On Provenance: Thoughts While Waiting For The Pandaria Remix

While Mrs Bhagpuss and I were out walking Beryl through some very muddy fields this morning, I had an idea that something was supposed to be happening today. I thought it might be the launch of the Anashti Sul server in EverQuest II, which made me quite excited. 

I thought, when we got home, I'd get that patched up, make a character, play for an hour or two, then write a blog post about it. I wasn't a hundred per cent sure I'd gotten the day right, though, so the first thing I did was check the launch date. 

I hadn't. It's a month away yet, not due to launch until 13 June.

Well, of course it is. I remember, now, writing about what a long beta it was going to be and how that meant Darkpaw had to be pinning a lot of hopes on the whole thing being a success. Just shows how much I listen to myself when I talk.

Still, I was pretty sure I remembered something was happening today and I was just about convinced it involved a new server starting up in a game I already played. I scratched around in the back of my mind for a while, trying to come up with a clue as to what it might be and then it came to me. Pandaria!

That was why I updated Battlenet and logged into World of Warcraft Retail a couple of weeks ago. I'd been thinking about taking a look at the Pandaria Remix event or, to give it its unwieldy official title, World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandaria.

And yes, that does indeed begin today. I'd be playing it now, with a view to writing about it this afternoon, except the doors don't actually open until teatime. The official start, which doesn't appear until the very last line of the lengthy official announcement, is 10.00AM PDT, which translates to six in the evening where I am.

That's fine, as far as it goes, although not great for me. I'll probably be eating quiche and watching the Chase about then, after which Beryl is likely to enter Evening Entertainment Mode and require an unhealthy amount of attention due to her innate Princessy tendencies. Even so, I should be able to get an hour or two in before bedtime.

A few bullet points on that:

• I'll be playing on my Endless Free Trial account, which allows me to make a character for the event but only level them to 20. 
• All Remix characters skip the first ten levels, stepping into Pandaland as fresh Level 10s. 
• A key selling point of this particualar dog and panda show is accelerated levelling. 
• The trip from ten to twenty is already over in a short session at regular levelling speed.

It is theoretically possible, then, that I might be able to log in, make a character, play for an hour, see enough to have something substantive to say about the experience and still have enough time left in the evening to put a blog post together. It'd be tight, though.

Which is why I'm writing this now, at midday, instead. Even though I don't really have anything new to say about the whole affair.

Ah, except I do. Last time I talked about it I'd only read the news reports and listened to some chatter. Now I've read the whole of that Blizzard news item I linked earlier and it's very interesting. 

Interesting to me, anyway, because the feature list reads like a Best Of from the last decade or so of EverQuest II. 

I'm not remotely saying these are ideas that originate there or that they haven't been used elsewhere, often, by other games. Plenty of them are generic to many MMORPGs. What I am saying is that I recognize versions of just about all of them from special ruleset servers in EQII that I've played on, as well as from the regular, Live game.

More specifically, a whole chunk of the Remix's remit seems to draw inspiration directly from EQII's Kael Drakkal server. In case you don't remember, that was the one where you started at 90 and all the content in the game was at the same level, which I admit doesn't sound very similar at all. 

This does, though:

EQII: "amazing new armor and weapon appearances made exclusively for the Kael Drakkel server"

WoW: "collect a variety of powerful new items and transmogs"

EQII: "Special loot drops along the way will allow you to upgrade your base gear as you progress."

WoW: "Each time you loot new items, you’ll have the chance for powerful new upgrades"

EQII: "Kael Drakkel armor appearances that will be usable on all characters on all servers"

WoW: "take your transmogs with you when you continue your adventures in World of Warcraft®:The War Within™"

 

All quotes verbatim from the two official announcements and the announcement for the update Kael Drakkal received nine months after launch.

I'm not saying none of this would have happened without Holly Longdale taking over as WoW's Executive Producer but it's getting hard to deny the equivalencies. They might not be immediately obvious to anyone who's only played WoW but as an EQII player, just about the first thing that comes to mind these days, whenever I hear about something new that's coming to WoW, is "That sounds familiar..."

