Welcome To Our New Cash Grab... Shop! I Meant Cash Shop! No, Wait... Game! That's It! Welcome To Our New Game!

It would be disingenuous of me to claim that I was excited when I read yesterday that Blade & Soul NEO was about to launch on Steam, but I did feel a slight frisson of interest. I already have the revamped version of B&S installed via NCSoft's proprietary Purple launcher but I have now largely been assimilated into the Steam hive mind and, like all the other drones, I prefer to have all my logins in the same folder.

Of course, I haven't played any B&SNeo since the day I installed it around the end of February. That doesn't really have anything to do with the quality of the game or lack thereof, more the plain fact that for the last three months almost the whole of my available free time has been spent on Suno. 

Making music with AI has effectively replaced playing games as my core leisure activity and seems likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I'm putting almost as much time into it now as I used to put into MMORPGs ten or fifteen years ago, although that's still nothing close to the time I would have spent in virtual worlds a decade before. 

But for that, I like to think I would at least have given B&SNEO a few sessions and written a few blog posts about it. I really like the original game, into which I must have put a few hundred hours over the years, and I was curious to see how the updated and supposedly improved version might stack up. Not curious enough to actually play it to find out, though, apparently.

It seemed at least a possibility that, if I had the thing on Steam, I might get around to playing it once in a while. I'm in my Steam library every day, looking for something or other, so anything that's there gets brought to my attention a lot more effectively than if it's sitting in the forest of icons on my desktop, especially if it's something I've played recently. There's a cruel synergy in the way Steam displays recently-played games that means the more I play something, the more likely it is to get played again, while the games I neglect slip further and further down the stack, probably never to be played again.

I didn't get around to doing anything about it yesterday, what with babysitting my Overseer missions in EverQuest II and spending eight hours working on one song on Suno (And still not getting a final version I was completely happy with...) but this morning almost the first thing I did was fire up Steam and go to the B&SNEO store page, where I was greeted with this:

I've highlighted the relevant line to make it stand out a bit more but it was already quite prominent enough to catch my eye the moment I saw the page: Mostly Negative. I don't generally treat the overall Steam review rating of any game as a flawless arbiter of quality or desirability but it is a useful indicator of general sentiment and a particularly good or bad rating will often send me to the individual reviews so I can get a reading of why people are choosing to rate it or slate it.

In the case of Blade & Soul NEO, the reason for the downvoting is very clear. People think it's a rip-off: 

Extreme Pay-to-Win: if you don’t swipe, you don’t play.

The cash shop’s so predatory it makes casino slot machines blush 

AVOID this clear cash grab and play something else

This game is the largest pay2win dumpster fire I've ever seen in my life. 

Some of the reviewers get quite eloquent about the game's predatory tendencies:

Costs a paycheck to get enough gear for content that's 1 patch behind and a brand new car to almost do the current content

You can only like this game if you want to try fent4nyl, while being in an abusive relationship with someone that empties your credit cards, hits and mistreates you, giving you nothing back but misery

I hope you have a solid job and no family, no debt, no vacations planned so that this game can become your second, third, and fourth job. 

They're also very articulate in explaining exactly why. So much so, in fact, that in some cases the detailed analyses of just what NCSoft did wrong when they gutted the original to pump and dump NEO run to more than a thousand words. 

 Someone did a nice list though:

10 reasons to not play and quit Blade & Soul Neo

1) DDOS or just sh!t servers
2) Bots everywhere
3) P2W/Whales
4) Useless Devs (No real fixes or bans)
5) TP Cost/Channel Change Cost/Lack of Gold
6) Cheating (Xml modifications already available)
7) Boring & Repetitive (Same sh!t everyday)
8) Time consuming (Ritual/Boss Timer sucks)
9) RNG (Loot/Skillbooks/Fusion/Enhancing...)
10) No arenas No Costumes (too expensive) 

The tl:dr of all of them is 

this is a giant nostalgia bait cash grab, very heavily monetized and falsely advertised as a classic experience that plays nothing like the original release

and 

Everything in the game is RNG! Even RNG is RNG, so RNG is the game, and thats no joke. 

