#any mmo launch

[brbgensokyo]

not to be an old man but technologically and sociologically amazing things like MMOs becoming so natural that they've become wallpaper is honestly a shame. They're such bizzare constructs from both a subcultural and textual level

[blackbackedjackal]

GW2 is one of those games I've been playing for so long that it's just a comfort space for me. I love the game and I love talking about it, but you gotta push the hyperfixation button in my brain otherwise I'll hardly mention it.

[exeggcute]

the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators;  reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

[snapscube]

Hey Penny. Between you and a couple other sources, I've been getting really into FFXIV. There's no chance I'm going to be able to catch up before Dawntrail. I'm still doing post game ARR getting ready for Heavensward, but I'm still having a blast and have been bugging some friends to play with me, so thanks for getting me into a new hyperfixation I guess.

YEAAA im so glad to hear it! sincerely do not worry AT ALL about catching up before dawntrail. there's still gonna be a lot of new stuff once the expansion launches for u to enjoy like the visual update and the system changes to glamour! just keep taking the progression at ur own pace! :D you'll get there eventually and youll be glad you took ur time, trust me as someone who chose to take TWO YEARS to catch up to shadowbringers haha. it was so much slower than i had any reason to take it, but it was all worth it cause pacing myself out to my own taste allowed me to savor the journey. and the game really is ABOUT the journey. it's absolutely not one of those "the game begins at max level" kind of MMOs.

hope u continue to love it and that u can find some friendlies to play with too!!

[m0ckest]

🌏 Palia — Games I've been playing

Cozy & casual MMO set in a growing world full of lore

For PC & Nintendo Switch; always free

Playful character design, dialogue, & relationships (including romance)

Improve skills by fishing, foraging, mining, logging trees, catching bugs, hunting, farming, and building/decorating your home

No combat, few time restraints

Only sharing because I genuinely love it and I want others to possibly enjoy it too! The game just launched for Switch and there are some fun things happening:

Use my friend sign-up link* to join and get a free fruit basket item

Link your Palia account to your Switch game** to get a cute-ass mushroom outfit and some other stuff

Watch Twitch streams with drops enabled for some exclusive items

Feel free to ask me any questions if you're curious. Their discord is really helpful as well. Have fun, my friends (And feel free to add me as your friend! My username is m0ckest) 🥰

* I get literally nothing from this but some cute in-game items lol ** Note for Switch players: When you open the game for the first time on your Switch, make sure you link your Palia account when prompted. You can not link again if you skip the first time.

The developers have said that this will continue to be a free-to-play game. The only real-money purchases are for cutesy outfits. Nothing purchased with real-money will ever give gameplay advantages.

While Singularity 6 is a newer company formed by previous employees from large MMOs, it is still a big company; I want to be transparent that this isn't a tiny indie game.

That said, the developers are very transparent about game progress and have proven to be extremely receptive to player input. The game is in beta testing. Each update brings new content as well as fixes, and I've enjoyed every one!

[renaultmograine]

Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime left Blizzard because he was reportedly tired of fighting with former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, according to those who worked closely with him, the two leaders having butted heads for years regarding the future of Blizzard.

New details about Morhaime's 2018 departure and Blizzard's contentious relationship with Activision come via an excerpt from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier's upcoming book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment , which releases on October 8 (the same day Blizzard's first expansion for Diablo 4, Vessel of Hatred, launches).

For years, Morhaime attempted to keep Activision, which acquired Blizzard in 2007, at bay. That goal of keeping Blizzard insulated from outside Activision pressure became harder in 2013 when Blizzard canceled project Titan, an FPS MMO that had been intended to be the next World of Warcraft, according to Schreier.

After the project's cancellation, which cost Blizzard around $80 million, Kotick and Activision began to assert more control over Blizzard, including pushing Blizzard to hire a chief financial officer, Armin Zerza, to keep costs in check. Zerza just "kept talking about how to make as much money as possible," according to one former employee, and at one point suggested axing Blizzard's annual BlizzCon fan convention, confused as to why a project with such low profit margins was allowed to exist, according to Schreier's sources. Blizzard announced this year there would not be a BlizzCon 2024.