Everyone spotted the debt dragonriding owes to Guild Wars 2 right away because GW2 is a much better-known game than EQII these days. A lot of the other innovations that seem to be changing the whole way WoW operates are coming in much lower under the radar, originating, as it seems they do, in a game most WoW players have probably never even heard of.

Whether this kind of cross-pollination is likely to create a stronger, healthier game remains to be seen. From my perspective as an regular EQII player who occasionally dabbles in WoW, though, it feels like a very positive development. 

I wonder whether the trend will continue in the next expansion. I do hope so. That would be interesting.

Dragons! Why Did It Have To Be Dragons?

It's more than a little unfortunate for ArenaNet that another mmo gaming company chose to release a cinematic on the same day they chose to plug the first episode of the revamped, replayable Living World Season One. Especially when you consider that gaming company happens to be Blizzard and the cinematic in question is the official announcement of the details of the next World of Warcraft expansion.

I mean, come on! Even I was watching the Blizzard stream, which started very conveniently for me at five in the evening, and I don't even play the blasted game.

The question is, having watched it, would I want to start? For the moment, let's just focus on the content of the expansion itself, putting all the other baggage to one side. No moral choices here, just aesthetic and entertainment ones.

On first impressions, based on what I saw and heard in the Livestream and read in the press release and media coverage afterwards, yes I probably would. I'm not saying I'd make a long-term home in WoW just off the back of what I just watched but I can easily see me buying the expansion and playing for a month or two.

It has a couple of things that appeal to me: a new race/class and a new starting area. The race itself isn't all that exciting. It's yet another dragon/human hybrid. I'm sure that's not the official description but a Drakkin by any other name is just as clichéd. At least it looks halfway decent. I never liked the look of the Drakkin and EverQuest II's Aerykin aren't much better.

Granted, it's a "Hero Class" so it starts at Level 58, but that's still better than going straight into the new at-cap content. With the new cap moving to 70, that's a dozen levels of new content if you roll a new Dracthyr character rather than just ten, although what that means, given the level squish that preceded the last expansion, is a lot harder to say. 

It seems unlikely there'd be a whole starter zone for a mere two levels but what do levels even mean in WoW now anyway? Maybe that's how it was for Death Knights back in Wrath. I played one but I can't remember. 

I could remind myself soon enough if I wanted to find out, though. Wrath of the Lich King Classic is coming. Not quite sure when but it's definitely on the way.. 

That doesn't even qualify as news, more like confirmation and I wouldn't begin to suggest any connection with the Norrathian drogon kin, even if  Holly Longdale is working for WoW these days but it felt very strange to see her fronting such a big announcement in her capacity as Lead Producer for the retro Classic faction.

What was even odder was the way her reminiscences about WoW sounded more heartfelt and convincing than anything the two WoW lifers sitting next to her could contribute. She has the ardency of a convert.

More of a surprise were her comments on the absence of the Group Finder from the servers at launch (Assuming I heard that right. It seemed a little muddled.). Of course, it wasn't added until late WotLK, so I'm guessing it will turn up eventually. Or maybe, if Wrath Classic really does signal the end of the line for the WoW Classic Experience, it won't.

Going back to the expansion, which I haven't mentioned is called Dragonflight, I was amused to see what looked suspiciously like both the Guild Wars 2 UI and GW2's Griffon mount make appearances as exciting new innovations. It wouldn't be WoW if it didn't add features other games perfected years ago. I'm pretty sure I've seen the crafting commission system in at least three mmorpgs I've played before, too.

The cinematic was quite nice. A little subdued, I thought. Almost thoughtful. As for the discussion that followed, it was a litany of saying the right things but with some surprisingly convincing self-deprecatory banter between the principals. 

And it's certainly better to have figureheads spouting things we want to hear than the opposite, even if they do sometimes seem to be doing it through gritted teeth. I'm not sure Kaylriene will have heard everything he was hoping for (I'm sure he'll let us know.) but at least it's a gesture in that direction.

The new zones look very pretty. More importantly, they don't look weird or spacey or unearthly or doomy or other-dimensiony or any of the other things I'm sure most WoW players have had about enough of by now. A return to Azeroth and landscapes that look suitably fantasy-real has to be a relief for everyone, not least the artists.

