A Different Kind of Glow

Since I've been whinging about it for a few days, I thought I should announce that, last night, I finally got the Glowing Green Eyes for my Dragon character, Poppyshock. They dropped from a Genizah of the Crawling Plague after fighting Erbu Nasir, the Guardian of Pestilence, in the Shadowy Forest.

This means I'm basically done with the Anniversary Event, though I will try to get into Fusang this weekend to get that last Lore object on each toon; and the XP rate for the fights is still pretty good at this point—if button-mashing drudgery. . .

PvE and PvP Are Not Like Chocolate and Peanut Butter

EDIT: I'm putting this here because there seems to be a slight misunderstanding amongst my readers. I'm not saying in this post that PvP and PvE should never mix. I am referring to special short time events—like The Secret World Anniversary Event currently going on through the 15th of this month—that cause a lot of players who would not otherwise involve themselves in PvP to flood a PvP zone—Fusang in this case—in order to fulfill some PvE objective.

An interesting series of discussions has arisen surrounding the Guardian of Gaia in Fusang Projects.

From Twitter:

((Four hours to get one Lunar Guardian dead. My god.))
— Klaus von Richter (@KlausvonRichter) July 9, 2013

It turns out one of the fight mechanics involves the Guardian healing itself from an AoE attack, and few if any players in Klaus' fight group understood how to counter it. It probably didn't help that that PvPers continued to go about their business of killing other players.

Even in the area where we're fighting the golem people are still killing other factions. Do they not understand that we're supposed to work together on this - this one time????
~~a BtV castmate

Meanwhile Skye Harris of the TSW community on Google+ has a different perspective:

[I]t's full of PvE players expecting a PvE fight . . . whinging in chat that they were killed by other players (it IS a PvP zone after all). . . Personally though, I cannot wait till this ill-though-out event is over and Fusang is rid of people who want to camp a PvP zone without actually PvP'ing.
~~from comments to my post on G+

I find myself agreeing somewhat with the sentiments of both PvPers and PvEers. I only want to get the Lore object to complete the achievement. I could care less about a 4-hour lagfest where I'm hindering and being hindered by other players, as well.

"Gee, I'd like to have a major PvE event in the middle of a PvP battlezone," said no MMO player ever. It's always a mistake for the devs to insert a special PvE event into a PvP zone. You please no one. Looking at you this time, Funcom. Live and learn, as they say. But PvP and PvE do not taste great together.

World of Warcraft Announces an In-Game Cash Shop

World of @Warcraft is definitely getting an in-game store: http://t.co/wItrZty6A9 #wow
— massively (@massively) July 9, 2013

No real surprise there, though the article incorrectly dates the current web-based item shop to the "infamous sparkle pony," when in fact both the Pandaren Monk and Li'l K.T., and other minipets were available months before that.

The other non-surprise is the level of nerd-rage in the post's comment section over the sub-plus-cash-shop business model. I personally don't have a problem with it, as I purchased the above-mentioned minipets from the Blizzard store (I believe some of the proceeds went to charity), as well as in-game items from Cryptic's STO shop while subbed that game. This is the classic Time Rich vs. Money Rich dispute I've covered several times over the past few weeks.

For every product and service, there is a certain portion of the consumer base willing to pay more than the market price for it. This consumer surplus can be exploited (this is not a bad thing) by the supplier. It actually helps keep the market price where it is. I agree with Tobold's opinion that if players want to spend extra money on a game, they should be free to do so. An item shop enables that.

A cash shop doesn't necessarily mean the end of creativity in a game. In fact, it may provide the economic stimulus to continue game development. This is not a new concept.

Even those with a passion to create have to eat and pay the rent.
~~The Ancient Gaming Noob, 2009

One must agree that if the game isn’t paying the bills, you have to do what it takes to change that or shut the doors.
 ~~TAGN, in a comment on the same post.

I no longer play WoW. A cash shop certainly won't bring me back. Players seem to be leaving WoW in droves. But if the introduction of an in-game item shop keeps the doors open for those that still enjoy the game, I have no problem with that. I even encourage it. After all, in December, Funcom faced the decision to make The Secret World subscription optional or let it fail completely. They made the right decision, I think; and thousands of players are currently celebrating what I consider the best game on the market a year after launch.

