The Secret World Archives - Page 3 of 5

Bloodlust Pays Off

April 9, 2014 by Belghast

What’s Wrong with TSW?

There are a couple of really interesting posts by Sypster and Rowanblaze that talk about the problems with The Secret World combat system. Mostly Syp’s post is him trying to articulate the way he feels about it, and then Rowan breaks down those points and tries to speak to each. Combined they provide a really nice bookend and are extremely worth reading. It is really nice to see someone try and put into words what is wrong with the combat other than “it’s clunky”. I have my own love/hate relationship with the combat in The Secret World. For the good I love how flexible the character build system is especially at lower levels, but there seems to be a point where all of that breaks down.

Like always, my little circle of regularly group mates rushed headlong into the content of The Secret World, and were starting in on Nightmare content only a few weeks after launch. For the most part we found normal and elite content in The Secret World to be overly easy. However facing nightmare content felt like slamming our faces into a brick wall at 60 miles per hour. The transition was brutal and unforgiving and seemingly unfairly stacked against melee players. I had managed to stubbornly limp my way through the Gatekeeper encounter with my Shotgun/Blades build, but when it came to nightmares I abandoned it quickly in favor of a pure ranged Shotgun/Pistol build.

The game went from being super forgiving and open to any build you could dream up, to being extremely punishing and narrow focused over night. So yes while the combat is essentially an overly repetitive use of “wow rogue” tactics over and over until you finish the battle, it was the fact that playing melee was a detriment to my groups survival that ultimately did the game in for me. We all return to the game to play the new content every now and then, but Nightmares were the point at which the game stopped being fun for many of us. Our creative builds that were super personalized were force culled into the few builds that “worked well” for nightmare level content.

Bloodlust Pays Off

Last night I had every intention of just quietly questing away in Elder Scrolls Online. However I logged in to a message from my friend Tam, wanting to know if I was down for running some dungeons. What can I say… I am a sucker for spelunking my way through bad guys. At the beginning of the night we were trying to figure out why I was a level ahead of them with the “dungeon” faction… aka the Undaunted. We ended up sifting through our achievements and found that I had already hit the “kill 1000 monsters in dungeons” achievement and they had not. I may or may not have issues with bloodlust, and as a result I have been tanking pretty much any dungeon someone asked me to. We started off the night with Wayrest Sewers again, and honestly I was expecting a rough time. However I found that I was able to split the packs much the same as I did the very first time I had run the dungeon.

I am guessing maybe in the previous group I had someone “helping” me by pulling something other than the one I was yanking with my chain. This is a super important point that needs to be addressed, and while I covered it in my tanking post… I figure it bears underlining here. When you are running these dungeons, let your tank pull and do not touch ANYTHING until you see the mobs run up at the group. The way combat packs work in Elder Scrolls Online is that all of the mobs in a pack will aggro you, but not all of them will actually engage you in combat. Touching them, means they will be doing so and you can quickly get overwhelmed. Let the tank pull and watch to see what actually starts attacking you. Then do not touch the ones that are just standing around cheering on the fighters.

I was not feeling like streaming last night, but I wish I had been… because after finishing off Wayrest Sewers we also ran the other two dungeons in the level 20 range. Darkshade Caverns and Elden Hollow were both really awesome. However in the case of Darkshade Caverns there is a bit of a surprise involved with running the dungeon that I really don’t want to spoil. Darkshade had some of the coolest fights to date, and I look forward to running it again. The loot seems to be improving as well as we go up. Granted it is still fully luck based, but several of us managed to pull out blue set pieces from the dungeon, as well as the normal unique loot drops. The lighting and effects in the dungeons are just superb. Final Fantasy XIV had some really amazing dungeon encounters, but I have to say so far at least Elder Scrolls Online trumps them.

