Monthly Archives: February 2016

February 2016 in Review

The Site

Here we are, another month gone by as we move through the tenth year of the blog. Despite the extra day we get this year… the third leap day for the blog… it has been a quiet yet active month here.

It was quiet because I was pretty much gone for a week as we went to Hawaii for my wife’s birthday. I wrote a few posts in advance, but nothing spectacular.

Obligatory “I was in Hawaii” picture featuring Diamond Head

But then it was busy because somehow, even with that interruption, I ended up writing 29 posts this month, if you include this one. Things happened I guess, like the DUST 514 shut down announcement (I wrote that post while waiting for my wife to get ready to go to the airport!) and skill injectors and the Pokemon 20th anniversary. Another lesson that, if you have low standards, you will never run out of things about which to write I suppose.

One Year Ago

Sony Online Entertainment ceased to be, having been sold off to Columbus Nova and rebranded as Daybreak Games Company. The launch was not auspicious to my mind, with Columbus Nova issuing a questionable press release while the new company shed many old hands. Still, classic Norrath seemed to be safe. New progression servers for EverQuest were announced fairly quickly thereafter.

H1Z1 was out in early access (or “recently launched” according to Colubus Nova) and having some issues. Polygon took my own point of view in stating that if a company is out there taking money for a game then they felt entitled to review it as it stood.

The Crowfall Kickstarter campaign launched and the game quickly hit its initial goal. Meanwhile, I was wondering how Nebula Online, another project with a Kickstarter, was going to make any money.

Massively and WoW Insider were recreating themselves as Massively OP and Blizzard Watch.

I was still playing WoW , which still had 10 million subscribers, while looking towards the 6.1 patch was due. I was doing pet battles and looking at my addons.

I was also still flailing about a bit with Elite: Dangerous.

Star Wars: The Old Republic seemed headed back to that vaunted fourth pillar.

The Tiamat expansion hit EVE Online, unleashing the Svipul menace. CCP was bribing people to vote in the CSMX election. And for the monthly blog banter walking in stations came up again. I was also figuring out how to change my space clothes and Reavers were making a difference.

The now defunct BattleClinic had just finished their site overhaul, allowing players to mine more data out of their kill mails.

Then there was Juche.

And, finally, a farewell to Leonard Nimoy.

Five Years Ago

At one point I was declared influential. We got over that pretty quickly though.

Hulkageddon IV came and went. We all survived. And then there was the new character creator in EVE Online. It had… options.

LOTRO had a welcome back event… even though it is free to play.

There was yet another sign of the coming apocalypse.

NetDevil got pulled out of LEGO Universe.

Nintendo was banging the drum for Pokemon Black and White. We were certainly ready for it at our house.

Van Hemlock was slumming back in MMOs for a bit.

I was taking a look at the holy trinity of roles through a historical lens. It wasn’t always Tank/Healer/DPS.

The instance group was still playing World of Warcraft. Now we just get nostalgic about it.

World of Tanks. It was in beta and set some sort of bogus record.

Rift was getting ready to launch. People were freaking out in the absence of calm words. Personally, I wasn’t buying into the game. Who needed a WoW clone when we had WoW?

Nostalgia was officially on with the launch of the Fippy Darkpaw Time Locked Progression server. Characters were rolled. Low level zones were crowded and experience was slow. But the tour was a go. We hit the Qeynos Hills, Blackburrow, West Karana, and the Qeynos Sewers. Important spells were rediscovered and camping trips were planned. Not everything was as we remembered it, but it made for a pretty darn good nostalgia adventure.

And while that was going on, SOE shipped the Destiny of Velious expansion for EverQuest II. But I couldn’t be bothered.

And, finally, one of our cats was on top of the refrigerator.

Ten Years Ago

EVE Online reached the 100,000 subscriber mark, back when companies talked about such things publicly, and launched the Bloodlines expansion. That expansion, which basically complicated character creation and made everybody go Caldari, would be the current state of the game when I made my first character in New Eden a few months down the road.

James Cameron was jumping onto the MMO bandwagon with Multiverse Network, which was going to lower the barrier to entry for MMO creation. The plan was for there to be an MMO released alongside his next movie, but Avatar had to go it alone in the end, while Multiverse Network shut down in 2011.