Now, to be very fair, the game has only just arrived on Steam and there are only about 160 reviews so far, but I've read over half of them and they all tell the same story: former B&S players came back to try the game out of very fond feelings for the original and found their beautiful old home burned to the ground with a gaudy, tasteless shopping mall and casino built on top of it. 

Even the "Mostly Negative" rating is doing game a favor. Several of the positive reviews are actually ironic negatives like this:

I love this game. Been playing everyday since the launch in february.
I also like being in an abusive relationship where my partner doesnt listen to anything I say and just takes my money so i can stay with my partner <3

Ah, where do I even begin? This game is truly something special! I’ve never felt so empowered by random chance before. The RNG system is a masterclass in how to keep things exciting - and by exciting, I mean completely out of your control. Every time I want to get a new skill, I love the suspense of knowing that my 20% chance is definitely going to work out. It really keeps you on the edge of your seat, and who doesn’t love a little uncertainty in their life?

Or they're from people so worn down by the process they can't even bring themselves to complain any more:

The negative reviews are valid. The game is a massive cash cow, but its NCSoft.. All NC games are cash cows, it's always been that way, always will be.

Remember that this is a Korean MMO. Its going to favor p2w heavily as well as have some rng systems added into it. I've seen this in most Korean MMOs.

I played the original Blade and Soul about 10 years ago. It was my formal intro to the most savage form of gacha p2w that I've ever seen.

Interestingly, that last one is from a player who makes a point that, I suspect, I might be making myself if I was actively playing and enjoying this new version of the game, namely that if you "Just play your game and have fun, leave the card in your wallet", you could probably do a lot worse than Blade & Soul NEO.

I enjoyed reading the reviews this morning. I was saying to someone at work the other day that video games have an undeserved reputation for fostering illiteracy, just as comics did when I was growing up. Anyone who spends any time on the forums or message boards or comment threads or review pages for either medium will find themselves disabused of that notion very quickly indeed. 

Whether I'll take any notice of any of the complaints and accusations is another matter. In common with almost every online game I've played in the last decade and more, I'd be very surprised if any of the P2W or RNG or Gacha mechanics had much of an impact on my natural playstyle, just as very few of the issues that so concerned players back in the Golden Age of MMORPGs - camping, waiting hours in LFG, the endless grind - had much relevance for me. 

When it comes to F2P, if you aren't interested in endgame activities or competitive PVP or leaderboards, most of the levers devs like to pull to get you to give them money don't have anything like the power often assigned to them. Or, to put it another way, no-one baits a hook for bottom-feeders.

Even so, the time I spent reading the reviews made me think again about installing the game on Steam. There's no realistic chance I'm going to start over in B&SNEO yet again and level up yet another new character. If I want a nostalgia hit and a quick run-around in the truly gorgeous world, the old, non-NEO servers are still up and running and I have a character in the mid-40s and another in the 60s, both just waiting for a chance to grab another level or two.

Instead of adding another version of Blade and Soul to the two I already have, I patched up the old one and I'm logging in right now to take some screen shots for the post. Probably going to be the only time I log in for a while but nostalgia, like Stamina in B&SNEO, (From what I read, anyway.) takes a while to regenerate.

New Toys Vs Old Games

There almost wasn't a post today because I've got a new toy and I can't stop playing with it. Two new toys, really. One's real, one's artificial, but they fit together perfectly. Finally, a use for AI that's both practical and satisfying. More of that another day, though. 

Meanwhile, here are some scraps. 

EverQuest II

My Necromancer made it to Level 130 in Tailoring a couple of days ago. It may only have been five levels above the boost but it still took a while. I had several expansions to level in and all of them offered those delicious, huge gobs of xp for every Signature quest but I'd forgotten just how long and fiddly some of those quests are and how much slower it all goes when you can't fly everywhere.

