do a staff roundtable at the beginning of the year, which is why Chris and Elliot have decided to suddenly jump on.

here um and we also have our state of the site report we're going to be talking about the awards we've got so much to cover in the next hour and whatever we're going to be doing so i just told my family don't wait up for dinner we'll see how it goes Let's throw the chicken leg down the stairs. It'll be fine. Wow, did you get a whole chicken leg? It might be even cooked. Possibly boiled. rare, just the way I like my chicken. Never mind. Just call the whole thing off. Get these clowns out of here.

Hey, you're just saying that because I sound like a clown, look like a clown, act like a clown. And dress like a clown. And smell like a clown. None of that is true. I met you in real life. What does a clown smell like? It smells funny. Oh, gosh. All right. You're out. You're out. Next one. That's my time, everybody. Thanks very much for having me. See you later. Okay. Well, let's start in by talking. We've got so much to cover. We really have to get.

going here and February 10th 2015 was a momentous occasion a day that will live In infamy. They don't live in a fuzzy memory in most of our heads because it was a really weird period of time for us. Oh god, it was so weird.

And we're going to actually be talking just a month here when we go into the 10th anniversary of Massively OP. So I don't really want to step on all that celebration that's to come. But this was around the rebirth. I'm not calling it an anniversary, Justin. I'm calling it Independence Day. It's our independence celebration. Will you have a speech?

No. We will not go quietly into the night. We're going to live on. We have to use every cliche in the book. That's the only thing required. Fireworks, though. We can definitely do fireworks. So February 10th, 2015 was the date that we restarted the podcast. And at that time, we were in the process of also restarting the site. The podcast was always going to happen. The site.

we were hoping uh but if nothing else this was the the consolation prize like something from old massively would continue but we didn't want to just call it massively speaking which was the old podcast we wanted to start over hit that reset button. Not only was the old podcast getting ridiculously high in number, it was, what, 300 and something? 331, something like that.

But we also want to kind of suggest to everybody, hey, this is a new – turning the page, a new chapter in our lives. Also, please don't sue us, AOL. That too. Yeah. AOL's lawyer's like, I hear there's a rogue podcast. Shut it down. Those dudes forgot to even reclaim the YouTube channel. I don't think they were paying us any mind, but we were very paranoid at the time. Didn't they also forget to reclaim the Twitter?

No, that one they actually reclaimed right away and then did nothing with it. It absolutely just bled. They could have sold it to us and made more money off of it than just letting it lie fallow and as people quit. They were, you know, let's just say that economic.

business decisions that was not AOL's forte otherwise we wouldn't have been in that position in the first place I can't believe you would say something so incredibly striking those guys I don't think they had anybody left to even monitor us I find so many people. Before the show today, I actually listened to the first part of that first podcast again. Did you really? Yeah, I was cringing a little bit because the sound level was not the best. And yet it was so nostalgic to suddenly jump back.

10 years in time and listen to us you know talking with with such optimism and also exhaustion you know that that mixture that was going on that week and going yeah you know we're restarting the podcast we're restarting the website we got this kickstarter going and you know we're

You know, even though we were kind of really kicked down hard by AOL, we're going to try. We're going to try to get back up. And it was good. It was good that they couldn't shut down the podcast. And, you know, here we are 500 plus weeks later and 500.

episodes later and we are hitting this giant milestone i mean yeah maybe it's just kind of arbitrary 500 is just a number after all but still it's a rather large and significant one and no there will not be a level squish this will not be the 50th podcast we're just gonna keep on I came here for squishes I have a lot of stuffies if you want. Some of them are very squishy, Chris. Oh, I'll take it. That's good enough for me. Thanks. Okay. So for Christmas, one of my kids.

gave me a three foot long squishy banana. And I looked at this thing. Of course, when your kid gives you something, it's the best thing ever. You're like, oh, wow, this is amazing. And in my mind, I'm thinking like, what the what am I going to do with this? It has since become the favorite toy of the entire house. Everybody loves this thing.

You go around, you're just whacking people over the head with it. You can shove it over your entire forearm, and now you have banana arm, and you go, yeah, I have the banana arm. I love that. You have banana arm. That sounds like it. a weird Mega Man pickup. Yeah, it does. It looks exactly like a big yellow Mega Man arm. That's absolutely sweet. Get equipped with banana arm. Wow.

So I don't know what we really want to say other than it's so cool that we hit the 500th podcast milestone. 500 more. There you go. Yes, that's a good one. 10,000 years Rick and Morty. Honestly, I say that in 10 years, we're going to be so old. It'll be 58. It's still doing a podcast on video games. I don't know if this is really what I meant to do with my life. I don't think it is. I have to put this on YouTube too.

No, no, Grandpa, that button starts to microwave popcorn. I'm podcasting! At this point, Joe, in ten years, putting it on YouTube is going to sound as archaic. That's true. Because, like... We all know that. Like, we're not talking about things that were a big deal 10 years ago. We know that. We're not, you know, I don't know. I'm trying to think of what. We're not uploading to MySpace. Although perhaps we should be. The Massively OP Podcast, now coming soon to Newgrounds.

Hold up a sec. I got to update our official live journal. Yeah, I don't really want to do that thing where social media likes to say, hey, you remember what was happening in your life? 10 years ago. And you're like, no, no, no, thank you. Nope. I had. Way more hair. It was all dark. It was awesome. My kids were small and cute and adorable. And yeah, no. And now you have banana arm. Now I actually found out this over the break. I'm going to become a great uncle.

My niece, who just got married, is now pregnant. So there we go. Great Uncle Justin! Great Uncle Justin sounds a little bit like a brand of cornbread mix. Not a good brand. The kind of brand you find at a dollar store, though. Exactly. Like it tries to pass itself off as some other major brand. 60% sawdust. That kind of ratio there. So doing a podcast every week, obviously, it's both a delight and a chore. It is a chore. I mean, it's...

A challenge. Don't say chores. Say challenge. Challenge makes it sound hard. It's a routine. It's a job. It's a job. We do this. This is work. I like to chat with Justin every week. I'm going to be honest. That's why I don't think we cared all that much if we made money at it, because I still wanted to keep doing that. You know what I mean? I wanted to keep talking to somebody who wasn't a guildie.

About the industry itself and not just the game we were playing. Forever. And we've been tracking. Because Justin is the only one who agrees to do it with me. I got the short straw, and that just haunted me for a while there. To be fair, you never asked me. I would have said no. Actually, it was the other way around. Justin actually started podcasting on Massively Speaking before I did.

I only got the job when I got the whole job. Yeah, it used to be Sean and Ruby. And then I eventually was brought on as kind of a third. And then... I think Sean was kind of just grooming me to kind of take over, and then it was me and Ruby for a while, and then me and Bree. Oh my god, Justice 2025, you can't say he was grooming you. No, you can't do that. That word is over now. My coat is luxurious. Only the finest shampoos for your justice.

Oh, man. This podcast is off the rails completely. We have really traced a lot of history on this podcast of the genre. We've done a lot of mail shows covering mailbag, and we've talked about – this past year, we started a lot of – Every once in a while, we do these theme shows that were actually pretty popular, and I hope that we can do that again this year. We have a whole list of theme shows that we will probably...

put off because they require a bunch of research. But we might do them. No, I'm kidding. We'll do them because they got a lot of people really like them. I think they were really fun to do too. Sometimes the news gets boring and we don't want to talk about it again and we just want to do something more meta. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, it's kind of become a staple, at least in my week and I know your week as well, that Monday is kind of the start of the week.

one of the big things on monday is i go do my groceries come home do some writing and do some prep and then in the afternoon every monday afternoon it's the podcast and my kids know like dude don't go in that room i don't know what happens in that room but we're not loud in that room.

I should apologize, too. I'm on my old mic because my kids are home for the snow day and they're upstairs making a lot of noise, which is why I'm on my old mic and not on the big one. Otherwise, you guys will be hearing a lot of chaos. I guess they're probably used to chaos. You do invite myself in. we'll bring the chaos good point we don't need my kids we've got you

I've already derailed the conversation about six or eight times. I could do it again. That is excellent restraint, Elliot. I'm impressed. Yeah, that's actually pretty low for you. I feel like it's worth noting. I'm sure this comes up before, but this is basically what our work chat looks like too.

It is exactly this focused discipline. No, no, that's fair. There's usually more arguing and definitely Justin isn't constantly trying to get us back on task like every minute. That doesn't happen. You're right. That isn't fair. This is actually more. focused. I usually just walk away once you guys get going. I'm like, I'll check back in in a half an hour when they're constantly strolling diagrams are done. I baffled as to why Bree thought that would be like a better thing to point out.

