The 24 Year News Cycle

It's been a very long time since I last logged into EverQuest but I'm by no means done with the game. I even have a return strategy of sorts.  

Daybreak's free to play offer usually rolls along a few expansions behind the current endgame. Currently it's at 2019's Torment of Velious, which was added last summer. This year, most likely, the F2P package will expand to include 2020's Claws of Veeshan and then in 2024 non-paying players should gain access to 2021's Terror of Luclin, the last expansion to raise the level cap. It went up by five levels to 120. Free access to that expansion would be a natural re-entry point. 

I still enjoy leveling in EQ. It's my main motivation for taking another turn around the Norrathian block, other than making new characters on new servers, which I also still enjoy once in a while. The last time I played for an extended period was when I was raising my Magician to the then-cap of 115. It was quite hard work but I had fun doing it.

Of course, I could just buy the latest expansion, which would include every previous one, but that would require both a degree of commitment and a level of impatience for playing EQ that I simply don't have any more. I don't feel that way about any mmorpg these days, I'm happy to say.  

Wilhelm recently posted his thoughts about the success or otherwise of the genre's move to a broadly free to play model and I commented that, for me at least, the change has been a complete success. One of the things I most appreciate about it has been the way it's reduced my desire to play any one particular game. I feel now that I can move comfortably from one to another at will, always knowing I can drop back in on a whim at any time. It's an approach that fits my mercurial personality a lot more comfortably than the old lock-in ever did.

I'm very happy to wait a year or three to get to content I'm interested in because I have many other options now. I also feel reasonably confident most of the games will still be there when I feel like coming back to them. The flip side of the coin we were tossing around in a recent post on the extraordinary length of time it takes to develop an mmorpg is that once the games are out finally there they tend to stick around. Mmorpgs do go dark all the time but a lot more seem to just keep on going, EverQuest being the prime example.

EverQuest will twenty-four years old this month. There are going to be some celebrations, naturally, although I don't think anyone's going to claim any special significance for the twenty-fourth anniversary. That's going to come next year, when the game turns twenty-five.

A quarter of a century in continuous operation is a real milestone. It's a given that no-one on the team that made the original game had any idea it would last this long. As I remember it, John Smedley himself only gave it three years, with an outside chance of five, which is how we came to have the sequel, EverQuest II as early as 2004. Sony Online Entertainment believed they'd need a follow-up to capitalize on the unexpected success of the original a lot sooner than actually proved to be the case.

EQII itself hits a very significant marker next year, turning twenty years old in December 2024, meaning Daybreak is going to have to celebrate two major anniversaries in one calendar year. The EverQuest Show asked Darkpaw's's Head of Studio Jenn Chan about it in an interview I read yesterday.

When it comes to anything that hasn't already been announced in the 2023 Roadmap, I think it would be fair to say that Jenn is keeping her cards very close to her chest. I've seldom heard anyone stonewall so determinedly, although she really didn't have to try too hard, given the exceptionally gentle and respectful questioning she was facing. That's not to say there was nothing of substance in the interview. On the contrary, if you're the kind of person who revels in technical detail concerning the back-end operations that keep a game built on a decades-old code base viable, there's plenty to hold your interest.

She goes into the backgrounds of both the recent switch to 64-bit, the Direct X 11 port and the upcoming re-write of the UI Engine, explaining why they were deemed necessary and how they'll improve the player experience. It's useful knowledge and as an executive who's arrived in her post via a route involving more of a technician's journey than most, her enthusiasm for revealing the mechanics of the process is plain to see.

Gently pressed to offer up some firm information on either the imminent arrival of new TLP (Time-Locked Progression) and TLE (Time-Locked Expansion) servers for EQ and EQII respectively, she's much less forthcoming. She confirms the TLE server will use a PvP ruleset, with a few tweaks: "it will be a similar experience to Tarinax on Day 1, but with the PVP writs and server specific rewards. So it will be starting from fresh, we’re going back to classic to the Shattered Lands era." Not much there we didn't already know and probably nothing to trouble most EQII players other than the PvP hardcore.