It didn't help that in some of the expansions I'd already started the Adventure questlines on my Necro. In a couple she'd finished them altogether and in one or two she'd made it some of the way and then stopped, but in the others she hadn't even started. Sometimes she could fly, sometimes she couldn't and sometimes she could fly for a bit and then had to walk. 

All the skills, none of the recipes.

It was all more than a tad confusing but I muddled through. I had to change expansions one time, when the questline required her to harvest a rare and she was about 500 skill points short. I changed a couple more times when quests seemed to be going on forever with no sign of any xp or because they wanted her to travel all over the place ans she didn't have the right to fly. 

After a while, she ran out of Tradeskill Vitality and went to refill it with the Veteran Hammer, only to find that, not having been a crafter before, she'd never even claimed it. (She has now, obviously.) When she ran out of rested xp a second time, I took a break for a few days, then came back and finished it off. The whole thing took either a week and a half or three or four hours, depending how you want to count it.

Once I was done with all that, I moved straight on to Qho's super-annoying gathering quests. It was made very plain to me as I was trying to level Tailoring that not being maxed in Gathering is no longer an option for a crafter. 

Qho's notorious demands have not gotten any less irritating over time, let me re-assure you of that. Especially the Nektulos Forest stage, always the most hated of all. I ended up buying a bunch of Gnomish Divining Rods off the broker for that one, which just about saved my sanity.

I'm up to the Feerrott/Rivervale stage now. If I remember correctly I think there's only one more double-dip after that - Lavastorm and Everfrost. From then on I think it's just the one zone each time. I bloody well hope so!

Once I get this lot done, it's on to the other gathering quests, the ones Raffik gives. Those are a lot more fun and Raffik is way less annoying. After that, I need to get my Sage out to make the Necro a whole load of Expert spells. 

And that's still not everything, not even close. There's still a hell of a lot to do just to get her up to speed on the basics and even then she'll still be heavily disadvantaged compared to the Berserker. It's no wonder I always end up going back to him every time expansion season comes around- it's pure inertia. 

This time, though.. This time I will succeed! I swear it!

Wuthering Waves

Team photo!

I finished the Riniscitta storyline a week ago. The story was really good and better yet, the fights were especially well-judged. I didn't even have to do the really big one at the end at all. I just got to watch my character do it without any help from me. If only all big storylines ended that way!

Since then, I don't think I've even logged in once. The moment I finished the Riniscitta questline, the game immediately started me on the one from the current update and I wasn't ready for it so I stopped. Then I had a load of work days and then Next Fest arrived and somehow I haven't gotten around to going back to Wuthering Waves just yet. 

I'd better do something about it or I'll be an update behind again... 

Maybe tomorrow, as the song goes.

Blade & Soul NEO

I logged in on the day it launched, which was sometime last week. I played through the now-optional introduction and tutorial. It was all exactly as I remembered and yet somehow much more disturbing. It didn't appear to have been changed in any way by the NEO update, not even visually, but I'd forgotten just how brutal that beginning is.

I kinda wish I'd chosen this option now...

Seriously, even among the many openings to RPGs, where you get to watch everyone your character knows and cares about get slaughtered before your - and their - very eyes, Blade & Soul stands out as particularly cruel and callous. They make a point of giving you just enough time with everyone so you see them as individuals with personalities, not just as faceless NPCs, then they pick them off one by one in front of you, right after your character has just had a really nice moment and everything feels great.

And if that isn't disturbing enough, they even make sure you get to see all the dogs and cats killed too. The camera actually lingers on the bodies of the pets for a second or two, just to make sure you don't miss anything. I did remember it was a bit of a traumatic opening but not just how disturbing it was. It's right up there with The Searing in Guild Wars 2 for shock value.

And then, of course, you wake up and instantly you're off doing quests for people you've never met, almost like nothing ever happened. There's clearly no such thing as PTSD in MMOland. 

To be fair, when you wake up there is a war going on, but still...

