I grew up in what I consider to be one of the best eras in gaming, namely the mid to late 80s and early 90s. This was the era of the 8 bit and 16 bit juggernauts by Nintendo and Sega, and while it was years later when I first experienced it NEC as well. However there was something else going on that damned near knocked me out of console gaming entirely. In 1991 my family got our very first computer, a no-name 386 16 mhz with a massive 90 mb hard drive and 2 mb of ram. There was no sound card and we were still several years ahead of CD-ROMs being a thing that you would regularly see in a computer. However the same friend of my dad that used to send him home VHS tapes filled with movies from HBO, used to send me floppies loaded with games for me to play on our new computer. Howard was a member of a BBS, an through that he would get all sorts of things some what I would later learn as “Warez” and others something called “Shareware”.
Apogee ASCII Catalog
For those not old enough to remember this era, the idea was simple. A company would release one fully playable level of a game and distribute it freely on Bulletin Board Systems and FTP sites. Folks would download it, play it, and if they liked it you could buy a code that would unlock the full version of the game and let you play the rest of the levels. They also distributed their entire catalog of games in an ASCII text file format along with all of the pertinent information on how to purchase the games. Being a teenager and not having access to a credit card, it would be years before I was able to play the full versions of most of these games. For example I played Spear of Destiny long before I actually played any level of Wolfenstein other than the first one. The same is true with Doom and having played Doom II before the later episodes, in part because in both of these cases they got a physical release stocked at our local Walmart that didn’t require me to convince my parents to give someone a credit card number over the phone.
Duke Nukem II
The first of these titles that I played were the original Commander Keen and Duke Nukem, and I remember at the time not being able to understand why these games were not released for the Nintendo or Super Nintendo. I was completely unaware of the proud history of effectively home brew game development on Computers like the Atari ST, Amiga and Commodore 64 because I simply wasn’t exposed to it at the time. All I really knew was the original Atari 2600, and then the 8 bit and 16 bit era consoles. It was after I got access to the internet that I more or less descended into the madness of all of the other options and got heavily into the Amiga scene when I picked up a 3000. At this time however it was extremely common place for ALL major game releases to offer a freely downloadable demo. When CD-Rom entered the scene is was extremely common for a Games magazine to have a pack in CD filled with demos of various products that were either out or coming soon.
Playstation Demo CDs
This wasn’t just a computer thing either. During the PlayStation and Dreamcast era, I remember demo cds for both systems in regular circulation. I used to subscribe to a PlayStation magazine, and each month there would be a CD included that had short demos for a lot of the titles that were just about to release. Once you moved into the PlayStation 2 and Xbox era of game consoles, the demos existed but were significantly less common. When you arrived at the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 era, the concept of downloading a demo had more or less been forgotten by developers. The era of try before you buy was a thing of the past, and this was also the era of several game releases becoming controversial for not quite living up to expectations.
Nintendo E-Shop with Switch Demos
While none of this is Shareware, I find it interesting that at some point over the last few years something changed. Nintendo Handheld devices have often had downloadable demos to sort of whet your appetite and get you interested in buying the full game. When Nintendo released the Switch I started noticing how many of these first party and major third party games had a fully playable demo that you could download ahead of time. Not only was the game playable, but often times you could pick up where you left off in your save file giving you further incentive to pay some money to continue that gaming experience. For example I absolutely played the Demo for Trials of Mana, and while I decided to start fresh after-all with a different party, I could have easily just picked up where I left off.
Steam Game Demos
This is a trend however that might have been happening under my nose for longer than I realized. Now that I look around it seems like there are many digital storefronts offering demos, and that might be what ultimately changed. Digital distribution, just like in the golden age of shareware, has become more a primary means of getting titles out to the public. It costs money to press a demo cd and distribute it out to the stores, but uploading a demo version to a store front is effectively free. It feels like maybe we are just about to go through a second age of Shareware, and while you are not downloading the games from some University hosted FTP server that you found through Gopher, you are still downloading them freely. So if you are curious what is available in demo form you can check out the following Storefront links that should in theory bring you right to the demo sections.
As someone who often writes impressions of games that he is enjoying, I should start digging up links to see if demos are available for that game. I can write all I want to tell you how cool I think something is, but giving you access to download freely and see for yourself is significantly more powerful.
Cannon Based Travel Systems are a Bad Idea
The game that everyone seems to be talking about right now is Final Fantasy VII Remake, and based on everything I am hearing it is a pretty great game. While I own it… I just haven’t been able to bring myself to booting it up and playing it. The truth is, Final Fantasy VII just isn’t that important of a game for me personally. At the time it came out I was super heavy into PC gaming and as a result I was playing Fallout instead. I did not get to play seven until it eventually got a PC release, and while it sounded amazing on my Yamaha based wavetable soundcard it already looked dated compared to the graphics I had been experience on the PC. Later on I got a PlayStation and the very first Final Fantasy game that I played on it was VIII, which probably holds that same game changing place that seven does for a lot of players.