Morhaime continued to battle Kotick in the following years, defending Blizzard's need for customer service employees and the studio's cinematics team. Following a meeting of Activision, Blizzard, and King leaders focused around the theme of "One ABK," Morhaime feared Blizzard was losing its independence, according to Schreier. He wrote a lengthy email to Kotick in response, stating he believed "preserving Blizzard's culture and magic" was a necessity in order to attract and retain "the best creative talent in the world." He additionally said that it had been "increasingly hard for me to provide Blizzard leadership and staff confidence that Blizzard has a stable future."

In 2017, Morhaime submitted a resignation letter, but was persuaded at the time by Kotick and others to take it back. Following the One ABK meeting in the spring of 2018, Morhaime formally announced his departure that October, saying it was time for someone else to lead.

Blizzard's story would of course continue, but without the man that Schreier said many Blizzard staff worshiped. Morhaime went on in 2020 to found a new game studio and publisher, Dreamhaven. Blizzard, meanwhile, in 2021 found itself embroiled in controversy following an explosive state of California lawsuit that accused Activision Blizzard of systemic sexual misconduct and discrimination, eventually settling with the state in 2023 to the tune of $54 million. Morhaime said in a statement addressing the lawsuit that he was "ashamed."

"To the Blizzard women who experienced any of these things, I am extremely sorry that I failed you," Morhaime said.

In the wake of the lawsuit, Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, with Kotick stepping down as Activision Blizzard CEO in December 2023.

[yurikaxiv]

Happy 11th anniversary FFXIV! My husband and I began playing it in the 3rd closed beta in 2013 and wow it's been over 11 years now since launch. A lot of friends who started with us have pretty much retired from playing or are on their way to retirement. It can be pretty sad seeing everyone growing up and moving on while we're still grinding away. 😅

Admittedly I feel like this game keeps my mental sanity grounded (provided I avoid any difficult content and pug PFs lol.) It's nice to sometimes kick back and go off to grind some fates with just the two of us. My husband wasn't really into MMOs and I'm the one who's dragged him through a bunch of them but this is the only one that stuck for this long for both of us.

Just want to give a shout out and thanks to those few of you folks who like and reblog my little screenshots here. I've been moving my FFXIV stuff around between twitters, flickrs and instagrams but hoping I can finally settle here for the long term of the game. Compared to 2012-2013, Tumblr's gotten pretty chill so I like being in my quiet little corner here. 😙

[beesmygod]

im a third anon and i also genuinely like 76. it got a lot of honestly deserved bad press on launch for being broken and dumb, but they addressed all those issues and now it's unironically good good. also its got the least toxic mmo community I've ever been a part of also since the game incentivizes cooperation and punishes dickhead behavior

any mmo that punishes trolls sucks ass im not playing unless i can grief people

[p5x-theories]

What We Know About Bui

(last updated 9/24/24!)

A woman that Wonder plays an online game with, codename Bui, who uses the name “YUI” in their game. Her real name is eventually revealed in her Confidant to be Musubi Matsukata. She joins the team as a “Phantom Idol”, or cognitive teammate.

Her Japanese voice actress is Chika Anzai.

YUI is a Confidant of Wonder's, though exactly what the earliest point it becomes available at is unclear, as she was added in a later update. Her Confidant focuses on the video game she and Wonder play together, which seems to be an open-world MMO, and the farm they create in it together. She seems to have trouble connecting with people, but becomes close with Wonder. More information about YUI’s Confidant can be found here.

YUI also had a special animated promo video focused on her.

Wonder eventually meets her in the real world, and they go to Boom Bang Burger together. While Musubi at first worries that maybe this is weird, because he's a high schooler and she's an adult, and he probably wasn't expecting that (and she wasn't either), Wonder doesn't seem to mind hanging out with her. They get the biggest burger on the menu to split, and after they eat, Musubi mentions she's an employee at an IT firm in Shibuya. Her parents have a farm that's an hour away from the nearest train station, so her options were either becoming a farmer too, or moving to the city to work. She chose the latter, because she hates bugs, but she misses farming sometimes.

Her Confidant rewards speed up the growth rate of Wonder's garden plants in the real world, and eventually give him a chance to get seeds back upon harvesting them.

YUI is somewhat airheaded and excitable, but is extremely familiar with the game world. When Wonder first meets her, she offers him basically whatever amount of in-game money he wants for the free land he got as part of a new player promotion. Instead, he suggests they try sharing the land, and turn it into farmland, which YUI becomes very excited about.