The last big ticket item in the expansion pack I won't comment on, other than to say I have no opinions on Talent trees in WoW and precious few thoughts on them in any game. A necessary inconvenience is about as emotional as I ever get about the mechanic. I'm sure it'll be a big deal to someone, just not to me.

I'll also pass on any comments on the lore or the story. None of it meant anything to me at all. I barely recognized any of the names. It's not as if I haven't played the game, either. I probably have a few thousand hours in WoW. That stuff just washes over me.

What was conspicuously missing from both the livestream and the press release was any detailed timescale. I think we did get a definite nod to "this year" but that was about all. We shouldn't have to wait too long to find out whether Dragonflight is going to be enough to rekindle the light in the eyes of the faithful. 

I suspect, at best, it'll be a holding excercise. WoW's glory days are most likely behind it now. It would be kind of appropriate if an expansion based around dragons turned out to be the beginning of a long tail for the game.

On With The Show

Last year The EverQuest Show ran a story about a visit to Daybreak Games' San Diego offices, where they interviewed then franchise producer Holly Windstalker Longdale and other members of the teams behind both games.

The lengthy interview with Holly was posted back in October but since then we haven't heard a lot from The EQ Show and I was beginning to wonder if the whole project had gone the way of so many others, into oblivion. Happily that turns out not to be the case.

Episode 8, just released, features interviews with the new producer of the EQ games, Jennifer Chan, as well as several members of the EQII team.

It's a highly professional production, better than some promotional videos from studios themselves. Fading, who put it together, apologizes for the long delay between episodes, saying "they do take a lot of time to edit because I like to have the quality there". It's there, no worries about that.

There are no great revelations in the thirteen minute video but there are a couple of very strong data points on that perennial topic, "how well are the games doing?". Fading mentions in passing that the EQII team is smaller than the EverQuest crew, which shouldn't be a surprise but kind of is anyway.

I know there are delusional EQII players who believe it's their game that carries not only the new Darkpaw division but the whole company. You see them chime in on the forums now and then, questioning who would want to play an ancient game like EverQuest.

A lot of people, apparently. We already knew from comments Holly Longdale made last year that EQ's population has been growing over the last few years. Now we learn that EQII's has as well.

In general the game is "doing great". In fact "we're doing better than we were years ago". There are a couple of references to the current server populations in EQII in which we learn they are "pretty strong" on every server, even "a little overpopulated" on some of the special rulesets.

It wasn't always that way. Several comments from the EQII team make it clear they went through some dark days not too long ago, when they thought they might not be able to keep on making expansions simply because they didn't have the resources. They also acknowledge the dispiriting effect of multiple rounds of layoffs.

Their claim that the smaller team is more effective may sound like wishful thinking or making the best of a difficult situation but it's entirely borne out by my experience as a player. I know there have been issues with testing and quality control and some players aren't happy with certain design decisions but my feeling is that recent expansions have been some of the best for many years.

It was also very surprising to learn that all of the music in EQII for the last few expansions has been done by one developer, unpaid and working in his spare time. They lost the budget for production of new music so Mark McBride began composing and recording it himself, together with input from the whole team, as a "passion project".

Which would be very sweet and rather sad if it wasn't for the plain fact that the music in EQII has improved almost out of recognition! I love the whole, new gothic style he's brought to the soundscape of the game and particularly the performing NPC bands and orchestras that pop up in the hub cities. You might want to try experimenting with a major chord once in a while, Mark, but other than that - good job!

I recommend the EQ Show video. It's a very interesting - and reassuring - watch for anyone who plays or follows the franchise.

My other public service announcement today is an in-game tip. Everyone probably already knows this but it was news to me.

I was puzzled when I got my free flying horse recently and found it had gone directly into the Mount tab of the character who'd opened the pack. I was sure it had been flagged Heirloom, meaning any character on the account could use it, but I couldn't see how that could happen if it was just an icon on a list belonging to a single character.

