• Warhammer Online (WAR)
• Age of Conan (AoC)

The developers for those games make the mistake of over-promising and under-delivering, a cardinal sin for any business.

EA Mythic set the expectation that WAR would launch with 24 classes and 6 capital cities, but shortly before launch they cut 4 classes and 4 cities. The game client was unstable (multiple CTDs a night for me even a year after launch) and the servers simply couldn’t handle mass RVR without crashing or lagging severely. The “lakes” RVR while leveling was one of the most enjoyable PVP experience I’ve ever had, but the game fell down at endgame in T4. A game that hyped RVR couldn’t handle it.

I didn’t play AoC, but I kept tabs on the community. Funcom set the expectation that AoC would ship with DirectX 10 support – it was written on the box – but DX 10 wasn’t there until 6 months post launch. The game in Beta had serious performance issues and bugs, and Funcom unwisely drew attention to a “miracle” patch right before launch. It’s like saying “we’ve done a crappy job but finally got our act together, really!” Gamers loved the leveling experience from 1-20, but unfortunately the content team did not maintain that standard of quality from 21 to endgame. Rumor was that the writers across leveling zones had little or no interaction.

After WAR, in 2009 and 2010 I played several other “new” games to the Western market: Aion and Allods Online (AO). Aion’s grindfest killed my interest before I even reached level cap. AO had a terrific Beta experience go into the toilet when the game developer implemented a Death Penalty mechanic that basically made the F2P game a P2P game. I stuck with AO as paying to play wasn’t an issue for me, but I eventually quit due to the lack of appealing endgame content.

The failures of these MMORPGs unfortunately coincided with the incredible surge in growth and popularity of Facebook and Social Gaming. Money was being funneled into Social Games for obvious reasons, as I wrote in that Jan 2010 article. I grew increasingly concerned that developers would lose the financial backing to publish new MMORPGs, which typically cost tens of millions of dollars to launch. All any executive or VC had to do was point at the high cost and high failure rate to say it wasn’t be worth the risk. The MMORPG market was facing a vicious cycle, whereas Social Gaming was in a virtuous cycle of wildfire growth.

I went back to the safe haven of WoW in May 2010 after hearing that much of the tedious grinding in WoW had been removed. I enjoyed the latter parts of WotLK and then Cataclysm, which finally brought back meaningful challenge in PVE. Although as Josh “Lore” Allen recently pointed out to me, I am in the 1% who wanted things to not be faceroll, and the other 99% of the population had gotten used to the faceroll joke that was WotLK Heroic content.

While Cataclysm was my favorite WoW expansion, by mid February I was restless / bored with it. A fellow gamer, Castorcato, sent me a link to the talent calculator for a game I hadn’t heard of. RIFT. Looking at the talent calculator for an hour sold me on trying the game. Castorcato said that RIFT in Beta felt like the good things from WAR again, and I got very excited.

RIFT’s launch was the smoothest that I’d ever seen for an MMORPG. It blew me away. The game had bugs of course, but the level of polish was phenomenal, so it was able to meet the “is this as polished as WoW” standard question from the gamer community.

At WonderCon 2011, I asked a panel with Scott Hartsman (Exec Producer, RIFT), Dirk Metzger (VP Publishing, Zentia), and Nick Huggett (Customer Experience Manager, Runes of Magic) about the viability of the MMORPG market given the past couple years and their responses were highly encouraging. I also spoke with Scott after the panel about how Trion was able to launch a AAA-quality MMORPG.

As you may know, I’ve been critical of RIFT’s 1.5 and 1.6 patches – IMO they’ve derailed the great progress being made for PVP from 1.0 -> 1.4. But there is no denying that Trion has shown that AAA-quality launches of new games are doable, with the right mindset and execution. Trion has also brought a healthy amount of innovation to the MMORPG market – in particular with RIFT’s superb spec system and the game’s integration with social media.

So we started 2011 with a bang with RIFT, but that isn’t the end of the story.

EA BioWare is launching SWTOR later this month. I started researching SWTOR once I saw what was coming in RIFT 1.5 to determine whether it was a viable option for me. Long story short, SWTOR has greatly exceeded my expectations in Beta and I am pumped to play it at launch.

My guess is that RIFT has been a significant financial success for Trion Worlds, and I expect that SWTOR will be the same for EA BioWare.