It's fine. Justin is running a tight ship here. It's tighter anyway. The Titanic was running pretty tight as well. yeah the um the anyways all i wanted to say about the 500th episode here is just to thank everybody for listening especially you guys who have been with us since the beginning or some of you crazy crazy people who came in late and said i'm gonna go catch up on the last 300 episodes y'all are nuts

Like you can binge Netflix. Don't binge this podcast. It's just not. I hope it's funny as hell. I bet if you got just a little bit tipsy and you just sat there listening to like, oh, yeah, you know what? Who's going to be? Camelot Unchained is coming out next year. It's going to be amazing. Right-eyed optimism about certain, yeah.

no it's it's just so interesting kind of going back and you know like if we could go back in time to 2015 that first podcast and go oh by the way city of heroes yeah it's coming back that'll be a thing again just just hang around it'll be So many surprises in this industry we've been covering. It's kind of fun.

But I do want to kind of move on and include definitely the rest of our team here talking on the podcast because we have a lot to cover. And one of the first questions I wanted to put out to all of you is now that...

2024 is in our rearview mirror. We're firmly in 2025, the most warm, sunny, bright month of January here. We have just a little bit left to reminisce about 2024, which is what did you really... personally enjoy playing last year what were some of your highlights in mmos and elliot i would like i like to kick this to you first okay that's fair uh obviously when i mean

I'm not going to mention the obvious game right up front, because anyone who knows my name knows that it's going to be on the list, so I'm just going to put that until later. But obviously, when... City of Heroes came back. I lost a good several months just playing that non-stop. Because it just... Like... I realized that obviously it was not like it was hard to access as a rogue server before then. And I even had done a stream with the rest of the crew.

It still felt a little more up in the air. Like, it still wasn't quite as certain. But as soon as they said, like, yeah, we have the license. We can do this. for as long as we... It felt real. It felt like, yes...

You can play the game now. So I jumped back in, went through the new stuff that had been added, went through old stuff that I hadn't seen because I had just... changed as a player over the years and just I had a grand old time and it was seriously a point where I was just I was so happy to have it back. and be able to play this game that I'd been missing for years. And then to my surprise, I did not plan this at all.

But I wound up going back to Warframe after years and years away from it. And, you know, working my way through. As of yesterday, I am... current with the game's content. I am up to the high- I went from being Chris, to use terms that I know you understand, I went from the mid-levels in A Realm Reborn to being current with expert. Wow, that's impressive. And it's great fun. It's a load of fun. I really enjoy the gameplay. The storytelling is way better. Like, I had always liked the setting.

But the storytelling has clearly gone up several levels. They've been doing a great job. So I've been having a lot of fun with that. And I did not expect that or plan that this year, but... Man, I'm super into Warframe, and I think it's going to stick this time. And last but not least, obviously... Final Fantasy XIV. We had an amazing expansion. It was great. I love it. I love Viper. I love Tural. I love Tuliolal. I love the character setting. All that stuff.

Great times. So I got nothing but good things to say there. No real complaints other than, you know, a player base that sometimes really needs to touch some grass. Sometimes. Yeah, you're right. There are certain players who just, you need to go somewhere that has all of the grass ever and just touch all around. You know that old, like, windows background with, like, the giant hilly grass? That place.

yes you just need to just keep touching it and like there are people who still very clearly it's like some of y'all I promise. I can't find a way to fit this into a column, but I want to. It's like, y'all, I am sure I play more Final Fantasy XIV than you do. And I don't expect as much out of this game as you can. It doesn't even matter who you are. That's probably true. Elliot plays way too much. And I don't expect this much out of this game. I have a more, like, I am sure I play more, and I...

am sure I do not expect this much. It is not supposed to be a lifestyle. It's just a game. Plus, how much can you complain a year that you get an expansion? apparently a lot maybe more than ever yeah we got an expansion But the expansion didn't contain the thing. The first patch didn't contain things we were never told it was going to contain.

So clearly there is a conspiracy and every mark of quality in this game is a lie. I think it's just that MMO players are crazy. I don't think it's just Final Fantasy. It's our genre. I think you're right. There is definitely some of... Some people in this entire genre just need to, you know, just like Chris said, just find that field, just roll, touch the grass. It might be whenever you like revolve your life around one thing and you're not diverse.

And then you're just a little too close. To paraphrase someone who I think had a very... It's okay for this stuff to be your hobby. It's probably even okay for it to be your social life. But it shouldn't be your life. Yes. Yep. Bingo. Well, Chris, what about you? How was your 2024? What were some of your highlights there? Well, my highlights definitely also included Final Fantasy XIV, so I'll not... I can't really repeat anything because Elliot has already, as usual, expressed it brilliantly.

um so my 2024 is going to be marked by a genre and a game specifically the game being elite dangerous um this was the year where frontier developments really shaped up and put out some great content and great updates which i did not expect was going to happen because you know you hear like in the investor reports saying is like we're going to scale back and

and do what we know how to do best and then you're like aha sure you are you're just you're just head patting the investor board and then they went ahead and did it and made huge improvements to elite dangers they fixed one of the biggest walls to any sort of real like customization and progression in regards to the engineer's system and then they like made refinements to

Something that actually like makes you want to care about doing activities just beyond simply getting them done because of the whole with the whole power play. 2.0 thing because yeah i mean everything you do sort of like fiddles with the background simulation but that's only like the small players the tiny factions the little

The little local governments, so to speak. But this one actually, like, allows you to really, really mess around with the bigger political players and the bigger powers. And, like, it gets... way more interesting and far more rewarding now. And then you tie that all together with the colonization plans that they have for this year. And like, just, I mean, I cannot possibly express in words.

how delighted i am that elite pulled itself out of the mire and became the spaceship sandbox that i hunger for and i was afraid was never going to happen i i genuinely was like well I guess Elite is just going to fall foul, but no, it's... And that's just, like, the stuff around, like, the wider galaxy. Excuse me.

I was never really ever to get to a point where I would engage in the Thargoid War, but that improved as well as from what I could tell. Didn't it end? The whole thing is over now, right? So they're probably going to start something new. Yeah, that's finished. The Thargoid War is done. The Thargoids have been defeated. All of the Titans are blown up into giant space chunks. Yeah. And now it's on to colonization. So, like, you know.

I am filled with optimism and delight about this game. I feel like the whole story, Chris, flew under the radar. I mean, I realize we covered it. You covered it extensively. But I feel like... I never saw this coming. I really didn't expect Frontier to recover at all. And then like when they did, like it was crickets. You know what I mean? Like people just didn't even notice. And I'm like, this is a huge story. We don't get these kinds of comeback stories often, guys.

and people are like oh okay this should be a bigger deal but i mean you know i don't know yeah yeah i really thought you were done with that for good me too i so did i genuinely was like Well, I guess I'm just never going to have my sci-fi sandbox. And lo and behold, FDev pulls it out. And I'm thrilled. No, no. What about you, Bree?

What were some of your big, big takeaways? Oh, gosh. I mean, I did play a little Lotro and Star Wars and Project Oregon this year, but my big two were kind of like they anchored.

the front and the back of the year, right? I played a ton of City of Heroes in the front of the year. And like Elliot, I mean... i i had been playing well maybe more than elliot i had been playing since 2019 when when they brought the whole thing back i don't really care about playing rogue servers anymore yolo right at this point whatever do whatever you want so i had been playing and i had kind of i'm gonna say burned myself out but definitely

like I had gotten my fill of just doing combat so when I came back with the license it was mostly because yay everyone's here it was just awesome to see you know 4 000 people concurrent in this dead game right that hasn't been alive really alive in 10 years or whatever or four was it 13 years 13.

i don't know can't do math on the top of my i can't remember but anyway mostly what i did wasn't actually like grind although i did get a character to 50 during that period but mostly what i did was like explore the the super group system because i really hadn't paid much attention to it i started dealing with mods i started getting into the touring other people's builds and i kind of

blown away by what's hiding there on what had been a rogue server what is now just a player run server the scale of the designs going on in that game all like under the radar you would never even know it if you didn't go looking for it is staggering it's like an insanely robust housing

basically system no one's paying any attention to it i had a lot of fun really exploring it that just consumed like the first chunk of the year and then the back i don't know five months of the year i just i blew it on guild wars 2 and i'm not sorry at all

I went back for Jantheir Wilds. Jantheir Wilds is a really nice expansion. I think it deserved expansion of the year. I think we're going to talk about that later. But that's not like really why I started getting into it again. It brought me in. But like why I stayed.

was I just kind of refell in love with the game again. I threw myself into the meta. I feel like I really understand how characters are built in the modern era when I kind of went through years and years where I just played the story and then left. Now I feel like I've done a complete 180 on that.