For EQ's new TLP server, due in May, there seems to be something a lot more significant yet to be revealed: "it’s going to be an experimental year. We’re trying something that we’ve never really done before, and if it works out, we may introduce some of it to live servers. But that’s all I’m going to tell you right now until we released the big article with all the details." It's an announcement of an announcement. Wake me up when we get there.

As for the plans for next year's big anniversaries, Jenn has little to offer beyond a commitment to make it worth the wait:

EQ Show: That’s a big year. Are you guys planning to celebrate this big milestone?

JCHAN:
YES.

EQ Show:
That’s all you’re going to give me?

JCHAN:
That’s all I’m going to give you for now.

EQ Show:
Is it a big plan or a little plan?

JCHAN:
There are big plans.

After that, it's the usual retrenchment into praise for what the franchise is really all about (Spoiler - it's "The Community". It's always "The Community" with some people, isn't it?) and some stuff about the long-delayed EQII Swag Store, of all things. I'm guessing that's a community thing too. It's certainly nothing I've ever given a moment's thought.

Finally, Fading, the EverQuest Show's interviewer, gets around to asking Chan the question we've all been waiting for; the question everyone wants a real answer to but which no-one ever gets: “What are the plans to expand the franchise?” Do we get a meaningful answer for once?

Do we hell. 

CHAN:
So we’re definitely always talking about expanding the franchise, expanding the IP. But we’re just not ready to announce anything just yet. But definitely some serious conversations going on right now.

I guess it's better than no conversations going on right now, eh? Or frivolous ones about things that are never going to happen in a million years. It's not like that's ever happened before, right?

Anyway, there's the interview, for what it's worth. I confess I only read the transcript. I didn't watch the video. I don't have time for that. I'm not Tobold, ffs! So if anything's revealed in the nuances of conversation, I'll have missed it.

The whole thing did have one effect on me, other than to create a sense of generalized, non-specific anticipation; it made feel like logging into EverQuest again.I guess we can chalk that up as another win for Jenn Chan. She may not tell us much but what she does, she sells better than most.

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!

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!

EQ3 Eh? Eh? Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink, Say No More!

Wilhelm sent me a link to an EverQuest site he'd discovered, called The EverQuest Show. I think it was intended primarily as a YouTube channel, which debuted in February this year, but so far there have only been three episodes, while the website has been considerably more active. There was a new post there just today.

I've added The EverQuest Show to the blog roll but it wasn't the site itself that drew me to make this post. As I was flipping through the articles I spotted a link to an AMA with Holly "Windstalker" Longdale and three other Daybreak devs, hosted by Fires of Heaven.

It looks as though the AMA happened in May or June so it's very current. It's also very long. I read the whole thing and it took me a couple of hours. There's plenty of waffle and nonsense but also plenty of tidbits that would interest any EQ fan.

One question that crops up over and over again in different forms is whether Daybreak are working on a new EverQuest game. Holly attempts to keep a poker face on this for a while but as her answers pile up the winks and smiles give the game away, literally. Ok, metaphorically.

I've severely trimmed these but here's some of the "evidence":

Q. Since there have been some rumors going around it, Is there another EQ game in development (other than the Nantworks stuff) by DBG?

Alan VanCouvering (Lead Content Designer): Wouldn't you like to know!

Holly: ….. 

Q. Being the 20th Anniversary, what is the future of the EQ Franchise? Be specific please. Is there another game in developed or at least in the talks of being developed or are we to expect that EQ will just receive expansions and new servers each year? 

Holly: There is a future and I don’t have specifics for you. The specifics will come when we have meaningful news. 

Q. So in 2019 if I’m an old school EQ guy who loves the world (nostalgia is a hell of a drug) but I also don’t want to play 20 year old games, is there a reason to care about the franchise? Are y’all going to surprise launch an early access EQ3 or am I stuck with ignoring a mobile game?

