Would you Adam and Eve it? Issue 2: Digging Deeper goes live.

Issue 2 Digging Deeper went live yesterday. I had a fun evening in the barber shop and plastic surgery, but at the moment I am not sure if the my decisions on changing my characters face worked. The light on the table is different from running around the game world. So I may need to go back and it is expensive to change. It's a shame there isn't a cool down timer when you make your purchase so you can go back as many times as you want within an hour.

After changing my character I went and did the mission to get the rocket launcher with a few cabal friends. The mission 'Venetian Missile Crisis' was enjoyable and you had to pick it up from your cabals HQ. The interface for the extra wheel was intuitive but paying for the rocket launcher is not cheap. I had to sink 55 SP's and 50 AP's into it just to use the weapon.

So I am spoilt for choice with regards to progression. I want to improve my blade/elemental build to help with quests for Transylvania, spend points in my assault rifle/fist healer build as I want to start healing in dungeons and now have points to spend to get the rocket jump.

With the new patch we also got improvements to displaying states on mobs. You now get the little state icons below the monster health. This is one of my favourite additions in 1.2, as now I can see who is afflicted very quickly. After 1.2 though I am experiencing some frame rate drops I don't know if it is the patch or the new Nvidia the drivers.

The cockney accents while in the barber shops chair are fun, check out the video below.

Howling at the black helicopters

Complaining about the patch delay or worrying about the staff layoffs as a player is like the werewolfs howling at the black Orochi helicopters.

As a player all I can do constructively is play the game and continue to talk and share positive points about the game.

I have just made it to the second area in Transylvania and you meet a great character called Alina Florea who laments about her decisions in joining the Morning Light. I loved how they fleshed out her character and her odd coloured shoe laces.

On a community note, if you are looking for more podcasts to listen to check out the following:

TSW Society

Beyond the veil

Also check out Fear and Tacos a new video podcast were you get to follow two experienced players playing new characters. Just to howl a little check out the following video, the GW2 reference made me chuckle.

Progress and the Secret World delivering content at Trion speed.

At the moment I am working through the first zone in Transylvania. It is a massive leap in style and theme from Egypt. I have gone from Indiana Jones like relic gathering to ancient feuds between vampire and nature. Transylvania is even different from Solomon Island. They are both dark foreboding places, but instead of zombies in a sea side town you get fantasy like creatures in a great mix of old gypsy like dwellings to carcase urban structures filled with soldier vampires. The quality throughout the game has been great.

I have also just unlocked my first deck 'Ninja' and have been getting used to it. It seems to have come just at the right time too as I was using a Blaze/Affliction build. Rooting monsters which I kited till they died, but a lot of the creatures are becoming immune to hinder and impair in Transylvania. World mobs which are actually challenging are a new thing for me in MMOs, usually the more complex creatures are kept to dungeons and the world mobs just have more hit points or the odd special ability. The classless system allows developers to include more varied creatures as they don’t have to worry if certain classes cannot complete the content.

This week another content patch for the Secret World is out called ‘Digging Deeper’. The patch is getting large as not only does it contain more missions and the ability to change your characters hair and facial features it is going to contain a new weapon with a new auxiliary wheel, changes to lairs (open world group content) and a group finder tool. The Secret World at the moment seems to be able to delivery content very quickly like Trion the makers of Rift.

Fan Trailer - The League of Monster Slayers

In my last post I suggested the Secret World could do with some more focused trailers. The game is huge and if you are trying to attract none MMO players I think you need to bring them in with targeted themes.

So over the weekend I put together a trailer focused around one of my favourite missions The League of Monster Slayers. For me it felt like a traditional American horror mixed in with a little bit of the Gonnies.

Except for capturing the footage all the tools I used are free software. To clip footage and spit video and sound I use VirtualDub. To clip and edit the sound I used Audacity and to arrange I used Blender.

Hope you like it.

Secret World: State of the game and new content.

So the Secret World state of the game has been posted. It iterates what the core loyal player base probably already knows, that the game offers something unique in the MMO genre. It was reassuring to once again be reminded that the development team are still on track to produce monthly content.

My favourite points are the hints to vampiric abilities and the Halloween event. But the most important factor is they expect Issue 3 to be released on time!

October could be a good time to re-push the game focusing on genres it straddles. Produce separate trailers aiming at zombie, investigation and vampire genres. Then take these and post them in the Walking Dead, Twilight tweet feeds. Maybe even post them as adverts while programs like these are shown.

Issue 2 of The Secret World

Details have been released for Issue 2 of The Secret World. I am loving the new ideas with regards to auxiliary weapons. A separate wheel is a good idea to prevent overcrowding the main wheel too early on. As time goes on the amount you can customize your character will be a great separator from other games on the market. I am wondering if they will appear on your character like the flame thrower.

Just a note I have not even tackled the missions in the first issue yet as I was leaving them till I finished the release content and I am still only in the Valley of the Sun God, I better get a move on.

Can the Secret World survive a Summer Holiday?

So my holiday in the sun is fast approaching and this is a big test for the game. In the past there have been two major reasons why I have moved on to another game. The first is a long holiday away from the game. By the time I get back and boot up the game the holiday has taken me out of the gaming routine and I have logged back in and seen dozens of half finished quests and tool bars with racks of skills and you need to spend the next few play sessions getting back into the flow, Rift fell afoul of this and since then I have only been back in small monthly time frames.

The next is a new game and delayed content. Age of Conan promised a player versus player focused game but when it released it mainly focused on PvE. Unfortunately 4 months later just as the PvP patch was due to be released, Warhammer Online was released. War let you play and level too cap by just killing other players in RvR and scenarios. It took 2 years plus of subscriptions from me and I still miss her.

Star Wars, The Old Republic was another game which bit the bullet to a newer release. I had hit max level on my bounty hunter and was in the early 20’s of my marauder. I loved the class story and some of the planet wide quests were interesting. The rest of the game fell into the standard MMO quests though which got me speeding through content just to see more story. The game also asked me to do daily quests once I hit max level, something I didn’t like in World of Warcraft. Then to cap it all off the advanced class system made the journey to level cap to similar for me to want to repeat.

There have been games like Dungeon and Dragons Online, Eve online and Warhammer Online which survived other games and holidays.

DDO like War did something new for me. Both games made the levelling process and the end game the same experience. DDO content was built around the dungeon crawl, no quests in an open world but focused group content built on what I think is the core of D&D. I also joined an amazing role-playing guild which liked to take the content slowly even if they had done it before. This has some of my best MMO memories.

So can the Secret World survive the holiday?