Oddly Oblivious

I guess right now I am simply preoccupied with Elder Scrolls Online, but right now I am pretty oblivious to the news coming out about Warlords of Draenor. I still very much care what happens there, because even though we have this insane guild right now in ESO, there are still a batch of diehard Stalwarts that will likely never leave WoW. I want the expansion to be awesome for them as much as anything else. I have to say that the new Draenei female is nice… but not really the night and day difference that you see with the Vanilla model makeovers. I guess the Draenei and Bloodelves were in a better state already than the previous models, so they were not quite so primitive looking.

I have been phenomenally bad at keeping up with my RSS feed since coming back from my grandmothers funeral. I guess I rushed headlong into ESO, and have simply not come up for air. Things have just been going so well over there that I have not needed additional diversions. I am still listening however, and occasionally things creep into my consciousness about Warlords. Story from yesterday was that MMO Champion got DDoS’d for not giving credit to the folks running the private servers where he collected the alpha zone screenshots. Now all of those shots are down from the site, with a disclaimer saying that Blizzard had asked them to take them down. While I can’t confirm anything about the DDoS, I am guessing the image take down is more related to that instead.

At this point I will be far more interested when someone I know actually gets into Alpha or Beta. The rumors that I am hearing about the garrison sound intriguing and a fun minigame to keep me engaged in the expansion content long after I have finished leveling. My real hope however was that the garrison would be shared among all of your characters. I have an army of tradeskillers, and it would be nice to have access to ANY of their trades, from ANY of my characters. It feels like Blizzard is always one step away from making something really awesome. For whatever reason they always stop just short of what I would like to see from them. Hopefully we will continue to get more official news, since really at this stage in the alpha… anything that gets datamined is mostly bullshit and likely to change before beta.

#ElderScrollsOnline #TheSecretWorld #WoW #TSW #ESO

WoW Needs a Gatekeeper

January 6, 2014 by Belghast

Content Gating

One of the constructs from EQ that existed in the early days of World of Warcraft was the concept of content gating. It still exists to a lesser extent but nothing like it did when there were formal quest requirements for entry to most of the raids. These were extremely frustrating barriers, not because they existed but because they required the entire raid to complete. Potentially the worst was the Vials of Eternity quest chain needed to enter Mount Hyjal. At the time this meant that in order to run the Tier 6 content, you had to find a group willing to take you through the Tier 5 content in its entirety, as you needed drops off Vashj and Kaelthas the end bosses of the two Tier 5 raids.

At the time this posed so many logistical problems for raids, as you were left with two somewhat unsavory choices. Firstly you could stop what you were doing in your current progression and run the Tier 5 content to prepare newer players for Tier 6. This took time, and most raids already had pretty tight schedules as it was. Secondly you could end up recruiting someone away from an already successful tier 5 raid, creating a farm team like scenario that caused so much bad blood between guilds. The best possible scenario was to pull a player away from a raid that had died, but this was a bit of a rarity at the time. Needless to say there was much cheering when the content gating systems went away in Wrath of the Lich King.

Must Be This Tall

While overall removing these raid based requirements was a good thing, as greatly simplified the care and feeding of raids, it did however introduce a lot of unplanned uncertainty. It was out of this uncertainty that things like Gearscore spawned. Gearscore was a concept of creating an overall quality rating for a player based on the gear they had acquired. The system was popular enough that with Cataclysm Blizzard introduced the iLevel system formally in your character sheet and began creating content gates based on this requirement. For example currently you have to at least be iLevel 480 or higher to be able to do a Heroic Scenario. The game keeps you from being able to queue for the content until you hit that magic number.

The problem is that the iLevel system of measurement is fundamentally flawed. Gear acquired tells a raid leader absolutely nothing about the overall play ability of the player. If you try hard enough you will be able to acquire gear regardless if you have the skill expected of that quality of gear. This is why you see players in Siege of Orgrimmar LFR that are legitimately only doing 20,000 dps instead of the 75-100k dps you would expect from the 496 iLevel requirement. iLevel is easy, so it has stuck around but it does nothing to tell you what to expect from a player. As was proven in the past, skill is much more important than gear, and players who really know their class will always out perform those who don’t regardless of how much new shiny gear you throw at them.