Her overenthusiasm can be a bit overwhelming, especially when working with her. She gets a gigantic tanklike tractor for them to use to prepare the field, nearly loses control of the powerful water hose she uses to water their plants, and fires fertilizer at the plants as if launching a cannon. In the market area, Wonder encounters another person who says he used to know YUI, but her over-the-top behavior and ditzy personality pushed him away. YUI later acknowledges this happens to her sometimes when she interacts with people, and it seems to bother her, though she tries not to let that on too much.

YUI's also very distraught when their in-game fields are destroyed by pests, and doesn't log into the game for quite a while, leaving Wonder to tend the fields and drive off the pests himself. Her reactions heavily suggest she blames herself when something goes wrong, and doesn't deal well with problems that (at least at first glance) feel insurmountable. Her avoidance likely also ties into her impulsiveness- unsure what to do, she almost immediately decides to leave, without taking any time to consider alternatives. However, when she comes back and sees all of Wonder's hard work, she finds a new determination, suggesting she'll try to be better about this in the future.

For these reasons, she seems to really appreciate the protagonist sticking by her. He doesn't seem to have an in-game name, and doesn't want to give her his real name at first, so she calls him "Baron", and shares her troubles with him sometimes. She also seems to enjoy his willingness to try things in the game world, including indulging her farming excitement, and eventually asks if he'll meet "a friend of hers" at the Boom Bang Burger in Shibuya. Both YUI in-game and Musubi in the real world are insistent that they're not the same person, and refer to each other separately.

In the real world, Musubi is much more reserved and quiet, and generally seems tired. She mentions she often is too busy at work to eat dinner. She confirms that she doesn't have many friends ("and neither does YUI"), and that "YUI" really enjoys spending time with Wonder in the game. She seems to be a particular fan of potatoes, especially fries.

Bui's Persona Apseudes (based on one of the sea-nymph Nereids, with her name meaning ‘she who never lies’) is categorized as an Electric type, and resists Electric while being weak to Ice.

Apseudes is a Resist Persona, meaning she’s good at targeting single enemies, and her trait gives her a chance to follow up a teammate, after they do damage, with an electric attack that increases the damage of the next electric attack to hit the target. Her first electric attack skill hits one enemy and has a chance to shock them (if they're shocked already, the attack's damage is increased), her second electric attack skill hits all enemies and does extra damage to one of them, and her support skill buffs Bui's attack, and selects a teammate to be her "playmate". The next time her playmate uses a Persona attack skill, Bui automatically follows up, then increases the damage of her next two follow ups. Her passive skills cause her follow up attacks to do more damage to shocked enemies, and buff both Bui and her playmate's critical rate whenever she has a playmate.

In combat, her melee weapon is wind and fire wheels (or possibly chakrams), while her ranged weapon appears to be some kind of laser blaster. Her Highlight is shown from 1:42 - 1:51 in this video, and it buffs Bui's attack and specifically her follow up, and guarantees she'll follow up any Persona skill attacks for one round.

Her recommended card sets are 1) 4 of Wands (Change) + Page of Coins (Growth), 2) 4 of Coins (Power) + Page of Coins (Growth).

The game recommends teaming her up with 1) Closer and Riddle, 2) Moko.

[hecatine-writer]

Palia: The Ship is Half-Built and It's Already Sinking

So me and my girlfriend have been playing Palia kind of obsessively over the last week, only to discover many many issues with the game such as:

Despite being in seeming active development for about 3 years now the game is very bare bones in terms of content, an overly obnoxious in-game store, poorly implemented mechanics such as climbing (the amount of times I got stuck on the geometry or somehow faced into the cliff face is very annoying), I find the game fundamentally lacking and overly grindy.

That's all there is, it's almost as if they recognize the critical lack of content and try to make up for it by padding out all the content and making everything overly expensive.

My biggest issue with the game however is A) the community management or the lackluster quality of it (they seem more concerned with people criticising their monetization then bigotry) B) their unwillingness to listen to the community. It goes so far that many people from the Alpha have outright stated that many of the issues the playerbase is having now existed in the alpha.

