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#TSW Monthiversary

August 3, 2012 by Belghast

My butchery of the English language truly knows no bounds. Yesterday I pulled together the word “troubulation”, a mixture of troubles and tribulation. Today I am either coining or stealing the term “Monthiversary”, because today is the one month anniversary of the launch of The Secret World. It has been one great month, and was capped by the release of the first of the monthly content updates: Issue #1 (patch 1.1) Unleashed.

EHMERGAHD!

I find it amusing that to date, I have yet to do one of my traditional “omg you have to play this” posts for the game. I think the reasoning is twofold, firstly I was informed that it has become almost stereotypical for me to say something is the “best game ever”. Looking back and my posts, and tweets and google plus ramblings… I can see the pattern. This game deserves so much more than one of my now clichéd “EHMERGAHD BORST GERM EVAH” post.

Secondly, I’ve come to the realization that it is so much harder to blog about something, when you cannot fathom stopping playing enough to actually write. For the first few weeks after release, I simply could not be bothered to stop playing the damned game long enough to put words on paper. So while I had topic after topic swirling around in my head, I’ve reached a level of obsession that I have not had since the early days of Everquest and World of Warcraft.

Never Judge a Book by it’s Author?

The Secret World has been an interesting experiment to me. Funcom is a company that I had pretty much written off based on the fact that I never really enjoyed either Anarchy Online or Age of Conan. So while all the trailers really played into all of my sci-fi/horror obsessions, I just did not want to believe that this company that had left a bad taste in my mouth, could produce a product I wanted to play. I even had friends argue with me, about how frankly stupid it was for me to judge this company based on experiences from a decade ago.

I’ve come to realize over time that I am often very wrong, and I’ve never been so happy to admit it before. After the very first open beta weekend, I knew I was hooked and would be for a long time. I wrote up my beta weekend impressions, which apparently some thought were negative, but immediately afterwards I went out to the Secret World website and ordered my lifetime subscription. The game brings something to the genre that has been sorely missing in the last few games I have played: Copious amounts of “Fluff”.

Pen and Paper Experience

Playing The Secret World, feels like playing under every great pen and paper game master. You know those GMs that take the time, to think everything through, and provide lots of handouts for the players? Ragnar Tornquist is one of those game masters, and we are together playing one of the best “modules” I have ever experienced. I know, there I go with the hyperbole again… but damnit it is true. This game reminds me of every good tabletop gaming experience I had over the years.

Funcom and The Secret World team has created this living, breathing world that we get to go adventuring in. Everything works like you think it should, you can look up addresses in the phone books, execute commands on the computer terminals, and in game references work like they would in the real world. The world and atmosphere, just feel right, and there is a constant uneasy quality to everything you do. You know you are treading in a world on the edge of oblivion, the music, the scenery, and the interactions keep you constantly aware of this fact. On top of all of this the writing and story is simply amazing.

Oh the Tales They Tell

I know I went on at length about the story telling experience behind Star Wars: The Old Republic. That game featured some of the best interactive storytelling I had experienced in a video game. The Secret World really raises that bar, while SWTOR was good for a game, some of the dialog in TSW stacks up against some of the best novels I have read. While I cared about my character and direct companions in SWTOR, I actually care about almost every character in The Secret World. You never interact with generic imperial officer number 47 here, every character has a motivation, unique mannerisms, and a story that is worth finding out about.

With the first monthly issue, they are going back and fleshing out the tale of Carter, one of the most endearing characters from the Innsmouth Academy. When I originally quested through the Savage Coast, this was one of the many characters I really wanted to learn more about and sure enough they are giving it to us. I really look forward to learning more about the characters I have come to love. There have been several nights I’ve been on mumble, with friends, discussing this or that character and what we thought of the outcome of a certain quest. Of course, keeping our thoughts and opinions bottled up until everyone in the channel had completed it, often becomes painfully difficult. But we have a firm no spoilers rule.

Proof is in the Playing

I can blather on and on about my love of this game, and of the tacos. But you won’t understand either reference completely until you’ve actually sat down and played the game. Luckily for you, in honor of their first month, and the release of their first content pack… they are allowing anyone at all to play for free this weekend. From today, August 3rd at 4PM GMT until Monday, August 6th at 7AM GMT all players with a Funcom account can download the game, log in and try it out themselves. They are hosting a meta-game this weekend as well, where you can win a special in-game t-shirt and 1200 bonus points for completing 30 missions during the event.

So if you find yourself wandering what all the excitement is about, download the game and play it for a few days. The truth of The Secret World, is that it takes probably 12 hours minimum gameplay for you to really grasp the complexity and intricacy of the game. Saying that, I know now that this game will not be for everyone. I’ve said it before, but the game is a niche game, and completely knows it is a niche. I will not hold your hand, and tell you what you should be doing. Often the developer takes an almost cruel pleasure in “trolling” the players, but behind all of this is an extremely rich gameplay experience.

You Have to Decide

I think a third reason behind me not doing a “Why you should be playing Secret World” post, is that for the first time in a long time I cannot say with any certainty that this is the game you should be playing. The Secret World is a very personal experience, and each player will find things they like and dislike about it. This is not a “shoot down the middle” and “target all the things” type game. You have to work for your fun here. If you are looking for a theme park ride, expect it to try extremely hard to kill you in the process.

What I can tell you, is that the game is extremely rich and rewarding. That the team behind it is extremely open to the community, and offers some of the best customer support I have ever seen. I’ve gotten every single ticket I have opened answered in person by game staff, and in all cases within 15 minutes. They have amazing folks supporting the community like Amber Skinner (@Morteia) and a Creative Director that constantly responds directly to tweets. While there are numerous bugs, all of this and their dedication to keep ironing things out makes the game enjoyable to experience.

