Thanksgiving Day in the US is usually a day focused on what one ends up eating (turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, etc). As someone who is also of Asian (Japanese) ancestry, there were also twists on that (teriyaki beef, fish/shrimp tempura, soba, etc). In recent years though, we (my family) slowly moved away from that day of gluttony. For myself and especially during those years pre-COVID when I spent part of the year in the US, and part of it in Japan, I came to not missing this particular “tradition” since it’s not something that is celebrated officially there (though many know of it and some folks sort of partake it in by ordering KFC when in the company of an ex-pat).
Thus for the past couple of years, Thanksgiving Day has been like any other day when it comes to the food part. What we did put more stock in though is with regards to what we are actually thankful for (like having the basic necessities, having the friends and family we have, having the opportunity to do the things we personally enjoy, etc). Like I am thankful for being able to “stream of conscience” post on this blog about the games I am fortunate enough to play. While a lot of these games have their issues, I am thankful they exist for me to be able to experience the good and the bad.
As much as ArcheAge (and all of its publishers) has had problems, it’s one of the still in service games that I still find areas of enjoyment in (again, that’s primarily the housing system). As of this writing, it’s just a week until legacy ArcheAge and ArcheAge Unchained are merged together (the latter effectively disappears since the business model will be the legacy one with all of its blatant “p2w” cash shop). Yes, I realistically know it’s also on borrowed time, which is why I am more so thankful to be able to continue logging in. Many of us who are gamers (doesn’t matter if you are hardcore or casual), often like to call these online games “dead”, when they are still in active service. But it’s when they are actually shutdown/sunset, that we realize how we can never experience that game again (unless an emulator is created, or by some chance, official server binaries/files are leaked).
To this very day, I still get the occasional comment on some of my Devilian videos (Memory of Devilian playlist) by former players; some who may have complained and quit, but found they still miss the game (warts and all). There’s still more game footage I’ve yet to upload (part of that was due to the travel restrictions during COVID where I had that data in Japan). This is a game I would’ve been happy to just see a simple emulator for, but that has never come to pass (and there have been no official server files leaked). Myself, I came to the conclusion a long time ago, that there will never be the perfect game that checks off all the boxes. While a lot of my postings tend to focus on what I personally find unenjoyable in the games I do play, I do also try to note the parts that I find good. So for most of those games, I will still play them and focus on the parts that I enjoy (being appreciative/thankful in the process that this opportunity exists in the first place). And yes, there are a few titles that just stop fitting the bill for me (like Lost Ark).
There are other titles from the not so distant past that occasionally come to mind. Just the other day, I was wondering what the state of MU Legend was. Back in 2019, the service was transferred from Webzen (the developer and owner of the MU IP), to Valofe. The last time I ran the game was shortly after the migration had taken place. MU Legend just didn’t jive with me though. The graphics (the game world and models) were average, character/mount movements and animations were “stiff”, the combat was so-so; for me, large parts of the game felt like an average attempt as a follow up to the original MU (which Webzen still operates). There were some good things in it though; it had a really good returning player system for example, and it’s capture/control guild wars system was probably one of the fun parts when it came to the guild competition aspect.
As for MU Legend, I learned in the process that it had shutdown earlier this year (back in May). According to Valofe, it’s supposed to be temporary (they called it both a service termination AND service reorganization while they “revamp” it). That of course would entail paying Webzen to make changes to the game (which pretty much went into straight maintenance mode once they handed off the publishing to Valofe). I had to find that announcement on the remnants of their Steam page since Valofe wiped all existence of the game from their VFUN portal. It’s also been 6-months since those announcements; a good sign this isn’t actually coming back, or if it does, Webzen was somehow convinced to turn this into an NFT-filled cash grab. I do feel bad for those players who enjoyed it until the end though. The point of this again, is to highlight how we should be thankful when the online games we enjoy (even if it is not all of it), are still accessible. I know there is a leak of the Japanese server files (unsure what version) that some have successfully got working; if I were into the game, I would probably try to set it up.
