I've Got My Glasses On My Face

Anyone remember Flyff? I wrote about it in June last year, when the seventeen-year old game was being re-launched as Flyff Universe. At the time, the U.K. was in the grip of a heatwave and my main reason for mentioning it was the attraction of being able to play it in a browser, thereby reducing the risk of my PC bursting into flames. 

The weather cooled off and I stopped playing. I haven't thought about the game since. Until this morning, when I received an email. No introductions or greetings, just this massive flyer.

Mmorpgs don't really let you forget about them any more. Not if they have your socials. They send you emails and tweets and probably ask your mother on Facebook how you're doing these days. (I really don't know how Facebook works.)

I used to be largely immune to this sort of passive-aggressive marketing. I used throwaway email addresses to sign up for games I was trying out and then never looked at those email addresses again. In recent years, though, as I've found myself returning to any number of old games, either out of curiosity, nostalgia or in the hope of finding something to post about, I've fallen into the habit of linking those dusty email addresses to the one I look at every day. 

I'm not sure what that does to my security levels but it certainly means I don't miss out on as many "Please come back! We really miss you!" campaigns and their associated freebies, handouts and outright bribes. 

It works, too. I can see why they all do it. I can't resist a freebie at the best of times and they make it seem so easy. Sometimes it even is.

Coming back to Flyff really could not have been any easier. All I had to do was find my old login details. The game runs in a browser so there was no downloading or updating. When I logged in, the first thing I noticed was a gift. It was right there on my hotbar, waiting for me.

I jumped to the conclusion that it was the welcome back for lapsed players because, as you can tell, I hadn't actually bothered to read the email in any detail. As I crop and edit the screenshots for this post, I realize it wasn't that at all. It was a "Global Launch Gift". I was under the impression the global launch had already happened back when I made an account last June but I'm happy to be corrected if it means more free stuff.

I wasn't a hundred percent sure what to do with the thing so I clicked it and it vanished. At that point I might have welcomed a little more information but I am a veteran of these giveaways, after all. I knew enough to look in my inventory to see if it had magically moved itself there. It had.

I opened it up to see what was inside. There was a lot of stuff. You can see it all listed out there, over to the right.   Most of it was the usual boosts and buffs, very welcome for anyone planing on taking the game seriously but not much more than inventory clutter to the casual visitor.  But there were two very interesting items at the head of the list that caught my eye right away; wings and glasses. 

What is it about glasses in mmorpgs? In real life, a set of frames balanced on the bridge of your nose rarely adds to a person's mystique but in games they're cool as hell. I love a good pair of glasses. As for wings... I don't think any more needs to be said.

I clicked on the Lucky Black Glasses Box and another window popped up. The game really seemed to be taking this thing seriously. At first sight the meaning of the list wasn't immediately clear. I glanced at it and didn't grasp the full implications. All the glasses are black. All the glasses are slatted. There are percentages that presumably represent your chance of winning each of them. 

And there are some numbers followed by an ellipsis, suggesting something has been left out or cut off. It was only after I'd hit the "Open" button and received my pair that I began to understand what it was.

The glasses I received were time-limitted to seven days use after first use. Those are the ones you have a 20% chance of receiving. It could have been worse. I could have had glasses for three days (30% chance) or just a single day (34%).

I guess I should be happy to get even a week's wear out of them but I'm not. I don't like time-limited items in mmorpgs. The whole concept seems mean-spirited. I realize it's a way to bring in some steady income in a F2P title that can't rely on monthly subscription income but I still find the whole thing annoying. 

I would never pay money for a loaner, even though logically it makes as much sense as paying a sub. Getting one for free is acceptable but still, somehow, disappointing.That said, they look great. And it's not even as though I'm going to be playing the game long enough for them to expire whie I'm using them. I probaly won't even log in again after today, at least not until they send me another email telling me I can get something else for free.

On the other hand, had I been one of the one-percenters who got a set of black slatted glasses for permanent use, I know I'd have been quite unreasonably smug about it, so I really have no moral high ground to stand on here. I'm just complaining for the sake of it, which is the prerogative of the blogger, is it not?

After the glasses I moved on to the wings. Those, I'm pleased to say, are yours to keep for as long as the game lasts. Which, given it's coming up to its eighteenth anniversary, could yet be a while.

They look pretty good, too. I'm happy with them, although it's a pity "you can't fly with them" as the description explains. Given that Flyff is literally a game built around flying - the very name is an acronym for Fly-For-Free - it does seem a bit churlish to be giving away dud wings.

Moan, moan, moan! That's all you do. And yes, there's some truth in that. Mostly, though, I'm just pleased to get stuff handed to me for doing nothing. Even if I'm never going to make much use of any of it.