As for the NEO part, so far I can't say I've noticed anything different at all. Then again, I haven't logged in again since, for much the same reasons as I already mentioned. Maybe next week, as the song doesn't carry on.

Once Human

I haven't played this one for a while but there's a good chance I could start again soon, although I'll have to re-install it first. The reason I'm thinking of going back is yesterday's announcement that there are going to be "permanent servers" due to "consistently received" feedback saying that's what players want. Well, Duh!

Seriously, what is it with Starry? They developed a really excellent MMOFPS/RPG and then made every conceivable effort to make it as awkward and complicated to play it as they possibly could. 

Insert witty comment re
Starry keeping everyone hanging...

Although the Scenario system has always had its supporters and really isn't all that different from traditional Seasons in other MMOS, the impermanence dictated by the complete lack of any persistence in the world itself has always rubbed many players up the wrong way. Eternaland is all very well as a kind of sandbox mode but it was never going to replace having an actual, persistent world in which progress mattered and in which the excellent housing tools could be put to good use building actual homes.

Of course, this being Starry, they can't simply add some permanent servers and leave it at that. If they did, someone might be able to work out what they were doing..

As always, the update notes are ferociously long and complex. They've chosen to call the new servers "Non-Shutdown Servers" which really trips off the tongue. They aren't truly permanent in the sense we know and expect from most MMORPGs, either. They're governed by a whole load of rules and regulations, which I won't attempt to summarise here, but the important caveat is that although Scenario servers will now carry on after the Scenario ends, they will only remain active as long as enough people keep logging in to them to make them worth Starry's while.

After that, it's anyone's guess. I've read and re-read the rules and I still don't understand them. Try this:

"ii. Each server will be merged into a single World on the permanent server. After the merge, you can switch between Worlds to interact with players from other servers. Subsequently, Worlds with relatively low activity levels may be merged to ensure a good experience."

Insert witty comment#2

The server goes into the world goes into the server but there are multiple worlds and servers. I'm not sure if it's a translation issue or just jargon that's been in use internally for so long no-one realizes how confusing it must be for outsiders. I think it means that although the nomenclature will change, you'll be able to keep logging in to the same scenario indefinitely but I can't say I'm even sure about that.

Whatever the technicalities,it does seem as though, when the update arrives, you'll be able to settle down somewhere and just keep playing if that's what you want. No more having to start over every few weeks. If only someone had thought of that a year ago, eh?

There are a whole lot more positive developments in the upcoming update, too. One new scenario will have all the available landmass available at the same time, another thing players started asking for as soon as the Northern region was added. The downside there is that it's only happening in a scenario with a very off-putting rulset but chances are I'll move there when it happens anyway.  

Or I could re-roll there instead because yet another thing that players have long been asking for is coming - Account-based ownership of assets. Starry have moved from not wanting anyone to have more than one character through grudgingly allowing it to now actively encouraging it. Previously I couldn't see much point in making another character but suddenly it's beginning to look like quite a good option.

All of that and more puts Once Human firmly back on my list of possible games for the Spring and Summer. 

Of course, first I have to get my current obsession out of my system. Since I got my new toy I haven't really wanted to play any games at all. That will pass soon enough, though. Novelty never lasts long. When it wears off, anything with value sticks around but has to take its turn.

And with that, I'm going back to play with my toy some more. Maybe I'll have something to share in that regard later. Or maybe I'll just keep it to myself. Decisions will have to be made. Anything to do with AI always causes such a fuss and I'm not sure whether I'm up for any more of that...

Oh My Ears And Tail!

Today saw the opening of character creation for the revamped/retro/classic version of Blade&Soul - Blade&Soul Neo. NCSoft are really working the publicity levers for this one. Anyone would think it was a new game, not just a reskinned old one.

I love character creators, easpecially the newer, super-duper, glitzy ones with the sliders and the lighting and all. It has crossed my mind occasionally to wonder whether an enterprising studio might not do quite well with a game that was pretty much nothing but character creation, a cosmetic cash shop and a few multiplayer locations where people could parade around, showing off. If it was glam enough, I'm not at all sure you'd need an actual game to go with it...