WoW Needs the Gatekeeper

The problem at hand is that people that are building raids have no non-subjective means of determining if a player is ready for the content until they have actually taken them into the instance. You can drag underperforming players along, but you need to have players that are performing past the expectations of the content to be able to make that work. The single best content gating mechanic that I have seen in any game came from The Secret World. At the top of Agartha there was an encounter that is collectively known as The Gatekeeper. He stands as the gateway to the nightmare level dungeon content, that drops the best gear in the game.

He presents to the player three tests, one geared towards Tanks, another towards Healers and a final one towards DPS… which in my experience was the most difficult. Each of them is a test of personal accountability and that you can perform what will be expected of you in the nightmare level content. They are fairly brutal, especially coming from the overall easy Elite mode content before them, but they do in fact very accurately assess how well you will do in the Nightmare content. Back when my circle of friends keyed for Nightmare mode, we struggled a bit, but we were still able to compete based on the skills displayed by the test. Waren and I both prided ourselves for passing the dps trial, without switching gear and going after either the healer or tank trials that were seemingly a bit easier.

Essentially the trial was designed to make sure you could move out of things while still maintaining a certain level of dps on the boss. These are the basic skills that any dps player needs in a raid encounter. The player could retry the encounter over and over until they succeeded only then allowing them to move forward into the Nightmare content. I know personally it was exhilarating when I managed to beat the Gatekeeper. I am certain I tried it some 20-30 times before I finally landed upon the way that I finally beat him. Sure there were guides to doing it easier, but the players till had to execute well enough to be able to get through the encounter. If you stepped in anything, you died instantly. If you allowed an add to catch you, you died instantly. If you failed to interrupt something, you died instantly. Finally if you failed to maintain a certain level of damage… you also died instantly.

Personal Endorsements

Once upon a time, in another life I was once a Boy Scout camp counselor. One of the things that happened every year during that first week before the kids arrived was that each and every counselor had their First Aid, CPR and Swimming Lifesaver certifications renewed. In each case it involved some sort of skills assessment, the Swimming Lifesaver being the worst of these. However each and every one of us passed it, and while we were cheered on by the rest of the staff each was a personal trial that we faced alone. I feel like raiding should be gated by some sort of non-subjective skills assessment similar to this. It sucks being the one to tell a player that they just are not good enough to be able to do the content. Without hard facts as to why, it often feels like the leader is playing favorites or simply singling a player out unjustly.

World of Warcraft has already created a system similar to this in the Proving Grounds. The problem is these are optional encounters and most players either don’t know they exist or since they are not required for anything… they never actually go through them. I myself have never done them, because they were not required for me and did not reward anything meaningful. If they took this concept and somehow integrated it into creating a ladder to climb towards raiding, it would be extremely beneficial in the long run. That has always been the problem with raiding in general, there is a nice clean linear path to climb to get from level 1 to 90. However once you enter the endgame all this player guidance goes away.

The iLevel system tells the player that having the gear is enough, however in reality we all know that success in raiding is about so much more than just gear. Having a similar endgame ladder to climb that even rewards pieces of gear to help the player progress would make what happens after you cap, so much clearer. Additionally having one of these Gatekeeper like encounters that controls entry to the new content provides a very clear “you must be this tall” sign that players that strive for. Sure it sucks because it introduces a “keying” process again, but in this case it would be one of personal responsibility, not of raid responsibility. Additionally it would give those really good but also very timid players a boost of confidence if they knew that beating this solo encounter… where there is no one to judge them… means they will do just find in the larger group setting.

Reverberating the Praise

August 9, 2012 by Belghast

So honestly… I started writing this out over on a friends blog. She posted something that resonated with me so much, that I just had to respond. However as I cleared the end of my fourth paragraph, I came to the realization that I was not posting a response, but writing an entire damned blog post on her site. Granted it is not unusual for me to rattle off a two or three paragraph response… but this was entering the territory of the ludicrous.