The Secret of Mana series for me personally holds an equal place in my memory as Final Fantasy, and once I found out there was a third game in the Seiken Densetsu series I desperately wanted it to see localization. The Mana series blended two games that I absolutely loved… The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy and rolled them into an extremely engaging package. I even liked the not-officially-in-the-series-but-possibly-should-be Secret of Evermore, which effectively used all of the same mechanics but more like if the Mana series had a weird love child with Earthbound. I was never really a handheld player, so I completely missed the release of Trials of Mana until it recently came out as part of the Collection of Mana. However at the same time that was announced we got a glimpse of a proper remake of the game, and ultimately I held out playing it until now.
Trials of Mana has become my new main Switch game since I more or less fell off the Animal Crossing bandwagon. I’ve been playing this before bed and as a result I am not super far into the game, but absolutely loving it so far. It is a seamless blend again of two genres that I adore, the Zelda-like and the Final Fantasy style RPG. There are so many weird in jokes for those who have loved the original Mana series and some cross pollination with Final Fantasy as well. I had to look this up to make sure, but they absolutely substituted Final Fantasy IV/Shadowbringers style dwarves in place of what apparently were mostly skull faced guys in the original. I’ve not encountered a Lali-ho yet, but I am absolutely inserting them in my mind.
Some time ago I wrote about the demo, and I opted to load those save files but also still create a brand new game just in case copying the save does anything. Originally I went with a team of Duran, Charlotte and Reisz which was fine… but I did find Charlotte to be a little annoying. So in the reboot I am mixing things up a bit and choosing at Ash’s suggestion the diametrically opposed character to Duran, aka the moody space princess Angela. I kept Reisz because she looks badass and I am hoping if rumor is true I can turn her into effectively a dragoon later in the game. Mostly it was a toss up between Duran and Kevin… but it largely came down to me not really liking Kevin’s default outfit and wanting to swing a big sword. Duran also reminds me of the hero from the first Mana game I played, so there is an awful lot of nostalgia there as well.
As I said I am not terribly far into the game, having only gone through a few scenarios, but I am really enjoying what I have played so far. The demo takes you up to a specific point and I have played through a couple of different sequences that occur after that and have collected my second element. It sounds like there are six different elements that I need to collect, so I still have quite a long ways to go considering I figure there is a final act that probably occurs after having collected them all. The hardest part to get used to is that you the character level up abilities rather than having weapons that holy weapons that gain experience. So far I have upgraded my gear twice, but it has all been purchased through shops and I have yet to see any world drops.
I definitely suggest checking out the demo, which is probably a post I have in me at some later date talking about this new golden age of try before you buy. After getting my hands on and playing through the final released game, the Demo should give you a really good idea if the game is for you or not. The combat gets a bit more nuanced but for the most part it is a very fluid Zelda-like with jump attacks. The game feels like I remember feeling while playing Secret of Mana. While I have played through Final Fantasy Adventure which is actually the mislabeled first game in the series, I feel like I need to dig up the Gameboy Advance Sword of Mana remake and play it at some point on my RG350 emulation handheld.
Before I dig into this mornings topic I feel like I need to preface it a bit. I really want Pantheon Rise of the Fallen to succeed. The release of new Western MMORPGs that are not highly focused on becoming pvp kill boxes is an extreme rarity. The Everquestian and Warcraftian dynasties are barren. It is a fevered dream for me to someday tuck into a brand new game that doesn’t involve playing k-pop idols in heavy armor. What I actually want is something more akin to a World of Warcraft or a Lord of the Rings Online that takes advantage of all of the niceties of everything we have learned in the last twenty years of gaming. However what I am apparently getting instead is a love song to the pain filled days of Everquest.
That is not to say I didn’t know this going into following Pantheon. This is a game created by the late Brad McQuaid. I also feel like I should preface once again that I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but I should have known with crystal clarity what I was in for. Brad has effectively developed the same game three times, each time trying to realize his original vision with a higher level of fidelity. You have the original Everquest that was severely limited by technological constraints. Next up was Vanguard that appeared to go through some severe development time constraints of needing to push forward to market in an incomplete state. Lastly you have Pantheon which seemed like a final attempt to make good on what he was seeing inside of his head but never quite capable of realizing in digital form.