I really get my characters. I really enjoy them. They're, you know, they're peak performance now. And so it like it led me to like look for more things to do in the game. And you guys know how important intrinsic motivation is, at least for me anyway. So now I'm like, you know.

full-on explorer in this game, and I've gone back and I've done stuff I never did before. I've re-toured old places, really enjoying the scenery and the 3D aspect, the heights, everything of past expansions where I had just forgotten them, really. So I'm actually having more fun in the older parts of the game than I am in Janthier. But Janthier was the cause. That was the catalyst for this reawakening. So those are definitely my two big MMOs from last year.

I think at least Guild Wars 2 is going to keep going into this year. I'm not done yet. For sure. What about you? Yeah, I think I went back. I always kind of keep track of what I was playing and did a smattering of some other stuff. WoW Classic kind of came back really strong at the end of the year for sure, especially with the 20th anniversary servers. a lot of fun but the two games i played um every single month last year was lotro and wow retail uh lotro

primarily going through the most recent two expansions. And so it's been Umbar, Umbar, Umbar, Umbar, for both better and worse. I like Umbar a lot, but it also doesn't feel like... old lotro you know like area door so uh and from time to time i do need to kind of take a break and go back to some of the old realms and kind of you know get

get back in touch with that. And it was a good year. I think it's been a generally good, solid year for Lotro, but nothing... utterly thrilling you know so a variety of new characters that i played for various amounts of time but mostly just all my staples um retail was kind of an interesting experience there with wow because at the beginning of the year i was like ah all right

i'm gonna get get into dragon flight i kind of bounced off of that it was fine but too many dragons for my taste you know way too many dragons for my taste and so you know it was fine i played some uh some retail, but once they got going with... pandaria remix that was really the point of the year that i very very much got back into world of warcraft and not because i like miss a pandaria i still don't i think it's kind of a middle of the road expansion um but i do

appreciate some things about it having gone through the remix but it was a lot of fun the way that they did it and being with my guild and just kind of having those experiences and it kind of filled up the summer and then just got more and more excited for the war within which ended up being an amazing expansion and what i think is the expansion of the year

But it was a good year, and it kind of ended strong, and I'm really excited, especially after the recent November announcements of what we're going to be getting here in 2025. So very much embroiled. the whole WoW ecosystem right now. And it's comfortable. It's very, very comfortable. And maybe I should challenge myself. I got some ideas of some other things I'd like to do this year. And in fact, I do want to talk about that next. So where are some of the things?

you're looking forward to in 2025 we'll make this a little open in terms of new releases expansions projects you want to do you've got 12 months ahead of you what are you most looking forward to in the MMO landscape. Anybody can start. Personally, I mean, obviously I'm going to kind of like be interested in what Final Fantasy XIV does because that's my home game, not surprising. But beyond that...

I really am looking forward to seeing what happens with Pal World next. That's another thing that kind of like marked my 2024 was like I found survival sandboxes that I actually really like, like Nightingale and Pal World specifically. And of the two, Power World most certainly feels like it's got a lot more momentum behind it for kind of fairly obvious reasons. But I'm still interested in what happens with Nightingale as well. I always want to see...

This team at Inflection Games pull it out and move forward, genuinely move forward. But the Fabric update that Pocket Pair put out for Power World is just... astonishing like you just hear like nothing in terms of major additions or anything like that and then bam like this humongous update that's more that was more than just

big island. It just dropped down and it was great. But more than anything else, because I am frothing for this, is Monster Hunter Wilds. I am going to disappear once that game arrives dude seriously i heard you got like an ultimate collector's edition or something like that yeah they put out like a i don't know if there was an ultimate edition but i know that they like

this uh storefront kind of like humble bundle uh fanatical i think it's called they had like like a build your own monster hunter bundle where like you could get like a bunch of the modern monster hunters as well as their expansions and like get like a bit of a lower price for packing the ball together which and and that actually kind of inspired a article idea that breathed her to me. She's had a brilliant thought. I don't know about that.

Born out of my own confusion. What the hell are all these Monster Hunter games? Please someone help. It's still a great idea. I never would have thought of it on my own. That's because you know. You're not confused. You know what's happening. Exactly. Those are the two games primarily on my immediate radar. Of course, I'm always looking forward to seeing what happens to other games.

And like I mentioned earlier, Elite Dangerous' colonization thing, that's definitely going to be on my radar too. But those two in my immediate vicinity are what I'm really excited for. Yeah, honestly, Pal World in general, I definitely mirror your playing around with Survival Sandbox games, Chris. For me, it was Pal World and... enshrouded, not Nightingale. But I definitely, like, Palworld especially was...

I did not expect it to actually play as well as it does. Right? It's incredibly tight for something that's in early access. And just for a game that, like... At first glance, it looks like you just slapped, you slapped Pokemon into Ark. And like, at your first glance, it's like, what? Like that. That seems like the most derivative ripoff possible, and to an extent it kind of is, but I feel like it's also kind of a, like...

There is space that Nintendo has not decided to explore with the Pokémon franchise that people are actually eager to, and... Pal World just does exactly that. It says, what if we just did this? Yeah, what if Pokemon actually lived? in consort with their trainer, so to speak. Yeah, that's kind of like... Plus, it has Relaxaurus. It has Relaxaurus, yes. Who is the best... Pokémon or Pokémon-adjacent creature ever created, he puts...

literally every Pokemon to shame. I will not be taking questions. Relaxaurus is great. I love the fact that his skill that you can get is he whips out gigantic rocket launchers and fires a barrage of missiles. That's the best. That's great. That's just, you know. And, like, the first time you actually encounter a Relaxaurus in the wild in that game, if you're just exploring, you think, oh, look, it's a big dopey, oh my...

God, what is it doing? All right, after 17 minutes of a relaxasaurus conversation, maybe we could get back to the question. What are some things in MMOs that you're looking forward to this year? In addition to Pal World. I'm going to yank it back to Relaxor. No. Don't you dare. Oh, I dare. I dare so much. But...

I am definitely actually looking... I would like to say a little bit more about XIV, actually, because Chris was a little more vague about it. And not that I blame him or disagree with him, because... To a certain extent, Final Fantasy XIV is... I don't want to say boring or something. It's just... You know it's going to be good. You know it's going to...

hit the right notes. It's like a better version of The Elder Scrolls Online, and The Elder Scrolls Online just blew itself up. So it's that same sort of... I'm looking forward to the patches, but I know they're going to be very good, and I know they're going to be very full of stuff to do, so what more is there to say? But I...

do think it's actually going to be very interesting in two forms. I'm really interested to see what sort of story structure they're going for with the patch stories, because... In most expansions, what you have is the main expansion story. Then the first three patches tell a story that serves as a coda and wraps things up.

for the next expansion, and the last two patches are really a prelude. In Endwalker, that wasn't the case. The story wrapped up very conclusively at the end of Endwalker, and the five patches were... their own self-contained story so i'm curious to see if we're going to have a similar structure of a three-patch coda followed by setting up for the next expansion or if this next one is going to be

more you know spanning the entire length of the patch cycle and i'm also curious because as of right now there is a lot of stuff on the docket for the rest of Dawn Trail, including new exploration areas, a new limited job, more stuff for Blue Mage. more variant dungeons that they want to make more relevant, just a lot of content, and I'm curious to see how all of that gets integrated with the core flow of the game.

I'm very curious to see what they do with these patches. Because it's going to be... It's not as obvious as it might seem. Okay. Anybody excited about Dune Awakening? It's on my list. I have a big long list.