Holly: We have spent a lot of time looking into the future and how we build this franchise up even better than we have in the past. We did some research over a year ago with all ages of gamers. It’s amazing how many young people know the name “EverQuest” because of family and other gamers. We are still relevant and considered an original. Someday soon we hope to take advantage of that global recognition and release something new. Can’t say when. Have no details. 

Q. Will daybreak ever do anything worthwhile with this IP? Specifically getting a green light to do some real development work and create an Everquest remake with the same mechanics as the original plus 2 expansions updated graphically and from an audio perspective with consoles included and cross platform play?

Holly: We will definitely do something with the IP. A strict remake? Probably not. Will it embody the EQ spirit, most likely yes.

Q. With such an iconic IP will we ever see EQ3?

Holly: 😄

Q. Now that Blizzard is showing cracks in the armor, and the MMO space is super-dry, how about you announce right here that EQ3 is in production?

Holly: Another EQ game? 😊

 In an answer to a question on EQNext, Ed Hardin III (Lead Systems Designer) said 

One of the hardest lessons we learned from Landmark/Next was to not start publicity until we are certain the promise of the game can be realized. 

From that I think we can take it we won't be hearing anything about whatever Daybreak has cooking until they're almost ready to take it out of the oven. But something is definitely cooking!

Elsewhere in the AMA there's confirmation that the mobile project NantWorks was supposedly working on, using the EverQuest IP, is still ongoing. The EQ team has some involvement, presumably advisory, but no control over what the game turns out to be.

Q. Can you give us any details at all on EQ Mobile?

Alan VanCouvering :  I don't know if anyone here knows anything about it, but it's outside our control. 

Ed Hardin III: While we (as a company) will have input into what anyone else does with EverQuest on mobile devices, we (as individuals) aren’t going to be designing it.

Holly: They are in their early days and will tell you when they are ready and confident. We are definitely involved though.

Going back to EQNext and Landmark, the team's answers confirm what I've thought for a very long time were the reasons the game never got anywhere: it was beyond the technical capacity of the company to produce, at least within the budget they had to work with.

Q. Landmark seems like a huge setback (time & financially). I spent a good chunk of time "building" in that world, but once I realized it was overtaking EQ3 production completely, I abandoned it. My drive at the time was the hope of watching EQ3 be built. Is there any regret/animosity toward going the Landmark/Voxel direction?

Alan VanCouvering: Yes, Landmark/Next cost us, but if you don't try you never know what can be done. I don't think we really regret trying, just that it didn't work out.

Q. How much of EQ: Next was real and how much of it was smoke and mirrors?

Holly: EQ Next was real, but a long way from completion when we had to walk away from it. Very tough, but the right decision at the time. There’s mountains of great work that went into that game that won’t go to waste. We aren’t done with this franchise. Not by a long bowshot.

One thing that was asked repeatedly and was shot down in flames every time was the possibility of a "Remastered" version of EverQuest. Too expensive and the resources would be better spent on a new game. Couldn't agree more.

Other topics of note (to me, at least) were:

Reverting the notorious Freeport revamp for the TLE servers (they'd like to but too time-consuming).

What happened to the Quarm special event server? (Not as popular as expected and took more dev resources than the limited interest justified).

Why isn't there a PvP server? (there is and no-one plays on it (as Wilhelm always suspected)).

Why do they keep making expansions for EQ and EQ2 that no-one plays? (Lots of people buy them).

Did the then-team know what a disaster they had on their hands with the Gates of Discord expansion (oh, yes...).

Was Brad McQuaid actually any good as a designer? (He was and remains "a driving force", "an unstoppable force").

And to finish, a couple of short ones that deserve re-quoting in full:

Q. Any thoughts on Legends style TLP servers? Premium fee on top of regular sub, DBG gets additional funding, we get real GMs and regular events? (For those who missed it, Legends was a Premium server with a much higher subscription charge than the regular game)

Alan VanCouvering: Legends was a disaster in all possible ways. I highly doubt that enough people would actually want to pay as much as we would need to ask for to run a server like that.