So I asked in general chat and someone said I should be able to pull it out and put it in the shared bank. You can turn any mount into a house item, they said. It's the same as that.

And so you can. I'd forgotten all about mounts being convertible to house items. I don't believe I've ever done it.

Having sorted that out, I happened to look at my currency tab, which once again is individualized for every character. I wondered if the same trick would work there, too, and it does.

You can drag and drop currency stacks from the tab into your bags to transfer them between characters. No more having to do the same holiday content twice because you're working on a different character, even though you have a stack of the currency left over on the first one.

I thought I'd share because although this is probably old news to most players, the very fact that I've gone fifteen years without noticing suggests it's quite easy to miss. At least, that's what I'm telling myself.

And if anyone has any more tips on similar obscurities, don't be shy - share with the group!

So Long And Thanks For All The Bears

The first I knew of Holly "Windstalker" Longdale's resignation was an email I got from Wilhelm at TAGN, linking the Producer's Letter in which she makes her farewell. It was Saturday morning and I barely had time to skim it before I was off to work.

By the time I got home, Wilhelm had posted a full account of the unexpected departure. I knocked out a lengthy comment but it wasn't until Sunday morning that I found time to put my considered thoughts together.

Such as they are. As usual, we virtual citizens of Norrath find ourselves in the unenviable position of amateur Kremlinologists, attempting to derive policy and intent from meagre sounds and movements glimpsed from afar.

The facts we know for certain are that Daybreak Games has been partitioned, divided like Gaul into three parts. The leader and figurehead of the entity known as Darkpaw Games has now departed, ceding her position and authority to her erstwhile deputy.

And that's about it for actual facts. Let the speculation begin.

Top of the list comes the possibility that whoever owns Daybreak is positioning the company for sale. This always seemed likely but I would say the recent segmentation into seperate asset groups makes it a racing certainty, even before Windstalker's dramatic exit.

When a top-level presence leaves in such circumstances, the two most inflamatory explanations are either that they were forced out or that they're fleeing the ship before it sinks. Looking at the former possibility, Holly Longdale seemed to have a clear vision for the future of the EverQuest franchise that involved growth. Perhaps that no longer jibed with the intent of her paymasters?

Nope, don't buy that. Whether Darkpaw was scheduled to go on the block or not, an optimistic, positive, future-driven outlook could only enhance the value, surely. If you're trying to sell something you want to talk its virtues up. And if you're running it as a going concern, even more so.

The jumping ship explanation has more merit. If you were the head of a subdivision of a company and you knew there were plans afoot to sell it off and you along with it, you might very well not want to hang around.

That's the bleakest interpretation, because it suggests Holly had no faith in the future she'd have under the new regime, whatever it might be. Although maybe it would only have been her own future that was in doubt. The longevity of in-post senior management after such a transition of ownership tends to be limited. Better to put yourself on the market right away, before you become tainted goods.

The third option, of course, is that what Holly says in her leaving message is the plain truth. She got an offer she didn't want to refuse. It happens. Perhaps her tenure as the face of the EverQuest franchise raised her albedo sufficiently to draw the attention of some even brighter star. Maybe she was headhunted, in short.

That's the easiest explanation to test. She says "I will be taking my leave from Darkpaw Games for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity". Unless she's going to work in a secret government facility in a nuclear bunker beneath a desert somewhere, we're soon going to know what that opportunity was. It's probably going to be on her LinkedIn if it doesn't come in a full-blown PR announcement.

Out with the old, in with the other old. Holly's replacement is already picked and in place. It's her "leadership partner...Franchise Technical Director and EQ veteran Jennifer Chan". I don't remember hearing Jennifer's name until now but that probably says more about my interest in the technical side of the games than it does about Ms Chan.

Wilhelm did some digging and came up with gold, a highly illuminating interview the new studio head gave to Shacknews almost exactly a year ago. I strongly recommend anyone with even a passing interest in the EverQuest franchise reads it.

There are half a dozen jump-off points for blog posts in there, at least. The one slight mis-step, where Jennifer Chan finds herself revealing a little more about Daybreak's relationship with Standing Stone Games than her employers would probably find comfortable and quickly retrenches to cover her mistake could generate a whole wild speculation post of its own.

