Wednesday 19 September 2012

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.

Friday 14 September 2012

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.



Sunday 9 September 2012

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.


Monday 3 September 2012

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.