I feel like another important statement is that both Everquest and Vanguard ultimately eased up on the harsh restrictions that were originally placed on the player on both games. Everquest made itself considerably more casual friendly with the introduction of graveyards that summon bodies, a massive teleportation network that allows players to move around more quickly and freely, and even the introduction of instanced content that was more casual friendly. In an effort to find an audience, Vanguard went through a lot of more casual player friendly changes as it struggled to stay afloat. I remember playing it launch and deeming it just not very fun, when I was used to World of Warcraft at the time. I went back considerably later towards the end of its life cycle and had a blast running around and exploring Telon.
Coin weight should matter, and we’ve decided to go that directionJoppa – Pantheon Creative Director
However all of the above doesn’t exactly explain why I am writing about Pantheon this morning. Yesterday while casually browsing the interwebs I stumbled onto a blurb from MassivelyOp talking about the decision to add coin weight into the game. For those who were not from that era of gaming, back during the Everquest days, the coin you were carrying had weight to it and you regularly needed to dump coin in the bank to keep from being encumbered. For those poor monk players they were constantly fighting a losing battle trying to keep their total item carry down below a specific weight number in order to keep from being debuffed. It was a bad idea then and it is a bad idea now. By the time of Dark Age of Camleot, the immediate successor to Everquest, coin weight had been abandoned and effectively has been gone from the genre ever sense.
The fact that this community wants coin weight back in the game tells me that they have a deeply masochistic streak. I think more than anything it also sets a tone for the type of game that Pantheon is trying to be. If you have coin weight then you are likely probably also going to have full item loss on death and corpse recovery, and on top of that the ability to lose levels. Essentially it sets a tone for a game that I really don’t want to personally play, because I would never freely return to a game that put me in the sort of negative positions that Everquest did. I don’t want to get those real world calls on a Sunday afternoon begging me to log in and resurrect a corpse because they had lost their level and needed the experience back and it was just about to rot. I also have no nostalgia for twelve hour long runs in Fear, Hate or the Plane of Sky.
They’re looking for people with the time and dedication of college students but appealing to the nostalgia of middle-aged gamers who no longer have that kind of time.
Tipa – via Tweet
I think last night Tipa hit the nail on the head and phrased my thoughts in a much more concise manner. Pantheon is being built for an imaginary demographic, that has the tastes of a 40 something but the free time and real world constraints of a teenager. I also wonder if this is the video game equivalent of a midlife crisis… the desire to recapture the glory of our past adventures in a modern game without having the logic to understand that is a bygone era. We put up with a lot of these punishing design patterns, not because we loved them… but because there was no other game out there for us to be playing that offered the same kind of experience. The critical thing we have now that we lacked then is the freedom of choice and a wealth of options that we could be playing that asks significantly less of our time.
What I want is a game that feels like Everquest felt like, without actually making me re-live the trauma of the past. I also want that game to be delivered with all of the knowledge we have learned in the two decades worth of online gaming that have happened between now and then. I am somewhat saddened by the fact that Pantheon won’t be that game. However I am more saddened by the fact that Pantheon is effectively being built for an audience that I question actually existing. Sure there is a community of backers and folks like Cohh Carnage fueling this fire, but I have also experienced this all a number of times as games launched. Players will absolutely tell you with utter conviction that they want this thing today, and then post launch tell you how it didn’t end up feeling as good as they thought it would. Players ultimately don’t know what they want.
What I do however know for certain is that I don’t have the room in my life that demands total control of my play time, and the requirement to always be grouped with other players. Sure folks will tell you that you can solo just fine on certain classes… as someone who tried to solo level a Cleric in the original Everquest, I can tell you that really is no life at all. The truth is I didn’t really have the time to play Everquest the first time around. However I was so hungry for that type of experience that I was willing to risk marital strife in order to get that experience. I know more than one marriage that ended over that game and the time constraints placed upon its players. While “coin weight” really isn’t as big of a deal as I am probably making it out to be, for me it is emblematic of a “vision” that I want no part of. I feel like we have probably swung too far in the direction of player convenience to make interesting game decisions. However I feel like this reaction is way too far in the other direction.
This weekend an event happened that I thought I would talk about, however first I feel like I need to give some background. During the heyday of World of Warcraft I was a die-hard Alliance player. They were of course the faction that had Dwarves, which went an awfully long way for me. However because of the human faction hacks, the fear break, and weapon skill hacks I ultimately re-rolled at some point as a Human Warrior that became Belghast, the character that I ultimately became most known for. Argent Dawn during Vanilla was a magical place, that much like cheers was a server where everybody knew your name. This was in part due to the fact that it had a very active server forum, allowing different guilds and both factions to mingle freely.
