Forums and the tone of posts

Have you ever noticed how internet forums tend to get taken over by the vocal minority of negativity?  Recently, this has happened to the forums for The Secret World.  The closer the game gets to beta weekend the more the tone of the forum has become negatuve, dismissive, and unpleasant.  I've stopped checking in on the forum because of the tone.  It is unfortunate too because we have meet some truly nice couples that we are looking forward to gaming with inthe coming months.

The Secret War Week 2

As many of you probably know, The Secret War has entered it’s second week over at The Secret World.  This week faction challenges were added as a component of winning the war.

Hubby finally got me to play it last week.  I’m still very ambivalent about the entire concept of marketing through Facebook games like this.  The amount of spam, well I consider it spam, the game sends out to the Facebook accounts of your friends is mind boggling.  Luckily, no one knows I have a Facebook account so they aren’t being buried by the posts.  However, it is also a really ingenious method of getting people to spread the word to other people without having millions invested in traditional marketing methods. 

However, given the declining popularity of Facebook it is a big risk on Funcom’s part.  Personally, I think they need to branch out the marketing campaign a bit if they want huge numbers at launch.

Awesome Day on LOTRO

First if there are typos I will correct them tomorrow since I am typing this on the demo tablet that arrived today.  I like the tablet it is slighty too large to type easily but that is  partially because it is so new.

Anyway,we had an awesome day in LOTRO today.  i had three mounts drop from festival envelopes on three different characters.  I also got the most awesome Fireworks Pony today for my warden.  Several characters will be getting it tomorrow as well.  Plus I finally took the plunge and bought my first LOTRO house.

Several people from TSW are joining us in Landrival and we are having a blast.

 

Edit: WOW typing in the dark on a new tablet is a bad idea.  lol

LOTRO Servers

Landroval may drive me batty at times but the server doesn’t feel empty.  Darrowdelf is quiet, friendly but quiet.  Economic differences aside, walking into The Prancing Pony is an immensely different experience.  The Pony on Landroval is never silent and never simply filled with NPC’s.  Darrowdelf it is church quiet and devoid of player characters. 

Don’t misunderstand me, Landroval is still jammed with people role playing and doing do horribly.  RP isn’t a huge thing for me but still if you are going to RP, and believe that your RP experience should be forced upon everyone else, then at least understand that context and setting of the world in which you RP!  But that being said, I’d rather be an active server of RP’ers than a quiet, appears to be dying server.

So, we are staying on Landroval.  Our guild is there and the characters we both feel connected to are there.  Feel free to contact us in game if you pop over to check out the world’s worst RP server.  The population is friendly, just touched in the head.

Back to Middle Earth

New pc’s, post and pictures tomorrow, and I fired up Lord of the Rings Online this morning.  What I thought was going to be a quick stop over in Middle Earth turned into an all day trip and a three month sub.   The improved performance from my old machine to the new has made the game completely different for me.  I was easily pulling 200 fps in places and 125 fps in Bree.  Before I was lucky to break 30 fps in town so you can understand my pleasure.  I only had very slight rubber-banding issues. 

However, Landroval is still very much Landroval.    I don’t mind RP so long as it doesn’t infringe on other people’s game.  And honestly, how does playing AC/DC on the lute in the Prancing Pony come remotely close to immersive role play?  Yes, I understand that Landroval is the “unofficial” role playing server but that doesn’t mean their role playing is entitled to break another players immersion in the environment.  Gee can you tell that the type, quantity, and quality of role playing on Landroval irritates me to no end?

We started new characters on Darrowdelf to play with a couple we meet on The Secret World forums.  Server seems good, far less populated that Landroval.  It will be interesting to see if the economy is as good.  I’m sure I will still go back to my Landroval characters, first love and all that. 

Aion Download Site

There has been a lot of confusion lately about where to go to download Aion.  Unfortunately, NCSoft has hidden the link very well on their site which makes no sense to me.  But any who, here is the link to download the launcher and thus Aion itself.

The Secret World Minimum Requirements

People are having trouble location and identifying the minimum requirements for The Secret World.  So, here is the link and the requirements directly:

Required
512 KBPS or faster Internet Connection
DVD-Rom
8X or faster DVD drive**

OS
Windows XP (SP 1)/Vista (SP 1)/Windows 7 (SP 1)
Video Card
nVidia 8800 series 512 VRAM or better/Radeon HD3850 512MB or better

Processor
2.6 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo or equivalent AMD CPU
DirectX
DirectX 9.0c Compatible

Memory
At least 2GB RAM for Windows XP / 3GB RAM for Windows Vista and Windows 7 *
Input
Keyboard & Mouse

Hard drive
At least 30GB of free space

*2GB RAM for Windows XP / 3GB RAM for Windows Vista and Windows 7
**DVD ROM required for installation only

If you want an idea of how TSW will play on your current system, download and run Age of Conan.  Run around any zone other than Tortage and see how your system handles the engine and the frame rate.  If you see little to no issues, then you are good to go for TSW.  However should you experience low frame rates or flat out stalls in performance than I strongly recommend looking at upgrading your system.  TSW will not be as demanding as Age of Conan according to Funcom but given how beautiful Conan looks, why deprive yourself of the beauty awaiting you in TSW?

Tera beta, Aion, and Age of Conan

Tera was quite simply awful!  Honestly we both hated it and didn’t play the game for ten minutes before we fled the experience.  The movement is clunky, the interaction with NPC’s is terrible, and the graphics were less than impressive for a MMO released in North American in 2012.  I will say this much for it, I am cured of my desire to play Tera ever again.

Valhakar downloaded Aion yesterday when we got home from the ER (he has a kidney stone).  I’m not sure if he likes it yet but time will tell.  It will definitely provide him a different experience than Tera or Age of Conan.  He made a priest which I will admit is my favorite class by far.  I deleted and remade my priest there because she was low level and I hated her appearance. 

Age of Conan is now reinstalled on my new pc, pictures and specs to follow this weekend.  My frame rate issues have been solved.  I still stutter sometimes but most of those stutters are not reproducible.  We are both looking forward to reacquainting ourselves with the game since neither one of us remembers how to play our toons. LOL

The Secret World went missing …

According to the official forums, the Facebook game has been temporarily taken down due to connectivity issues.  Funcom and Facebook are actively trying to resolve the issue and bring The Secret World back online quickly. 

Secret War on Facebook

Today Funcom released their Facebook tie-in for The Secret World.  With the release of the Facebook game they’ve also released an updated faction test. 

We haven’t played the Facebook game, mainly because we aren’t on Facebook.  According to the official forums there have been a couple of hiccups with the release of the Facebook game.  However, the smart player base of TSW has come up with many a work around and things seem to be working smoothly.

There are rewards from the tie-in that are usable once the game releases but apparently the clothing rewards are ugly which is just fine with me.  I could care less about the title reward from the Facebook game to be honest.

Betas

So exciting news today, Guild Wars 2 announced it’s first beta weekend on 27 – 29 April.   So far my e-mail is devoid of a beta invitation but I have high hopes.  I know I’m one of a possible 1 million possible customers for the beta weekend.

Tera has an open beta this weekend and I know that we will be participating.  I’ve been interested in the game for a long time but that interest has lessened in recent months.  I’m hoping that the beta gets the game out of my system and I can move on.