End of Dragons First Beta Event

Greetings, Traveler!

I tried to come up with a clever title, but failed. So, for the past five days, players of Guild Wars 2 were given the opportunity to test out three of the new elite specializations that will be released with the End of Dragons expansion in February. Scooter and I got in on the action. And though I don't think anything was broken–exactly–I definitely have preferences for one over the other two, and Scooter, even more strongly. The beta test is over for now, so all I have of these characters are the screenshots I took.

Secret World Legends First Devstream

I am totally including this as a DAW entry, because I love The Secret World, and Romain "Tilty" Amiel, is one of the few MMO developers I had the pleasure of personally interacting with, thanks to my stint on the Beyond the Veil webcast.

So, back at the end of February, Funcom announced through a quarterly financial report that they intend to relaunch The Secret World with new combat systems, a reworked new player experience, and a free-to-play business model. Concerned voices raised the specter of Sony Online Entertainment's "New Game Engine" for Star Wars Galaxies. Relaunch activities were set to begin in late March. Bloggers at the time assumed this meant an actual relaunch of the game; however, it was apparently only a reference to the start of closed beta on 28 March.

I've adopted a wait-and-see approach to the news. I've been resubscribed as of early February, but have only been able to play a few times in the intervening weeks. So I totally missed last Wednesday's Letter from the Producer. Having a little time today, I logged in to play me some TSW, and discovered the beta had started already. They did a devstream on Twitch that I had just barely missed by a few minutes. Of course, I was able to watch the recording, which featured community manager Andy “Odonoptera” Benditt, newly promoted community team member Nicole "Spynosaur" Vayo, and game director Tilty. The stream was fairly informative and included a bit of character creation and gameplay.

The most striking thing I learned about the new Secret World Legends (SWL) is the forced reticle combat mode, where there is a small target circle in the center of the screen which represents roughly where the player character is aiming. I say roughly, because the actual target box is much bigger than the reticle itself (which many people in the chat felt was too big as it was). If you're not sure what reticle mode is, think of how you might play, say, Call of Duty on a console. Belghast once called it "Action mmo perma-mouselook interface." The Elder Scrolls Online uses reticle mode (or, it did when I tried it a few years ago), as does Neverwinter Nights.

Now, TSW already has a reticle mode option that can be toggled by hitting the "T" on your keyboard (by default). But I generally stick with the regular MMO (read: "WoW") style of moving and controlling my camera and cursor. I haven't really liked reticle mode in the past, so I am skeptical about it being the only mode for movement and combat in SWL. But I signed up for the beta in hopes of checking it out.

But not so hidden in the Producer's letter mentioned above is the following:

"This will not erase your progression in The Secret World though! Secret World Legends will exist on a different server than The Secret World, meaning you will still be able to play your old character on The Secret World server."

In many ways, I still feel woefully uninformed as to the direction Funcom is taking with their IP. It seems that they'll be putting TSW into maintenance mode; that is, all new content will be presented in SWL instead. But they seem to have learned at least one thing from SOE's NGE debacle: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe I'll get LoneStarBelle to Panoptic Core after all.

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This article from I Have Touched the Sky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If you repost part or all of the work (for non-commercial purposes), please cite me as the author and include a link back to the blog.

Scooter proofreads almost all my articles before I post them, for which I am very grateful. However, any mistakes are mine and mine alone (unless otherwise noted). If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

One Night in Beta

So Landmark alpha is over and closed beta has begun. David Georgeson, in the new intro video, said that closed beta will last quite some time, much longer than alpha. There are also plans to introduce many more features, like dangerous creatures, fall damage (I need that grappling hook), PvP elements, and more. Right now, mostly what has changed is the crafting system, which is now more complex. And seems to require even more resources.

Scooter and I were so busy gathering the resources we needed to create our claims and then stake them, then get enough copper to pay the upkeep for a few days, that I completely forgot to get any screenshots. Which is why the wall of text.

I was a bit miffed at the cost of upkeep (300 copper per day), but it's really only a few minutes of digging. What is somewhat more irksome is the five-day limit. So I can't ever be away from the game more than five days? For who knows how many months? I really hope that changes, and soon. I realize the other side of that argument is that they don't want to have zombie claims just sitting there, but I may just as soon return to my pocket dimension in Rift, if that is going to be how this world plays out. It seems to me that as long as I pump "upkeep" into the claim, I should not be limited if I need to be away from the game for an extended period of time.