Holly: What Alan said. Entitlement breeds demands that no dev team could realistically meet. Doesn’t mean we won’t offer premium-type stuff, but that server was super painful as a business model and play experience for a bunch of reasons.

And my favorite of all:

Q. Why does my Clockwork Rhino mount eat all my food?

Alan: There might be a gnome living inside it. 

Ed: I can’t say there isn’t a gnome.

There's a lot more in the full thing. I recommend reading it thoroughly if you have an interest in EQ or, indeed, in how Daybreak operates these days. And thanks again to Wilhelm for steering me in the general direction of this little goldmine. If it was reported or referenced anywhere else I didn't see it.

You Bring The Tar, I've Got The Feathers : GW2

Just shy of a year after launch Guild Wars 2 looks to be in good shape commercially. NCSoft's quarterly report in May described both box sales and microtransactions as "still very strong". The Nosy Gamer's invaluable if controversial Digital Dozen consistently shows GW2 second only to World of Warcraft in XFire logins. Anecdotally from my own observation in-game I'd say Yak's Bend has rarely been busier, with plenty of new players asking new player type questions in map chat and many familiar names I haven't seen for a while not just reappearing but sticking around.

That popularity, however, doesn't seem to be mirrored by the GW2 bloggers and commenters I read. Some have dropped out altogether while others still post but frequently grumble (guilty as charged). That might be just the insular nature of the little pond we all swim in, though. I took the trouble to click through Hunter's GW2 blogroll this morning, which is a list of blogs most of which I've never read or even heard. Some of them are shuttered or haven't posted for months but quite a few have posted recently in pretty positive tone.

Clearly GW2 is working very well for some and less well for others. Today I read an interview with the game's Head Writer Bobby Stein that goes no small way towards explaining why that might be. The full interview is here and it's well worth reading. As usual the subtext tells almost more than what's being said out there in the open. Here are a few highlights, with gloss:

"...with multiple teams producing thematically connected stories in short development cycles, it's often stressful. But now that we've gone through the motions a number of times, it's getting a little easier to manage."

Ironic understatement. Always one of my favorites. So are you managing it or aren't you? If not, when do you think you might get on top of things?

  "To put it into perspective, our first two Living World releases, Flame & Frost: Prelude and Flame & Frost: The Gathering Storm, had extremely short development cycles. The common misperception about these two releases is that there was supposed to be a huge narrative component to them when in reality they were meant to provide context for upcoming releases which would have much more gameplay and story. In essence, we were rolling out the Living World story in small phases while our tech and design were being solidified."

Testing in a live environment with players as the test subjects, in other words. I don't object in principle. I played five years on EQ2's Test server after all, but it had a population in double figures for most of that time. Paying players generally do not choose to play in unstable environments. But then, we're not paying, are we?

"I’m happy to say that our latest designs will go a long way in solving many of the usability and contextual issues that players are facing when trying to experience the Living World story."

I like the use of the future tense there and the flurry of adjectives and descriptive phrases setting limits on what might be achieved. Let's not over-promise or over-commit, eh? Still, Syp should be happy to hear a fix is incoming for at least some of the problems he so eloquently highlighted.

"We've had to rethink our methods of story delivery post-ship...I was not directly involved with the core Guild Wars 2 story, so I wasn’t privy to all the decisions and ideas that formed the final product at ship...Now that my team is actively writing story content, I’ve worked with people in various departments about the ways in which we present story to our players. We no longer use cinematic conversations for exposition."

I'm in charge now. All that stuff those other guys spent five years on? Dust in the wind. Although I tend to agree that those puppet-show cinematics never worked and no-one's going to miss them, it does make me wonder what else from the ancien regime may now have become that of which we no longer speak.

"world dynamic events are very good at conveying and reinforcing themes, but aren’t necessarily great for character development. They’re non-linear by nature in that they run independently of player progression within a linear story path..."

If you give people toys sometimes they don't play with them the way they're supposed to. For god's sake, sometimes they just kick the ball about and don't even keep score!