The Spinoff Post

I’ve been pretty lousy at keeping up with Google Reader lately. So after a busy morning I sat down to read a few posts, trying to grind down the massive count a bit. I know I have said this before, but my blogroll is literally what I read, so I try my damnedest to read each and every blog that I am in essence “advertising”. It was to my pleasure that near the top of the stack, MMOGC had thrown up a brand new post.

First off you have to go over there and read it right now, because it covers a topic that has become very near to my heart. In her post titled “Funcommunication” she goes into a length how amazing Funcom has been at bringing us, the players, into the experience. I have to say that I agree completely, and she managed to put it into words far better than I have done to this point.

A Bigger Shout Out

I mean I have given shouts out to the Funcom staff in several posts, but I don’t think I have really covered the magnitude of the experience. I’ve thought a few other companies in the past have done a great job interacting with the community, but that said Funcom has really taken it to the next level. Players tend to have completely unrealistic expectations for games companies, I am just as bad as anyone about this. However having this level of constantly interactivity, has been extremely humanizing.

So while we get frustrated about the bugs, seeing a constant effort to try and fix things makes the pill a little easier to swallow. As a programmer I know, that you have to pull off a lot of layers of false assumptions about a bug before you can really get to the root of it. In the case of the chat system issues, they were basically occurring in a way that could not be lab tested. There is no real way to get hundreds of thousands of players to connect to your development server.

While it was annoying, and I am glad that time is behind us I cannot describe how much I appreciate being “kept in the loop” about what was going on. So much marketing babble and spin works its way into patch notes and announcements, that it is really refreshing to see the equivalent of “we thought we fixed it, but I guess we didn’t, we are trying something else”. No one is all knowing, and as a programmer we usually operate on our best guess. When dealing with extremely complex systems, the wrong answers are often times more telling than the final solution. Be it through the forums, live streams, official blog posts, or twitter, I am always impressed with the level of candor shown towards the community.

Amazing Customer Service

Another point that I have to harp on is just how great the customer service has been. GC writes in her post:

Honestly? I was pleasantly surprised. On a Saturday evening, right smack in the middle of a busy celebration weekend, both my husband’s and my tickets were answered by a helpful in-game representative within ten minutes, and within another five we were all fixed up and ready to go. Let’s face it, bugged quests are irritating as all hell and no one ever likes running into them, but the sting sure is lessened by a prompt response and swift resolution to the problem. I was very satisfied.

Granted, based on the inevitable complaints on the forums, not everyone has been as fortunate. So maybe you can say that my husband and I just happened to hit the GM lottery.

I can say without the shadow of a doubt that she did not win the GM lottery. It might be because of the level of evolvement with the community, but for whatever reason I have simply cared more about The Secret World than I have most games in the past. Always in the past it felt like my petitions had little to no effect on the game world. I am notorious for figuring out a work-around to avoid bugs, and then just ignoring the fact that they actually exist rather than reporting them. In this game however I have been a bug reporting fiend.

So far it has not mattered what I have reported, be it a problem with geometry or the chat issues not actually being fixed… I have always received a prompt and courteous response. I’ve put in somewhere between five and a dozen petitions since launch, and in every case I have had a tell from a GM within ten minutes. The vast majority of these times, it was far closer to five minutes. In one instance, I reported a bugged encounter in a dungeon, and we moved on to the next boss. The GM responded before we were through the first phase, and patiently waited for us to finish the fight so I could more properly respond.

I remember one night, I had petitioned a GM about a geometry issue or as I call them ‘”The Potholes” of City of the Sun God. There are a few places in the world, with gaps that you cannot see before accidentally falling into them. While I was typing up my petition, another player fell in the hole with me and used /reset to get out. I could have done the same, and ultimately I did to free myself, but I figured that if I didn’t report it, it might not get fixed. The GM took the time, and asked me to go back to the hole, so they could properly document the problem, and make sure it was on the list of known issues. This little attention to detail really gives me hope for the future of the game.

