Restless In Tyria

We're just over a month away from the eight anniversary of the launch of Guild Wars 2. It's a measure of just how long the game's been around that we can put a precise date on when it officially went Live.

GW2 has to be one of the last MMORPGs to follow what used to be the traditional path to market. There was a lengthy development process lasting several years, throughout which ArenaNet released information in bursts, revealing classes and features with great fanfare to keep the interest pot bubbling.

There were interviews and discussions across the gaming media. There were playable demos at conventions. I recall there were even junkets where accredited press and favored bloggers were flown across the country for a hands-on and a hand-shake. It was the continued coverage from Zubon and the much-missed Ravious at Kill Ten Rats that finally piqued my own interest in a game whose development I would otherwise not have been following.

In the final months before launch ArenaNet ran a highly successful promotion within GW2's precursor, the original Guild Wars. I hadn't played that game for years but I ended up buying the collected expansions, contacting customer service to get my old account restored, and playing through a fair chunk of content to build up some Hall of Monuments points.

Back in 2012 "beta weekends" were an established promotional device and one I very much enjoyed. I'd first encountered them in Rift, an experience which came too early for me to document here, but by the time we reached the same stage for GW2 (and The Secret World) I had this blog up and running.

I was immediately and powerfully impressed, particularly with how it looked. In my first impressions piece I wrote "It looks absolutely stunning. Screen shots and videos really don't do it justice. The whole thing looks like a hand-painted, animated movie".

I was happy enough with the gameplay, too: "...based on just a few hours... what I've seen is an excellent implementation of traditional, standard and familiar MMO... Guild Wars 2 looks to be a really first-class AAA theme-park...".

Everything looked so good right up to launch, but...

But there isn't really a "but". A lot's been said, no little of it by me, about how ANet reneged on the (in)famous"Manifesto" but despite all that the game goes on, much the same, not least because most of the manifesto claims were manifest hogwash to begin with. Viewed with hindsight, the official Manifesto promo video makes that clear enough. Once you've seen the provenance of those stirring scenes in the game itself it's hard to believe the hype. (Okay, they were right about the art...)

I'm not here to warm over cold complaints, though. After all, I'm still playing GW2 eight years on. It can't be that bad, right?

No, it's not. It's perfectly fine for an eight-year old MMORPG. If I'm going to complain about anything, it isn't the game itself. It's that I'm still playing it.

Alright, not even that, exactly. After all, I'm still playing several games a lot older than GW2. The real problem is that GW2 is the newest MMORPG I'm playing regularly.

In the eight years since Guild Wars 2 appeared there hasn't been a single new entry to the genre that's been able to unseat ANet's sophomore effort from pole position in my play rotation. I've played a lot of newer games in that time - Final Fantasy XIV, WildStar, ArcheAge, Black Desert Online, Blade and Soul, Twin Saga, Revelation Online, Riders of Icarus, Elder Scrolls Online, a whole load more I've forgotten. But I'm not playing them now. I'm playing GW2.

Most of those games are still around. Some of them are doing pretty well, FFXIV and BDO especially. I still drop by a few of them, now and again, to see how they're getting on, check in with my old characters, have a bit of a run around. Sometimes I even settle in for a while, do a few more levels.

But not one of them has stuck. Guild Wars 2 remains the last MMORPG I can really say I have played since Rift. And I'm finally beginning to feel it.

For years I've listened to MMORPG players talking about burnout and boredom and ennui. It's as much a trope of the genre as dodgy escort quests and elite raiding. I've been aware of it but I've never really felt it, personally. Any time I have sensed the chill shadow of disengagement on my back I've simply turned towards the warm glow of another MMO. Because there's always another MMO.

Or there always has been. Now, though? I'm not so sure.

In 2020 here we all are, blowing on the embers, or so it sometimes seems. WoW Classic, EverQuest Progression , ArcheAge Unchained, LotRO Legendary... The past sells better than the future, it seems. And even if it doesn't, it certainly feels like the safer choice, for players and developers both.

And we're all seeking a place of safety right now, even if safety also means stasis, repetition and tedium. It's ironic that, with a present that seems to consist of eternal lockdown out here in the real world (or worse, blind terror over things opening up that shouldn't), when we go in search of freedom and adventure in our fantasy lives, increasingly all we find are chores and tasks and every day the same as the last.