Ultimately, you are going to have to download the game, put in some hours of game play and determine whether or not it is right for you.

On SWTOR and F2P

July 31, 2012 by Belghast

While I anxiously wait on The Secret World to patch in the background, I thought I would take a few minutes to respond to today’s big “un-news” story. Pretty much every news source from IGN to Forbes is reporting that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be going to the free to play model by this fall. I am not really sure if this was any surprise, since in mid-june there was another similarly placed article hinting that Bioware was looking at the model.

Roar of the Crowd

What is also fairly unsurprising is the immediate upwell in the gaming community, including much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth. This really should shock no one at this point, and is really deserving nothing more than a polite “I wish them well”. I know for me personally, the subscription fee was no barrier, and had nothing at all to do with my reasons for leaving the game. I completely believe in the concept of voting with my dollar, and I have no problem supporting the causes I believe in.

By that token, I guess you can state that I just stopped believing in Star Wars: The Old Republic. It was an amazing rollercoaster ride of riveting story. But at the end of the day, there just was not enough content to hold my attention. By the same token, I don’t feel a need to “Rage against the machine” and try and bring the game down. I still have several friends playing it, and reportedly they are still enjoying themselves.

Enter the Pundits

I find it annoying that this move is being treated like the sign of something bigger. On one side we have groups of players that are mad at the game, feel betrayed by it, and are already signaling this as the desperate act of a dying game. On the other side you have groups chanting “death to subscriptions”, and ushering this move in as the beginning of a brave new era. I tend to think this is the act of a company, doing what they feel is best for their product. While this might be the highest profile conversion, it is far from the first, and likely will not be the last.

While I personally find the subscriptions a much more honest business model, Free to Play is not necessarily a bad thing. I know at least in the case of the games I have played, the free to play status has done a lot to lower the barrier of entry. I’ve seen the server populations bolster in Everquest 2 since the conversion. While there are a lot more ruffians on my roleplaying server, the vast majority have been seemingly well mannered. The only thing I am uncertain of, is whether or not these players actually stick around for the long haul.

Negativity and Zealotry

I think one of my biggest frustrations with this whole situation is that there will be so much negativity in the coming days from all the camps. I realize this makes me seem like a hypocrite, because I’ve ranted about more than my fair share of games in the past. If you look back through my archives you can see many an angry tale featuring my favorite boogeyman, the dreaded Blizzard. I would like to think that over time I have mellowed.

I’ve reached a point where I am just tired of both the rampant negativity and zealotry in the community. Do we have to hate all other games just because we are playing something different? If we love a game, do we have to shove it in everyone else’s faces until they accept our choice as the “one true game”? I guess I have reached a place where I am happy to play the games I like, but equally happy to hope the other games succeed as well.

We Need More Success

We have built a zero sum climate in massively multiplayer gaming, that really doesn’t need to exist. While every game is in essence competing with the games that came before it, when did we start having to tear the others down? I feel like in order to keep the MMO culture thriving, we need each one of these games to find their own niche, and their own kind of success. Ultimately we have to redefine what success means, because there will likely never be another 10 million subscriber game.

I know personally I have stopped looking for a WoW Killer that will never exist. So long as we keep using that as the bar for success, we are setting every game up for a failure. Maybe I have grown up a bit, but right now I am just looking for some enjoyment in whatever I play. Currently that happens to be a mixture of The Secret World, Everquest 2, and World of Warcraft.

While I have joked that “If you don’t like TSW, you have no soul”, I do not literally mean that. Not every game, has to appeal to every player. I think part of what has had me so excited about The Secret World for example, is that it is a very niche game, and seems to be happy with that fact. We need more games that are OK with catering to a specific niche. We as players, need to be okay with not winning the subscription race and playing the game with the most people.

No Free Ride

So I think this announcement heralds neither the doom of Bioware or the subscription model for that matter. Players will always be willing to pay good money for good content. Free to play, simply means that these companies are giving us the game, and hoping we like it enough to give them money in return. Ultimately we the players have to fulfill that social contract and give them that hard earned money in one form or another. If you don’t then honestly you are just a drain on that games community. At the end of the day someone has to pay for it, because there is no such thing as a free ride.

#TSW Automatically Join Custom Chat Channels

July 31, 2012 by Belghast

Today is the big patch day, and I am having to pacify myself by listening to The Secret World soundtrack while at work. We’ve had report from in game, that custom chat channels are now working again. You have to rejoin the channel when you first log in, and then reportedly the tab stays bound. That said, it is probably still safest to use the Auto Join script.

This won’t be a “real” post, but I wanted to throw together a quick howto for setting up the Auto Join scripts. Credit goes to Scopique of Levelcapped for tipping me off to this existing in the first place.

Creating Auto Login

Find your Secret World install directory, this is typically “C:\Program Files\Funcom\The Secret World”.
If you do not already have a scripts directory, create one aka “Scripts”.
Inside the “C:\Program Files\Funcom\The Secret World\Scripts” directory, create two new files: “auto_login” and “auto_teleport” with no extensions.
Edit each file so that it contains the following lines:

   1: delay 5000
   2: /chat join channelname password

I’ve found that in order to get this working correctly, you do not need the normal chat channel # sign. When you log into the game auto_login gets executed, and when you zone auto_teleport gets executed. If you have a chat tab bound to this channel, it should automatically pick up on the newly joined channel.

If I figure out a way to automate the re-binding of the Cabal tab on zone, I will update this post to include it. For the time being it looks like 1.1 has not fixed that problem yet.