That said, I do still have a vague ambition to get far enough into Flyff one day to be able to fly. It seems weird that it's not something you can do right from the start. I think I might have to look into it to see just how long it takes and how difficult is to get there.

For all its modernization as it morphs from plain old Flyff to Flyff Universe, with a revamp due some time very soon for yet another makeover to Flyff Universe Reborn  (Pre-register now if you want yet more freebies!), Flyff is a pretty traditional, old-school game. I found that out this morning as I was trotting through the trees looking for ambulating mushrooms to complete a quest.

 

I'm not talking so much here about the mechanics, although those would feel very familiar to any player newly arrived in a time machine from 2005, but the way players approach them. It's a good old while since I last received a throrough overbuffing from a passing stranger but it happened to me this morning within minutes. I remember it happening to me in Rose Online, another retro title of similar vintage last year, too.

It used to be the thing to do back in the early noughties. High level players would hang out in starter areas, blessing lesser levels with their powerful damage shields and regens. A good buffing could turn a newbie into an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction. Some people got so addicted to the feeling of power they wouldn't leave the village until they'd been buffed up to a diamond-hard glare.

It wasn't as simple as handing out a couple of buffs and moving on, either. There used to be all kinds of etiquette associated with the process. You could as easily get yelled at in tells as receive a grateful bow. The whole thing might be worth a post of its own, some day, if I can bring myself to write it.

I was generally in favor of the practice, although there were times when it could be disruptive or unwelcome, but the one thing I really didn't appreciate were the self-appointed guardian angels, who buffed you  then hung around to make sure you made good use of their largesse. As a new player, the last thing I wanted as I familiarised myself with my class was someone following five paces behind, watching every damn thing I did.

The person who buffed me this morning was one of those. In retrospect, my mistake was probably saying "Thanks!". I should have just stayed silent, as if I hadn't even noticed. At the very least I shouldn't have added that cheery exclamation mark. 

Thanks to the extremely overpowering buffage, I finished my quest in seconds, one-shotting everything. It was fun and I would have carried on but the person who'd buffed me, who now seemed to have me on auto-follow, ran behind me all the way to the questgiver as I went to do my hand-in and then stood around waiting to see what I was going to do next.

What I did was log out, which was exactly what I used to do back in the day when something like this happened. I'm all for a quick conversation, a friendly wave and a name to add to my friends list but if you want to avoid acquiring a stalker it's best to be ruthless and act decisively. Get it wrong and next thing you know you're changing servers. Or games.

It is, as they say, all part of life's rich pageant. Like a lot of annoying things, when they're not there you find yourself kind of wishing they were. I'd rather have to ghost an over-enthusiastic player or two, now and then, than move through a world filled with nothing but ghosts, players who never acknowledge your existence in any way at all.

As for the game itself, I imagine I'll be back, sometime. History suggests it. One day I might even learn to fly. Me and the pigs, both. Plus, I guess I'll have to log in again if I want those daily Welcome Back rewards. It would be plain rude to turn them down, wouldn't it?

Buffs, Boons, Brevity : Everquest, GW2

Many years ago, when Everquest set the rules and others followed, buffs were measured in minutes, even in hours. With the exception of Bards, who had constantly to twiddle their fingers and twist their songs to keep up a seamless stream of morale-enhancing musical notes, buffing was a matter of clicking a handful of hot keys once an hour or so.

Starting out as a Cleric you'd receive Courage at level one, the first in what would become your core buff line, giving you the endlessly sought-after ability to increase hit points. It was a line of buffs known intimately to everyone, not just Clerics. Through various eras, depending on the current highest or most widely requested exemplar, the line was known by different names: Center, Valor, Temperance, Vigor, Aegolism. At the peak of my own career as a cleric the call was for Virtue. Later, when I was a user rather than a dealer, it was Tenacity and Temerity.

Whichever class you played, whether you were the giver or receiver of buffs, you learned two things from the beginning: as you grew more powerful buffs lasted longer and they affected more people at once. The duration of most buffs increased incrementally level by level as well as upgrade by upgrade and higher levels would bring a group version of a single-cast. Over a couple of years I progressed from a half-hourly buffing session outside Splitpaw in the thirties, where I had to hit everyone with Center separately, to a single cast of Hand of Virtue at 65 that buffed the entire group and lasted a couple of hours.

That wasn't all. As expansions rolled out both the game and the world broadened and deepened. We discovered new ways to extend and prolong the buffs we cast. Items appeared that offered a whole range of effects, able to focus spells to be more efficient, more powerful and, especially, longer-lasting. Whole fresh paths of alternate advancement opened up, bringing enhancements of every imaginable kind including the ability to cast buffs that affected not just your group or even your raid but everyone in the immediate area.