It was always that way, of course. Just listen to the voiceover on that video. What contempt for what the genre had to offer - "I swung a sword. I swung a sword. I swung it again. Hey! That's great. We don't want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No-one enjoys that. No-one finds it fun." Yeah, well, see how that worked out for you, ANet, eight years on.

And that's what it comes down to, in the end. Not even just in the end. In the middle. At the beginning. When the newness is gone all that left is the same old.

Gone are al those new games coming out like flowers bloming in a rich, strange garden. Spring faded long ago and Summer, too. The first hint of Autumn chill was already in the air, eight years ago, when Guild Wars 2 opened the gates to Tyria. It's winter, now.

I used to enjoy paging through the multiplicity of lists of MMOs in development. Twenty MMOs to Watch. That kind of thing. They came out every year and there was always plenty to be excited about. Yesterday I took a look at what's out there now.

New MMORPGs 2020

11 Upcoming MMORPGs to be Excited About in 2020
 
The 5 Best Upcoming MMORPGs to Play in 2020

Perfect Ten: Upcoming MMOs to watch in 2020

Any of those doing it for you?

There are two or three I'm genuinely excited about, although we're fast approaching the point where they'll have been in development so long I won't quite be able remember why. Worse, I don't expect to be playing any of them this year, next year, maybe ever.

Some of the rest I could play right now, if I didn't care they're half-finished, buggy messes in alpha or beta or Early Access that still want my money up front anyway. A few are region-locked, which annoys me, but it's a mooot point because they're games I most likely wouldn't enjoy even if I could get at them.

And that's the big problem. Most of the games on all those lists look like nothing I'd want to play. I think it has as much to do with me as with the games. I have a very particular idea of what I want in an MMORPG and what I want is no longer in fashion the way it once was. No-one's making games like that any more. They cost too much and too many have failed.

Looks like I'm stuck with the games I already have, then. Which most likely means more Guild Wars 2, more EverQuest II, more EverQuest, probably even more World of Warcraft. A strict diet spiced only with a sprinkling of all the other ageing games that look and play just like them. I can't say it's a prospect to set jaded taste buds tingling.

See you in two years for Guild Wars 2's tenth anniversary, I guess. That should be a big one. And by then we should be starting to ramp up for EQ's silver anniversary and WoW and EQII's twentieth.

Can't say there's nothing to look forward to, can we?

Yay?

Better the Beta You Know: GW2, EQ2

I bought Guild Wars 2 this week, a game that doesn't yet exist. Spinks think this demonstrates poor organizational skills on my part. Ravious put his hand in his pocket but he's a little concerned about where we might end up if a precedent is set. Just to give a little perspective, I was chatting with someone at work yesterday who told me that he and his girlfriend are going to see Michael MacIntyre in August. They bought the tickets last August. Paying for things that don't yet exist is not something ArenaNet just invented.

As I've said before, how we pay for MMOs is quite possibly the single least interesting aspect of the entire MMO phenomenon. We're all adults. We can spend our money how we like (although if it genuinely makes a meaningful difference to your household economy whether you spend £50 on a video game this month or in three month's time it's entirely possible you shouldn't be spending it on a video game in the first place, but then, hey, I'm not your dad so knock yourself out!). No, the part of the discussion that spun out of this which interested me was whether or not beta access counts a "benefit" to players.

So, crabs again?

I've done a lot of MMO betas. My first was Anarchy Online, for which they sent me the client in the post, on CDRom. I still have it somewhere. I spent most of a week trying to install it. Never got it to run but that didn't stop me buying the game when it came out, when it still didn't run. Anarchy Online remains the benchmark for the worst MMO launch ever. I think it was three months before they actually charged anyone a subscription because that's how long it took before the game was playable.

From then on I applied for pretty much every MMO beta and got into plenty. A surprising number of my fondest, most lapidary memories of a dozen years spent trekking through virtual worlds come from betas. The thrill of using a jet-pack in Endless Ages (still the best flight experience I've had in an MMO); seeing the Capryni scatter as they scented a prowling Gingo in Ryzom;  riding into Lomshir for the first time in Vanguard.