The original Blade&Soul's character creator was probably one of the earlier tweak-heavy models I tried although certainly not the first.I was a little late to that party. B&S came out in 2012 but I didn't try it until four years later, when it launched in the West. 

By then I'd seen plenty of fancy character creation suites but I was still quite impressed:

"Character Creation is equally well-designed. Very easy to follow, plenty of choice, lots of presets, no sliders. Classes seem to be locked to races. Didn't notice if they're also locked to gender. I went Summoner because That Cat which means I am the cute, small race. Win!"

That's what I said first time around. No sliders, I notice. I didn't like sliders back then. Luckily I'm softer on them now because the new character creation options have plenty.

 

Classes are still locked to races, something I'm broadly in favor of, unfashionable though it may be. Of course, I'd probably think differently if the class I wanted to play was locked to a race I didn't like. Gender-locking classes would be a lot less acceptable but it's not happening so forget I mentioned it. Then again, one of the races is gender locked to all-female...

There are four races in B&S but I'd have to look them up to tell you what they are. I do remember they all have very short, one-syllable names but that's about it. I didn't spend much time on them because, as far as I could see, there were three flavors of vanilla human (Can you have flavors of vanilla?) and one human-with-animal-attributes.

In 2016, I chose the least-obviously human option and it won't surprise anyone to hear I just did the same again. There is a slightly different-than-expected reason for that. I mean, yes, if a race has ears and a tail I'm always going to favor it, that's a given, but in this case only the Lyn (That's the name of the animal-inflected race.) can be Summoners and Summoners are the only ones who get combat pets. 

I was sure I wanted to play a Summoner, even if it meant I'd be replicating my character from the old game. I could literally have cloned her - I still have the saved file from character creation nine years ago. I didn't find that out until the end, though, by which time I was emotionally committed to the new character I'd just created.

I might still use the clone option for one of the two remaining character slots, just for the appearance, not the class. You get three slots but only one can be filled pre-launch. Since the old game isn't going away, though, and since I still have my existing character there, I'll probably just play her there, if I feel like seeing her again.

 

When B&SNeo arrives next Tuesday (On the same day the Stars Reach Kickstarter goes live - I wonder which debut will draw the more interest?) I plan on starting over from the beginning. I haven't even taken the option to skip the three-level tutorial. If I'm going to play again, I'd like to refresh my memory of the plot, which I seem to remember has a fairly complicated opening.

Following on from the notes I gave myself at the end of yesterday's post. I'm not at all convinced the Summoner is the best class I could have chosen. Pet classes have historically been preferred for soloing, it's true, but the guidance you get in character creation clearly points to this one being best-suited as a support character. That strongly suggests it's intended for group play and there's not much chance I'll be engaging in any of that.

Maybe I'll make something else when the game starts. On the other hand, I seem to remember doing just fine with the Summoner last time. If it ain't broke, as they say...

As far as looks go, there have been comments, as there often are with "imported" MMORPGs, that the character models and outfits are over-sexualised. This is hard to deny when you first enter character creation. The default appearances are somewhat risqué and that's not even mentioning the "jiggle-physics". 

I'm happy to say that's a feature mercifully absent from the diminutive Lyn, although their childlike appearance brings up awkward issues of its own. Fortunately, if you use the "Outfit" toggle, you'll find that just about every clothing set on offer is perfectly respectable. Once properly dressed, as they are in the illustrations for this post, I'd say the characters almost qualify as "demure". 

I'm not sure if I'll end up with the same look when I log into the game for the first time. A lot of MMORPGs have a nasty habit of showing your character wearing clothes in character creation that they won't see in game for a long time. I think most of the outfits in B&S were tied to storyline or quest progression. Looking back at my old posts, though, my character seems to be decently covered-up in pretty much every shot, so it should be fine.

