Massively Overthinking: The best of PAX East and GDC in 2018

By
Bree Royce
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The past couple of weeks has been wild as we dispatched writers to GDC in San Francisco and PAX East in Boston to gather up and bring back everything they could on the MMORPGs large and small on the spring convention circuit. In fact, as I type this, we’ve got Brendan in Reykjavik for EVE Fanfest too! So for this week’s Overthinking, we’re rounding up our coverage and then reflecting on the best and worst as we pick out what most excites, surprises, and disappoints us: First the roundups, then our thoughts. Read on!

PAX EAST 2018

GDC 2018

​Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): I don’t know about the “worst” from PAX East, but I was a bit disappointed that Elder Scrolls Online didn’t wow Eliot either, but happy to hear I wasn’t crazy for getting that “so it’s ESO but more” feeling. I did enjoy hearing about Pantheon, especially as I’m playing kind of a throw-back MMO myself at the moment. Eliot’s coverage, for me, is exactly why I’ve been rolling my eyes at most MMO coverage by non-MMO sites: We catch details the other guys don’t, and that allows our writers to place things in a context that our readers (and ourselves!) can appreciate. I feel like I’ve moved away from the scenarios Eliot experienced, but in the hands of non-MMO specialist, there could have been major hype or major disappointment. The details were things simply watching a stream might not have highlighted because Eliot let us into (the safe part of) his head and hit the notes I hope resonated with you all as well.

Oh, and his interview with Feathers. That’s Hall of Fame stuff right there.

For GDC, I’ll tell you about the worst: nothing you saw me write about! GDC was awesome because I often got to talk to developers instead of just company reps. When the latter were sent out, I often had my time wasted. Admittedly, though, we generally found someone who understands that I’m not being sent out to grab swag and hype games, so we’d get a crack at someone higher up, and I really respect those teams.

As for what I thought was the best? The business stuff! The game specific stuff was awesome, and I got to talk to some great developers who I really hope break the industry into something better. However, the panels and industry interviews often talked about the meta-context of our hobby. The good, the bad, the potential improvements, the niche stuff the mass (gaming) media ignores… things that should give any gamer not waist-high in the industry or secluded fandoms reassurance that our hobby won’t just be flashing lights and gamble boxes in the future. Even better was that some commenters asked us to cover that kind of stuff. I’ve never been more proud of you guys than when I see ya’ll looking through articles even the experts expect you to ignore. You wowed people, and I’m so glad I had the chance to present that to you fine folks!

(You can’t see it, but I’m bowing as low as I can right now).

Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): Man, I love con season, and I also can’t wait for it to be over. The peeps who go to them and work them are real heroes because as Feathers can attest, it’s really not that fun – it’s a job.

I know Eliot didn’t have the most enjoyable experience at PAX, but he brought home such great stuff. For example, the fact that he came away impressed with both Pantheon and Ashes of Creation, about which I’ve had more than my fair share of doubt, actually filled me with hope that they will actually 1) happen and 2) work. Ship of Heroes continues to impress me with how fast the team is getting the game playable too. SOH and Ashes in particular really haven’t been in production very long and they’re showing at cons. This makes me happy!

GDC is a totally different beast, much more meta – in fact, we hadn’t been to a GDC in probably four or five years or so until Andrew piped up and volunteered for it, chiefly because there hasn’t been much MMORPG content, but he made it work! Out of that one, I was happiest to see the first efforts toward industry unionization, the academic work on the trust spectrum, and the epic Ultima Online panel. My first MMO love!

Disappointments? Probably the fact that Elder Scrolls Online didn’t bring a flashier demo to show off what’s probably going to wind up one of the top two expansions of the year; I wanted them to have a much bigger showing. I also came away from the GDC pieces much more worried about SpatialOS than I already was and deeply, deeply concerned about the somewhat flippant way data scientists are helping the bean counters wring the life out of the industry.

Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): My feelings on our recent event coverage is screwy, just because… well, I was on the floor for PAX East, and a lot of the things I saw were the same things or similar to what Andrew saw, thus meaning that we hit a lot of overlap. However, I feel pretty confident in saying that the game I’m most interested in out of the lineup of “coming soon” stuff is still Rend; I was really impressed by the title when I first saw it and remain impressed by it. Most of the more classic MMO stuff either covers games I already play or games that I can respect but are meant to solve problems I don’t have.

Unless I can mention that it’s hard to be excited for anything after a two-hour drive becomes three and a half hours because of traffic which exists for basically no reason well outside of rush hour.

You know what, I’ll just go with “hooray, I met Yoko Taro at PAX East.” That’s exciting for me.

Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): I was truly heartened to see both many and varied MMORPGs and other online titles showing up, from the big boys like FFXIV and World of Warcraft to smaller indie fare like Ship of Heroes and Pantheon. Major props to Eliot and Andrew for working their butts off to cover all of this and bring us back reports that we can read in luxury without having our feet fall off in the process.

My most positive impression from reading through the pieces is just how many “pleasant surprises” there were in the bunch. Even if I don’t always agree with the tone or direction of certain projects, I do want MMOs to succeed and to cultivate more variety. So yay for Ashes of Creation achieving solid combat, Pantheon successfully bringing back that old gameplay feel that it wanted, seeing Legends of Aria leap forward in quality, hearing Ship of Heroes’ enthusiasm, and of course, getting the announcement of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth’s launch date.

Sure, I wish more games and studios could have been there. Trion is having a stellar year with lots of interesting news, but it was at GDC and not PAX. But I think we got a fantastic amount of reports that might give some players hope for the future.

Your turn!

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