The Secret World end of world/subscription.

So it is exciting times in the Secret World with the onset of the end of the world and going 'buy to play'. As a life time subscriber I am quite happy with the move. I love my subscription model but we still have the barrier of the box price, so players have to invest something to play the game.

Funcom have also said they expect the points to cover the price of the content they release and on top of that I get cool items each month. When I bought the grand master pack I knew it was a gamble, and I bought it to support the game I love as much as to cover a subscription.

So at the moment I am very positive as I think this will help Funcom continue to create content. It also convinced a few of my friends to try the game now the barrier of subscription is no longer an obstacle. This seems to be mirrored in the charts on Steam and Amazon as the game is selling well.

As for in-game I have completed the elite dungeon runs and managed to complete the gate keeper as a DPS. After listening to guild members on team speak and reading guild chat I was dreading it. For those who do not know its a gear/skill check for nightmare dungeons. The DPS flavour makes sure you can win a DPS race, cleanse abilities all while dodging attacks. The fight is a lot of fun but difficult. I was very please once I managed to complete it and gave myself a high five.

A new end game?

Since reaching the end of the story I have been involved in my own version of the end game. I eventually want to progress into nightmare dungeons, but for now I am happy with doing the following:

• Picking up quests I missed and running newer quests from issues.
• Running elite dungeons when I can get a cabal group together.
• Making builds with www.tsw-builder.com and trying out different weapons and roles. This is my primary end-game at the moment. Throwing myself into pugs with different heal and DPS builds and seeing if I can get through them without getting shouted at. As far as healing I am trying the classic monk build and also the leech healing assault rifle builds. With a side order of looking what it takes to be a tank. Issue 4 looks like it will give tanks a wider ranging to experiment, with the changes to exposed planned. Seeing the other roles within the game is also helping me becoming a better DPS player.
• Running the odd lair.

As a casual player I love the way the Secret World has eliminated daily quests in letting me replay almost any mission. Instead of being stuck to a set of daily quests I can login for an hour and go to any zone and just revisit my favourite places.

Halloween delights

The Halloween content has hit the Secret World and I spent most of Thursday night running through it. It takes you back to Kingsmouth and you get to visit some old friends Madame Rogêt and Deputy Andy. As in all missions in the Secret World the characters are fully fleshed out and they live and breathe on the screen. The play between Rogêt and Andy had me thinking “Oh no she didn’t!!! *finger waving* Sandy is not going to be happy!” We even get back-story on Deputy Andy’s cats!

If I could sum-up the new content it would be flavour and depth. From the cats with thick Mexican accents to hints dropped for future story. I also loved going back to Kingsmouth and travelling across multiple zones. I think Kingsmouth is my favourite zone in any MMO I have played, please keep us going back there for future content.

Secret World Halloween Pub Quiz Sunday 21st October

Sorry, I have been a little busy playing and theory crafting builds to write anything substantial. But the Secret World community is shaping up to be a special one. Check out this thread for details on another up and coming community event.

Secret World Community Event 'The Revolution'

A massive Secret World community event happened this weekend called ‘The Revolution’ and by all accounts it was great success. You can check out the thread here.

There are a few videos from the event too...

http://youtu.be/fijXIhI8ORE

I like this phone cam video series as it makes the party look more lifelike.

http://youtu.be/6_fxX8AiQV0

Reaching the end of the main story line

Last Thursday I finally made it to the end of the main story line and also finished the quests in Transylvania. I enjoyed the journey and left with many questions, but rightly so as we have not reached the end of the first act. Slight spoiler warning, I loved the dragon reaction to the end, as it showed a chink in their scales. Throughout the story they seem so confident in their models and planning.

I am looking forward to see where they take the story and the characters. Which is weird as I think this is the first MMO were what happens to characters in the game, matters as much as what kind of impact my character has on the world. It would be good to see changes in zones and see how existing NPC's within the game react to the on-going story.

So what now? Well as soon as I had finished the main story line I started to go back and tackle the new content from the issues. So I imagine I have multiple nights of investigation missions, writing notes and banging my head against my monitor. In my journey through the game I signed up for dungeons as DPS, I still plan to join groups to do elite dungeons in that role but I also plan to try out the other roles. Otherwise what's the point in having all that flexibility if you don't use it.

So I spent a load more points on assault rifle and fists, swapped my talismans and queued up with the looking for group tool as a healer. I was over geared but the plan is to practise first and find my feet. The whole experience taxed my ageing multi-tasking skills. I got into a group to run Dream of The Darkness War which if you have never run is a very fun instance. Keeping myself mobile in fights, dodging bombs and the turning white marks on the floor cast by the third boss Dark House Sorcerer, while also making sure I keep up group members, who stray into swirly debris AoE damage and make sure I damage the boss to gain leech healing was a wild ride. Like the first time I ran the Polaris dungeon I wanted to go on the ride again but it was already past my bed time. The experience was very far from my days as holy priest in World of Warcraft.

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.