Trying to stay on topic, I found the interview reassuring in what it might reveal about Darkpaw's possible future. Chan comes across as both technically competent, practically minded and deeply immersed in game culture. That's a feature set all too rarely seen in public-facing developers.

She also represents continuty. By handing the controls to the person who was already sitting in the co-pilot's seat, Daybreak would seem to be asking us to expect business as usual. Whatever was going to happen will still be happening. The ship is not going to change course, although if you believe it was already heading for the rocks that might not be such good news.

As Wilhelm observes, Jennifer Chan doesn't come across as much of a "vision" person. I find that to be a positive. I saw what "vision" led to under John Smedley and Dave Georgeson and I didn't like it. If we're in for a period of "boring" technocratic control that's fine with me.

The other side of the continuity coin, of course, is the question it raises over the speed and suddenness of Holly Longdale's departure. Sometimes, when the deputy steps into the boss's shoes, it means things happened so fast there was no time to make other arrangements.

Whether this is a planned transition or a panic promotion is something Norrath-watchers can only guess at. Everyone at Darkpaw will know, though, so we might not have to keep guessing for long. Especially if this turns out to be only the first in a wave of goodbyes.

Let's hope it's not. That really would be a harbinger of the end times. The teams at the two EQ games are small but of late they've seemed tight and focused. They make a big deal of the family feeling at the studio. It's something a lot of companies do and it's usually twaddle but here it has often felt more real than that.

But families sometimes break up when the parents aren't there to hold the center. Without Brad McQuaid, John Smedley and now Holly Longdale (not to mention the much-missed Domino and the much less-missed slew of veterans who left after the Daybreak's post-acquisition housecleaning) I do wonder just how much sense of  "family" still remains.

Coming full circle, back to the supposed sale of the franchise, I'm increasingly of the opinion it could be a good thing. I never thought it would, of necessity, be bad. I work for a company that has been sold twice in my time there and something like half a dozen times since it began in the early 1980s. It's still profitable, still growing and the current iteration is, from the persepective of both customers and employees, one of the best.

Changing owners is not necessarily a bad thing, not at all. There's a strong argument to be made that Sony, with all their huge resources, never made anything like the most of what they had with EverQuest, while what Daybreak wants from the franchise has never really come into focus. Who's to say a new owner might not have a clearer vision or treat the two games as jewels in their crown?

As usual, we'll just have to bide our time, wait, see how things turn out. It's not like we Norrathians aren't used to doing that, after all, now is it?.

Don't Start Me Talking... : EverQuest, EverQuest II

Yesterday, as Wilhelm pointed out in the comments, I magnificently managed to miss the post-hook I'd been waiting on for weeks. Instead I chose to witter on about how I had nothing to write about. Comedy gold.

The news I'd missed was that The EverQuest Show had put up their interview with Holly "Windstalker" Longdale, Executive Producer of the EverQuest franchise. They were also good enough to provide a full transcript, which I've read. I haven't watched the video so anything that's given away by facial expression or body language is going to have to wait until I do.

As Wilhelm says, there aren't any major revelations but there are several tasty morsels of detail and a whacking great hint of something big to come. The whole thing doesn't take long to read but I'll pull out a few of the more interesting quotes anyway:

EQ Show :

How are the games doing?

Holly :     

...since 2015 , since I came on board, breaking all the rules both games have grown. So where we had a trend of the audience trickling off, we’ve now grown and we’ve grown revenue at the same time, so we’ve actually hired some people to fill out the teams...

Well, that's reassuring. And surprising.

It's been my consistent impression as a player and customer that, despite the surrounding intrigue, chaos and conspiracy theories, and notwithstanding the sequential layoffs and downsizings, my playable experience has undergone continual improvement throughout Daybreak Games' curation of the franchise. Even so, I would have guessed that both the audience and revenue for EverQuest II in particular would have decreased over that period. EverQuest, I would have imagined, would have done well to hold steady.