"Our players want to be entertained. If a story resonates with them, they’ll appreciate it. If it’s poorly executed or gets in the way of their adventuring and exploring, then they’ll have something to say about it. But story and characters provide the player with context and without them, the game is reduced to its core mechanics."

Fine. Only first off, much of The Living Story has been poorly executed and secondly, context is Background while the mechanics you're introducing are Foreground. Our adventuring and exploring trumps your narrative. Always. Or it should do.

 "We didn’t build a living game world just so people could kill virtual monsters. It’s there so they can live out their heroic fantasies, go on thrilling adventures with their friends, experience unusual situations, and do things that they can only dream of in real life."

Well I certainly can't vote over a hundred times for the same candidate in the same election in real life, I'll give you that. Not if I want to stay out of jail.

"Players will soon understand where these characters are headed, and how these seemingly disjointed events fit together and tie into the larger narrative. So while it may look like we’re playing catch-up, we’re actually ahead. It’s just hard for the average player to make sense of it all since we’re pacing it out in two-week increments and we don’t yet have a mechanism to log what’s past and what’s to come. That’s slated to change before the end of the year."

"Soon"! Great to see you again! By the end of the year it is then. Just another eight or ten bi-weekly episodes of The Living Story to go before it starts making sense. Can't wait. Oh, hang on...

"Any team that has to support a live game is under a lot of pressure to produce great content. We’re certainly feeling it since we absolutely must ship something every two weeks"

My wife isn't talking to me, my children call me "that man", the dog growls when he hears my key in the lock. Just so we get "something" out alternate Tuesdays. This can't go on...

"It’s sometimes hard to process complaints that each semi-monthly release isn’t a full-blown expansion."

What more do you want? Blood?! If I find out who said "Expansion" and "Living Story" in the same sentence, then you'll see blood!

"What we can do is look at what players are doing, analyze those metrics, and make informed decisions so that we’re providing them with more of what they like and less of what they don’t."

No! Seriously, NO! What you're doing is providing us with more of what we're doing, not more of what we like doing. It's not the same thing. Much though I personally disliked the Super Adventure Box, it was possibly the most popular single addition to the game ever. None of us had any idea it was coming. One of your people decided it would be worth doing and he did it and he was right. We need you to make new things, things we don't know we want yet, not just replicate more and more of the exact same stuff you can see us doing already.

"we don’t have the luxury of huge budgets and flexible release dates that we had before launch. In short, we’re forced to be more creative with less resources"

Not much has changed since February, then. I won't hold my breath for a new WvW map.

"Once our Living World tracking system is online, we will have solved the story presentation issues that are currently making it difficult for people to experience the story content in the proper order...In the long term, we’ll have a system to better support the Living World narrative."

Yes, end of the year. You said that already. Until then we'll just kill all the things, tick all the boxes, grab all the loot and forget about the story. You know that's what we're going to do anyway so there's really no hurry.

"Players will soon experience events in the Living World story that will tie things together in a way that is more relevant to their character. We also intend to provide a mechanism that will help players more easily find and experience the story content, though I can’t provide a specific release date for that feature."

Not the end of the year this time, then? That's too specific, is it? Soon come, as Peter Tosh would have said.

"I think it takes a lot of guts to comb through thousands of critical (and at times, somewhat snarky) posts about why a total stranger hates what you’ve spent years crafting."

I think if you're getting "thousands" of posts that say they "hate" what you've crafted you might want to consider the possibility of crafting something different next time, rather than crafting the same thing again and painting it a different color. Is that enough snark?

Taking my snark hat off (I kill and skin the snarks myself, I'll have you know, although I have a little man that makes them into hats for me) Bobby Stein comes over pretty well in the full interview. I'm sure he's doing the best he can. It must be a nightmare of a job, under-resourced, on a frenetic schedule, juggling the demands and competences of four separate teams. I bet he wishes he was working on a nice, behind-closed-doors, full NDA, done-when-it's-done Expansion instead.

I wish he was, too.