Another concern I have is with their limited size they had less than 200 developers (which is very little for an MMO) and for some reason decided to layoff a portion of their worker when the beta was launched back in November. At the same time a month later, they launched the game on the Switch (which is unstable to say the least) but there's a substantial amount of people who would be into cozy games on that platform which tells me they wanted to tap into that market to make money.

Yet... why would I want to spend money on this game? I do not believe for a second that it will last long enough for it to be worth it when they actively try to crackdown on any less than positive feedback. Their unwillingness to listen, and complete hypocrisy on creating a "cozy environment", tells me that this game will crash and burn. Maybe I'll get to watch a fun retrospective about the little MMO that could, good Ol' Palia and its sad tale of greed and hubris.

My advice to any people working in Free To Play, consider stealing Digital Extreme's homework. They've been going strong for a decade now with Warframe. Also don't try to make an MMO with a fraction of the resources simply because you think the market you're going for is untapped.

[dare-to-dm]

Speaking of reading, I had a really cool library dream last night.

In the dream, my library launched a very involved summer reading program that came with an MMO. Basically, you'd fill out a questionnaire about your reading habits and what you like to read and what your reading aspirations are. And it would generate a list of books for you to read.

Then there would be quests and book clubs/discussions you could complete based on those books. Like, you'd make an avatar and join other readers in activities online. It was cool! My list was all sci fi stuff. Unfortunately, I woke up before getting to see any of the actual activities, but I thought it was a neat concept.

[steviewashere]

One of my biggest (and admittedly nerdier) fascinations/special interests is lost media. Doesn't matter the type of media; it could be a TV show, animated children's movie, a commercial that premiered once and was subsequently vaulted, a religious show on a local public broadcasting channel, a misprint copy of a book, etc. etc.

I just love it all. Anyway. I want to share a lost media thing of my own that I remember interacting with at one point in my childhood, but has little to no attention on it. More on it below the cut, if you're interested.

If you were a kid (fuck it, any age) in the late '90s and into the 2000s/early 2010s specifically, you might've had one of these:

This is a Baby Bottle Pop. They are a sucker/sugar combo candy. Basically acting similar to FunDip; you suck on the lollipop top (the part that looks like the nipple for a baby bottle) and then dip it inside the bottle, where there's flavored sugar. Typically, the sugar is flavored something like strawberry or blue raspberry, something fruity. These are still produced; although, I haven't seen them on a grocery store shelf in years—seems like they're sold at special confectionary stores in malls now, like Lolli & Pops, but I haven't seen them next to Kit-Kats at the checkout stand since I was a kid.

Anyway.

Back in the early 2010s, Baby Bottle Pop had this promotional thing going on. Where, if you bought one of these candies, you'd be given an exclusive online code. (The cultural zeitgeist of late 2000s/early 2010s internet.) The online code gave you access to this MMO game, much like other exclusive online codes on products at the time—functionally similar to Webkinz, though you weren't redeeming a virtual pet to take care of.

You'd make an account via Baby Bottle Pop's website, babybottlepop.com, once you had access to the code. You needed a code from a purchased product in order to get in. (If the product wasn't purchased and you tried to use the code, it would be immediately invalidated as it hadn't been activated. Y'know, think of it as an inactive gift card). (Also, this is what really separated BBP's MMO from other advertised children's MMOs. Webkinz, you didn't have to purchase a pet in order to play, but it was cooler if you did. BBP required that you purchased a product or you couldn't play. Shitty, I know.)

Once in the game, you'd design an avatar that looked exactly like a baby, and then you'd have access to mini games, other player's avatars, and a point and click free roam world (highly similar to how Club Penguin functioned).

There is one commercial that I found from the Baby Bottle Pop campaign I'm thinking of. It's circa 2012, advertising the candy (of course) and then telling you that if you redeemed the code given to you, you could make what they called a "Crazy Baby."

That's it. It's a fifteen second commercial. The live action kids turn into Crazy Baby counterparts, the art style similar to that of the game. Featuring them complimenting each other on the way they eat their Baby Bottle Pops.

And, also, I don't even know if this commercial is advertising the MMO. It could just be advertising the exclusivity of making an online avatar. This commercial mentions nothing about roaming around a virtual world and making friends with other Crazy Baby players. But since it advertises something that could be similar or even exact to what I'm talking about, I'm bringing it up.

