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The Game Archaeologist interviews Puzzle Pirates' Matt Jensen
Two weeks ago, we opened the book to a strange game indeed. The odd combination of swashbucklers and minigames has sentenced Puzzle Pirates to the fringe of MMO society, yet it's thrived there as an offbeat title that caters to a... very select and fanatical crowd. Which is totally cool with me, by the way. I love MMOs that take a path less-traveled. Today I got the pleasure of sitting down with Puzzle Pirates Lead Developer Matt Jensen to talk about what it's like to work on the lovechild of Captain Hook and Bejeweled. If nothing else, he convinced me that it would be awesome to work at Three Rings Design because the dress code every day is peg legs and frilly blouses. His team also has one of the coolest offices ever.
The Game Archaeologist: Puzzle Pirates
Up until this point in my life, Puzzle Pirates has always been that "oh yeah, that actually exists!" game to me. Even when I do lists of pirates in MMOs, this title slips right off of my radar. Maybe it's because Puzzle Pirates doesn't make waves (har!) these days, or maybe it's been around for so very long. I can't be the only one; the last time Massively talked about Puzzle Pirates was three years ago. I think that part of Puzzle Pirates' forgettability is that it doesn't exactly scream MMO. I mean, its combat is more cerebral than anything else, it's all cutesy and stuff, and even its name suggests a casual flash title than anything deep and substantive. Yet I have friends with a long and abiding love for this game, people who always chide me when I forget it. So to peer pressure I bow: It's high past time that we gave Puzzle Pirates its due as part of the MMO genre. Avast, ye landlubbers, and swab those peepers: We be goin' to sea!
The Game Archaeologist: What if World of Warcraft had never happened?
As you know well by now, I do love me some "what ifs?" from time to time. In an industry as volatile and unpredictable as this one, it's not hard to imagine a world where, say, Ultima X did launch or where Bill Roper is coming off his fourth straight successful game or where a different studio secured the rights to a popular IP over another one. Perhaps the king of all MMO "what ifs" deals with the former (yes, former) king of MMOs. What if World of Warcraft never happened? Putting aside our own personal reaction, which may range from heartfelt relief to severe heartburn, we should look at this question without bias or emotion. Today I'm going to step way, way out on a limb and talk about an alternate universe where one of the biggest MMOs of all time simply did not happen. In that universe, how did the MMO industry unfold from 2004 on, and what would we be looking at playing today? Maybe it's an impossible mind exercise, but I've been mulling it over for a while, so here are six outcomes that I think are quite likely.
The Game Archaeologist: Will classic MMOs survive without free-to-play?
It's amazing to me how quickly the industry has shifted to where we don't just welcome free-to-play as a business model in MMOs -- we downright expect it. Take a look in the comments of any new MMO that dares to launch with a subscription-only model: People will be tripping over each other in an attempt to predict just when said game will break down and admit that it needs F2P. Whether or not BioWare's admission that it's looking into F2P for Star Wars: The Old Republic surprised you or not, it's a sign that no game is immune to the allure, dollar signs, and downright necessity of the popularity and flexibility of this model. I think this brings a pressing question to bear in the field of classic MMOs: Will they survive without free-to-play? It's a pretty important question for a few reasons. One, a surprising majority of remaining sub-only MMOs are older ones; two, people now expect free in games they try; and three, players aren't exactly flocking to classic MMOs anyway. This week I want to explore the conundrum that these games are in and why some players may have blinders on when it comes to the fate of their favorite games.
The Game Archaeologist: Maze War
It's hard to know how far back to go when chronicling the history of early MMOs and their ancestors. After all, the Game Archaeologist has looked at several titles (Air Warrior, Habitat, Neverwinter Nights) that do not fit the modern definition of an MMO yet were bound in blood to the genre nonetheless. So if today's game seems to be somewhat tenuously related to our favorite hobby, I beg your forgiveness in advance, but I do feel it's pertinent to our exploration of this wonderful genre. The game in question is Maze War, and it holds a general's uniform's worth of medals depicting firsts in the infant genre of video games. Most importantly for us, Maze War was the first graphical video game to be networked and allow players to interact and fight each other. You can see why that may tie in to our current situation. While the game itself certainly never attained the complexity of modern shooters or RPGs, its innovation and pioneering certainly make it worthy of examination. So let's dust it off and get to it!