I was actually a lot more concerned about her ears and tail, anyway. And her hairstyle. There are so many great choices. I found it very hard to settle on just one. It does seem a shame to have such a huge variety of looks available but then to be limited to a mximum of three character slots to make the most of them.

Presumably there's some sort of in-game option to change looks but I always have an existential problem altering anything other than my characters' hair, clothes, accessories or make-up. Swapping body parts is a step too far for my suspension of disbelief, even in a magic-rich world so I'll be stuck with the ears and tail I started with.

Or maybe not. We'll see. I'm increasingly of the opinion that I need to get over myself on some of these self-imposed rules, many of which date back to old, unchallenged assumptions from my pen-and-paper roleplaying days. Those, scary though it is to think it, ended almost forty years ago. It's probably time I moved on.

The real benefit of making a character now, other than being able to get straight on with playing the game the moment it arrives, is that character creation also allows you to reserve your name. It's a bit of a moot point for me since I'll lay good odds no-one would have thought of the one I've gone with anyway. I very rarely have any problems getting the names I want for the very simple reason no-one else wants them.

It's done now, anyway. Should I want to hit the ground running on Tuesday, I can. I won't, of course, if only for the very good reason that I'm working Tuesday and I probably won't play any games at all, not even in the evening. And then on Wednesday I have something else on so maybe not then, either.

Thursday, though... that might be the day!

Neoclassical - Giving Blade&Soul Another Go

 I don't, by and large, suffer from FOMO. I can let all kinds of things slide without worrying about it. I do, however, have something of a curiosity problem. I can't keep my nose out of things that don't really concern me.

A case in point is the current Stars Reach pre-alpha. I've been fairly convinced from the moment I first heard about the project that it wasn't likely to be a game for me and very little I've heard, seen or read about it since, including a dozen hours hands-on with what there is of the game so far, has given me cause to change my mind. I think it's very likely to turn into something a lot of people will enjoy and I  hope for their sakes (And the developers, of course.) that it does but I can't see any real likelihood I'll be spending much time there.

And yet I still applied to test it and, having been accepted, have tried to do my best to log in and give my feedback, on the rare occasions I've been able. Granted, I always had in mind the potential the testing program offered for blog posts, so it wasn't entirely out of idle curiosity that I filled out the application, but although it's given me something new to write abnout, since I've been posting about the progress of the pre-alpha and the Kickstarter I've seen precious little sign that more than one or two people who read this blog are particularly interested. Indeed, the few comments I've had have come from people also in the test or who applied and didn't get in.

This wasn't going to be (And still isn't.) a post about Stars Reach but since the Kickstarter has come up, let's talk about that for a moment. What is going with it? I tend to think it's some smart marketing but it could certainly be read as something a lot less favorable. Panic, even.

There's a trick to building anticipation and my estimation is that for now Playable Worlds have just about managed to stay on the right side of the line. Sentiment towards there even being a Kickstarter was weak when it was first announced but by leveraging the whole thing to turn it into a kind of loyalty test with pre-alpha access as a reward it does seem most of the negativity has been replaced with a puppyish eagerness to be included.

Whether that will translate to dollars in ther bank when the actual Pledges are finally revealed, which may or may not be sometime next week, is the part I find the most interesting right now. At one point I was very curious to see what the rewards on offer would be but we have a kind of idea about that after last week's press release so the big question is whether it will be enough. It certainly didn't sound appealing to me but then, as I've said, I really am not the target market.

That's just an aside to the main subject of this post, though, which is why am I sitting here, typing this while Blade & Soul Neo downloads in the background? Or, I should say, fails to download but I'll get to that later.

I should begin by saying that I like the original Blade & Soul quite a lot. There are twenty-eight posts here tagged "Blade and Soul" (Or "Blade&Soul", because I can never remember which way NCSoft style it.) I played it a for a few weeks when it launched in "Western Territories" in 2016 and I've had several shorter runs at it since. It's on the longish list of games I often think about going back to but mostly don't.