Phenominal Community Team

I know specifically I have harped on this before, but if I am going through the process of making this post anyways, I have to take a moment to talk about Ragnar and Morteia. Other companies have been involved with the community, but Funcom really sets the standard here. They are constantly responding to players, and answering questions directly. Maybe it is silly, but it feels somewhat awesome to have the Creative Director or Community Manager share your post with the community.

Thing is it goes so much deeper than just rebroadcasting links. It feels like we are getting let in on some secret, like they are leaking little bits of information to the diehard fans. So when they answer a question, or hint at some upcoming feature we get all giddy with excitement. MMOGC gives the great example of Ragnar talking about upcoming work from Peter Stormare. I mean that is awesome, while he might not want to be known for this, I cannot picture Satan without thinking of his amazing performance from Constantine. This man belongs in The Secret World so much it almost hurts!

Why This Matters

The Secret World still has a lot of bugs, and there are a good number of features that have been frustrating to deal with. In most other games, these would have been deal breakers, because the layer of clinical distance from the user community gave the impression that they frankly did not care about my gameplay experience. Normally my tolerance for frustration is pretty low, I have trouble looking past a bad UI or controls to see the story underneath. While I really like the UI and controls, you can read my original review of beta weekend and see that I was less than favorable.

So upon reading that, you might ask yourself what changed? In many ways the game has changed drastically since beta weekend, and improved in almost every way imaginable. But I have to say that a good chunk of why I can look past the rough edges at times, is thanks to my experiences with customer support and the community team. They are the face of Funcom to me, and my regular dealings with them has allowed me to handle the quests going wonky, and getting stuck on geometry. My frustration is always tempered with the feeling like they actually care, and are working to try and make the game a better experience for everyone.

Not Just a Love Song

So it is pretty easy to write this post off as a love song towards the company that runs the game I happen to be playing. I mean I have rambled on for 13 paragraphs at this point, about my awesome experiences with them while playing their game. For me it goes deeper, as bloggers it is so easy to dwell on the negative aspects of a game. It is so much easier for me to pull myself away from a game I hate, to write an angry rant than to log out of a game I am really loving. The problem is, all this negatively just turns into a wall of sound, where every opinion, dissenting review and frustrated plea becomes a indistinguishable from the mass of angst.

Instead I think we are better served spending our time, pointing out the things that are going well, the individuals that are in fact doing right by the community. Each week it seems like we hear of another game flailing, another round of layoffs, and more pox upon the industry. We need to highlight the good in gaming, and make sure those people feel appreciated. So here you go Funcom, I really appreciate your efforts, and that of the amazing team that has created The Secret World. While I am somewhat angsty, about not being able to get the nifty Steam swag, I wish you all amazing success with that new venture.

Good Job!

106 Miles to Chicago

August 8, 2012 by Belghast

It seems like the Secret World community as a whole is still coming down off the high that was the Monthiversary celebration weekend. As a whole I think the weekend was a rousing success. It gave several friends of mine time to get in and see if the game was for them. I know of at least four converts, and two of those are now proud holders of a lifetime account.

Coup De Grace

Honestly I think the concept behind the weekend was a master stroke. The 24 hour buddy passes are just simply not enough time to decide whether or not the game really resonates with you. There have been some discussions in my cabal, namely between myself, MMOGC, and PaganRites… and the basic idea is that it takes at least 10 hours of gameplay for you to really “get it”. That is to really understand why this game is so unique, why it is worth playing, and grasp the deeply intricate combat system.

Sypster over at Bio Break theorizes that the celebration weekend, is essentially a way to offer a “free trial” without actually saying those words. I totally think this was the core of the weekend, it let anyone who has a Funcom account try the game. But even more than that I think it was a great way of building customer loyalty. While getting to your 30 quest mark, might have been a daunting task for someone brand new to the game. For those of us who are veterans, we were able to easily cut a path through some of the easier quests.