I'm sure my list is pretty long too. What are some of the things on your list? Go ahead. I mean, obviously Guild Wars 2 is at the top of my list. I know that we've got two more chunks of Janthier and then we know there's one more, at least one more expansion coming because a year and a half ago.

almost two years ago they said they were working on two after Soto so we know Jantheir was one of them plus there's one more I want to know what it is and then I want to know what they're doing next are they moving on to some different thing or a different kind of expansion cadence i don't know but i want to see um i want to get back into lotro this year i i know i played a little last year but i

did not accomplish any of my goals like i just ended up just playing alts because that's fun and um i i really would like to finish a character and get to see umbar which i own but i haven't actually gotten to play um I want to get into Star's Reach. I know it's not coming out.

i'm well aware and i but i have access to the test but i haven't been able to get to a single one of them they're always on bad days or at bad times like in the middle of the work day or at night when i'm like putting my kids it just doesn't work so at some point i need to say look all y'all put yourselves

bed or i'm not coming to work today i want to play because i really want to see it in person i just haven't gotten to um obviously we're keeping our eye on light no fire i really want to play that i'm hoping that will be the survival sandbox that actually makes me fall in love with survival sandboxes maybe uh dune awakening is on my list just because i want to see it at this point i don't think it's going to be something i fall in love with at all but

it's dune and i want to see what fun come is up to i want to get back into project gorgon i haven't really played that since the beginning of last year and i really miss it it stayed on my hard drive just taunting me i'd really like to try it out and i want to see where they're going because the last

time they gave us like a an update on their finances they said they were like it's fine to keep producing content through the beginning of this year i don't know what happens next and i want to i want to see what happens next paley is on my list this year i'm pretty sure daybreak has insinuated that it's

going to launch it really launch it alongside the console release this year so I'm probably going to jump back in at that point obviously we're still waiting for news on EQ3 and Guild Wars 3 but they're not coming out this year but we're watching we're waiting we're listening and Elder Scrolls

Scrolls Online was on my list as something I wanted to try to get back into this year. And I made that decision like three days before, as just as Elliot said, they decided they were going to destroy their cadence and potentially half maintenance mode the game. I'm being dramatic, but I am.

definitely worried about the future of the game even though I'm sure they will keep it up Microsoft will milk it forever and all of the existing content is already there and very cheap so that's probably what I will be enjoying there's a lot though i mean like if you look at the anticipated awards list it's huge and i didn't even put everything on it there's so much to look forward to in the genre and you just got to pick and choose that's my picking and choosing

I gotta be honest, I am not looking... I don't want to say I'm not looking forward to Dune because I don't really care that much about Dune. I don't, but that's not really why. It's because it's Funcom. And I'm sorry, but I'm just a man. Standing in front of an audience with object permanence. What has happened the last every single time. Funcom has launched.

anything i know yeah it's also created two of my all-time favorite mmos and conan exiles is still getting updates and is actually a really good sandbox if you're into that kind of game and they have joel bylos running this one i really like joel bylos he is There's a wonder maker over there. They have a lot of incentive. A lot of incentive to do right. And 10 cent money. I know they do. But I also remember that this is...

I know. And it's like, that's why we're just going to anticipate it and not invest our entire futures on it. I know. And I'm not blaming anyone who does, because yeah, it looks really cool. And like, you know, it's one of those things. I'm not saying this to mock people who are interested in it and are looking forward to it. There are things I will mock people for looking forward to. This ain't one of those things. Ashes of creation, sure. Okay, fine.

Well, I've got a pretty long list. Yeah, tell us your list. Well, I think one of the things I would love to see this year, I mean, if everything stays the same, I'll be fine. You know, like I could play WoW and LOTRO till the cows come home and I'm not going to be, you know.

Like going, oh, I've got all this extra time on my hands. I need some other game to fill it up. It's more like I like to have a diversity in play styles. I like to always be touching into some other games and see how it goes. But my big... One of my big things for this year is I want to hear some full details of these MMO projects that we know are coming.

You know, like, I'm only going to live so long, right? You know, already a great uncle. So I would like to hear more about these games like EverQuest 3 and Guild Wars 3. And I'm glad that, you know, like Project Ghost is talking and Star's Reach is, of course. You know, a big, big anticipated one there. Love to hear a lot more details as they promised us on Into the Fire.

Or like no fire. Sorry. Yeah, there's a lot of interesting sounding projects that are in the works and have been in the works for a while. And I would love for the veil of secrecy to be lifted off several of them so that at least we can.

start the speculation the anticipation the expectation process um i don't like it when it's just like we know they sort of exist these projects may or may not go forward we just you know i need a little bit more than that that that is my number one wish list for this year apart from that

I am definitely psyched for Dune Awakening. And I'm not a Dune fan at all. I don't care about the franchise. I wrote a whole column on that this week. You can check that out. Just not a Dune guy. It's just not my thing. I think you'll be okay not being a Dune guy. It's like an alternate reality version of Dune. It's not like really...

You know what I mean? It changed the storyline so much. I'm just saying the IP isn't the huge draw for me so much as, hey, it's an actual, honest to goodness, MMO, and it's sci-fi, which is always a big plus in my book. And there's some interesting ideas at play here. So that... That'll be interesting to see when they get that into early access and if that's maybe too soon. Of course, we've talked a lot about how early access goes. I also have a lot of plans for different games to return to.

as they continue to season and grow. You mentioned Lake Palea. That's definitely one of them. ESO, it's been a long mainstay of mine. I'm a little dismayed over the change in direction. At the same time, if they do pull out some of these quality of life changes, especially with increasing the combat difficulty, maybe making it more worth our while to actually...

you know, not steamroll through everything on the game map that might actually be kind of really make it feel more like an MMO again versus an adventure game, which is what it's felt like for a long time now. I would like to see those improvements. Maybe go back to Fallout 76. They have some plans this year. They keep improving it. They're going to add the ghoul race so that you can become an ugly, horrible, misshapen, irradiated ghoul. And, you know, that speaks to my heart. Absolutely.

I'd love to do that. So, yeah, there's a lot of games I'd like to go back and play and maybe even some Guild Wars 2, time permitting. But I'm definitely very excited for Lotro's... log refresh i think that's the number one like that's been on my most wanted you know one of my most wanted things for that game for a long time so i'm glad to see that they're doing that um and of course housing for wow and burning crusade

for WoW Classic with these new servers. You know, I know that both of those are kind of at the tail end of the year, so maybe we could just fast forward over the next 11 months, but... and get right to it. But I am anticipating those things. And I'm just glad to see a whole lot on the table here. So I'd rather have a buffet of tantalizing choices rather than one or two things that I'm forced to, you know, play.

So let's move on from this topic. Actually, let's go to the awards. We just wrapped up the Massively Awards show for the 2024. We had a lot of them. And how many total awards? 20 oh including the yachties not including the yachties oh i I think it was like 23 or 24. I don't remember. And then like 12 or maybe 13 yachties. And then five of the crazy stories, which are basically just yachties. I just, at that point, nobody wants to read the 17th yachtie. That's boring. So I.

There's two different things. Speak for yourself. It's a lot. Okay, maybe Elia wants to read the millionth Yachty. I would just be putting out a new Yachty every single day from all of the weird shit that we cover all year. I have to cut it off somewhere, right? It could go on for a while.

I know over the course of the year like a weird story comes out where like, Bree, you're adding that to your list, right? I do add it to the list. But I don't always keep them all. Like I really try to cut it down to just the best stuff or sometimes some of it gets smushed. Like if you look at the –

oh, what's the best, worst transmedia synergy, which thank you, Trion, for that phrase. We will never let it die, I promise. That one always has like 10 or 12 or whatever entries in it, and then I just pick one winner, kind of, you know, whatever. So there's usually some of them get bundled is what I'm saying.

So the main awards we had, yeah, we had almost two dozen there and we rolled them out over almost all of December there. And so they're all fully out. And I know you always do a wrap up award. Yeah. Yeah, it's not out yet. It'll be out I think Friday if I can get to it.

Otherwise, next week. Yeah. And that's a pretty big post because you not only recap them all, but you compare them to previous years as well. And I try to incorporate all of the polls because we do our own award, but then we also let the readers vote. So there's kind of like two awards.

We give them an award and they get a pick too. And then I always record them to see who brigaded this year. This is why we don't do it. It's fine. Brigading doesn't really bother me because it's not a big deal. And sometimes it just shows a lot of interest in a game, which is really cool too. Yeah, if you're looking for that, search the word debrief on the site because it's pretty much the only time we use that word and it's got all the debriefs from every year we have done this.

It was a good award show this year. I know you put in a lot of work. The whole team does as well. And I think it came together very well. Larry, by the way, did an amazing job on the banner. He did. Nice dragon breathing fire at poor little Mo there. So yeah, I felt like overall, really good picks. for all the awards. There was a lot of love, a lot of games. Are there any specific awards you guys want to talk about? Me, I want to talk about the awards. Y'all, NCSoft cleaned up.

Like, hardcore. I didn't even really think about this until after we did it, but not only did NCSoft win Best Studio, which, by the way, I know I saw a lot of Furrowed Browser for that, but they won it because they licensed City of Heroes. That's literally why they got it, and they totally deserve it.

