Overture: several actual horse neighing sounds are played while the actors sit and vape on the stage. One of them occasionally says “horse” but no one moves.
Prologue – Pamtree Horses Like Pamtree Songs: Two dozen grown adults walk out on stage in horse costumes and mumble lines about a specific kind of horses called “Pamtree Horses” which are mostly unique because they have to pay property taxes on tractors.
Rock You Like A Horse-icane: Two of the actors get into a staged fight that quickly turns into kissing while the rest of the ensemble has to hurry them off the stage.
Garblebarble Poopaloop the Condescending Horse: The lead singer of this song just says “no” and then does the worm for five minutes.
The Entirety Of Peter Gabriel’s “So” With No Changes: The album is played on a CD player in the center of the stage. The cast resumes vaping.
Dabstep Mapplerapple the Horse Who Can’t Be Bothered To Show Up For Bloody Rehearsal Who Also Has A Stupid Face: Andrew Lloyd Weber sings this song himself. There is no cast member named Dabstep Mapplerapple and everyone else looks faintly confused about what issues he’s working out here.
Pamtree Horses Like Pamtree Songs (Reprise): The horses decide that one of them gets to go to the glue factory for a factory tour because all of the tractors exploded.
What Are You Playing: The actor playing Garblebarble Poopaloop keys your car.
Bonus question: What game did you not play until well after it released that wound up becoming a favorite game?
​Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): Another Pokemon Go/Animal Crossing weekend, I hope. I’ve actually been flooded with paperwork and chores/errands, so after brief visits to my Animal Crossing, it ends up kind of sitting there most of the day. At least I finally got a flag I like, but Asheron’s Call players should check my twitter to see how they like the potential town theme I’m considering.
For the bonus question, there are so many games on that list: Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana… but the most relevant would have to be Star Wars Galaxies. I avoided it at launch because even though I loved Star Wars, most of the fans I knew who were going to play it were… not the kind of people I wanted to associate with. I played it for about a year, I think in 2008. I really fell in love with the mechanics, but the servers were ghost towns, which was probably the biggest reason I ended up quitting and feeling like I had missed out on so much.
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): Assuming we all keep feeling okay – this is the weekend my husband and I are gonna sit down and roll City of Heroes toons with our little kids to play together and actually teach them how to play instead of just explore Paragon Chat. Wish me luck.
There’s been a bunch of MMOs that I played around launch, thought nahhh, and then went back to a few years later after they’d been polished up a bit more and finally fell in love. City of Heroes would be one of them. Thought it was a mess at launch. City of Villains, and later AE, brought me back.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): Animal Crossing New Horizons continues to dominate the vast majority of my personal play time, but there are also continuing social event things for my guild in Final Fantasy XIV and perhaps a fresh character start in City of Heroes Homecoming in my future. I think, perhaps, the problem I’ve been having has been trying to recapture too much of the old Virtue server magic; it’s time I start with a wholly new character and make wholly new friends.
The Witcher 3 has been one of those games where I heard about it to the point of annoyance and not wanting to play it (protip: Telling me that I “must play this game” is a fast-track way for me to hate the game and get annoyed by you), but I did a quick bit of romping around and found enough to enjoy. Not enough to dive headfirst and go whole hog on it, mind you, but I can certainly appreciate the praise heaped upon it.
Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): I have to keep rebuilding Ishgard in FFXIV. I have to. Beyond that, I’m faintly tempted to see if I’m a bit more… into leveling an alt in World of Warcraft for a bit, and there are some single-player things to get into.
Most of the games that I’ve started playing and discovered a love for are games where I was there at the start, but it wasn’t until well after its release and completion that I discovered Saints Row the Third. That franchise is now one of my favorites of all time; it’s a perfect blend of over-the-top delirium and just perfectly timed humor directed at careful targets. It’s a joy.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): Behind the curve as usual, I just now got Path of Fire for Guild Wars 2, so I’m going to leap-frog across Heart of Thorns to tackle that first and unlock some mounties. Er, mounts. Actually, I’d be fine with either. I’m also doing some Wildermore questing in Lord of the Rings Online and scratching the walls of my house.
Tyler Edwards: I’m wrapping up the Delta Rising expansion content in Star Trek Online. It’s very much like its source material, Voyager. Not great, but not as bad as I’ve seen people make it out to be. I also started a new character in Wolcen; I’m trying out a ranged minion master build. I feel kinda bad for continuing to mindlessly grind dungeons in this game when I could be working my way through my gaming backlog, but the depth of the build system and the visceral satisfaction of the combat are such an addictive combo.
Bonus question: Two examples come to mind. The first is Mass Effect. I was a huge latecomer to that franchise, but it wound up being one of my all-time favorites. On the plus side, that meant I could get the deluxe edition of ME3 for like eight bucks. The other is more relevant to our neck of the woods: World of Warcraft. WoW came out during a period of my teen years where for various Real Life reasons I had stopped gaming altogether. I didn’t get around to joining WoW until about the time Ulduar came out.
Pierre, patron: My The Last of Us playthrough is still going on. I’m approaching the end of the game, and I must say that I’m getting used to the combat system and even appreciate it now. I first found combat very frustrating and unpleasant, but now I see how they contribute to generating a scary and stressful atmosphere and how they’re in fact contributing to making this game a masterpiece. As for the narrative part, it’s one of the best storytelling and acting I’ve ever seen in a video game. With part 2 being delayed indefinitely, I now have more than enough time to finish the game, and even finish its expansion, Left Behind.
I’m still training for my Braid speedrun. I also started playing an old adventure game made by The Brotherhood Studio, Stasis, as I wanted to play their most recent game, Beautiful Desolation, but I prefer to play their games chronologically, starting by the oldest one. I’ve also answered the call from Rimworld; I want to know what all the fuss is about with this sandbox, story-generating game. What a fool I am when you know how time-consuming this one is…
Finally, on the MMO front, The Elder Scrolls Online is on the menu, but time will most likely be lacking.
Bonus question: I had to think a lot for this week’s question but I found a very good example: Final Fantasy XI. I’m not sure it’s the only example but I didn’t find another one. The game launched in Japan in 2002 and in the US in 2003. I started playing mid-2006, and it was my first MMO. So basically, you can say that MMOs are games I started playing well after they started to become a thing, and they wound up becoming one of my favorite types of games. My next MMO of choice was EVE Online, which I also started playing very late after launch. Your turn MOP readers: WRUP this weekend? Stay safe, live long and prosper. Cheers!
Every Saturday, join the Massively OP community and staff for What Are You Playing, our roundup of what MMORPGs and other games we’re hoping to play this weekend (with a bonus question or two for our amusement). Tell us what you’re up to! Go off-topic! And don’t forget to have fun!