SOE launched the Kingdom of Sky expansion for EverQuest II, which became the first bit of content that I did not buy for the game. I never purchased the expansion, getting it for free as part of the later Echoes of Faydwer expansion. It marks the line between “classic” and “new stuff” in my brain, as illogical as that seems ten years down the road.

Dungeons & Dragons Online went live. I remember picking up the box at Fry’s and reading the label on the bottom of the box that declared the game required group play, that no solo play was supported. I put the box back on the shelf and moved on. How times have changed.

Featured Sites of the Month

For this month’s feature site I want to bring your attention to:

The Nosy Gamer

While I remain confused as to what to call him some days… the blog is the “Nosy” gamer, but he goes by “Noizy” when he signs his handle… his is the blog you go to if you want to see somebody track and follow up on topics like illicit RMT in EVE Online and other such goings on. He is a respected source in the EVE Online community.

Then of the “other” site of the month, I want to point you at is:

The Digital Antiquarian

This is a long form blog that delves in depth into video games and other related digital entertainment topics. Posts come up about weekly, but they usually dig deep into the meat of the topic at hand. Take a look at the table of contents for the site.

Most Viewed Posts in February

Search Terms of the Month

elder scrolls online 1 million
[I wouldn’t pay that much, wait for a Steam sale]

need someone to hack my empires and allies accnt
[Wouldn’t you be better of just letting that go?]

what expansion is fippy darkpaw in
[They were trying to unlock Underfoot back in July 2014…]

wow token useless for free players
[For specific definitions of “free” I suppose]

Diablo III

I have carried on with Season 5, finding fun in chasing down the various goals and achievements laid out for this round. This has led me to my highest level character yet in the almost four years since the game launched. That probably says something, though I am not sure what.

EVE Online

The month started with the Reavers and some of KarmaFleet down in Querious having a good time brawling with the locals. Then we got called back home because we had a real war… or as real of a war as we can manage these days… to fight. The Casino War, pitting the Coalition of the Billing against SpaceMonkey’s Alliance. So that has been the main focus for the last couple weeks, with content being delivered to our doorstep fresh daily. And it looks set to continue on.

Meanwhile, the theme of the month seemed to be skill injectors. I have yet to be in a fleet since they were introduced where somebody hasn’t announced they have a new ability thanks to injecting billions of ISK worth of skill points straight into their head.

Finally, we seem to be ending up the month with server issues and extended downtime. I hope that isn’t a sign of things to come.

Minecraft

It has been a quiet month on the Minecraft front. I’ve still played some, and Aaron built another automated device for us, but there hasn’t been much to write about. However, the 1.9 update looks like it is finally threatening to arrive, and that should stir things up a bit.

PlanetSide 2

In a moment of odd timing, just as the Casino War was heating up to the point that Reavers were called back home, The Imperium decided we should go play PlanetSide 2. The deal to get us there was no doubt struck with Daybreak ages ago, so the timing was what it was. Still, it is free to download and a pretty easy game to jump in and out of. I’ll be interested to see if it sticks.

Pokemon

Pokemon turned 20 years old just two days ago, which got me focused on the game somewhat. There is a series of legendary download events over the course of the year to celebrate. And the next installments in the core RPG game, Pokemon Sun & Moon were announced three days back, so we have those to look forward to. Meanwhile, the most immediate action was the release of the original games, Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow, on the 3DS Virtual Console.

In order to experience the origins of the series, I grabbed a copy of Blue, while my daughter picked Red. We shall see how far we get.

Coming Up

What is coming up next month… aside from the dreaded start of Daylight Savings Time? For a week or two I will be extra groggy every morning as I try force the reality of my sleep pattern to line up with the illusion that is time.

As noted above, there is the distinct possibility that we will get the Minecraft 1.9 update in March. That could lead to some fun as we try to upgrade our server.

In EVE Online the CSM XI elections kick off today. That will mean something to somebody I am sure. There will likely be a March (YC118.3) Update coming, though I am not sure what we’ll get besides fixes. I am not sure what features are slated to hit before the big Citadels expansion later this year. Are we getting that new watchlist update? And, of course, the Casino War will carry on for a while I am sure. We’ll see who gets tired of nightly content first I suppose.