But the more I thought about it, it's like they also get Throne and Liberty. That's not really Amazon. That's an NCSoft game. Then they get all of the ones that Guild Wars 2 got. So Guild Wars 2 got Best Expansion, Best Housing, and Best Business Model. NCSoft. Got five of the freaking awards. And I didn't plan that. Like, I didn't really think about it as it was happening. That's a turnaround. Like, who saw good guy NCSoft coming in 2024? Dead serious. It was not me.

Yeah, I thought we were going to hold that grudge against them for City Heroes forever. I'm sure some people are still holding that grudge. Hold that grudge against them for City Heroes, but this year they... Now you're just holding a grudge because you like doing it. Grudges, right.

I thought that was really fun. And you know what? Technically, you could count that they also got Best Classic MMO because for the first time, we were able to give it to City of Heroes because it's a real game now and not just a rogue server. That was really cool. So really, they got six awards. That's nice. Yeah, that felt good to be able to do that for Homecoming, honestly. That's the one I'm the most happy about.

don't know that i thought of that initially until we started getting into the discussion i was like wow you're absolutely right this really is like the best like yeah that's that's it's it's a shoe-in it's brilliant it's I'm so excited about that. Overall, I feel okay about the awards. There are a couple of choices that I wouldn't have personally gone with, but you know what? The discussions are... That's why we have the discussions we have. Right. Yeah.

irons the wrinkles out or brings up things that I hadn't thought about or completely forgotten because, you know, oh boy this year. You know, it's... Overall, I'm pretty good about it. I feel good. I think we got it right. I would maybe kind of push against the MMO of the Year. But I'm not like so bent up in shape about it that I don't think Thrown in Liberty shouldn't have gotten the nod. It's just I don't think it was best of the year material personally. But that's okay.

I also, as I wrote, I sort of recognize that not every MMORPG has to be for me, and this one is on fire. Yeah, I voted for Throne 2, and I thought it was okay. I thought it was fine. definitely can understand why other people were like totally hyped about it i think that when it's a brand new game like it almost gets like bonus points it like you know what i mean what's the thing in golf when you get like a handicap and you actually get a boost from being you know brand new

I think that's what happened here, and I'm not really sad about it. Originally, that's how all of our awards were. They were only for the new games that came out, and we stopped having a lot of those. Sometimes we would have them and they were like, oh, my God, these are all trash fires right now. Maybe they'll get better later. And a lot of them did. You and I had a conversation. The year we awarded it, nothing. It was 2014. It was the year Wildstar, ArcheAge, and Elder Scrolls.

Souls Online came out and they were all terrible at launch. Every last one of them. At the beginning of 2024, I would have predicted...

That Throne of Liberty would have been our disappointment of the year. That's fair, though. From the reports we were getting overseas. South Korea did not like it. Yeah, it wasn't doing well. Every indication overseas. You're right. It was like... every sort of news coming out of the korean version was like this is going to land like a wet bag of pudding like i just and it didn't revolutionize the industry let's not oversell it or anything like that but i think it was

It was pleasantly well received. It was it did a really good job. There's more positive word of mouth that I saw about it than negative. And so that's why I kind of gave it my nod. And I went like, yeah, wow. OK, you know, like, cool. Like we need more wins.

else and you know probably won't be talking about at this time next year you know we won't be going oh yeah thrown the liberty had an amazing year but for a launch it i think it did a pretty good job it might get a best pvp mmo nodded then maybe oh wait did it also win best pvp damn ncsoft got another one It got best PvP. I forgot about that.

seriously what the heck conspiracy yeah you're acting all like i had no control over all this what i just didn't think of it as being ncsoft wins again you know what i mean you know the sound of all that ncsoft money i'm counting out flip flip

Oh, my God. Children, come get my baskets of gold. NCSoft had a terrible year, right? NCSoft had layoffs. They had, like, investor uprisings. They're shutting studios. They did not have a great year. They did not have a great revenue year. Like, Gildersleeve was doing fine. Some of the MMOs are doing fine, but, like.

Mobile is just tanking in Asia and it was not a great year for them. Not that it's been a great year for like any MMO or any game studio. It's like everything's on fire right now. I'm just saying they had kind of a bad year. So going into this, I wasn't even thinking about it that way.

did we change any of the awards this year like take any out or add any new ones in we added crafting back actually was the only brand well we've had it before but we had not used it for years and that i think we were just not getting a good like

people were not interested in yeah and this year i was like you know what i think i think we have a good pick possible pick for it i think we should bring it back and that is the one that in fact won i don't know if i convinced you guys or if you i can't remember anymore but we ended up I can't remember. Was that Lotro?

Yeah, we gave it to Lotro because they put in all of those crafting quests. They were actually actively doing something to improve the state of crafting in the game and therefore in the genre, doing something new. You know, it's not like this is about the best crafting of all time. It's not. It's good crafting, but it's new, and so that's why I got that award. Whether we have anything to give it to you next year, I don't know. I might kill it again. We'll see.

I don't want to give it out just to give it out. You know what I mean? I want there to be a good reason to bring awards back like that. Like when we brought back PvP. There's also a risk there, if we just bring it out when we do have something really good to give it to, there's a risk that we're just creating categories so that somebody can have an award. I'm not saying that...

I'm not saying we're ever going to reach the extreme point of this. If for no other reason than having talked with you so much during the awards, I think this would actually drive you to insanity. This would actually end with you. wandering the streets, muttering to your son. Gotta collect the votes. Gotta collect the votes.

Oh, that's just Bree. She's just local color. She just wants a quarter. Gotta collect the votes. Gotta collect the votes. Gotta collect the votes. This may happen to me anyway, and it's inevitable at this point. It's fine.

There is a certain point where, you know, for some of the, and I'm not saying we're there, obviously, with, you know, Lotro does deserve a nod because they did have a lot of new crafting stuff that they didn't have before. But if we only bring it out when we have a good thing to get a bit given.

award for eventually we get a point where we're just making an award for best lotro goes to inexplicably thrown at liberty now one of the awards i was glad that actually had seemed like it had more competition and more discussion than in years prior was housing seemed like for a while their housing was kind of very stagnant as an oh yeah yeah didn't we kill that for a while too we might have but it was just like

Like, oh, it's either EverQuest or Star Wars Galaxies or maybe Rift. Giving it to Dead Games. Why are we having to give this to Dead Games? And now we actually have a good variety of housing. Like, a lot of these games are either... coming into existence with housing or adding it at a later state as in guild wars 2 here so it was actually really encouraging i thought to read that and go you know like hey not just guild wars 2 but you know wow's got housing on the horizon

um you know we talked about palea there's you know a lot of games that wayfinder that's some pretty fun housing too yeah i want to say yeah wayfinder surprisingly good housing that was I was very impressed with that when I dipped into that game. But I'm just encouraged to see more variety and choice in these categories. Competition is good. Any other thoughts on the awards? Yes. Can we talk about... Worst business model for a second. You'll have to refresh my memory.

Okay, so usually some form of Star Citizen wins. It either Star Citizen wins or it gets like, you know, it'll get like a co-winning, I think one year at one with Fallout. And then we passed it by for Diablo Immortal and then it was right back the next year, this year. It didn't win. eFrontier won.

everybody like that was like one of those things where we brought it up and it was like oh yeah i'm changing my vote changing my everybody pile on like oh this is an easy one we weren't even thinking about it because a lot of people don't even take it seriously as an mmo because it's a crypto game because it's a blockchain game i mean

not that we're allowed to call it a blockchain game wink wink right but when they did that they did that like a week before we decided the awards and i was like you have made a critical error and the time for our attack has come i'm afraid this was a big mistake because now it's

in everybody's minds and everybody was so mad about it. It was just such an easy pick. I wonder if it's winning. I should go look. Brie literally going, you've activated my trap card. Honestly, when Brie and I were talking,

And yes, it is still winning. Is it really? It is still winning. It's still winning the fold. Even over Star Citizen and Roblox. Even over Star Citizen and Roblox. Roblox? Roblox is actually only... has a small number of people sleep on how terrible roblox is it really is but i when uh brie and i were talking uh we were talking about how like honestly We need to just make, or I was talking about, we need to just make the worst business model, like the Star Citizen worst business model award.

Star Citizen is going to just win this every year. But it doesn't. It doesn't. Sometimes something is worse. But it's like, we all know it. You need to come. Like, we need to say you can't nominate this anymore. No, I don't want to do that. It's bad enough. Of course it's not fair. Worst MMO business model sponsored by Roberts Space Industries. Oh, if it were sponsored by...