The only things I've found that mention or are on the same lines as this game/avatar creation are one article from 2008 (when the website first launched, I'm assuming?), this commercial, a post made on the r/LostMedia subreddit, and a singular twenty-five minute YouTube gameplay video.

Speaking of the gameplay video, it's from user, Crawler929. It's the only gameplay video I found. It's the only one other people have even mentioned. And while I'm a little skeptical of the commercial I linked, it's worth noting that this gameplay video and that commercial are from the same year, 2012. It's highly likely that those things are connected. Though, there was a promo campaign for another online game called Baby Bottle Pop Message in a Bottle from the late 2000s—probably 2009, as that is the posting year from the person who shared it. (And considering how the main child actress looks similar to Hannah Montana, the character from the show of the same name that was on air at the time, this year could be accurate).

Visiting the BBP website on the Internet Archive via the Wayback Machine is basically one huge error. You'll reach a turquoise and orange-accented screen with a load up bar with the word "Ruffle" on it, and then be met with a black screen. Scrolling up and down on the black screen leads you nowhere, it's basically just a void.

There's nothing else. No other part of this MMO shows up on the internet. The original site no longer exists, now replaced with something called Candy Mania. I'm assuming BBP is owned by the same company or is made by the same manufacturer as Push Pop, as Push Pop has a game on this site. BBP, though? There's barely anything, possibly nothing.

Honestly, I just wanted to share this because it's kinda crazy and kinda sad that stuff like this is just gone. But it's worth saying, too, that this game will most likely never exist again or be resurfaced. Games like this made for promotional events for products never last. They're around for like a year and then get shut down when the event is over. It's sad, but true.

These games also don't have the same sort of fanbases as other big MMOs for kids did at the time. They won't be remade like Club Penguin, ToonTown, or even The Pirates of The Caribbean Online were. Lost to time and also conglomerate company greed.

Anyway, this is just some nerd stuff that I'm into. And I have so many other lost media stories that I like talking about, but this is the only one that I actually have ever interacted with. A game I never thought I'd lose.

Protect all media types and archives, as you never know what could become lost media next.

[diaphin93]

Some of my thoughts on Dawntrail

Soft spoilers, as far as impressions go without any explicit details.

So I'm still not fully finished with Dawntrails MSQ but I have to say, the quality of the story this time around is really such a mixed bag. The good moments are fairly good and that there are interesting ideas, but then the plot has this seeming obsession with killing all tension and stakes the moment they are bought up. Every single time when shit seems to hit the fan, the writers seem to be nearly obsessed to backpedal and force into us yet another sightseeing tour or slice of life shit, where it just ruins all excitement. And it all just feels to wishi washi, like everyone has to be perfectly nice and understanding towards their antagonists and we can never call out or hate somebody for doing legitimately monstrous stuff that is just legitimately pure evil no matter how you frame it.

Honestly, I already felt like there was some dip in quality even as far as late Shadowbringers, with things getting rushed like crazy and too many plotlines being hastily resolved and therefore being dead for the future, but Dawntrail is so far a massive drop in writing. I never felt this obviously railroaded by the MSQ. Also FF14 is one of the most successful MMO's of all time, why is there no increase in the quantity of content we get with the expansion launch and it in fact feels like we get less and less actual gameplay content inside the MSQ.

Also class balance is a hugh big hit or mess. Generally the majority of changes are just taked in nuffing burgers that just worsen the 2 minute meta while loading more and more damage into 2 minute cooldowns and some classes just feel bad and underdeveloped. Reaper doesn't need a communio combo action, it needs something more interesting to do inbetween Shroud uses. And Dark Knight feels actively the worst it has ever been, they already castrated every unique element of it with Shadowbringers and left it a shallow Warrior clone and with the decrease of OGCD's and manag regen, it basically lost the only thing that it had going for it, which was the double weaver heavy burst.

[azerothtravel]

Secret Origin

I'm just an old time Warcraft nerd who's too dumb to quit. My first WC game was Warcraft II, when I was in high school. I gravitated toward the Horde because they were funnier. I liked the game, but wasn't too good at it. Jump ahead to the release of Warcraft III, it's a whole other thing. I read all the lore in the huge manual. I was completely taken with the concept of orcs as once noble, tragic victims trying to make their way in the world and atone for their crimes. A friend of mine had me read some of the novels. I was suddenly way, way into the setting. Plus, I knew a lot of people who played WC3. I enjoyed the Orgrimmar campaign in Frozen Throne with no idea it was more or less a test run for WoW.