There may or may not be some PlanetSide 2 times worth writing about.

I will no doubt have something to say about Pokemon Blue as I play to discover just how far the series has evolved in 20 years. I played quite a bit yesterday and I was actually a bit surprised at where things stood “in the beginning” as it were.

And I suspect that Season 5 of Diablo III might be winding down for me.

Honest Game Trailers – Pokemon Diamond and Pearl

Pokemon has been around for 20 years and a day now… and I’ve been on something of an Honest Game Trailers kick this month… so here is their take on my first Pokemon title, Pokemon Diamond & Pearl.

Yes, they put names on all of the Pokemon added with this generation.

And, if that isn’t enough, there are Honest Game Trailers for:

Pokemon Turns 20 Today

The Pokemon franchise turns 20 years old today. It was back in 1996 that the original Pokemon Red & Green launched in Japan for the Nintendo GameBoy.

With all of the things that have come since that initial launch… an animated TV series that is nearly 19 years old at this point, 19 movies, 10 TV specials, a collectible card game that remains hugely popular, and a host of spin-off games… it is sometimes easy to forget the rather humble beginnings of it all. I was actually aware of the collectible card game and the TV series before I ever saw the game on a Nintendo handheld.

I had a Pikachu on my desk at work back in 1999 or so, and a few Japanese Pokemon cards that a friend gave me. I had even seen the TV series a few times… hell, the seizure causing episode is a bit of cultural lore at this point. But my own journey with the core Pokemon role playing game didn’t come until 2008.

In February of that year we were going on a trip and, in order to keep our then six year old daughter occupied on a long flight, I was sent out the obtain a pink Nintendo DS Lite and a few games. I think I grabbed LEGO Star Wars and Mario Kart along with Pokemon Diamond as the game selection, though I could have just picked up the last one. It was all she played on the flight both ways.

During the trip I was impressed by the Nintendo DS Lite hardware. It was compact, solidly built, had a great screen, long battery life, and built-in WiFi support. But more than the hardware, I was impressed with the game. My daughter, being six, had me help read some of the dialog in the game during the flights. That exposed me to the game sufficiently that I decided I wanted to play too. So, for my birthday the following month, I ended up getting a cobalt blue Nintendo DS Lite and my own copy of Pokemon Diamond.

Since then I have played a lot of Pokemon.

I have binged and played through titles in focused sprints. I have played some of the spin-off games, like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (basically a Rogue-like with Pokemon). I have gotten burned out and let titles sit half way played for months at a stretch. I’ve gone to watch tournaments and to download events and even a special Pokemon celebration at our local mall. I even collected them all at one point.

There are currently 133 Pokemon related posts on the blog, all under the Pokemon category.

The hardware has changed. The DS Lite screen seems so small now… I used to be able to read it without glasses… and I have a Nintendo 3DS XL to play on these days. The graphics have been updated. But the basics of the game haven’t changed all that much. And I am still looking forward to the launch of the next games, Pokemon Sun & Moon, which were officially announced yesterday.

But this is where it all started for me.

My Pokemon Diamond and old DS Lite this morning

Now to decide which one of the three originals I want to grab from the 3DS store. The obvious choice is Pokemon Yellow, because Pikachu. But that also seems like the safe choice. Plus it is in color.

Pokemon Sun and Moon Coming for the Holidays

As we sit here on the day before the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Pokemon franchise, Nintendo has some new Pokemon related announcements.

The big one is, of course, the next new Pokemon games in the series, Pokemon Sun & Moon. You can see the brief statement about the new games here.

Coming in Q4 2016

While the setting and new features slated for Pokemon Sun & Moon are yet to be announced, we do know that they will link into the Pokemon Bank application available for the Nintendo 3DS series, which will allow players to move their Pokemon from Pokemon X & Y and Pokemon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire to the new title.

In addition, the revised versions of Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow, the original generation which started it all back in 1996, and which should be available in the 3DS store tomorrow, will also connect into Pokemon Bank.

A diagram from the presentation, so it must be true!

This will allow you to catch the original 151 Pokemon… well, not Mew, but the other ones… in the initial setting and then bring them into the current generation of games.