This is great news for fans of the MMORPG, regardless what game(s) you play. The more success stories in the industry, the greater the degree of financial investment into game developers, which means more new games for us.

Thank you Trion Worlds and BioWare for delivering!

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• Re-work (balance) Pyro Mage’s Ground of Strength. It its current incarnation GoS provides total CC immunity indefinitely for the Mage plus the ability for their spells to stun, and this is rather imbalanced in PVP
• Increase Rogue melee and Marksman damage

The timing of the balance update makes sense – there has been sufficient time since 1.1 went live for the community to get its arms around the changes and to identify problem areas.

To date, players have often framed their feedback quite negatively. E.g. some players have been equating Trion to “Failcom” (aka Funcom, the maker of Age of Conan) and to Electronic Arts / Mythic Entertainment (the maker of Warhammer Online).

Both are unfair comparisons, but players have been badly burned since 2008 by games that were over-hyped but under-delivered, and Trion is experiencing the backlash from players who are now understandably wary of game developers.

While I am not going to predict what degree of commercial success Trion will have or whether Rift is the fabled “WoW Killer” (and as I wrote elsewhere that’s the wrong question to ask), Trion’s actions with and after launch show me that they get it. I have high confidence based on what I’ve seen and heard that Rift will continue to improve and that Trion is listening to the community.

Hopefully over time the majority of Rift’s players will perceive that as well.

As I have stated previously, Rift has been by far and away the best MMORPG launch I’ve seen in over 2.5 years, including Warhammer Online, Aion, and Allods Online. What has made Trion’s launch of Rift successful? Multiple, synergistic actions:

1. Trion didn’t launch until the game was ready. As Exec Producer Scott Hartsman said to me at WonderCon 2011, they were not going to launch until the game was sufficiently stable and had sufficient content
2. Trion has been unusually communicative about upcoming changes with the community. Examples: the Dev Tracker forum functionality to track all posts by Trion employees, Trion’s participation in 3rd-party fan podcasts, and their honesty in answering my questions in person
3. Trion is willing to make the tough calls to bring classes and specs into balance, even if the decisions are unpopular in the short term. I’m not going to tell you the balance in 1.11 is perfect. It’s not. Balance is an iterative process, and considering that we are ~7 weeks from launch, balance is reasonably good, even better than what I experienced as a 2k Arena Protection Paladin in World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm expansion Patch 4.0.6

Class / spec changes for the sake of balance can be hard on the community, but they are absolutely essential for the long-term health of a game.

UPDATE (2011/04/22): OK, maybe I spoke too soon. On the Alpha 1.2, the CC immunity and 30% stun proc for Ground of Strength have not been touched. /sigh

UPDATE (2011/04/29): before I forget, the stun proc was removed from GoS in the first update to 1.2 notes published on 4/26. I think the indefinite full CC immunity is still an issue.

• Warhammer Online
• Aion
• Allods Online
• Rift

Rift’s game developer, Trion, has been remarkably savvy in how they have handled the game thus far, in particular by:

1. Not over-hyping their game then under-delivering. My impression is that Rift has mostly spread by word-of-mouth; my gaming friend Nathan and real life friend Gaardarun both raved about Rift from Beta
2. Delivering a stable, polished game at launch, with a clear path for implementing frequent updates/fixes with minimal downtime. The game servers have been taken down for maintenance at times, but the longest I’ve seen so far is 30 minutes, and Trion has managed expectations on downtimes pretty well. I.e. there hasn’t been that 12-hour unplanned downtime that we all dislike
3. Borrowing innovations from other games. Rift has taken some of the best mechanics and design features from games such as Warhammer, including the PVP mechanics for “tanks” such as Guard, Taunt, Hold the Line, etc and Detaunt. And other game features such as Achievements, Guild Achievements, Guild Ranks, etc that originated in Warhammer (and which Blizzard also copied)
4. Designing the most flexible spec system ever, which is both fun-to-play and IMO shields Trion from the class/spec griping from the playerbase

That last point has huge implications. Consider the following example with WoW. You roll a Paladin to heal at endgame as Holy, but you are unhappy with nerfs or issues for your spec. What are your options?

