Rants tag

Rants, ruminations, and rambling remarks from my mad, muddled, meandering mind.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

DAW4: Funcom Oslo

In 2009, my friend told me about a new game he'd heard was being developed. It was going to be set in the modern era, include secret cabals, fighting demons and each other for control of the world. There weren't going to be classes or levels; players' spells or moves would be based on skills and the weapons they wield. It sounded pretty, cool since we'd discussed that sort of "natural" progression— somewhat like Tabula Rasa, where PCs started out as generic soldiers and specialized from there—would be ideal.
Flash forward to Spring, 2012. My friend has gotten into a couple of the beta events and likes the game well enough, I'm hot in to SWTOR, and don't care much about The Secret World, yet. Ragnar Tørnquist and his team have worked hard and long to develop the game, which is released on July 3, 2012. Mixed reviews and competition from two highly anticipated games, Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2, lead to disappointing sales and subscriptions. Rather than fold up, Funcom transitions TSW to a buy-to-play, with an optional subscription.
Fast forward again, to this month and Issue #6: "The Last Train to Cairo." Granted that it is a $10 DLC, Issue #6 is a fantastic story and worth every penny. The last mission alone is a heck of an E-ticket ride. It's helped my lovely bride get enthusiastic about the game again. A game I love to play.

And for that, I appreciate the team in Oslo.

7 comments:

  1. Yay for team Oslo!

    On a totally unrelated note: are you still investigating the e-mail delay on Blogger? I only now discovered your comment of like one month ago. *blush*

    I posted Appreciate your developers...etc yesterday somewhere in between 12pm and 1am GMT+1 (Central Europe) and subscribers got the e-mail this morning at 9.40am GMT+1. There's always been this delay of hours as far as I recall (don't know if the moment of posting matters). What are you after?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. On second thought, I might have posted it on 11.40pm GMT+1 after all. I don't really think much about it. Hope it's of any use anyway.

      Delete
    2. Thanks for looking into it. I was just wondering, because the WordPress blogs I subscribe to (like BioBreak, MMOGamerchick, etc.) send me an email almost soon as the author posts. Certainly no hours-long delay. But if that delay is normal for Blogger, I guess I can't complain.

      And looking closely at your post time, the tooltip does say your DAW post was published at 12:28 in the morning, GMT+1. :)

      Delete
    3. Hmm yeah, Google services are a bit behind on some points in my view. If I upload a picture with the new google photos, it takes quite a while too before I can find it back and link to it - so annoying. Picasa Images was more user friendly, but I have no clue how to get it back.

      That said, I still love the freedom you have to change anything you like in Blogger without having to pay for it.

      And wow, I didn't notice that it said the posting time at the bottom - duh! ^^

      Delete
    4. You use google photos to upload to your blog? I just upload straight from the Blogger interface.

      Delete
  2. I am glad you and sctrz are joining us for our Monday nights now even though we're not questing in the same areas. I really like these new issues for the reason that we can go back to some of the earlier areas and do things as a guild group.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you. We're loving it, too. She doesn't particular like Solomon Island. But as I realized we could get through the Storyline Mission and move on to Egypt, she's really jumped in with both feet. She even said she was looking forward to Transylvania.

      Delete