Coming to the Virtual Console February 27, 2016

It will be a one way trip from Pokemon Red, Blue, or Yellow, but you might as well catch them there, as we still have most of the year left to wait until Pokemon Sun & Moon come our way.

I have been waiting for this announcement for a while now, as we seemed due for a new Pokemon release announcement. I guess waiting for the anniversary makes sense.

The questions that remain for me include, which of the original three should I grab, will I be able to endure a 20 year old version of Pokemon, and will I finally finish up Pokemon Alpha Sapphire before the holiday launch of the new titles?

And, if you’re dying for more Pokemon history, Polygon has a Pokemon timeline posted covering the last 20 years.

CCP Continues to Confound Recognized Financial Expert

I am quite willing to bet you that CCP goes bankrupt in 2012. You might want to interpret their “great success” how ever you like, but financial reports don’t lie.

Tobold, October 2011

CCP continues to defy the predictions of financial expert Tobold Stalefoot.

Nosy gamer spotted an Icelandic news report on the company financials, a rough translation of which ended up over on Neville Smit’s blog. The bottom line for for CCP in 2015 was:

The company yielded US$20.7 million profit last year…

According to CCP, the company’s profit, cash balance and financial position has never been stronger.

So they have that going for them. Bankruptcy seems to be a much longer term goal of theirs than previously assumed.

In similar prognostication related news, the DICE awards have refused to relent to Tobold’s version of reality and Fallout 4 remains the DICE pick for 2015 Game of the Year.

The one time MMO gamer Tobold, whose expertise also extends into determinations on good versus evil, who is lying and who is telling the truth, fairness in the matter of pricing in relation to currency exchange rates, whether or not the hosts of Top Gear actually drive those cars, and dramatically quitting blogging only to return the next week, was unavailable for comment.

Addendum: An analysis of the CCP financials here.

Couch Podtatoes Podcast Episode 80 – A Daybreak Retrospective

In one those “a joke that ends up with a life of its own” moments, a “demand” that I appear on a podcast ended up with me actually appearing on one.

https://twitter.com/proceduraldave/status/692771751906799616

Izlain at Me vs. Myself and I apparently drew the short straw amongst the podcast community and so I ended up on the Couch Podatoes Podcast episode 80.

The topic discussed was Daybreak Game Company, formerly Sony Online Entertainment, and how they and their games have fared over the year since that transition. We track the timeline, gush about the state of EverQuest and EverQuest II, ponder DC Universe Online and PlanetSide 2, cast a critical eye on the H1Z1 split, and wonder whatever became of EverQuest Next.

For those interested, you can find the podcast here.

It has actually been a while since I was on a podcast. I think the last one I was on was the VirginWorlds five year anniversary podcast, and the ten year anniversary is next month. Doing the podcast was fun. I enjoy talking about video games. Actually listening to myself on the podcast is another matter. My voice never sounds like I think it sounds and I can hear every malady that afflicts me in it. I am clearly not completely over that bout of pneumonia I had in December.

Anyway, there it is! Enjoy! And a big thanks to Izlain for having me on!

(Also if you’re not into the “what are you playing” segment, which I must admit, as a listener, can be tiresome, you can jump to the 10:50 mark where the meat of the discussion begins.)

CCP to Create More Dead Links on My Blog

After careful consideration whilst planning upgrades and changes to Tranquility, we have decided to discontinue the EVElopedia as of the announced extended downtime on Monday February 29th, 2016.

CCP Falcon, EVE News Update

Well, that sucks.

The final featured article?

Not that I thought EVElopedia was the be-all, end-all of New Eden knowledge. In fact, it was lacking in many respects, often being out of date or incomplete on many fronts. CCP made a wiki and then didn’t make keeping it up to date anybody’s primary job I would guess. But I often found it useful, especially since it used the same hierarchy for things like ships and modules and the like as gets used in the game itself.

I probably refer to the site once a week at least when I want to figure out what ships the Angel Cartel has or something of that sort.

There are alternatives of course. CCP is suggesting the Brave Newbies and EVE University wikis as alternatives in their post about the shut down. And, of course, being in The Imperium, I have access to the Goon wiki as well.