• Continue to play the spec and hope for future buffs, or
• Re-spec to Protection or Retribution and re-gear, or
• Roll a different Healing class, re-level to endgame, and then re-gear

Those are all crappy options to me, given that I value my time and what I enjoy most is endgame not grinding to get back to endgame. I know some people have been conditioned to accept the current market standards and would say “suck it up and re-level, it’s what I did” but I think that is a lousy customer experience.

With Rift, you can simply change which 3 of the 9 talent trees you are playing as a Healer (Cleric). Rift’s flexible spec system protects players from making a steep time investment in a class that they are later unsatisfied with for whatever reason.

The other implication of the spec system is that there are fewer opportunities for (real or perceived) imbalance between specs for the same class. Everyone knows a spec change has a low switching cost. No need to re-roll, re-level, and re-gear from scratch.

Is Rift the next “WoW Killer”? I don’t know and frankly don’t care. It’s the wrong question to ask – the right question is whether a game supports a virtuous cycle:

Trion made the right decision as to when the game was ready to launch, thereby avoiding the irreparable damage that was done by launching too early, as we saw with Warhammer Online and Age of Conan.

Will Trion continue to re-invest in the game over time? It’s too early to tell, but my impression is that they have a sharp management team, a perception further reinforced by an interview with Trion’s Marketing head back in December that I read today, while trying to find paying subscriber numbers. I haven’t been able to find those numbers yet – if you see any good articles please link them.

From a bigger picture perspective, Trion gives me hope for the “traditional MMORPG” market. Just over a year ago, I expressed concern that game developers were moving away from traditional MMORPGs and instead investing in social gaming. Trion shows how to do traditional MMORPGs right.

Please keep in mind that this is my honest, objective opinion. Like many of you, I’ve been burned by bloggers who hype up new games which only end up disappointing.

TLDR: I’ve desubbed from WoW to play Rift in the Head Start, which started today. I know this news will disappoint Paladins who have been following my PVP Guide and videos For me it’s time to move on. Keep in touch!

It’s still very early in the Cataclysm expansion – barely 2.5 months since it launched. In my opinion Cataclysm is WoW’s best expansion so far:

• Class re-designs have been largely well done
• PVE is challenging again (not that I really care but at least it made leveling not completely tedious)
• The PVP system is accessible and is about as skill-based as it has ever been.

Despite all this, recently I have felt restless / bored with WoW PVP. I don’t want to get into too much detail, but I will simply say I haven’t taken to Retribution as much as I had hoped, and I simply miss meaningful World PVP.

Earlier this week a gaming friend from the UK, Nathan, sent me a couple messages about Rift, a game which is launching in Head Start today.

Up until now I’ve largely ignored the Rift chatter / hype. I’ve had no reason to check it out, and I’ve been burned by hyped MMORPGs before, e.g. in 2008 with Warhammer (WAR), in 2009 with Aion, and in 2010 with Allods Online.

However, what Nathan wrote was very compelling to me, especially the following excerpts:

It is the perfect amalgam of WAR and Aion, honestly. What I like about it: customization…finding classes and roles that match something you would enjoy playing.

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html

I cried wolf when Blizzard ‘simplified’ talent trees, and this REALLY gets me pumped! Graphics are lovely, sound is great.

Battles are VERY Warhammer-esque (same engine I think too). I’ve played beta since the second phase, spent a couple of weeks getting feedback and to this day (beta just finished), I still have no idea what to play!

I played around with a Rift Spec Calculator. Each class can invest talent points in 3 of 9 different talent trees. The degree of customization is nuts, and this will generate a ton of fun discussion in the community. It’s clear that Rift has borrowed good mechanics from other games, such as the Guard and Hold the Line mechanics from WAR. The Guard mechanic enabled a tank to put a Guard buff on a friendly player that split damage on that player between them – so in essence tanks could protect targets when needed. HtL was a buff that tanks provided to players behind them, e.g. for mass charges or defenses. These were awesome mechanics that made tanks very relevant in WAR PVP.

The only thing that I noticed of concern is that Rift has only 2 factions – and in every game I’ve played that had concentrated server-based PVP (e.g. LOTRO, WAR), population imbalances tended to affect mass PVP outcomes. That is, the more populated side would tend to win, and this sometimes created a vicious cycle: the losing side tended to shrink as people got frustrated with losing and re-rolled, while the winning side got bored due to facerolling. I am still waiting for another game to copy Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) which had a 3-faction system – from what I’ve heard this was very healthy for PVP and created ebbs and flows in terms of faction strength that the playerbase enjoyed.