I'm sure they have a shelf in their office where they just keep putting our awards on there. They had it, but they laid it off in the last layoff round, so sorry. They ain't getting any more most anticipated. You know what? I wouldn't be surprised because they have in the past. There were years it got best business model and biggest disappointment and most anticipated in the same year. Don't underestimate how many people still are very much pulling for Star Series. They are.

Oh, I am estimating correctly. And you're in a cult. You need... To use the joke that I so frequently use when I'm talking with Bree in work chat, if you are still really sure that Chris Roberts is going to deliver the space... sandbox that you want. First of all, that game exists. It's elite dangerous. Chris really likes it. So go play it. Second of all, if you're still pulling for it and you're willing to, you know, defend the company on public forum.

go to therapy. Just go to therapy. It's cheaper. Oh my gosh. I also, before we go off the awards, I want to talk about like the story awards, like not literally story, although there was one guy in the comments who took the word story and was like, I don't like stories. And I'm like...

That's not what that's not what that word means here. OK, anyway, I thought that would be worth because we kind of decide them like all together so that no one thing gets all of those. Like everything is a disappointment and a mistake and a surprise and a big story. We don't want that. That would be dumb.

Can we go through them quickly? Sure. I think we gave biggest disappointment to the collapse of Blue Protocol. That still makes me sad. I know that makes everybody here sad because I think all of us at one point were hyped for this. We gave Stormy is Future. See, again, that can kind of be the same, but we gave it to the cryptic MMOs, not because the cryptic MMOs are bad. So that's Star Trek Online, Champions Online, and Neverwinter. I think we all love those.

cryptic was kind of a fixture even if you thought it was kind of a clown show sometimes it was cryptic it was lovable and huggable in an mmorpg studio yay but embracer basically lit it on fire it basically doesn't exist anymore i don't think that there's anybody but a few like

You know, skeleton staff still there. All of the production for those games has been moved overseas to a company that has never run anything bigger than Realm of the Mad God. And we're all a little worried about what's going to happen to those games. Especially since... Cryptic was a cringeworthy clown, but it was a friendly clown. I know. We all liked the clown because we knew the clown. The clown was fine. It was a good clown.

Tied into that was The Biggest Story, which is what I was referring to before, which is not in fact about stories in MMOs. It's stories about, you know, the genre, the industry. And I think we kind of gave that to like the... broad layoff shit show that's been going on for the last two years which i think i think it really is even though it's not technically an mmo specific story it affected a lot of mmo teams i think we even mentioned it hit the eso team it hit the wow team even blizzard labor

people off from well this year in this year this comeback year just on and on down the line it's it's really bad i'm very very worried uh i think that definitely deserves story i think we were all right on that one um Blunder. Blunder went to New World Eternum. Yeah. I think the problem was...

separating that, when we went to write that down, I was like, I don't think the Blunder was coming to console. And it wasn't making a new version that would be more marketable and have a new name. No, definitely not. That was all smart. This makes sense. And ignoring the PC player base. Right. I think we would not have even nominated it if Amazon had said at the start of the year, look.

We're working on a console port. Our updates are going to basically slow to a crawl or be non-existent for most of this year because we have to focus on this console port. That would have not gotten them, like, it still would have sucked, but it wouldn't have felt like a blunder. It would have felt like, okay, well, they said, I mean, they gave us an idea of why it's happening this way. Yeah, exactly. We're not abandoning you. We just need to, you know.

We've lost some staff and we need to really focus here so we can get this launch out so we can go back to updates and seasons like you expect. Blah, blah, blah. Please stay with us. We appreciate your faith. This is so easy. You know what I mean? And it's so weird because this is stuff that Scott Lane has said before.

Like, that's the weirdest thing. It's like a changeling of Scott Lane was sat in the chair during those whole things. Yes, with... like uh band-aids over their mouths like a zipper where they're not allowed to talk i think that was the worst part it was the marketing was bad and the developers weren't even allowed to talk about it you could see someone would ask them about the word mmo mmo and they would like they would

there would be like a flinch in their faces. They were like, I can't say that word. I can't say that word. I can't say that word. And as they tried to mealy mouth their way around it without breaking the rule, I feel so sorry for them. But, you know, the studio still deserves this.

What else? We picked best surprise or biggest surprise went to WOW Easy for their housing announcement because I don't think even our WOW people did not really believe that was going to happen. Especially not this year. Especially, like, the announced, like, it's way too early to say whether WoW did a good job with housing because it currently doesn't exist. It is a promise of something that is going to exist.

But one of the things I noted in a couple of my end of year 11 columns is that, like, it's easy to forget now because we're on the other side of this. leading up to the War Within involved a whole lot of Blizzard stepping on ranks.

they really yeah no it's fair the early part of the year was not great for blizzard apart from the community facing stuff where they were constantly updating roadmaps and stuff that's they get they get bonus points they delivered a lot on yeah they did they did that but i'm saying you know Just as a managing of the game itself goes, for most of the year, up until The War Within, it did not look like this is going to be a comeback story.

The fact that that is a valid narrative at this point, like it is a valid narrative at this point. And I'm not saying that it's like a, oh, well, you can't really say that because if you look at how much they screwed up at the start of the year, it's like, yeah. That's why it's a comeback story as opposed to a continuing to do your job story. I'm saying it just because you wouldn't have, the first half of the year, you wouldn't have expected The War Within to...

pull it up, pull off even being a decent expansion. And you definitely wouldn't have expected it to pull the trigger on. The feature that WoW has been very conspicuously missing for the past entirety of its lifespan. And not just missing, but like denigrating and like constantly saying, no, we're not doing this. We don't want to do this. This can't be done. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or lying and saying, oh, we want to do it, but it's hard. Yeah. I mean, Microsoft clearly lit a fire.

under their butts. Microsoft's one good deed for the year when it wasn't too busy laying people off, it finally kicked Blizzard into gear. Yeah, those are all really good stories. Yeah, the very last one was actually an even better story because we gave trend. I forget. I think it was you who came up with this, Justin, giving best trend to the year of expansions. And you're bang on because we really did have that period.

over the summer when we had like five major expansions come out. And that wasn't the only ones. Every single big MMO had one. And then we had all of these. Eve had one. And Albion Online had several mini expansions and then EverQuest and EverQuest 2 and Lotro and DDO. And it was like, wow. oh, okay, that's a lot of expansions, and I haven't even had to go digging yet. You know what I mean? That's a lot. All of the old games delivered last year. Yeah, it was a really good year for Legacy.

MMOs and ones that weren't cryptic-owned. There was. Star Trek Online and Neverwinter, they got updates last year. That's the frustrating part. They fly under the radar because everyone's so nervous.

Yeah, but getting so many good expansions, I was – again, I didn't agree with expansion of the year, but I'm still very, very happy that there were so many options and a lot of very strong feelings on that. And really, we kind of – all win because almost no matter where you're playing you got something new to new toy to to play with new new lands to explore new quests to do and you know that's good that's good for all of us so yeah i'm hoping 2025 kind of upsets

game and gives us you know says hey let's try to do even better uh instead of going oh we worked so hard last year we're just gonna you know cruise through this

So speaking of cruising through this year, obviously this is the year where Massively OP just kind of rolls over and gets a buy. But before we do that, before we completely fall down on the job, we have our annual... state of the site report the state of the site is everybody stand up and applause shakes hands with everybody and then squirts a lot of uh you know hand sanitizer and then moves on okay

All right. So we pretty much ended financially. We ended 2024 almost exactly where we ended 2023 within actually like a thousand dollars like in the bank. So that's two years in a row that basically we broke even. That's probably maybe gonna sound good. It's not.

great um because our hits are just as good as they were in 2022 but 2022 was our best financial year ever and so we did much better than break even that year um to the point that i was even able to give raises at the end of 2022 which we need because in my opinion We still don't pay that well. So I don't really count it a loss or a win. It's just we are still alive with runway to keep staying alive some more. I guess I just have to take that I don't get to control the way the industry is going.

One thing we worked on a lot this year, because advertising revenue specifically was down, again, because the companies don't have any money, or rather they're reprioritizing their money and other things like, you know. AI and then not spending money on advertising. Very frustrating. But we spent a lot of this past year basically trying to figure out ways to make what we already have, what we're already doing, make more money, right? to cover our costs and some of that like

Yeah, there's a lot that goes into the revenue because some of it is like not recoverable. Some of it is advertising, yes. But some of it is like people don't have any money, so they can't donate as much on Patreon. We're down under $1,000. It's like $912, I think. we make on Patreon every month, which is not really very much. That doesn't even pay for one Chris a month. You know what I mean? Not even close. It's all the dog food. It's so crunchy.