That both games have grown both numbers playing and money taken is fantastic news for those of us who want to see Norrath prosper. As Holly says, after fifteen and twenty years,

"It is staggering that both these games are still profitable ventures..."

Part of the reason for this turnaround is, as we more than suspected, some smart and effective managing of players' nostalgic affection for the franchise and the life experiences it has given them over two decades:

Holly:

...obviously nostalgia is really important to our players. Being able to revisit places we visited 15 years ago. 16, 20 years ago. 

That accounts for the popularity of the Progression servers but there's more to it than that:

...we’re trying to be smart about the content we do do... We don’t want to go too far out... I know we’ve been to the moon and back but you know, we don’t want to go too much farther and too much crazier than that. So we want to go back to those themes and develop those stories.

That's why almost every expansion is some kind of return to versions of the past:  areas, regions, continents or (coming up, we all believe) moons that players know and remember from the core game and from earlier expansions. It's not just a clever re-use of assets, although I believe there's some of that too; it's a key turned in the lock that opens the heart.

It's a policy that means Live players are as entangled in past glories as are those engaged in Progression. They are different audiences and the same all at once:

EQ Show:

How do you balance the TLP players, with the LIVE players, because they seem to be two vastly different groups playing the same game.

 Holly:

They are. But they’re also almost equal to each other now, in numbers.

That's another surprise. Although we all knew the Progression servers were doing well it's only natural to assume the bulk of the game is on the Live side. I imagine an expansion year with level cap increases for both games will unbalance (or balance, if you prefer) the ship a little but clearly the future of the franchise lies in the past.

Or does it?

EQ Show:

...a lot of people have asked, what are you guys going to do with the intellectual property... is there another game in development? 

Holly:

I can’t talk about what’s in development. But I promise you there is a future for EverQuest. I promise you. There’s a lot of work has gone into evaluating our past. We’re in a really unique position where we have more than 20 years worth of data on players and what they like in MMOs and MMOs we’ve made. Why wouldn’t we take advantage of that when we craft something new for EverQuest?

Which is about as broad a hint as the PR person, who was confirmed to be in the room making sure nothing got said that shouldn't get said, would allow. I read that as confirmation that DBG are working on another title in the franchise and that, unlike the ill-fated and ill-advised EQNext, it will be squarely aimed at the faithful.

As one of them I can't but be happy to hear it.

There's a lot more in the interview that's worth reading or watching or listening to for any dyed-in-the-wool EverQuest Franchise fan. There's stuff about the dedication of the team and their insistence on doing work on the EverQuest games in their own time; there's confirmation that they've had to learn how to do more with less, something I personally feel has contributed to the improvement in the games that I mentioned at the top; there's aknowledgment of the lag and database issues currently dogging the games and there's even a little squib about the upcoming re-organization of the whole Daybreak portfolio.

I'll leave you with Holly's reply to Fading from the EQ Show's "final" question:

EQ Show:

Final question I’ll ask you. How long is this game going to be around?

Holly:

At least another 10 years.

EQ Show: 

You think so?

Holly: 

Absolutely.

Works for me!

Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain

According to Belghast's schedule for Blaugust, this is Developer Appreciation Week. It used to be a separate event, one I eyed with suspicion.

Who really "develops" MMORPGs, anyway? They're usually built by large teams, sometimes involving hundreds of people. The massive companies that fund them comprise numerous departments, some of which work almost independently, others which have to constantly negotiate and compromise just to get anything done.

Then there's the someone, or several someones, with the unenviable task of wrangling the disparate elements while keeping to a schedule and a budget in the hope of eventually bringing a finished product to market. That, infamously, was the role Sigil Games, makers of Vanguard, lacked.

It's all a bit vague, though, isn't it? In popular music you have the performers, the songwriters and the producer to consider. All their roles are relatively easy to assess. If you're particularly involved you might also look at the engineer or arranger. Literature is even more straightforward: the author and, maybe, very occasionally, the editor.

Movies are probably the closest analogy to video games; huge, collaborative endeavors involving hundreds of individuals. In the early days of cinema, responsibility for quality and success was generally assigned to the Studio, then to the Producer and, of course, the Star.