The Game Archaeologist: The Anarchy Online bloggers
It's a simple fact of life: Newer MMOs get all the blog love. World of Warcraft and EVE Online, in particular, are lavished with so many dedicated blogs that it's almost embarrassing, while most of the games that we look at in this column are practically ignored. It could just be that blogging didn't really come into vogue when these games came out, but whatever the reason, it's kind of a shame that few if any folks are out there blogging about their in-game experiences in Ultima Online or Asheron's Call. That's why I was utterly surprised to see two brand-new bloggers hit the scene writing about Anarchy Online: Sephora's Closet and Donovan Drones. Both of these blogs came out of a community-wide effort to encourage new game writers in May, and I was so fascinated with their game du jour that I contacted each of them for an interview. What would drive someone to blog about Anarchy Online in 2012? What is there in the game worth writing? How many more words do I need to write until this paragraph doesn't look pathetically skimpy? Come with me and we'll find out!
The Game Archaeologist: Richard Garriott's haunted cache
Whenever you get really into a new hobby, it's natural to want to blab about it to anyone who drifts into your gravitational field. That's why we all talk about MMOs, right? It's also why any friends, family members, and coworkers have had to put up with excited rambling about my discovered love for Geocaching. Some of you probably know Geocaching, as it's been around for over a decade now. For those of you who haven't, it's a worldwide treasure hunt that involves over a million and a half "caches" of various sizes that are hidden and then marked with GPS coordinates. Players head to the official site or one of the open-source projects to get the coordinates and go hunting for them. There's a useful two-minute introduction to this hobby on YouTube if you're curious. I noted on our Massively Speaking podcast that Geocaching has a lot in common with MMOs: Both encourage questing and exploration, both have treasure to be found, and both plug you into a community of adventurers. Listener Terrence heard this and send in an email with an interesting revelation that ties these two hobbies even closer together, as a game developer brought his online world to a real-world location. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you Richard Garriott's haunted cache.
The Game Archaeologist: Dark Sun Online
Computer RPG players in the late '80s and early '90s were surely familiar with Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) and its now-infamous Gold Box series. The series, so named because of their distinctive gold packaging, ran on a solid engine that helped the company churn out over a dozen titles within a five-year span. From Dungeons & Dragons' Pool of Radiance to Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday, these titles quickly became revered among the gaming community. I personally have very fond memories of playing both Buck Rogers titles, despite not having ever watched the show. While the Gold Box series has not become as timeless or replayable as late '90s classics like Baldur's Gate and Fallout, they definitely had a huge impact on the PC scene and helped elevate the CRPG genre. Following the Gold Box engine, SSI went on to produce another engine that it used for a completely new series set in the D&D campaign setting of Dark Sun. Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (1993) and Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager (1994) were both modest hits, and when it came time for a third game in the series, SSI decided to make the leap to the then-untested realm of online gaming. What followed was a wild two-year experiment in MMOs that happened prior to the Ultima Online and EverQuest generation. While ultimately unsuccessful in achieving its potential or gaining a large audience, Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands made a valiant attempt at achieving the inevitable future of gaming.
The Game Archaeologist looks at Guild Wars Utopia
Aztecs. Chronomancers. Mounts. Halberds. Golems. Dual wielding. These are all but a hint of what a fourth Guild Wars campaign could have been, a campaign that was under development in the mid-2000s but was scrapped by 2007. Replacing it was the expansion Guild Wars Eye of the North and the workings of a super-secret sequel to the game (which you've probably never heard of). It was the forgotten campaign, swept under a rug while it was still under the rug. But what if, in some alternative timeline, ArenaNet had gone ahead with this campaign? What if it became an established part of the Guild Wars legacy, as familiar to us today as Nightfall and Factions? What if Guild Wars Utopia had lived?
The Game Archaeologist: When dead MMOs come back to life
Maybe I'm alone in this, but my jaw just dropped when I came home this past week to see that Massively posted the news that Shadowbane is coming back to life. Granted, it's only going to happen in China, but still, that's pretty incredible. Shadowbane's been in the ground for three years now, and if I had to pick an MMO that deserved resurrection, this particular one would be farthest from my mind (no offense if you liked the game; it's just that there are so many others that are even more worthy). But how can this not give you hope? Many of us have lost an MMO we loved or at least had a decked-out character populating the character select screen, and the thought of that game coming back against all odds is a goosebump-rising one. It may also smack of justice served, as some MMOs fail not because of faulty gameplay but because of mismanagement by the studio, complex legal wrangling, or bad marketing. Today let's look at a few examples of dead MMOs that were brought back to life and what this may mean for the future of the industry. Zombie MMOs! Not, you know, MMOs with zombies.
The Game Archaeologist: Are graphical updates worth the hassle?