BTW, another milestone: This is my 400th post on I Have Touched the Sky.

Gaia Rocks! Not Always a Good Thing

Not all is Happy Happy Joy Joy in the TSW anniversary event. Some problems might be endemic to the type of activities Joel and his devs at Funcom planned. Seems like it would be better to plan around that sort of thing, rather than ask the players to grin and bear it.

It's totally awesome to have so many folks together in one place for a single purpose. However something that causes enormous headaches to most players is the atrocious framerate caused by having everyone and their sister in on these major boss fights. Most people, even on high-end rigs with graphics turned down, are lucky to eke out FPS in the teens. On my machine, an above-average-but-certainly-no-longer-top-end Asus G73, I had to downgrade to DX9, low graphics, and turn off particles, to get anything close to motion during these fights. The pic below shows really good fps (in the upper right corner), but I had just barely arrived. Typically it dwindled from the teens down to 2 -5 fps by the end of the fight. Otherwise, I'm looking at a slide show; which wouldn't be that bad except I often end up dead because I don't see ground-effect boss damage until it's too late. Other players' bad habits don't help, but neither does the core design of the fight.

Some of the choices made for loot drops are not great either. Considering each boss fight is on a two-hour cool down, getting a stack of flares isn't exactly anything to write home about. The signets aren't much better, considering how many drop all over the place anyway. The huge number of signets being received has also had the side effect of collapsing the signet market on the auction house. I will say it was nice to see a few major talisman signets, but they are few and far between, considering how many total I've picked up over the past few days.

It's rather ironic that Gamespot puts out this lovely quote regarding Issue 7:

How refreshing that The Secret World continues to hew its own path, building tension through storytelling, and requiring you to exercise brainpower rather than just tap some keys until things fall over dead.

I'm sure that's true, given the awesome storylines of Issues 5 and 6. However, each Guardian of Gaia fight is about ten minutes of button mashing, coupled with "Don't stand in the fire." The XP and Pax (currency) are decent, I suppose; though that has been masked by the admittedly great double AP/SP boosts they've have running over the weekend—which ended Sunday :(.

I personally only want thing more for any of my toons, and that's the glowing green eyes for my dragon, the only avatar I'll use them on. I got them within the first couple of fights on my other two characters. In fact, they were the first thing that dropped off the Transylvania bosses for my Templar. But after something like 12 Transylvania fights on my dragon, I have yet to see the glow. I'll keep plugging away I suppose—like a rat in Skinner box—though I'm less and less happy about it.

Finally, we come to the last aggravation of the anniversary event. There is a Guardian of Gaia rampaging (occasionally) through the Fusang Projects PvP warzone, as well as a piece of lore. While the Guardian has been dropped from the achievement required to the T-shirt (seen in the pic of Karl toasting, above), the Lore object is still in there, and required for the other achievement. So what is the problem? No one I know has been able to get into Fusang. The other night, Scooterz and I waited for over an hour in the queue. Then on Sunday and last night, I spent the entire time I was logged-in in the queue. Luckily you can do other things while waiting. My buddy, Tententacles has been queued whenever he's logged in since Thursday or Friday. I have a feeling Joel and the devs either need to fix the queue or move the Lore object. (EDIT: Apparently, Fusang has in fact been broken this whole time. But that was in no announcement or FAQ I saw.)

Anyway, much like the STO summer event that is currently going on, what started out as a fun lark of a few different activities in TSW quickly became grindy and not worth my time. At least Funcom is not trying to extend this anniversary business out a month. After a brief update this morning, the servers are back online, and we've all got "A Dream to Kill."

Beyond the Veil Take 47: Lights, Camera, Fashion!!!

I was about to feel bad, because this show is over a week old. But then again, everyone's been very busy between last week's Anniversary show, Galactrix and Feii's Joel Bylos-guided tour of Issue 7, and just general TSW event mayhem. Beyond the Veil Take 47 is now available for download. There is also a rather lengthy video of the event; or, if you'd rather just see pics of the participants, you can follow this link.

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