As I moved my way into leading raids, I got indoctrinated into a bit of a club of other raid leaders who were in pretty regular communication. I’ve talked about this before but we had an incident where someone took BOE loot as need, left the raid and posted it on the auction house. I mentioned it to one other raid leader, and within fifteen minutes this player was on the do not invite list of all of the major raids in the game and on non-raiding probation for the guild based raid that he just joined. Twenty minutes he was in chat begging me to reverse all of it, when in truth the cat was out of the bag. No one wanted someone like that in their raid and all I did was mention it to one other leader in passing and it set the wheels in motion that really couldn’t be undone.
Argent Dawn was a server that was greatly impacted by a number of events over the years, most specifically the Alliance faction. Firstly the transition between 40 player raids to 25 player raids was extremely fraught, and similarly was the shift down to the existence of 10 player raids. Probably more than that however was the shift away from non-guild based raiding that came with Cataclysm. Blizzard started attaching things at the guild level, and Argent Dawn was a server with a still thriving ecosystem of raid groups that weren’t actually really associated with a specific guild. For years we were an overpopulated server being one of the first two Roleplaying flagged servers, and each time new servers opened up Argent Dawn was often times in the list of eligible targets for transferring characters off. On the Alliance side of the house this claimed entire guilds as they decided to make the jump to greener pastures.
For me personally, I checked out of World of Warcraft during Cataclysm, and it began a cycle. I would go through this pattern of returning at the end of one expansion, playing the pre-expansion content and then ultimately leaving again one or two patches into the new expansion. This is not exactly what you want in a guildmaster, and this ultimately lead me to hand off the reigns a few times… firstly to Elnore who was a serious raider and shifted the focus of the guild to raiding. Then to Rylacus who was more or less the Steward of Gondor, not really leading the guild but more keeping tabs on it while I was away. Finally the guild transitioned to Kylana, who like Elnore once again shifted the guild and the infrastructure to serve the purpose of raiding. There was a time where I was unfairly bitter about the changes in the guild as a whole, since I fought hard to keep Stalwart not just another raid guild. However I can see that they made the changes that were needed by the people who were still around and still playing the game while I was constantly gone.
The bigger problem however, is that I was never just active in House Stalwart. I was active in the community at large and while I was gone it changed in even more sweeping ways. Not only did my effective “home” feel a little foreign each time I returned to the game, but the server community as a whole felt like strangers. There was a time when I had the limit of server channels configured on my characters, and coming back they were all ghost towns. Gone was the council of guild and raid leaders, gone were the social channels of friend raid groups, gone were the few roleplaying groups that I was still friendly with, and replaced was a bunch of asshattery in raid chat by a completely new crop of people. I tried to make connections, but ultimately it didn’t feel like home.
For years I had been a semi-active member of the Bloodmoon Chosen guild on the horde side, which was made up of a bunch of people that I knew from the Argent Dawn server forums and the eventual Argent Dawn IRC channel. These were folks that I had communicated with daily for years, so it absolutely made sense that I park my little horde alts in their guild. It was during Warlords of Draenor I believe that some drama happened on that side of the fence, and while I am still not exactly sure what went down, all of my friends from BMC broke out and founded their own guild. Facepull felt like home because it was made up of so many people that I had known since Vanilla days, and I started leveling a Paladin that served as my horde main for a few expansions.
The funny thing about Argent Dawn Horde side is that it seemed not to be changed so severely by the rigors of time. While roaming around in both the Hubs and the over-world zones I was constantly bumping into familiar faces and having random conversations with folks that I actually knew form the onset of the server. This weekend one of these events happened, and it was ultimately what inspired me to write about my shift in allegiance. I was landing at the Great Seal just as a familiar name was about to take off, which caused me to send a message to her. Tenebres is someone I have known from the forums for decades, and I remember when she posted baby photos of her now 15 year old daughter in what I think was the IRC Server at the time? So what followed was us talking for a good 45 minutes catching up on how and what we have been doing.
The thing is… this isn’t a one time event because I am constantly bumping into people that I have known for years while roaming the world, because it seems like the Horde never had the great server splits that the Alliance side did. The Horde just feels like home right now. There has been massive turn over in the Alliance guild, and I dearly love some of the folks that still tie back to the era in which I was actively playing. However playing Horde reminds me of the social fabric that I loved about the server because while it is somewhat diminished, it still exists and there are still large groups of people that communicate on a regular basis. It is ultimately those social connections that root me to a game and to its server, and without them the entire process just feels hollow. Ultimately this is why I am spending my time of late playing catch up and leveling an army of alts, because that is the one thing that I miss the most from Alliance side, being self sufficient in all of the tradeskills.