Yesterday my best friend from high school told me the reason he hasn’t been on WoW is because he’s been playing Rift Beta with a co-worker, and they bought the Rift pre-order because they were very impressed with the Beta. Net-net, the game mechanics in Rift sounded attractive enough and I heard good things from people whose opinions I respect, so I bought the Rift pre-order and cancelled my WoW subscription – I don’t have the time to play multiple games and I plan on chronicling my experience with Rift just as I did with WAR.

I will be playing Taugrim the Warrior, Defiant faction, on the Sunrest Harrow server (RP-PVP).

P.S. my reason for making the decision to switch from WoW to Rift has nothing to do with the 4.1 Patch nerfs that were announced on Feb 24. I made the decision before that:

Of course, I hope the 4.1 WoG nerf gets revisited, I just won’t be around to see it.

P.P.S. if you are playing Warrior in Rift let me know what specs you’ve tried so far and your take on them.

So after only 4.5 months of playing Aion, I’ve de-subbed.

The reasons are pretty simple:

1. the leveling was boring and very time-consuming. Fundamentally Aion felt like work to play based on its design
2. the main PVP zone, the Abyss, was largely empty. This was nothing like WAR, WoW, or LOTRO, where it was easy to find opponents to fight

The funny thing is my Chanter is only just over a level away from 42, which was my original target level for making PVP videos – Chanters get a ranged stun at 42. But the main thing is I simply don’t believe in Aion. I would not recommend Aion to a new player who is used to “Western” MMOs (e.g. WoW/LOTRO/WAR). So I figured it didn’t make sense for me to invest the time to level up and make videos.

I think some of the good qualities of WAR really set me up for disappointment with Aion. WAR was fun from level 1 all the way to 40, aside from the game instability issues. Aion was incredibly stable but consistently boring.

A YouTube subscriber sent me a PM back in September 2009 about Aion, and he was right about the game:

Not a big fan of aion, knowing the principle is Korean mentality based, it’s going to get old fast.

I myself been hooked in so many same type mentality game design and they all ending up a disappointment.

I work in the gaming industry, and I know how Aion is build as. [Aion] makes it more efficient for people who has time to waste, then instead of people who actually has the skills to show off. Quite imbalance approach, but then again, that’s their mentality of designing video games. (The american version is based off the asian version, same set of rules will apply.)

Hope you won’t spend too much time on Aion, you might setup yourself for a disappointment in the long run.

I’ve been following Keen’s posts about Allod’s Online so I might check that out.

We had no problems clearing the instance, and I was able to help DPS Kromede in between heals. Granted, we were both level 38 against Kromede. But the tank was using a 2h (so more damage taken), and I’m pretty confident we could have done this successfully at level 34.

The footage of this Kromede fight is fun to watch from a Chanter’s perspective because I am moving and shifting roles the entire fight, which is what Chanters do best.

Templar tips from Chalen:

• Use IJ to interrupt Kromede’s AOE. You have to back up a bit from Kromede for the interrupt to work
• You can switch between 1h and 2h weapons during pulls to rotate cooldowns to maximize DPS

Chanter tips

• the L37 skill Word of Quickness is incredible for burst healing. I should have used it when the tank’s health dropped to 25%
• Word of Protection is one stigma you’ll use from mid-game to end-game (unless you go heavy MC/DPS spec). It is a tremendous bailout ability in tight situations, because the extra avoidance and mitigation can be the difference between people dying or just surviving

Thanks Chalen for not just being willing but being interested in doing stuff like this. It breaks up the monotony of leveling.

Thankfully this morning I PUG’d with two very skilled and open-minded players and learned a lot in the process.

I joined a Templar’s Recruit Group for Fire Temple on the LFG channel very early this morning, so there weren’t many players online. After a Ranger and Sorceror joined, the Temp said “OK let’s go” and I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. I wasn’t sure whether my 35 Chanter could handle solo healing duties but I was certainly willing to try.

The Sorceror went LD on a pull when we had a couple adds and didn’t come back. From a cynical point of view, I don’t think that was an accident. The Sorc gave up instead of even trying. Fortunately, that didn’t affect our ability to clear the instance twice and get some nice blue mat drops in the process.