After Cahiers du Cinema promoted auteur theory, imprimatur shifted to the Director, where it somewhat shakily remained until the recent global trend towards megafranchises nudged focus back to the Studios once again.

For most of the decades I've played video games I couldn't have named anyone who worked on most of them. The exception would have been those idiosyncratic dog-and-pony shows so common in the 1980s, where one individual, coding in his (it was nearly always "his") bedroom, managed to cobble together something that made him a millionaire overnight.

Rather than admire those people I thought of them as bizarre. Rarely did any of them go on to make a second game anyone cared about. I can't remember any of their names and why would I? They were the equivalent of lottery winners.

I played EverQuest for quite a few years before I began to learn the names of the people who created it. The only reason it happened at all was because I was on the official forums all the time and some of the old guard would pop up and post there occasionally.

Also, players would rehash, with incredible lack of consistency, the origins of the game. After a while I got so confused and irritated by the contradictions and misinformation that I started doing some research of my own. From that I slowly began to understand that the games I was playing were created by individual human beings with agendas of their own.

Prior to that I really had never considered how the games came to exist, any more than I would waste mental energy on how my refrigerator was designed and brought to market. A game was a commercial product you bought in a store. It was either good or it wasn't. End of.

As the years went on and I became more and more deeply enmeshed in the culture surrounding MMORPGs, I came to recognize the names of many game developers, particularly the showmen (and they were nearly always men) with the big egos. I didn't think much of most of them.

More than that, I actively disapproved of the cult of personality many of them cultivated and of the fawning adoration expressed by their fans. In my book these people were, at best, technicians. They might be deserving of appreciation and praise by their peers, who could understand the skill sets, but I couldn't see any reason why any player should care, so long as they were competent at their jobs.

I think that attitude finally began to shift during the protracted and often disturbing collapse of Sigil Games. The detail that came out of that, particularly concerning Brad McQuaid, was both a soap opera and a tragedy. And I had to consider that, for all his very human faults and failings, Brad had made two of the best MMORPGs I had ever played and facilitated some of the most joyous and long-lasting memories of my life.

From then on I began to pay a lot more attention to who was behind the games I liked or didn't. I started to make decisions on what to follow or even buy based on the names behind it. I lost all faith in EQNext quite specifically because of the gurning, grinning, self-aggrandizing crew of supposedly charismatic developers SOE chose to front the PR push. Who could possibly take anything any of those people were doing seriously?

By complete contrast, the handover to DayBreak Games came as a glass of ice water on a burning hot day. The first few weeks and months were worrying but once everyone got their feet under the table and particularly when John Smedley departed, I started to get the strong feeling that the grown-ups were back in charge.

In the years since then I've had little cause to revise that opinion. There may be chaotic maneuvering going on at the corporate and financial levels but down in the engine room, where they make and maintain the games, everything has been humming sweetly.

Holly "Windstalker" Longdale, someone I never really paid much attention to when she was buried in the background of the Dave Georgeson circus, has come very much into her own as the ringmaster in charge of the EverQuest franchise. Under her stewardship there seems to be both clear direction and clear intent as well as the capacity to complete. I have confidence in her.

The nature of the MMORPG marketplace and the obfuscated and often concerning nature of Daybreak's corporate structure means no EQ player can ever feel truly relaxed about the future. Still, I feel better about it now than I did for many years in SOE's decline, when unforgivable debacles like the PSS1 scandal threatened to drive the entire operation onto the rocks.

I also have a modicum of faith in good old Brad McQuaid. There he is, plugging away at Pantheon, the game everyone once dismissed as a con or vaporware. Now, for quite a few, it's the Great Hope for The Future. I believe he really does mean to "make worlds, not games". Whether finances will allow him his dream is less certain but I trust him at least to try.

In the end the developers I appreciate are twofold: the visionaries and the caretakers. We need both if we're to have MMORPGS that delight and last. Here's to Brad and Holly, the past, present and future of the games I want to play. Long may they stick around, doing that thing they do.




*** Unusually, I have borrowed all the images here from the web. If anyone owns one and would rather it wasn't used, please let me know and I'll remove it.***