And, one of the charms of EVElopedia is its wealth of somewhat outdated information. There is still, as an example, a history lesson in how Domain sovereignty worked. That information, while no longer relevant in the age of Fozzie Sov, is part of the rich history of New Eden, and I am loathe to see it disappear merely because it doesn’t reflect today’s reality. There is also a host of items on the site related to the lore of New Eden, also part of the threads that have been spun together in order to create the fabric of the game as it stands today.

According to the post, some of the “prime” fiction and backstory will be archived to and put on another site at some future date

But I am primarily annoyed because, as noted in the title, I have tended to link out to EVElopedia quite a bit over the years, so a lot of links on the site are going to go dead. This is the World Wide Web at its worst.

All the more so because I had alternatives, but I chose to link to the official EVE Online wiki because I thought that was less likely to just up and disappear with little notice than a user created site. I guess CCP has made a fool out of me on that front.

Finally, I am more than a bit cheesed off about the seeming indecent haste in making the whole thing disappear. Is there a reason it needs to be remove right fucking now? Is there some fee due on March 1st if it remains?

Seriously, inviting people to save off what they might want with four days notice is a serious dick move. I’m tempted to go try and rile up Jason Scott to see if we could get the internet archive team to save a copy of the whole thing.

And that idea is all the more compelling as I took a peek over at the Internet Archive and found that while the Wayback Machine has archived most of the top level items on the EVElopedia site, when you attempt to drill down to the actual articles, nothing is there.

There is a .sql file you can download, which promises it has all of the “player content” currently hosted. But I am not sure what that really means. It probably doesn’t include the wide array of classic graphics screen shots and the like, weighing in at only 102MB. (Also, DBVisualizer ran out of memory trying to open up the file.)

So I am pretty pissed about the whole thing. Yes, this is old stuff and likely doesn’t matter to you, but it matters to me… and there is not much I can do about it.

A Strange Time to Shoot Monkeys on Auraxis

These are great days we’re living, bros. We are jolly green giants, walking the Earth… with guns. These people we wasted here today are the finest human beings we will ever know. After we rotate back to the world, we’re gonna miss not having anyone around that’s worth shooting.

Crazy Earl, Full Metal Jacket

Life is heating up in the north end of null sec space. As noted elsewhere, what has been dubbed the Casino War between SpaceMonkey’s Alliance and the gambling site I Want ISK has escalated into a concentrated attack on SMA’s home in the Fade region by groups hired by the gambling site to attack our Imperium allies. SMA has abandoned their foothold in Cloud Ring and, after some of there own internal drama, set about to defend their space.

Of course The Imperium is there to stand by and defend SMA. Reavers were recalled to the north. Forces have been focused to help cover their space.

Suggestions by our foes that we reset or otherwise abandon SMA in the middle of this fight are beyond ludicrous. Nobody gets reset in the middle of a war. That is a recipe for disaster. If anybody deserves to get cut, they’ll get cut when things settle down.

Besides, a war, one with regular action right in the middle of our home space, one that has fleets going up every night, with kill mails to be had, along with a brand new shiny doctrine to fly… well, is that made-to-order content or what?

So with that pot boiling, it seems like an absolutely perfect time to… tell the coalition to go play another game!

Yes, The Mittani is monetizing his followers in conjunction with Daybreak and/or/by (pick the one that suits your narrative) encouraging a team building expedition to PlanetSide 2!

As with the H1Z1 invasion last year, there is a code you can get from the site to collect a few exclusive items.

Official graphic or something

I think the “and more” is the title Imperator.

Members of The Imperium are being encouraged to run off and play… in the middle of our war… as part of the Vanu Sovereignty on the Emerald server.

On the upside of all of this PlanetSide 2 (unlike H1Z1) is free (to the point of being problematic for Daybreak), relatively stable (though we broke the server on the first night), and being a shooter, is easy enough to jump into and out of quickly if there are no fleet ops going on at the moment.

So, good line member that I am, I went and downloaded the PlanetSide 2 client again and started trying to figure out how to play over the weekend. It is a shooter, but it is also an MMO with advancement and upgrades and a cash shop and blah blah blah… plus, while I played it for a bit when it launched, that was a couple years back.