Entire playstyles arose out of these options. Clerics and enchanters grew rich, offering their spells for hard cash or desirable items. Certain locations buzzed and whirred with commerce: the lawns or boards outside the banks in Plane of Knowledge, the hill in front of the Guild Lobby, the pathway where the Priest of Discord stood, ever-patient. How he must have hated all that bonhomie. The shouts and calls of players looking to buy or sell buffs rang in the air as adventurers ported in to refresh their protections before heading out to begin the hunt once more.

Best of all, in an emergent forerunner of the kind of open, co-operative play made familiar in recent years, selfless or self-aggrandizing individuals would call all-comers to them for Mass Group Buffs, bringing dozens, scores of people at a dead run as the count-down neared zero.

Careerism

"Mass HOV at POD 3 minutes". "Extended SD at Small Bank, casting in 30 secs". "3hr KEI at GD Stone. Donations always welcome". The cries of the buff-hawkers, as familiar and cheering as the chimes of the Ice Cream Man. The thrill of receiving a buff that could make the difference between a slow, difficult session or a brisk romp, only bettered by the satisfaction of being that caster, able to stand tall and share the fruits of your hard-earned success with friends, strangers and paying customers alike.

There were downsides. Some casters became greedy, some recipients picky. Woe betide the fresh sixty Enchantress, over-excited at coming into her prime, her signature spell in her book at last, who set up stall casting KEI at base duration, a mere two and a half hours, while others were offering three and a quarter, enhanced. Then there were the imbalances: the lack of level restriction on Temperance that could turn a newbie warrior into an unstoppable killing machine for a couple of hours (working as intended) or Koadic's Endless Intellect that could do the same for a young wizard or druid for even longer (a bug, corrected only after several years, even though time and usage had long-since rendered it normative).

Acquiring long-lasting buffs became routine to the point that many adventurers simply wouldn't leave the house, or at least Plane of Knowledge, without them. Once in situ, and sometimes even with group members on the spot, willing and able to provide comparable alternatives on demand, breaks for a return to PoK for a refresh of a key buff (or a KEI buff, often as not) made for a commonplace disruption to the rhythm of the kill.

Still, for all the drawbacks, now it looks like a golden age. The synergies and interplays between classes, individuals, groups and communities; the motivators of personal pride and character progression; the exuberant spirit of play; the turning of the economic wheel.

An addiction in the making

Whole weeks, months of satisfying gameplay derived from the search for improved focus effects, the desire to make spells cast faster, cost less mana,  last longer. It wasn't that you felt more powerful having them, though you did; it was that you felt complete. And always there was the ritual of it all; the casting of buffs as the party came together, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need; the donation of reagents by the willing, the unseen mark entered into the clerical notebook against the names of those who sat on their Peridots.

Even in Norrath the glory days are gone. Mercenaries provide buffs on tap. Spells no longer require reagents. In EQ2, half a millennium on, once cast buffs last forever.  It's understandable, excusable even. Aging games must offer convenience or wither away.

But what excuse do newer MMOs have and what do they have to offer instead? In GW2 a long-duration buff might last you half a minute. A trait might extend that by ten or twenty percent. The only way to keep buffs (or boons as they're known in Tyria) up is to run in a pack with everyone chain-casting like crazy.

It's a methodology that both suits and predicates GW2's zerg culture. It leads to faintly ludicrous, inelegant behavior like stacking, where everyone piles on top of one another like students trying to beat the record for packing a phone booth before charging off to throw themselves onto their opponents like a horde of rabid rats, hoping the seconds-long buffs will hold. It causes Guardians and Warriors to call constantly for company, asking people to huddle close so their auras of power or virtue won't go to waste.

The upshot is the frenetic action, the restless motion so emblematic of the modern MMO. It's entertaining but it's exhausting too, not to be dismissed lightly, with its own strengths and pleasures, to be sure, but perhaps lacking the defined, developmental purpose of the system it replaced. Traits constantly, cheaply swapped for effects that last seconds fail to emulate either the gravitas or the satisfaction of items and abilities long-desired, worked for, effortfully acquired.

Those permanent, significant and meaningful, not incremental, improvements, did more than just replace existing items or abilities with the numbers changed. They stood as markers not of linear progress but of the rounding out of a character learning to live more fully, more meaningfully in his world.

I miss it. I miss the progression and the character-building, but most of all I miss the buffing itself. How we all cursed it then, that relentless re-application, having to spend a couple of minutes at the start of every session cycling through the same half a dozen casts only to find yourself doing the same again just a fleeting two or three hours later. Talk about not knowing when you're well off.

As I run through the borderlands, blowing my warhorn for those few seconds of swiftness, trying to stay in the bubble around the commander and not fall back to the straggling tail, what wouldn't I give now for some good old Spirit of Wolf.

Extended, of course.