Since I know I can't squeeze money out of people who don't have it when we're in this bad economy. Well, you know what I mean. I'm not going to fight over the economy right now. We're dealing with a lot of inflation and people have higher costs and concerns. So I understand why they're not donating to any websites. It makes perfect sense to me.

me so we've been trying to basically try out new ad types we even at one point tried out a totally different network maybe you even noticed that and i'm sorry for the chaos if you did but maybe i don't know um but yeah we we basically we used this other network for a while and they gave us some tips and some suggestions and they

tried to work around our layout and, you know, they just, they have a different model. It actually started to pay a little bit better than the other ones. So for a while we actually had two networks, which was again, a giant pain in the ass. Thank you to my husband who has been.

basically spearheading this effort all year um and in the end we ended up back with our original network because they were willing to say oh well if you're going to shop around we're going to help you out and i was like well that's not why we were doing it but you know okay so now like

they have us hooked up with a totally different system in there. It's just, it's going to be better. I hope it should work better for our layout and should get us more importantly, better returns on the things we're already doing. Like we already had ads, you know what I mean? So just getting better ads, getting.

better placement for the ads and hopefully ideally at some point in the near future having like more fine control over what actually gets shown i know this is all very granular but i'm telling you this is what we've been working on instead of fun things unfortunately because we got to pay the rent you know what i'm saying and

If we hadn't done this stuff, we would not be breaking even right now. That is basically what allowed us to break even this past year and will hopefully allow us to break even at least next year. That is continuing. We're not finished with that. And in fact, I know that as they work more on the fine controls for the Google type app, it's basically like when we're bought out, like...

Do I need to explain all this? I probably should. When we're bought out, it means like a specific studio has like taken over our entire site. Like all of the ads are like for that one thing. That is the best thing that can happen to us. When you see those, give us a cheer because that is like, that is money.

right there anytime that happens but like most of the time that's not happening and we're just getting fed all these random ads and how those come in and where they come from and where they're positioned it's totally up in the air depending on the network and the rules we set so ideally we're going to have better control over those in the meantime until i can actually get down into that um

When you guys see weird ads that you're like, oh, that looks kind of skeevy, please let me know. Because sometimes those ad people, they're literally doing it on purpose. They're going around our filters and our flags and whatnot so they can get stuff. Not on our site specifically, but on sites where they're not really welcome so they can reach a bigger audience. So please.

Help me out there. That is a huge help instead of just blocking the ads and never telling me because not only does that hurt us because we're not making any money, but it also means I can't fix it for other people. If you care about the site. Please help us on things like that. It costs you nothing but like a minute for an email, please. Anyway, that's...

That's kind of like off topic, but I just wanted to explain what's going on with the ads and how we're able to do this, how we're able to keep our budget without having to claw back. you know, the raises and stuff we did at the end of 2022. So but that's that's the long story short, right? We are still here.

We're still doing everything we can with what we have to keep on being here. I know we could be better. Everything could be better. The world could be better. But the industry is literally on fire right now. And I'm trying to be content with survival, with not catching on fire. Through these rougher years that we just we don't have any control over them. That's that's how the cyclical industry works. And it's I almost feel bad complaining because.

There are studios and websites that literally vanished from the face of the earth this year. They don't get another year to keep trying. They don't get another year to recover. They're just gone. So we're already doing so much better than that. But yeah, if you want to help, if you want to keep us on top, you can donate. You can donate to the Patreon.

please don't block the ads if you can help it report the crappy ads to me post our stuff on reddit and social media or any combination of those things that you can afford with your money slash time whichever like not everybody has money right now but some people have time whatever you can do It helps us. I know it is rough out there for everyone. We're just trying to make it through to the other side because I'd really love to have another 22 again. 2022. That was amazing. All right. Bravo.

I don't like this part. Just so we're clear, I don't like dealing with the money. I know I like dealing with the money posts when it's other people's money, but I don't like this. I didn't ask for this. I never should have agreed to this. It is very stressful. You can also look back and say, hey, look at what we did in 2024. We can allow ourselves a little bit of back patting. I mean, look at back in 2015.

Just as we opened off the show, look at what happened back in 2015 when it looked like we were massively well done. We've been in so many wars. You're right. Not even that, but like there was a time I've talked about this before. It was like 20. Was it 2017? I don't even remember when we were basically flat broke. Well, one of our vendors had skeeted off with our cash and I couldn't pay any. I couldn't even pay myself, let alone anyone else. And it's kind of a miracle we survived that.

and saw a penny of it back we got almost every penny actually back but like it's been worse

We have runway. That's how we've been trying to build our little tiny indie company here, so that we would have runway, that if something bad happens, if the advertising completely vanishes, if our ad network... loads and get set on fire or something tomorrow that we we have backups and we have you know enough money to coast for a while while we all find new jobs or something that's well what i what i was trying to say is not just the the fact that we're existing but what we do

over last year was monumental we the number of podcasts of posts of columns yeah of news of stories that we covered ongoing things the stream team with chris and mj there that you guys kept pulling out on a weekly basis there is i mean so much content that when you step back and you look at an entire year i hope people who do support the site feel like they get their money's worth they get you know or their attention's worth if you continue to follow the site um i feel like we do good work

And I'm not trying to be egotistical about that. I truly do. I think we do a very good job here. And we have really good writers. And so I'm proud to be part of this team. Yeah. 100%. Agreed. Thank you for putting it that way. That was so much better than my version. My version is consumed with worry. And Justin's like, no, we put out as many posts. Well, you're planning to have us go out to the highway ramps and hold up science and internet journalism.

Please give me money. We're not desperate. You know what I mean? We've been trying to play the game smart and just... weather i just don't know can we weather 10 years i mean i don't know this industry changes like every year here yeah it does and we're still here we're still going

So you said you had a couple pieces of mail before we close out the show. In fact, the first one is for you. These are the two I held back from the mailbag show because I thought they would work better for this venue. The first one is from Joe, and he says,

to voice my support for spinning off an MMORPG game archaeology focused podcast with history and interviews even if you have to put it behind Patreon to support its development either permanently or for the first few months before releasing you'd have at least one person who would pay hundreds if not thousands of pensions

a month to have skilled interviewers like yourselves dig into this topic i think i think we had made a joke about this or i don't even remember this is from a couple months ago where we thought that would be a really fun thing to turn your game archaeologist columns into like a Shorter podcasts, maybe. Justin's like, I don't want to do it. But it would be fun. Want is a different word than can. Can, yeah. Have the time to do it. It's, yeah.

Never say never. I know this is such a developer thing to say, so I'm just going to pull out those chats. Never say never. It's not off the table. It's not likely. I'll just be upfront with that because it comes down to a couple of things. Personal interest. I like history. I love the history of our genre. I also feel like I've done my duty to king and country in that regard. And I might...

be winding things down on the game archaeologist front. I'm not saying I'm completely done. I think there's some major projects I'd like to tackle, but it's so... incredibly time intensive all those columns are just very time intensive and that's that's a hard thing when you're balancing two jobs and a family and a lot of other responsibilities. And that's not an excuse. It's just, that's.

That's how things go. Time is a zero-sum game. And adding another podcast that's not just a freewheeling, let me give you my opinion podcast, which are like this, generally easier to put on, but one that has to be... researched ahead of time you have to have interviews you have to have you know kind of a really

high quality level production, which for some people, if that's their full-time job, that's awesome. I would not be able to do that. You would get like one show out of me and it would take me three months to do and maybe get, you know, a half dozen hits.

and then it'd be like okay that was yeah so like in my head i'm thinking like wouldn't it be cool if we could do that something like in the radio lab format you know what i mean where it's super polished and everything is like cute quick clips back and forth and it's

It's awesome to listen to, but the amount of work and the cost in something like that, that would cost our entire budget. More than our entire budget. If we can be the inspiration behind somebody else picking up that ball and running with it, no. bless you do it you know like absolutely i'll be the first person to listen to it and i'll i'll give you my big thumbs up i'm just saying at this point in my life it's probably not going to be something i can handle

it might be like a fun like a fun thing to do occasionally like as part of our podcast like just yeah especially if we could bring on a developer who you know like scott hartsman i think i could probably wait that's been on our list for a while to make him Let's make it happen because I'd love to grill him about all the juicy details of Tryon and everything. Come on, Scott. Do it. Tell us some stuff. I'm sure you don't have any NDAs left. You've been out of it way too long, right?