"I'd play this game again if the graphics were updated." "If they re-released this game with modern graphics, it would be way more popular." "The Game Archaeologist is my hero, and I will name my progeny in his honor." How many times have we heard the above statements? From my perspective as someone who tries to keep tabs on classic MMOs, I see these claims quite a lot. Such sentiments pop up in nearly every other post Massively does about older games: "This title is rock-solid except for its aging visuals. Update those, and it would recapture its former glory and then some." This has gotten me thinking whether such logic would pan out or not. With Anarchy Online's much-hyped graphics overhaul on the way, this discussion seems to crop up more often. Is the power of a graphics conversion or overhaul strong enough to pull back in previous players and fresh blood? Or is it merely slathering on new paint over a rusting hulk?
The Game Archaeologist and the veteran of Kesmai
Aaand we're back! Did you miss me? No? Not even a little bit? Aww, you know how to make me feel all kinds of appreciated! Even though it's been quite some time since we finished up our two-part series on the Kesmai company and its incredible (and little-remembered) role in powering up the MMO genre, I wanted to return to take the topic for one last spin. A fellow blogger, Wilhelm "The Ancient Gaming Noob" Arcturus, backs his nickname up by providing memories and stories from gaming eras well before many Massively readers' time. Since he actually played several Kesmai titles back in the day and lived to tell the tale, I wanted to pick his brain before we moved on to other titles. So join me in welcoming Wilhelm and his magical clockwork nostalgia retrieval system!
The Game Archaeologist: Bio break!
Man oh man, why couldn't I just take a month or so off of this column without getting sucked back into it? Why must classic MMOs be so compelling and newsworthy these days? I planned to take some time off of TGA while I went through Dark Age of Camelot in Choose My Adventure (which you're all reading, yes?), but there was so much to talk about regarding older MMOs that I couldn't sit back and stay mum. Ergo, I've dashed off this special "break" column devoted to commenting on recent news about classic games. Hopefully this will help tide you over until I get back into the full swing of things in April. On the docket for today's discussion is Vanguard's forthcoming F2P change, EverQuest's recent conversion, Anarchy Online's stunning graphic engine video, and more!
The Game Archaeologist and the Kesmai legacy
Most studios would be overjoyed to have pioneered one significant advancement in video game history, but then again, most studios aren't Kesmai. While it's not a household name today, it's reasonable to say that without the heavy lifting and backbreaking coding that this company shouldered in the '80s and '90s, the MMO genre would've turned out very different indeed. Last week we met two enterprising designers, Kelton Flinn and John Taylor, who recognized that multiplayer was the name of the future and put their careers on the line to see an idea through to completion. That idea was Island of Kesmai, an ancestor of the modern MMO that used crude ASCII graphics and CompuServe's network to provide an interactive, cooperative online roleplaying experience. It wasn't the first MMO, but it was the first one published commercially, and sometimes that makes all the difference. Flinn and Taylor's Kesmai didn't stop with being the first to bring MMOs to the big time, however. Flush with cash and success, Kesmai turned its attention to the next big multiplayer challenge: 3-D graphics and real-time combat. Unlike the fantasy land of Island of Kesmai, this title would take to the skies in aerial dogfighting and prove even more popular than the team's previous project.
The Game Archaeologist discovers the Island of Kesmai
It was the mid-'80s, and I was just a kid in love with his family's IBM PC. Not having a wealth of capital at the time, I relied on hand-me-down copies of software that rolled in from friends and family and probably the Cyber-Mafia. Practically none of the disks came with instructions (or even labels, sometimes), and as such I felt like an explorer uncovering hidden gems as I shoved in 5 1/4" floppy after 5 1/4" floppy. Some titles were great fun, some were so obtuse I couldn't get into them, and some were obviously meant for those older and wiser than I. One game that fell into the latter category was a brutally difficult RPG that smelt of Dungeons & Dragons -- a forbidden experience for me at the time. It was just a field of ASCII characters, jumbled statistics, and instant death awaiting me around every corner. I gave it a few tries but could never progress past the first level, especially when I'd keep running out of arrows, so I gave up. Unbeknownst to me, I had my first brush with Rogue, an enormously popular dungeon crawler that straddled the line between the description-heavy RPGs and arcade titles like Gauntlet. Rogue defined the genre when it came out in 1980, spawning dozens of "Roguelikes" that sought to cash in on the craze. Not five years after its release, Rogue got a worthy successor that decided it could bring this addicting style of gameplay to the larva form of the Internet. It was called Island of Kesmai, but you may call it "Sir, yes sir!"