And the bugs. My god, the bugs. Pushing through a gap in geometry to break into someone's house in Endless Ages and not being able to get out again (that was a re-roll). Falling for fatal damage every time I even passed close to a griffin tower in EQ2.  The plain unplayable lag in Rubies of Eventide, Horizons, EQ2, Vanguard... well, every beta ever at some point, come to think of it.

Waiting for the end of the world

This is where I should make a confession. I really like bugs in MMOs. I see them as content. I've probably had almost as much fun out of bugs over the years as gameplay, which is partly why EQ2 Test was my home server for more than five years. I like finding bugs and I like reporting them. I've had everything up to and including all my characters vanishing from bugs and while I get as annoyed as anyone would when I can't do what I was planning, dealing with a funny, odd or flat-out game-breaking bug sometimes turns out to be a lot more involving and thought-provoking than whatever I had in mind. It's true dynamic content.

 A huge part of the interest in playing MMOs for me has always come from trying to understand how they work. It's one reason I don't like tutorials much. I like to observe, gather data and test hypotheses while playing. I like it best of all if I'm never quite sure, even after extensive research, what the hell is going on. Bugs open up the cover so you can see the gears whirr and betas pull back the curtain so you can see backstage. More than that, you can chat to the stage manager, the make-up artist and the props team. A good beta will offer multiple channels of communication with the developers, from ad hoc in game chats through organized content testing to lengthy forum discussions. It's not one-way traffic, either. In a good beta you have a real chance to influence the detail, even the direction of the game you eventually hope to play. I've seen countless changes made in good betas as a result of player feedback (and countless more ignored but, hey...)

Wonder if woodworkers get a scratching-post recipe?

That's a good beta. A bad beta is one where nothing you say, nothing anyone says, seems to be getting through to anyone that cares. Where feedback is ignored, issues glossed over or there's always a "miracle patch" just round the corner. I'd name names but the NDAs for betas like that never end. (The only genuine miracle patch I ever saw was in the final week or thereabouts of EQ2 beta when, after a month of game-breaking, unplayable rubber-banding lag and innumerable fiddle-faddling changes to changes to changes that had just about everyone playing believing the launch should be delayed at least another three months, we logged in one day to a lag-free, reasonably smooth, certainly fit-for-launch MMO. They said they had one last patch that would fix most of the major problems and they really did. Of course it didn't address any of the gaping holes in the underlying design - Scott Hartsman had to come in and start on that six months later, but you can't have everything. At least it ran! )

Mandatory letterbox format preserved for disbelieving future generations

Then there's the opportunity to say "I was there", although that can be a very bittersweet experience. Some MMOs I've beta tested have been more to my taste at some point before launch than they ever managed afterwards. It can be a little galling to remember that the game you're playing not only could have been better but was. I'd rather know, though, than not know.

And finally there's the end. The day it all stops. Sometimes the server just closes and re-opens as "Open Beta" the next day and it's all a bit of an anticlimax, but often there's a big party, or an apocalypse. My favorite beta memory ever comes from EQ2. Everyone gathered at the Claymore in Antonica for a party before the world came down but right at the very end, just before the countdown started, I decided to go into the great dark in my own Inn room, just me and my cat. I just made it back in time to sit on my bed and then the world ended. You just can't buy that.

Boom, out go the lights.

Oh, wait, now you can! That's where we came in. Will GW2 beta weekends have any of the benefits I'm gushing over? You wouldn't think so. They will be totally nonexclusive, open to all for the payment of a fee. They'll be isolated weekends, not a continuum. It's unlikely that a community will have a chance to develop (a beta community can be a very different beast from a Live one). Above all, people will have paid to be there and will have entitlement issues off the scale compared to those normally seen in betas (not that those aren't often ridiculous in themselves).

These weekends will probably be much more like the marketing-led Open Betas MMOs throw out like chum to bring in the fish they hope to land at launch. But maybe not. Rift's beta weekends were proper betas, even at the end when they were letting everyone in. Every single Rift beta weekend was arguably more entertaining than any weekend post-launch. Any way up, I'm happy to have the opportunity, even if I did have to pay for it. It's money I would have spent in any event and it will buy fun I otherwise wouldn't have had.

I'd have preferred to have gotten into the closed beta, all the same.