I think I’ve sort of got a handle on the medic role at this point. The graphics, and thus the world, as somewhat bland. But for a shooter where you can get a hundred people in a pretty small area killing each other, that is probably a requirement just to keep frame rates up. The cash shop is as confusing as ever. I have nearly 12K in what was once Station Cash on my account from subscribing to EQ and EQ2 over the last few years and I couldn’t tell you want I should spend it on. So it just sits in my wallet.

I’m also a little less impressed with the game’s Guinness Book record. Not only was the number (1,158 players) something of a yawn compared to EVE (4,070 at 6VDT-H) but it is clear that it was an all effort staged event because there is a hard population limit… a limit which seems to be considerably lower than the record… and a queue for continents when that number is reached.

But those are minor gripes. The game is fun enough in that frantic way that shooters are. A decent distraction. And aim bots, often the bane of such games, seem to be under control. It is hard to tell with snipers… and I get sniped often enough… but with combat in visual range nobody seems to magically hitting their targets, a situation even I have been able to detect in the past when playing shooters.

The small yet ironic twist to all of this is that our SMA allies in The Imperium were already active on the Emerald server in PlanetSide 2. According to their Dead Monkey Gaming site, they were headed there last October. However, they went to the New Conglomerate on the Emerald server while, as noted, the call from TMC has been to join the Vanu Sovereignty.

So we appear to be shooting Monkeys in our own way on Auraxis, the world on which PlanetSide 2 takes place. I know I’ve been killed by a couple. The timing of this is interesting, even if it is accidental.

MMOs and their Middle Age Problems…

I just recorded a podcast with Izlain from Me vs. Myself and I. It should be up by the end of the week if you are simply dying to hear my voice. I will put up a post about it when it is ready.

The topic of the podcast was Daybreak and looking back at what has gone on over the last year since Columbus Nova Prime became their new lords and masters. As it turns out we are both, in our own way, SOE/Daybreak fan boys, having been heavily influenced by EverQuest and EverQuest II.

And it came up, as part of our discussion of what I call the “legacy Norrath team,” that both of us would really like to have EverQuest content with a new client. The old client isn’t the worst thing in the world, and it has been improved over the years, but you can still feel every one of those seventeen years since the game was launched. It clunks. It chunks. It does things in bizarre ways which betray that fact that it was created before some UI features became standardized in the genre.

I even wrote about this… whoa, nine years ago… as part of a list of five “insane” things I wanted. Specifically, I wanted EverQuest content with the WoW client, my logic at the time being:

WoW = Easy to play, light system requirements, and stylized (thus longer enduring) graphics
EQ = Huge world, awesome lore, cranky old engine, dated graphics that will never catch up

As I put it, “I want to blend these two in perfect measure and make the ultimate super Norrathian experience! I want Norrath to live forever… in a form I can actually stand to play!”

Because I have to admit that half the battle when I want to go back and play EverQuest is simply dealing with the client UI and its quirks. A new client would improve the experience and make the game more accessible to a new generation of players.

Picture guaranteed to induce nostalgia in old school EQ players.

Of course, as much as I want it, I know that a new client is never going to happen. It is never going to happen because the legacy Norrath team hasn’t completely lost their minds.

To work on a new client the team would have to divert resources away from other things, including content for and improvements to the current game. But EverQuest is in what I will now dub “MMO Middle Age,” wherein it is done attracting new players in any significant numbers, but it is still receiving content updates on a regular basis. It is still worthwhile to make expansions for the game because enough people buy them.

The legacy Norrath team knows this. They know where they stand. They know the days of an expanding player base are over. They mostly have a pool of current and former players that they can depend on for revenue, and they need to focus on that group.

And, to their credit, the legacy Norrath team has used the last year to great effect. Despite an initial stumble, when they said they were done with expansions, a position they later and quite correctly reversed, the team has spent the whole year catering to their installed base. There were expansions and updates and special rules servers for subscribers only… and let’s face it, if you’re a fan of the game and are playing, you’re subscribed… that included some special treat like the return of the Isle of Refuge, along with some of the best company/player communication in the history of the franchise.

The Broken Mirror? Try the broken gaming budget!

And when you can sell people $140 expansions, who needs a new client?