The Game Archaeologist chats with John Smedley about EQMac's salvation
A week ago I sat here writing up what I thought was going to be the epitaph for EverQuest's odd foray into an Apple-only product, EverQuest Macintosh. The word came down from on high that with the coming of free-to-play, EQMac's diminutive server population would be ushered out the doors as Al'Kabor got sent to the retirement home. That was a week ago. Boy, what a difference a week makes, right? Since the writing of that article, we received word that not only did Sony Online Entertainment reverse its decision to kill EQMac but that it will be making the server completely free for its community for the indefinite future. I learned that while under the influence of a 102-degree fever, so I initially thought it was just my brain cooking in my skull. But no, it was the truth. So what happened in the span of that week? Why did SOE do a 180 and keep alive an ancient relic of its flagship MMO? For the whole, unadulterated truth, I called up SOE President John Smedley to get the full scoop on the wild rollercoaster he's taken this loyal community on these past few weeks. Finding out what he said will only cost you one click. It's worth it, trust me.
The Daily Grind: What's the longest an MMO's been out before you've tried it?
Part of the joy of working at Massively is that this environment constantly challenges and encourages us to check out not just new MMOs but current and older ones we may have overlooked the first time around. After all, unless your name is Beau Hindman, it is virtually impossible to play every game out there. So I can't be the only one who checked out Ultima Online for the first time 11 years after its initial release or Dark Age of Camelot around its eight-year anniversary. Sometimes I'm a little hesitant to try older MMOs because I fear that they're a little too long in the tooth or that their future shelf life is almost at the "expired" date, but once I get past that, more often than not I end up saying, "I can't believe I waited this long to try it!" What about you? What's the longest an MMO has been out before you tried it for the first time? And for a bonus question, what got you to finally give it a go? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: Were older MMOs better by virtue of experimentation?
If you haven't sensed it by now, the Massively staff is made up of a very wide range of preferences, experiences, and gaming types. Sometimes quite heated discussions -- OK, rabid rubber chicken-throwing screamfests -- erupt due to disagreements over what makes MMOs great, what the industry should be doing, and what it did right in the past. Recently we got into a two-fatality "discussion" over whether or not MMOs prior to World of Warcraft were better simply because they weren't trying to copy WoW and were more willing to experiment. It certainly seemed like there was more variety from each new title back then, although some of those experiments certainly did not prove to be palatable to the gaming masses. Then again, this might be a case of rose-colored glasses looking upon the past with faulty nostalgia instead of accurate realism, and it discredits the actual innovation and evolution of the industry since then. There certainly are more people playing today than back then, and MMOs have become more widespread and accepted by even mainstream media. So what do you think? Were older MMOs better because they experimented more than ones today or do titles today deserve more credit for what they have become than glasses-wearing old-timers give? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: Instance vs. open
So here's a battle for all of you readers out there. A good way, if you ask us, to wake up the morning. Do you prefer the way of the open, massive, uninstanced dungeon crawls? Or are you more of a modern day lover of the instanced method of dispatching monsters?Now there are certainly advantages and disadvantages to both. Uninstanced dungeons create a very epic dungeon experience, as you can come across other small groups of players fighting against the hordes of monsters while you explore a huge underground space. However, uninstanced dungeons can sometimes mean overcrowding, lines to kill bosses, and generally non-immersive behavior.Instanced dungeons, on the other hand, let players enjoy the content at their own pace with no kill-stealing and no lines. But instanced dungeons don't seem to have that same flair for adventure and unexpectedness as a non-scripted dungeon does. In short, it's like riding a pre-planned roller coaster rather than having a true dungeon adventure.So what do you prefer? Let us know readers, let us know!
Two launches & an anniversary
The 2nd of November is a notable date for MMOs -- not only was today the release of Tabula Rasa and the grand unveiling of a certain new MMO blog site, but Asheron's Call was also eight years old today! Turbine have put up a brief "thank you" message to all players over at their website.On November 2nd 1999, Asheron's Call was the first MMO to be launched by developers Turbine -- now better known for creating Dungeons & Dragons Online & Lord of the Rings Online. A sequel, Asheron's Call 2, was released at the end of 2002, but was shut down just over three years later after unsuccessful sales and subscriber numbers -- despite a major expansion released in an attempt to save it.Asheron's Call always had a small but dedicated community (and deserved a *much* bigger one, at the time!), so I'm not surprised to see there's still some subscribers out there. Nice to see Turbine haven't forgotten about their first title, too. Any AC1 players -- past or present -- still out there?Happy anniversary Asheron's Call!