And Raph Koster. He'll be on our show every week. Every week until Stars Reach comes out. I thought Koster would come and he would not tell us anything about Stars Reach. But he could talk about the industry at large. That's true. kind of writing a homer simpson uh check there just so i bet you like uh our town now what with our ample parking and daily concerts by the who We'll talk after this. Alright, can we do the last one? We got one more.

It's from Lancelot. Lancelot says, I hope everyone is enjoying whatever MMO they may be playing. I had a question regarding a potential Discord community. Will there ever be a Discord community for the listeners and fans of the website and podcast? I have been listening and loving the podcast for several years and also regularly use the podcast.

the website for news one thing i would love to do is interact with people who also love doing the same whether that may be being able to chat in conversations with other or play some moos with other people that may be playing the same game i know that there was a possibility of opening the floodgates the discord server mentioned in the faq but i was

wondering if there was any update on that so i'm gonna do the same thing justin said and say not yet um i always hold open the possibility because i can see upsides but

I can see more downsides than upsides. That's why I never do it. The short answer is then no, not in the short term. The long answer is a whole bunch of reasons uh the first one is we don't really have the funds to support it um and you're thinking what it's discord it's free like yeah to have a really good discord trevor you need to pay somebody to do it you need to pay somebody to moderate it to maintain it to keep it pretty to make it functional to

stop toxic edge lords and to like put in games and fun things and links and bots and all the works to keep it interesting um i don't have the money to pay for that i'm trying to you know what i mean we just don't have that kind of money which means what would actually happen is that it become my ninth or tenth job at this website and so it would not be done well because i wouldn't be able to devote much attention to it it it would suck i monitoring synchronous chat is just too much work um and

That would be the end of my work-life balance, which I barely have now. And it wouldn't be good for the site. Like, never mind me. Oh, just have me moderate it. Hell no. It wouldn't be good for you either. I did that just to get you to respond to that. That was it. That was the whole point. I suspect most of the people who would participate would be just fine. But it only takes one turd to ruin it for everybody.

The second thing is I'm always leery about doing anything that would pull people away from our core business, which is... the news website, the editorials, the pages that actually produce content and produce revenue. I don't want to open a Discord and kill our comments. I don't want to drive people to be talking someplace that isn't our website. I can't do that. We don't have the luxury of being able to afford that. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, honestly, this is why.

Even all of our streams are technically on the website. It was because we were sending people to Twitch and they weren't coming back. And so that didn't work. I needed to bring people to the website. and the third the third big reason is maybe maybe even the most important thing is that most of the discords for generalist websites that i have seen do not take off anyway

they don't really add much to the sites that they're attached to or the reddits they're attached to. Um, and I don't, I just don't want to make another one of those just for everyone to go in and be like disappointed, especially when.

I mean, I don't know about you guys. I'm already in like 100 Discords. I'm in so many Discords, I had to make a second account so that I could be in more Discords. Like, I don't need more. You guys don't need more barking at you, especially if they're not going to be like massive, if they're going to be small.

This is exactly the same reasons we don't have forums. Well, actually, we did have forums like around 2010, but actually killing the forums was like one of the very first things I did when I took over in 2000.

12, I guess it was, because they require tons of effort, tons of moderation or they die. And if they don't die, they basically become Reddit where it's like super toxic. And everybody's talking about like the same threads over and over and every single week, these weird grievances that the handful of real. loud people have and they just repeat themselves ad nauseum and i just i don't want to be another reddit i don't want to do that um

I just can't. So this is honestly the same reason MJ stopped leading a lot of the guilds. That was something else that Lance a lot mentioned was that he wanted to be in guilds. That is so much work. Like anybody can be a guild eater. But being a good guild leader that you actually want to be in a guild under is like a part-time job. And she was trying to do that for like 10 games. That was non-functional. None of them was like great. And I think she would be the first to admit it.

Yeah, it's just too much work on top of the other work. What I would love to do is have more money like for the site, because then it would maybe be worth it to pay MJ to monitor something like that.

That's just not in our cards right now. So that is why I am cautiously saying no for the near future and instead would encourage people to make use of the comment system we already have where like we can kind of guide the discussion based on what's actually new and happening and not just based on, you know.

again those ancient grievances and also the social activities that you know people that like mj and chris are doing on their streams they have like a social thing going on like multiple times a week what did you guys do like

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, at least eight streams a week where you guys are in there for an hour and a half chatting and being social. And a lot of times you'll bring our readers and watchers like in with you. That is totally a thing you can participate in without actually committing to a guild.

And also Elliot has What Are You Playing, which we kind of turned into like our weekly open thread where people can just say anything they want, randomly talk about their lives, randomly, you know, look for groups, whatever you want to do.

Yeah, but that's why I don't want to say no, because I can imagine a time when some of my reservations on all of these things would go away. Like maybe five years in the future, nothing looks like this anymore. Discord is different. The web is different. I can foresee that being different. We didn't use Discord as a team until the beginning of last year. We used Slack before that.

I never say never because we have changed our mind in the past, but right now it doesn't make sense for Massively OP. Maybe that will change. What about opening up an official The Palace server? What? All right, get out. All right. It's a good idea, Lancelot. I just wanted you to know that I've really thought about this and I think about this a lot because I kind of live in discords.

And sometimes I wonder, maybe this is the right moment. And then I think about all of these, like, Bree, don't do it. You can't. I am literally in a few invite-only, like, just people gathering. Discords. Yeah. And there.

moderation takes a fair bit of effort when people who are in there are people that are specifically invited and specifically like known to be okay i know that these people are not going to start shit for no reason sorry Justin you're gonna have to believe that I'm sorry didn't even think about it but even in those servers i know there is still i don't want to say moderation drama but there is still moderation issue because no amount of vetting people in the world is going to

get you past the fact that say mike and sharon just don't like each other and they don't get along and they're prone to arguing or like Kyle is going through a bad time and he's starting fights as a result of it. It's still a lot of work in order to keep the community going. What the hell, Kyle? Come on. Well, I mean, Kyle, Kyle's in a bad place. And, you know, like, he shouldn't be. I'm not disagreeing with you about Kyle. I'm just saying, like, it makes a certain amount of sense.

Kyle needs to get his stuff together. Anyway, sorry. That is the vibe there. We kicked trap. We are still thinking about it. It is a good suggestion. It has some drawbacks. That's all. That's why it stays. The reason I'm even taking it seriously is because I think there are some positives to it too. That's why I keep mulling it over. But hopefully some of our listeners can take away from this show that...

the importance of commenting in our posts and, and going to the site and supporting the site. And this is not just a, you know, that, as you said, that's our core business and these other things are peripheral. And so help support. core help keep massively op online for another 10 years as we get ready to celebrate our 10 year anniversary here next month we just want to

Thank you in advance for listening to the show. 500 episodes right there in your pocket. And now you can have hopefully another 500 as we go into the next 10 years. That would be wild. The 1000th show. If we got there someday. just to look back and go oh my goodness do you remember when we were all the way back then in the mid 20s now we're in the mid 30s and we're still playing Guild Wars 2 they never came out with Guild Wars

They went right to Cold Wars 4 for some reason. Don't understand that. But, you know, still. So that's all the time we have on today's show. We do want to thank especially Chris and Elliot for making time to come on our extra length plus size show here and giving us your take on all of this. So thank you guys so much for that. Always a pleasure.

Genuinely. I love doing these. Yeah. And with Bree, congratulations on 500 episodes and putting up with me. I really appreciate that as well. We are a weird, weirdo team, Justin. We literally couldn't do it without each other, I think. It works yin and yang, oil and vinegar. It all gets good.

All right, that's all the time we have for today's show. We'll get back on track with normal shows starting next week. I know it's been kind of a tumultuous last month, and it's how it always is. Don't make promises you can't keep. You said normal. It won't be normal. It's never normal. A new normal. TM. Yeah.

We'll be what we'll be next week. You guys take care. Continue to send us in some podcast emails. As Brie said, check out the Patreon. Oh, yeah, there are more. I should mention that. We have one, two, Pandagruel, Quark1020, Scott, and Sam. Plus, there's like one or two more in my inbox. we didn't get to that I didn't hold off on you know what I mean there's more we didn't forget about you I promise next week

And definitely check out the Patreon program on the right-hand side of the site. If you are interested in helping to financially support Massively OP, we do appreciate that so much. And obviously, always reinvested in our pork rinds. which is just been blown out of proportion at this point all right that's all today you guys take care we'll see you again next week people are really gonna thank me Barbecue, man. It's awesome. It's delicious barbecue. It's nice and tangy and crunchy.