Here is footage of the 1st time we downed Kromede.

I went ultra-conservative on this attempt…I

1. didn’t melee
2. spammed Healing Light non-stop
3. chain MP potted most of the fight
4. stacked the deck in our favor by using the awesome group DP buff Word of Wind

Turns out it was a very easy and smooth fight. As you can tell from the footage, the tank (Inlove) used great positioning. He and the Ranger Maddux were very skilled players and it was awesome grouping with them. We handled some multi-mob pulls that I’ve seen wipe full groups.

This is as close to an apples-to-apples comparison that I could get between different classes, in terms of having the same level, comparable gear, and fighting the same mobs.

For Chanters, there are a couple things to be aware of in terms of our CC:

1. you can’t knockdown a mob already on the ground, but you can knockdown the mob as it starts to get back up
2. if you stun a target and re-stun it while the previous stun effect was still in effect, the 2nd stun will overwrite the 1st stun. An example of this is getting a stun with Infernal Blaze, then stunning with Parrying Strike. Depending on the situation, you may want to allow the 1st stun effect to complete before trying another stun (e.g. so that you can interrupt your opponent when they start casting after the 1st stun wears off)

Here are a few Chanter tips that I didn’t mention in the video:

• In PVE, you can tell that I allow auto-attacks (AAs)to weave in during abilities for my Chanter. Even at level 31, I don’t have enough melee abilities to spam non-stop without having to wait for either Meteor Strike (MS) or Hallowed Strike (HS) to come off cooldown. So I basically time abilities with some AAs so that I can use MS and HS whenever they are up. I tend to favor opening with MS over HS, because I want to get as many Pentacle Shock procs as possible and MS-IB do better damage than HS-BS. One could argue though that it makes more sense to open with HS to use Infernal Blaze as early as possible. You say po-tay-toe, I say po-tah-toe. In PVP I would spam abilities, because you have to get as much damage in bursts as possible (and before you get CC’d)
• For PVE, do not use Booming Assault, the 4th skill in the HS chain. It is an evil MP hog and does not debuff the target or have any useful effects
• It’s important to get used to watching the chain / reactive icons to the right of your character in the middle of the screen, instead of looking down at the skill bar. You want to keep your eyes on the action as much as possible, and having to look down can be a distraction

Here are a few Sorceror tips that I didn’t mention in the video:

• The Curse of Roots stigma ain’t cheap, but it’s worth it’s weight in gold, for solo and group play. You will save yourself a lot of deaths by investing in it, so over the long haul, it will more than pay for itself.  It’s always sad to see Sorcerors who haven’t purchased it yet; not having CoR severely affects a Sorc’s ability to CC, especially when pulls get messy
• Did I mention how great Wind Cut Down is? Oh, of course I did, but heck, it’s worth saying again. And the 16s cooldown is short enough that you’ll use the ability every pull. So go out and buy it, if you haven’t already

I forgot to record flying; I wanted to mention that the easiest method I’ve found for steering while flying is holding both mouse buttons down. This allows you to make very fast turns mid-flight, which can cause problems for keyboard turners trying to keep up with you.

I’ll be traveling for work and holiday for most of this month, so my leveling will slow down quite a bit in December. I’m hoping to get my Chanter to 42 in January.

One of the first advances made by game developers in this regard was to provide player and guild profiles on the web. Most of the major MMO’s (e.g. WoW, WAR, etc) provide profiles for each character, where you can see things such as their current gear.

Aion includes this; it’s “table stakes” in my opinion to have parity with competitors. E.g. here is a screenshot of my Chanter’s profile on aionline.com.

There are many reasons why this kind of information is very helpful, e.g.

• to figure out when forum posters can credibly back up their claims in terms of progression or gear
• to see how other experienced and skilled players enchant/socket their gear and which gear pieces they go after (crafted vs PVE)
• to share your character’s progression with your friends
• to find out how strong players of the other faction are
• etc

However, Aion has gone further than just player and guild profiles. When you login to aiononline.com, you can see the status of your current Auction House (AH) items and how many of your friends and guild mates are online:

Aion limits a character to 10 items on sale on the AH. However, I can tell at any time which, if any, of my AH items have sold with a web browser. Even when I don’t have much time to login and play, this visibility has enabled me to keep my AH “stocked.” I’ll login simply to post new sale items when I know some items have sold.