So after a year of being Daybreak, I think the legacy Norrath team can be counted as a success. They had all the right moves and had fewer mistakes and stumbles than one would expect after years of watching SOE in action. I think the worst quote from the team was Holly saying that they didn’t want casuals raiding on the EQ progression servers, something that got reversed on the Phinigel “true box” progression server.

And don’t worry, I don’t think I’ve spoiled the podcast as we talk about all the Daybreak games.

Anyway, this is a team at Daybreak working within the reality of their situation. With a pair of games that are 16 and 11 years old at the moment, there really isn’t anything they could do that would sustain their current installed base and attract, say, 100,000 new players, much less 100,000 players willing to spend some money on the game. Aesop had a story about that sort of thing, letting go of what you have to try and grab something you can’t be sure is even really there.

Youth, that era of sustained growth, is over.

But middle age is respectable. World of Warcraft is also in middle age. It is still a cash cow, it still gets new content, but it isn’t the bright new thing. Granted, Blizzard has bought the game a bright yellow Camaro, coming this summer in the form of the Warcraft movie, in a pretense of youth in order to attract new players.

My daughter asked me to "do donuts" in the car...

Me, as metaphor for WoW and the movie…

But I suspect any interest its bitchin’ new ride attracts will fade when faced with its own middle-age reality. It is going to have to adapt to sustaining it installed base rather than attempting to attract a sea of new faces.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is also in middle age, after a short time in youth. But it will hang in there. It seems to have found its balance in middle age.

And then there is EVE Online, which enjoyed the longest period of youth… which is to say growth… of any MMO I can think of. I think that long youth has skewed the expectations of many residents of New Eden. Having enjoyed seemingly endless youth, it sometimes feels like the game has just stumbled for a moment or is maybe just having a bad hair day. If only we could have another big headline grabbing battle or some shiny new feature like walking in stations, then youth, and growth, would return.

I think that is just us kidding ourselves however… though creating a new player experience that doesn’t confuse and confound probably 90% of players who try it out couldn’t hurt. The game needs to focus on its installed base and keeping them happy… which is as difficult as anything in EVE Online, since the game has so many niches, each of which feels neglected when another gets attention. I think we need to admit the game is now in middle age.

For these games the next stage… I’ll call that retirement I suppose… when they are still worth keeping online but not necessarily getting updates… as with Guild Wars… still looks to be a ways off. Better to have the problems of middle age and catering to a shrinking base of loyal fans than to face that and the eventual shut down that follows.

I can attest, middle age isn’t so bad. You have things. You know things, like how escrow works. You just can’t necessarily be all the things you once were.

What other MMOs are in middle age now? They seem to grow up so fast these days.

BB72 Roadmaps are Best Written in Pencil

For Blog Banter 72 the topic is the Roadmap for EVE Online. (Roadmap is a single word when used in tech, but two words when referring to a literal map of roads.) We were pointed at a post that Sugar Kyle did just as the CSM summit was opening up and were asked what we might want as a roadmap for the game.

The thing is, I saw that post when it went up and quickly wrote out a few items that I thought ought to be on the agenda. My suggestions were:

Keep the old camera around until the new one is rock solid. The new one mostly works, but I’ve had it freak out on me enough that I had to turn it off. There is no need to be in a hurry to ditch the old one unless there is some burden which comes with the legacy code.

More of a practical/tactical item, something to do RIGHT NOW, than a roadmap suggestion. CCP did actually fix one of my major issues, where if you were looking at something when you warped the camera would pretty much go crazy. However, I haven’t turned the new camera back on yet. I suppose that is the roadmap item, how to get people to actually use the new camera and get used to it (and help work out any remaining issues) before they turn off the old one.

Dump the entosis link module and let us just shoot command nodes. We like to blow stuff up. Use the same mechanic for citadels so there is a cap on the amount of DPS to keep a blob from being able to blitz through.

This is a little less tactical, and something borrowed from my pretend CSM platform, which was based on the idea that all CCP projects should, in the end, create things that explode or cause things to explode more. Here my logic is that a bunch of people shooting something (and getting a kill mail) is more fun that a bunch of people watching somebody shoot a beam at something. An items for the “revisions to Fozzie Sov” list.