But I didn't like MMOs. I wasn't sure about WoW. Then I got into the beta. I hauled my whole-ass desktop over to the house of the same friend who loaned me those books, and we were up til 4am downloading the client and then getting started. Gormorash the orc warrior was born that night (And so was Skarsnik the troll hunter, but he lost interest after BC). I was immediately sold. Running around Azeroth at ground level, full of detail from the RTS games, was a ton of fun. Gormorash went on many strange adventures in beta, like a hilariously inept "raid" on Westfall where half our group died before we got there and none of us were even level 60.

Then Gormorash was rebooted on Argent Dawn US when the game launched, a member of <Flaming Skull Clan> with several other friends of mine.

By middle 2005, almost literally everyone I knew played WoW. My oldest friends, friends from college, friends from the internet, relatives. Basically 2 friends and my parents were the only people not playing. Friends of mine who didn't know each other met and bonded through WoW. It was a glorious time.

By the end of 2006, I'd been through 2 guild collapses and one server move, as they opened up free transfers to Eitrigg and my friends all took it. I wasn't sure I'd keep playing. The novelty had worn off for most of my friends. I wasn't that into raiding, and doing Arathi Basin over and over was only so interesting (Gormorash just lived in Hammerfall for like a year). I was maybe gonna quit. And then, in early 2007, my brother found 2 Collector's Editions of BC just sitting on a shelf in a store, and asked if I wanted one. I had the vanilla CE, but I'd missed BC when they were released, and didn't buy BC at all. He bought them and shipped me one, and we leveled 60-70 together. It was a lot of fun.

Along the way, I started a new guild with some online friends, and Gormorash is still in it. He's never missed an expansion. Most people have fallen off the wagon. Our guild typically only has 3 active members at any given time these days, but that's fine with me. Sometimes a couple people come back for major content. It was lore that got me into all this, and that remains my primary motivator for playing. My endgame is more PvP and leveling alts than raiding, but the game has literally never supported those 2 things better than right now (2023), so that's pretty good. I still have a good time. And that's why I have hundreds of screenshots to choose from stretching from the 2004 open beta to just a few days ago to post on this blog. With the sad exception of most of 2006, lost in a hard drive failure, I have a comprehensive collection of every screenshot I ever took, and that's what this blog is all about.

I've made a few other Gormorashes on other servers, but rarely leveled them very far. Someone out there made a Gormorash that isn't me, a fact that shocked me when I found out. Who stole my name? Was it you? I have characters of every race on both factions, but still tend to prefer Horde. If you see me, say hello!

Gormorash is an orc warrior who came of age in the camps. With his brother, Rugurrash, he's led a guild of adventures for many years, with trusty allies Snarfner, Vallkillmore and Canon rounding out the core group. His hair's started to gray after saving the world 8 or 9 times, traveling through space and time and the realms of death, but he's still out there, still exploring, still getting into trouble and mostly getting back out of it. He's an alchemist and herbalist in his spare time, and has a completely unmanageable collection of pets. He is really, really tired of being forced to fight his own Warchief, and really hopes the gods don't lean on that already very tired trope again in the future.

[yoiku]

I really don't know how I feel about going back to FFXIV with DT dropping soon. (putting this under a read more due to some depression talk)