We’re in the nascent stages of increased MMORPG access across “channels.” The market is evolving, and the question becomes, where is it evolving to?

Let’s consider social games. For many popular social games, you have a flexibility of playing the same game on Facebook, on a game site, and on your handheld (e.g. iPhone app) or on your PC. Social games create a strong “pull” for players by enabling them to experience the game regardless of their location; you can play via a web browser at home, at the office, while traveling, etc. On top of this, social game developers have learned how to create a sense of urgency that makes players feel the need to login and play. We see this phenomenon with “time management” games, such as Mafia Wars, where players have energy that is expended on missions and regenerates even when a player is “offline.” So players have a sense of urgency to login and spend energy after they are full, so that they can maximize the progression of their character. I feel that same sense of urgency with Aion when my AH items have sold – I want to log in, collect the sale proceeds, and put more items up for action.

So how far will cross-channel integration affect MMORPGs? That is, what will the experience be when we are not logged in to the game client? That’s the big question.

Several years ago, the question was which platforms (PC, console, or Mac) a game would be supported on. But the rise of social media and social gaming, coupled with the evolution of mobile devices with high-speed wireless Internet access, is causing structural shifts in the gaming industry. The question is no longer which platforms a player can play on (PC, Mac, console), but rather how does a customer experience the game, regardless of their location. The MMORPG market must innovate, as it did earlier this decade when MMORPGs created new social meaning (playing games with other people in a rich environment), to remain relevant and attractive to consumers.

My hope is that MMORPG game developers will be creative and open-minded in terms of how they approach cross-channel integration. There are the obvious concerns for MMORPG players. E.g. increased out-of-game access (e.g. being able to buy/sell on the AH) could be vulnerable to exploitation by “gold farming” companies. However, at least in the short term, there are mechanics that companies can implement, as NCSoft has done, to allow players to still feel connected to and see what is happening with their characters, even with they are not logged in to the game client.

I leveled my Aion Sorceror to 33. While I found the class to be a fast leveler (relatively speaking), I wasn’t sure I’d love playing a Sorceror at end-game. In addition, the overall pace of leveling in Aion has been an anchor dragging on me for weeks.

I started thinking about picking up my Chanter again, for the 2nd time. The problem? I deleted my Chanter 6 weeks ago, due to concerns about Chanter PVP, so that I could use the name “Taugrim” for my Sorceror. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and with the level 42 ranged stun and level 45 HoT, Chanter PVP could be viable and challenging.

So I submitted a request on the NCSoft support site around 6pm PST. It was simply worded:

I deleted a 25 Chanter named Taugrim on October 5, 2009. I now play a 33 Sorceror with the same name.

Please restore the character. I am willing to pay for this service, however, I am unwilling to level a character to 25 again.

If you can not restore my character, I may cancel my subscription, as I simply don’t have the time (full-time employed) to re-level again.

Thank you very much.

I wasn’t expecting to get a positive response from NCSoft in this matter, because the character had been deleted so long ago.

And I remembered the experience I had with WoW’s GMs, when asking them to restore one item. I had to talk to several WoW GMs to convince them to even consider my petition. It wasn’t a positive customer experience. It went like this:

WoW GM: you understand that you only have a limited number of restores for your account?

me: yes, I understand

WoW GM: you understand that you only have a limited number of restores for your account?

me: …

I didn’t actually type that last line, but the conversation got rather repetitive, until finally the WoW GM fulfilled my request.

So I was pleasantly surprised to receive a response within 40 minutes from an Aion GM saying that they would restore my Chanter. They asked for 3 names for the character, which I gladly provided, and an Aion GM restored my Chanter as Taugrum, just over 3 hours from my initial request.

I was impressed! The Aion GMs were prompt, professional, and helpful. And they have given me “new legs” in terms of continuing to play Aion. Now I have a reason to play, to get to 42 and make some narrated videos of a NA Aion Chanter fighting opponents of near level (i.e. not a useless lowbie ganking video).

Will I actually make it to the 40s with my Chanter? Who knows. At least I have a reason to be motivated about playing. I gained 2 levels since yesterday, and it will be interesting to see whether I can gut out the next 15.