Work on some more interesting PvE content. I know, that is tough, because no matter what CCP introduces players will just optimize to beat it and then it will simply become another ISK faucet.

Vague, and clearly an ongoing item, the idea that CCP can possibly create PvE content in New Eden that is interesting and which doesn’t simply become an optimized ISK faucet like every other bit of PvE content in the game. Not sure how you get there from here.

Having just watched my daughter, 14 and better at video games than I am, try to get into EVE, I would have to suggest that the NPE still needs some work. It went from a narrow path that didn’t really prepare you for the game to a wide path that an actual new player can get totally lost and frustrated with.

Ah, the new player experience. The forum hysterian’s favorite bugbear, that goons are ganking new players and driving them away, pales into complete insignificance (if it is even a much of a thing at all) compared to what the NPE does to the game. As noted, I watched my daughter try to go through it and ended up wondering how we get any new subscribers at all in the game. As with better PvE, I don’t know what the answer is, but somebody at CCP had best be asking the question.

I could probably come up with more items. I doubt there is an area of the game that somebody isn’t aching to see updated, improved, or expanded.

Instead though, I want to write a little bit about roadmaps in general when it comes to software projects. They are a good thing, when used correctly. And, having worked for companies that could come up with a six month roadmap, I’d have to say they are better than nothing at all even when used poorly.

A roadmap is a plan for where you want to go, which is usually broken up into a few distinct pieces.

The current release – What you are working on now. It is likely nailed down, the features and goal set out, and most everybody knows what they’re doing. If you code in short sprints or iterations for regular code drops, the “current release” idea might actually encompass a few updates.

The next release – Unless your product development life cycle is really immature, you have some people at least laying the groundwork for the next release. That is likely a list of features, most of which will make the cut, but some will fall by the wayside, either pushed off into the future or discarded. Somebody is likely trying to do design work and maybe some preliminary coding. This is likely what the CSM should be hearing about.

The future – These are ideas and plans about where the product should go. It is likely that nobody is writing code related to these items, except maybe to ensure that what they are working on today won’t make them more difficult. There are often items in this area that are defined by a single sentence, and there are a generally a lot more ideas here than it is possible to code in the given time frame. It is a field of possibilities, not a contact that needs to be honored. This is where ideas from the CSM likely drop, unless they are small, self-contained features or incremental improvements.

You usually don’t share future items in detail outside of your organization, because people will assume that any document you share is carved in stone, even if they should know better. So we get this sort of thing from CCP.

Some sort of release schedule…

That isn’t actually a roadmap at all. That is a train schedule.

A bright future of some sort!

This isn’t really a roadmap so much as a vague promise that exciting new things are somewhere just beyond the horizon.

Some more detail, with a line even…

That is a better roadmap. Still very general, as it is for public consumption, and still only very high level features, but it at least gives a sense of what the medium to long term priority is. (In a world where “two years” is long term.)

The thing to remember is that, aside from what we get in dev blogs about the next release, none of this is really set in stone, either as features or when it will get released because the roadmap doesn’t work that way. That third item was from EVE Vegas in 2014 and we are clearly not through with those middle three items. We have sov warfare changes, and structures coming, but the former still needs some tuning while the latter will probably take a while before it is settled.

Basically, if we’ve learned anything over the years, it is that until CCP does a dev blog or detailed forum post about an upcoming feature, it hasn’t yet been retrieved from that future bucket. New Eden is a complicated place and it always takes longer than you think to do anything, whether it is in game or out.

I want new things. I want the new things, vague as they are, which are on those charts. But I know some of them are still a ways off and that nothing we’ve been told yet about the future is set in stone.

Others diving into Blog Banter 72:

Neville Smit – What’s Your Roadmap?
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah – Mapping the Way
Grimmash on Gaming – This is the Road (map) to…
Morphisat’s Blog – Road to nowhere
Stabbed Up – Roadmap for me; roadmap for Eve
It’s Not Personal, It’s Strictly Business – EVE’s Road Map & Future Features
Sand, Cider, and Spaceships – Is This the Way to Jove Space?
MMO Nomad – The roadmap to…
Just for Crits – Roadmap to Hell
Space Cadet Online – Roadmap with No GPS

The Ancient Gaming Noob

Veni, Vidi, Scripsi