When I read that NCSoft was repackaging the whole thing under a new name - more accurately the old name with "Neo" stuck on the end - I was interested enough to follow the news to see what it meant. What I learned surprised me a little. 

If you haven't been keeping up with the story, B&SNeo is neither a sequel nor a relaunch. It's kind of a "Classic" version that's starting over at the beginning but it's also a bit like what happened to The Secret World when Funcom decided to try to give it more popular appeal by streamlining, modernizing and re-promoting it as Secret World Legends.  

NCSoft, luckily, are handling the whole thing a lot better than Funcom did. When Neo opens for business in just under two weeks on 25 February, Blade & Soul will simply carry on as before. You'll still be able to play it and as far as I know you'll still be able to start playing it as well. The two games will continue in parallel, although I wouldn't like to say how much onward development the original will get, if the revamped version is a success.

Who'd have thought it'd be NCSoft that would be caught doing the right thing, eh? I guess maybe they learned something from the City of Heroes debacle after all. I'm pretty sure Funcom haven't learned anything from SWL, although I suppose they haven't shuttered anything else since and TSW is technically still playable - I think. I haven't tried to log in for a long time.

Getting back to the point, when I read all of this, my original feeling was that it might push me to patch up B&S and have another go but I had no interest in Neo, which looked like it was just going to be a graphical update with a few tweaks. I always found B&S to be a very good-looking game with an aesthetic that's aged well so I wasn't feeling the need for a visual upgrade.

Then I read this piece by Michael Byrne at MMOBomb in which he goes into some detail about just what's different about the new game. He focuses mostly on the monetization, something that never really affected me since I didn't play long enough to hit any of the pay walls, but he also mentions several changes to things like cosmetics and outfits being available not only through the cash shop but through gameplay and a revision of the really annoying weapon upgrade system to make it much more straightforward.

Those were two of the things that I didn't much like about B&S so the thought of being able to play dress-up and not have to upgrade all my gear seven hundred thousand times does carry some weight. 

On the other hand, Neo will follow exactly the same storyline, which might be a problem. Believe it or not, I can actually remember quite a lot of the story, even though it's been a few years since I played. That speaks well in favor of its quality but it also means I might not want to go through it all over again.  

If I'm realistic about it, it's not likely to become much of a problem. The chances of my getting anywhere close to where I was when I stopped is minimal. I may not have been at the level cap - not even the original one - but I was in the thirties or forties somewhere and it took me quite while to get that far. I don't imagine I'll be doing it again.

Still, when I got an email from NCSoft this morning, inviting me to pre-download the new client, I thought "Why not?" The thought of starting over is at least as attractive as going back to my old character, who was somewhat bogged down in a part of the story that she was having a little trouble getting past. And as has been discussed many times around this part of the blogosphere, going back to MMORPGs after a long lay-off comes with all kinds of problems of its own. If nothing else, starting afresh would certainly be less of a hassle.

So that's what I'm planning to do. NCSoft has made it relatively easy although, as Michael Byrne points out, they're doing themselves no favors by insisting on the use of their own portal, the oddly-named Purple, rather than adding the game to an existing one like Steam or Epic. 

At least the Purple launcher is easy to install. NCSoft offer a host of options to link it to other services. I used my old Gmail account that I have the original B&S tied to so with a bit of luck I'll be able to use Purple to swap between them, should I ever want to. Which I won't.

The download itself seems very slow, something not helped by the way it didn't save progress when my internet briefly hiccupped just after I started writing this post. If it makes me restart every time that happens I'll never get to play because my ISP is going through a flaky stage just now.  

With luck and a following wind I'll get the whole thing downloaded and installed before the twenty-fifth. All I'll have to do then is find time to play. I noticed when I was registering with Purple that NCSoft has its own cloud gaming service through the platform, which might be interesting. If I can play Neo in the cloud on my laptop that would seriously increase the chances of my playing it at all.

We'll see at the end of the month. If I do end up playing, you can guarantee I'll be posting about it.