As a result it also made Kingsmouth an extremely active place. For all that activity, I was pleasantly surprised in the relative lack of “asshattery”. People seemed genuinely helpful to the new guests inhabiting our servers. I know I answered more than a few “newbie” questions, and in my time trying to knock out some of the easy quests, jumped in and saved more than a few overwhelmed players. So while this was a great trial weekend for new players, for us veterans it became a really easy way to earn enough item shop currency for some spiffy items. The positive is that there are very few items on the cash shop that cost more than the 1200 points you earned from the quests. The only negative however is that they are in fact “bonus” points, and will expire in September.

A Mission from God

They’re not gonna catch us. We’re on a mission from God. – Elwood Blues

Over the last several days since the release of Issue #1, I’ve been on a mission that has completely consumed me. Essentially I decided that while everyone was off doing the brand new content, and trying to get in their thirty quests for the celebration weekend, I would start my hunt to kill all the rares in the world. I still have a long ways to go, and some of them have been rather maddening (Mr. Freezie I am looking at you), but I’ve made a pretty massive dent in the total. I have no clue if I actually get anything for doing this, but it is one of those things that I am obsessing over.

So far I vanquished 27 of the 38 total “achievement rares” in the world. Here are the ones I have found and destroyed (minor spoilers):

Nattfari – Draug in Kingsmouth
Mr. Freezie – Zombie in Kingsmouth
Soloman’s Omen – Undead Bear in Kingsmouth
Father Appleby – Undead Priest in Kingsmouth
Dunwich Road Horror – Mud Golem in Kingsmouth
Coach Roarke – Zombie in The Savage Coast
Lurking Revenant – Revenant in The Savage Coast
The Collector – Scarecrow in The Savage Coast
Umbral Brood King – Ak’ab in The Savage Coast
Penumbral Elevated Caste – Ak’ab in Blue Mountain
Algernon – Wendigo in Blue Mountain
Bastard of the Brine – Deep One in Blue Mountain
Billy’s Muse – Shadow Thing in Blue Mountain
Gronarch the Exiled – Sand Golem in Scorched Desert
The Lost One – Ghoul in Scorched Desert
Deathstalker – Scorpion in Scorched Desert
Ainn the Harbinger – Plague Golem in Scorched Desert
Corrupted Egyptologist – Filth Infected Cultist in City of the Sun God
Kiya, the Pharaoh’s Concubine – Tomb Guardian in City of the Sun God
Emissary of the Dead Nations – Ghoul in City of the Sun God
Cretaceous Shisocerca – Wasp in City of the Sun God
Village-Eater – Troll in Besieged Farmlands
Ursine Horror – Undead Bear in Besieged Farmlands
Demolisher – Siege Breaker in Besieged Farmlands
The Nameless One – Deathless in Shadowy Forest
Traitor of Basarab – Vampire in Carpathian Fangs
General Blasius – Filth Infected Human in Carpathian Fang

I won’t lie, some of these have already been a massive pain in the ass. There was one specific spawn that I essentially camped most of the weekend, killing the placeholder every 15 minutes. It took two full days of doing this off and on before the rare I needed spawned. Others like Mr. Freezie and The Lost One, spawn in such high traffic areas, that essentially as soon as they are up they have aggro’d onto someone. I am sure I will take a break before too much longer, since I too would like to se the new content. Up to this point however, I have had a blast tracking down all these dangerous beasties.

The Nightmare Begins

A few weeks back the little five man team I have been running with, finished all of the elite dungeons and with much effort especially on the part of the dps, managed to get through the Gatekeeper encounter. I have to say, that even looking back the dps version of The Gatekeeper was insanely difficult, and I am still shocked I managed to get through it without lowering my standards and changing to one of the more standardized builds. I still plan on doing a write-up for exactly how I managed to down The Gatekeeper as Shogtun/Blades, but I just haven’t had the time to finish it up.

Getting our Asses Kicked

As difficult as the encounter was, I have to say it really did nothing to prepare me for the difficulty of nightmare dungeons. This week our little team finally started attempting the hardest mode of the dungeons currently available. At first we decided to dip our toes into Darkness War, since so many of the instances have a number of little painful bugs right now. We were completely overwhelmed by the amount of damage taken, and the amount that we needed to output.

