I’m currently obsessed with the changes Wizards of the Coast is making to Dungeons & Dragons. If you don’t know, there’s a new edition of the game coming this September, which means the whole thing – all the rules and character classes – is getting an update. Over the past few weeks, the Wizards have been revealing how to do that. In other words, patch notes – it was patch notes sharing. The biggest set I’ve ever seen.
This excites me and made me realize something else: patch notes have always been exciting. I’d even go so far as to say they’re one of the most exciting things about gaming. And I know how it sounds! I know bullet lists aren’t sexy things. And if they are for you, let’s talk. But no – it’s deeper. Hear me out.
Patch notes are a widely accepted thing, but they’re not that old on console. It used to be that games would come on a disc or cartridge and we’d pop it into our machine and that would be it. Dot. No further development. The game was as it would be forever. However, with the Internet’s capabilities came the ability to release updates—first small ones, then larger ones—and this in turn allowed developers to continue to develop games and make changes to them.
It took longer on PC. Everywhere there was an online game there were updates. Ultima Online (1997) had patch notes, I’m sure Quake (1996) and Quake 2 (1997) had updates and of course EverQuest (1999) all subsequent MMOs. These games are my touchstones so I’m sure there were others I missed. But the one that really made me feel the magic of the patch-note was Dark Age of Camelot in 2001.
I felt the magic because I met the ideal requirements for it. I had invested hundreds and probably thousands of hours into the game, which meant I knew it very well. Should something change in game balance or game world, I would understand it and its implications. I also cared about staying competitive in the game fighting other players, so any changes to my character class were important. And I was a little bored. On some level, I wanted a change. Cue patch notes.
Patch notes have always been exciting. There, the future of the game would be written in black and white. Which classes would be on the rise in terms of power and which classes would be on the way down. Were there new things? How did they work? All the clues you needed to make assumptions were there. What did they mean to you? That was the question on everyone’s mind, no matter how they looked at the patch notes. You could almost feel the mental energy directed at them – without anyone loading the game. Only theory. And then the arguments.
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My brain is doing a similar thing with Dungeons & Dragons right now. I invested hundreds of hours into the characters in that game, so the changes made mean a lot to me because I don’t want to stop playing. Similar was the case with Overwatch when team ‘Jeff from Overwatch’ revealed character overhauls in the game. Are my characters okay? Want to try something new? How does it all work? Mental arithmetic. Imagination. He kicks into the powerhouse. To me, it’s as much a part of the game as the game itself.
It’s not just balance changes. They are the most important because they are the most personal and belong just like the characters we play. However, the patch notes introduce significant changes even to worlds we know very well. I remember when Blizzard first introduced instant PvP to World of Warcraft and it was a huge thing. Similarly, I remember Blizzard introducing new raids into World of Warcraft, or new events, and those were big deals as well. These days, you can push the boundaries even into single player games. Look what Larian did to Baldur’s Gate 3. It changed the ending of the game and extended it to give some beloved characters more airtime. BioWare changed the ending of Mass Effect 3 after that as well. These are really important things.
Think board games, which I think are analogous to how games used to be in how they’re set up the moment they’re packaged. They are a lot of fun, but they are static. The enjoyment eventually wears off. Where they stay alive changes. I bet you changed the games you played as kids for the same reason. I know I did – we were forever changing the rules to forty-four and all running around the streets. It is the same.
I know there’s another less welcome side to it, which is the introduction of buggy games and day one patches and, I expect, crunching – either before or after the games are released. None of these are good things. But the ability we now have to extend the life of the games we care about and pull them apart and rethink them excites me—just as it excites me to see the creators of Dungeons & Dragons now rethinking their 50-year-old game. These are the things we like to think about, our escapes. And the leadership to top it all off?
Patch notes.