I still very much love the game in my mind and have kept up with what i think is the majority of news, but I have not logged in since jan/feb of 2022. Basically maxed out my crafting&gathering professions after endwalker main story and since then I haven't been able to bring myself to resub. Well, For a lot of it I also haven't had the time or money either but i have been thinking the entire time that i'll go back after the initial rush with Dawntrail launch has calmed down. Now I don't know anymore. As much as I loved the conclusion of thing with endwalker, I think I played it at a very bad time and my mind keeps connecting the game to that time now. I was suicidal around the time EW launched and the story resonated a bit too much with me at the time, so much so that I doubt I'll ever be able to replay it. I loved it but it also became what feels like a straight link to how bad i felt about myself and life while i was playing through it. And i think because of how anxious I was at the time as well really did a number on my already frail self-esteem when it comes to doing any kind of group gaming. The trust system is handy for that but I would rather play mmos with people than npcs. At the same time just the thought of queueing to a roulette turns my stomach a little too much. So I'm feeling pretty conflicted. DT seems like a nice fresh and a lighter start before likely delving into another heart wrenching story arc later, so part of me is still looking forward to try it. At the same time I feel like going back to the game might make me feel worse again. Part of me wants to roll a new character entirely but I know I don't have the time or will power for that again. I miss having any kind of social gaming circle to be an active part of. Well, I miss having more social interaction in my life in general but I'm too afraid of feeling like I'm alone in a group again. that sucks even more than just being alone as it is when you got the ol' depresso stuck in your brain. I dunno, maybe I need to get therapy before I give any of that a try again. (at least the progress on that has been moving along this year) I definitely feel like this is entirely a me problem after all. How I wish they sold self-esteem or confidence somewhere, I still haven't figured out how to find any of that within myself.

[g-hua]

Wuthering Waves is pretty nice so far. I really like the plot, the lore, the world, the characters, and their design. The combat looks and feels really nice. I'm fully aware that it's a Genshin clone, but it's the first Genshin clone that I've tried so far that managed to keep me interested.

The gacha system is also less unforgiving (although it's still a gacha system and inherently predatory, so I hope it doesn't lul anyone into overspending on it just because it's slightly more player friendly).

I can't really add any positives that other people haven't already mentioned over and over again. It's actually really fun and pleasant looking with an interesting plot.

But...

1. It's 2024. Why does the android version not have controller support...? Why do mobile developers keep doing this...? Specially Chinese mobile developers, Android based OSs absolutely crush iOS in China due to affordability (and other more shady marketing reasons framed as nationalism). Are they unaware that people use mobile controllers like the kishi or a Bluetooth one? My boyfriend gave me a kishi ages ago for Christmas and I rarely get to use it properly outside of ported Indies... I always have to use Mantis Gamepad, and it's just not the same because I'll still have to use the touchscreen for menu stuff a lot... I usually use my Xbox controller for my chromebook tablet too... Why are these mobile games always so mobile player unfriendly? The lack of controller support makes the platforming and similar activities (like, for example, time trials) so frustrating that I'm ignoring them all... Maybe I'm spoiled by my switch, playing games on it always feels so much more comfortable and fun (that... was a gift from the boyfriend too... I feel like I'm just spoiled in general now).

2. The disconnects, the +200 and +300 ping, the random once in a full moon clipping of character's design elements (like Rover's ponytail, the odd glitch once in a decade... The game feels like they almost managed to polish it fully but ran out of time at the last moment... It's not a big deal at all but it's enough to notice that they don't have the same resources as mihoyo. I don't mean this in a "mihoyo best company" kind of way because no, definitely not, but more in a way where if this company wants to compete with them they need to compensate for their lack of resources with more care for their project. I tried their previous game, Punishing Gray Raven, and I feel like more care was put into it. Maybe they just wanted to rush this one out as quickly as possible to increase profits before people got over games like this or because they were afraid the market got suddenly saturated because they weren't quick enough? The aesthetic things like the clipping and the rare glitch don't bother me, but... The ping and the disconnects... It always disappoints me when that happens during game launches... It demotivates me to play a lot... I used to play MMORPGs on US servers while being in the EU back in 2014/15 and had fewer ping problems... The companies that made the MMOs I played didn't have the resources that Kuro Games has and still managed...

(Edit: I just realised that might sound confusing, I'm playing in the EU server. What I meant was that I had less ping issues playing games on a server that wasn't meant for me back then than I do playing this on a server that is meant for me.)

Putting those two together is shooting yourself in the foot... If a player is already dealing with ping spikes and disconnects and you make aspects of the game that require precision more frustrating due to the lack of controller support... How is the player supposed to become invested in the game? They will get frustrated and go play something else until the frustration passes. They won't feel comfortable investing money into the game because they aren't immersed in it properly. I understand that these companies don't care about the casual player all that much (much less the F2P player) and that most of their revenue comes from the whale players, but this will push possible whales away too... That's mostly why I don't get decisions and mistakes like this... It's in the own company's best interest to fix these things...