It’s also why I am really thankful this year, that there are several leaked official server versions for TERA PC. Without any of those, there would be no way to experience 95%+ of the game today on PC (since the only thing that had existed prior, was a partially completed emulator of the TERA Rising patch) except on console. This really stuck in my mind in the days leading up to this Thanksgiving day since I was back to playing around with it (having put it aside for the past year); that was spurred on by chance when I happened to check back in on RageZone, and found that the TERA v71.03 official server files from EME had just been released. Downloading and setting it all up, brought back the memories of the previous year (wanting to have my own working offline setup before the official closure such that the adventures would continue in what I call TERA Offline). Seeing the old skywhale (not the repurposed one used for the Guardian Legion aerial mission which was released in a subsequent patch) cruising over the skies of Val Aureum and off the coast of the Velika Outskirts, brought back a flood of nostalgia. This was something small I could experience (again) in the actual game world. It also reminded of a time when that game world was decently populated (since I was now viewing them from an offline setup with just myself in that game world). And since this was just a few weeks (at the time) before Thanksgiving, it was not lost on me of how thankful I was that any of this even exists (because official server file leaks are extremely rare, and we have FOUR widely available ones for TERA PC; v71.03, v92.03, v92.04, and v100.02).
I know that it seems strange to have this fixation of what was the past, but as I’ve noted before, there’s something different with how these older titles were originally designed and written. Most of todays newer games, look great graphically (and have a lot more general refinement to them), but they always tend to give off this feeling that they were always being designed first and foremost for their monetization systems. Sure, these online titles always had that aspect; the point I am trying to get at is that more recent ones (especially ones released after 2015), were designed to not only to generate recurring revenues, but to also boost the key metrics utilized in the developer/publisher contracts (where it is left up to the publisher to figure out ways to utilize those to their advantage/to meet the obligations demanded by the developer/IP owner).
It’s why Lost Ark (despite it having its development started in the same time frame as other games that I ended up enjoying a whole lot more) is a turn off for me since it’s not just the item level treadmill; it’s also the original release design (with all of its intentional designed time sinks including the slow loading screens you have to continually go through; only just recently was the Ocean Liner mechanic finally changed to be instant teleport to locations). Unfortunately, there’s a lot more of that including the animation shown after completing things like guardian raids (they should be skippable or have an option to disable it when not in a party), the slow animations when climbing or traversing a crossing, the inability to just hone an item in one go depending on the amount of materials you have, etc. The game even has one of the slowest loading (from launch) to character selection lobby and it’s not completely due to EAC (since even the KR STOVE version during the OBT which used Game Guard, took forever to launch). Yes, a lot of the other QoL stuff including the roster system, are great. But it’s offset more by the rest of the design where I find the game unenjoyable (and why it falls into the same category that I have games like MU Legend in despite it being way more refined/polished in terms of graphics and combat; but that aspect is only a part of what makes the actual experience fun/memorable to me).
So this little tidbit regarding Lost Ark, is just the flip side of this entire op-ed since what I am thankful for are the older games that were designed with more naive and purer intentions at least initially. That’s why OG TERA players have fond memories of the game during its initial launch schedule (even though I view some of the reasons as not being positives like the slower/more difficult mob grind to level up which can be replicated by just not upgrading/using underleveled gear). The same goes for OG ArcheAge where players always bring up the time during closed beta or pre-3.0 builds (but conveniently forget about the awful parts like regrading/gear breaking failure mechanics). The point is that the early versions of those MMO’s that were released in that 2010-2014 timeframe, had a very different developer/designer mindset (as most of those folks were players from that older school 80’s-90’s era; way before the big money/corporate suits/bean counters took over the gaming industry). So that’s another thing I am thankful for when wearing my gaming hat; to have experienced that era of what I call the golden age of gaming when a lot of those early games, were written by enthusiasts).