After some regrouping, we decided to start working on the first instance, Polaris. I think we were a bit gunshy in trying to assume that the first dungeon was going to be the easiest. We attempted that login in SWTOR, and found out that honestly The Esseles ended up being one of the most difficult of the hardmodes. Thankfully Funcom did not do this to us, and we’ve managed to make a pretty big dent in the dungeon. It is funny that we are treating this 5 man as though it were a raid essentially.

OHGODSQUID

On our first night, we struggled our way through the encounters, learning the mechanics as we went. All of us are pretty reluctant to try and look up strategies for the encounters. It is so much more enjoyable to have those “aha” moments for yourself, than to try and do things the way someone else says you have to. Honestly most of my raiding career was this way as well. We invested in taking the time to find a strategy that worked for our specific groups makeup.

Last night we returned and had most of the bosses “on farm”, as it were. We are still struggling massively with the “OHGODSQUID” as I refer to it. I think towards the end of the night we were formulating some new ideas on how to beat the encounter. Hopefully we will go back in tonight, make some adjustments and dine on some mutant calamari. Then of course will come the real challenge, but I won’t go into it for sake of spoilers.

I Has Purplez

The awesome thing that makes the struggle worth it, is that pretty much everything in the zone drops much better gear than we have seen to this point. So only going in and being able to kill a few bosses is completely worth the effort. So far we have managed to outfit our tank in a number of really massive upgrades, and our healer in a new headpiece and weapon. The amount of difference this has made has been significant, in the difficulty of the encounters. They have gone from “OMGWTF” to hard but manageable with a lot of work.

Last night we got our very first purple dps item, and through the luck of random numbers I managed to win it. So I have a little purple tint to go with my blue tones. The funny thing about gear in this game, is that always before people would link the item and dressing room it, and there would be a chorus of “man that looks cool”. In The Secret World, these items are just better stats, so in a way you just don’t get nearly as attached to any one item as you did before.

Honestly I am completely okay with this. My emotions are wrapped up in my outfits, my cosmetic items, and the ability to mold any weapon to look like whatever happens to be my current favorite. The talismans, simply become a means to an end, a way to perform better and make life easier on your friends. Always in the past I was reluctant to upgrade out of full sets of gear, because I hated looking like an unmatched hobo. But now when the gear comes down, with slightly better stats, swapping it out becomes a completely no-brainer.

Linkspam

Going to wrap up this post, since I have the development live stream going in the background. I still have to give a shout out about how badass it is that they have been giving us a semi-weekly view into the inner workings of the game team. In closing going to throw out a series of links. There have been some great articles posted about the game, so these are definitely ones you should read. Please note, not all of these are super positive about the game, but that is completely okay. I’ve always said this was not going to be a game for everyone.

First up we have a review of the weekend by Kadomi at Live Like a Nerd. She went into the game expecting nothing, but got completely hooked. Talks about the “missing time” concept many of us have experienced while playing the game. I swear it was only thiry minutes!!
GC over at MMOGamerChick, also a guildie, does a great write up about her post celebration “hangover”. Great read, because really the weekend was so much fun it was draining.
Maeve over at Multiplaying, gives a great review of the game that has become her latest addiction.
Kotaku gives a pretty even-handed review of the game. You can tell the writer actually played it in production, unlike some of the other reviews I have read.
Psynister and Fynralyl are a husband and wife duo that tried the game together this weekend. While they liked some things, they were overall turned off by the game. Both are well worth the read, because a lot of the things they mention, are things some of the TSW diehards love the most.
Rowan over at I Touched the Sky, posted a rebuttal of sorts. Not in the sense of trying to state that Psyn and Fyn are wrong by any means, but to answer some of the points they brought up. Also extremely worth the read.
The new episode of Enochian Frequency is ready to go. I highly suggest listening to the podcast regularly especially if you are interested in the real world lore behind the lore.
Lastly I wanted to give a real quick shout out to Scarybooster and Feliz. Feliz has created a beautiful new skin for Scaryworlds.com, I highly suggest you check it out and tell them what you think.