The controls are a little wonky again (or still). They just don't seem as responsive, making it hard to move quite the way I'd like. And there is no keymap, so I can't reassign stuff to fit my habitual keystrokes.

It's not all negative. Scooter and I ended up with an awesome pair of claims in the northern part of Serenity Valley (how could I not choose that island), on a mountain with old growth vegetation all around. It may be my imagination, bu the claims seem smaller and the buffers larger this time around. With the initial download and subsequent flurry of resource gathering, there wasn't much time to work on our claims themselves, but I look forward to developing the property in the coming months. I'll have maps and pics in the near future, if you want to visit my piece of the world.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

QOTD: The Champagne Room

[Beta is] like the champagne room of your local nightclub, I guess. You're supposed to watch as the special people go in, and envy what you think they're doing and dream about the day you get in there too…. but in the end, it's just a different room with the same people and products, only bigger egos. Huh, that comparison was more accurate than I expected.
~~John "Big Bear Butt" Patricelli, "Looking for Relief"

I have found this is often the case. I even had to /ignore a couple of really annoying people in the TESO beta last night, even though I decided within less than an hour or so of blocking them that I would probably never play the game again, even if it goes F2P. Full disclosure: I did pay $60 for Landmark. But I have yet to see the sort of behavior that would warrant /ignore-ing people when I have been logged in.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Carrying a Torch

So thanks to a timely tweet by Scarybooster, I was able to sign up for and get in to the beta for Runic Games' Torchlight II this past weekend. I managed to get some screen shots, though it was a bit complicated for me, and involved MS Paint. Hopefully there is a better way to actually capture screenies than I was able to figure out.

Graphics

Torchlight II is very cartoony, almost appearing hand drawn, down to the human(?) characters having only three fingers. I happen to be comfortable with that aesthetic, though some may prefer the more realistic graphics of, say Diablo III. The starting areas I explored had a somewhat gloomy atmosphere, with cool palettes dominating; though you can see from the screenshots that the game is fairly well lit, and there are bright colors where appropriate. I liked the special effects, like the "Glaive" which reminded me of Krull. Things like gore and death effects were consist with the cartoon style, not super realistic, but limiting the game to older children, IMHO, at least thematically.

Mechanics

Here I refer to my moment-to-moment interaction with the game interface, as opposed to the underlying dice-rolls. While it is possible to zoom in fairly close, you are always looking down at the environment from a certain angle, as opposed most MMOs I've played where you are usually looking over the shoulder of your character is whatever direction they're facing. I really liked the game interface, which was similar to most games of this sort, I suppose, though mouse navigation took some getting used to. I basically dragged Weiden around with my curser. There were two quickly available using the right and left mouse buttons, plus the quickbar had potions and spells I had learned, which could be right-clicked for action or by tapping the numbers on the keyboard.

Character Progression

There were a four different classes, a caster Embermage, a melee Berserker, a tanky Engineer, and the pistol-wielding Outlander, which is the class I chose. Every character has a combat pet, with a variety of animals to choose from.

I only got to level 14, having played for an hour or two. I had limited time play on Sunday and Monday, but didn't realize Runic had extended the beta till Thursday, I read somewhere that the beta only included about six hours of playable story or Act 1 of the game, but I am not sure exactly how far I got. As you can see from the above screenshot, when you level, you get both freely distributable  attribute points and semi-restricted skill points (some skill point distributions have level requirements). I dumped as many skill points as I could into the two special attacks I had, including the aforementioned "Glaive."

Equipment and inventory were fairly standard RPG affairs, with some equipment having customizable slots where "embers" with various stats could be placed. Your pet also carries a pack where you can put extra loot until you are close to a vendor.

TL;DR

I liked the bit of time I spent with Torchlight II and intend to get it when it comes out (currently available for preorder). I didn't focus too much on the story, figuring I'd have time to check it out when I play "for real." While the beta was online only, the game will be playable offline or on a LAN mode—the lack of which, along with other factors, led me to steer clear of  Diablo III. If I am able and willing to play tethered to the internet, I may as well log into my current MMO, SWTOR.