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Chaos Theory: The Secret World was worth the wait
Folks, I have to be brutally honest: I'm old. I have a family, two jobs, and more time-consuming hobbies than one man should. And yet it pains me to log out of The Secret World. Last Saturday I slew demons (and Illuminati) in Funcom's new MMORPG for 10 hours straight. Actually, I took a 30-minute dinner break, so I guess it was more like nine-and-a-half. The point is that I looked up at my clock, said holy crap when it told me that the sun was about to rise, and scratched my head trying to remember the last time that happened. I've been playing MMOs since the late 1990s, and when I say that I've pretty much played them all, that's not hyperbole. Right now, TSW is running a close second to Star Wars Galaxies as the most enjoyable title I've experienced to date. And keep in mind that it's been live for two weeks.
Chaos Theory: Tornquist on The Secret World's launch, future
You know, this is probably obvious if you've read my coverage of The Secret World thus far, but I'll just go ahead and fess up: I dig the game, and watching Funcom knock the cover off the ball is gratifying in a strange sort of way. That's why I didn't get too upset when my opportunity to interview creative director Ragnar Tornquist was upstaged by the firm's huge news dump this afternoon. The company shocked gamers and industry watchers by promising monthly content updates and a whole bunch of other stuff, some of which I had asked about in a series of questions we sent Funcom earlier in the week. The resulting answers are still worth a read, though, particularly if you're pinching yourself over TSW's successful launch and its rosy future.
Chaos Theory: Early access to The Secret World
Dark days aren't just coming, folks -- they're already here. And they're glorious. As you've probably surmised, Chaos Theory is a new column all about The Secret World. What you might not realize, however, is that this addition to Massively's feature roster was a little bit last-minute. Don't get me wrong; I've been looking forward to this game for a number of years now (heck, I signed up on DarkDemonsCryGaia.com waaaaay back in May of 2007, before Massively even existed!). Up until very recently, though, we had no plans to cover the game on a recurring basis. That changed over the early release weekend as I spammed our editors with zomg-I'm-having-a-blast-and-you-should-totally-let-me-write-about-this emails. Sure, I played the press beta and largely enjoyed it for what it was, but now that I'm in the game proper, tooling around on my own characters and taking the time to soak up the stories, the lore, and the mechanics, well... let's just say that we'll have plenty to talk about for the foreseeable future.
The Daily Grind: Do you try and influence the random?
Objectively, we know that the drop is random, that the attack randomly hits between one and eight times, that the boss randomly targets a party member, and so on. But human beings are notoriously bad about certain concepts, and one of them happens to be randomness. Somewhere in the world, someone genuinely believes that all you have to do to stop a typhoon is to find the right butterfly before it flaps its wings. And if you know enough about computers to know that they're incapable of generating truly random numbers, it's a short step from there to trying to influence whatever act of random chance is coming due in your favorite game. When you're playing, do you try and influence what should be random events? Do you have little theories about what causes certain things to happen and how to alter them? Have you learned and lived by simple mantras like "two steps left, one step right" -- even when you know objectively that they're not going to have the desired result (in the linked case, causing the monster to not blow up half the party)? Or, on the opposite end, do you rigorously dissuade yourself from any such theories and remind yourself that random is exactly what it says it is on the tin?
The OverAchiever: Voyage of the Glory of the Hero
98 out of 100 people at that party would walk over my corpse for free gum. -- "Veronica Mars." Ah, poor Veronica; so young, and yet so...correct. Well, let's not dwell on that for too long, because we've got more heroics to steamroll in pursuit of a badass mount. If you're just joining us or want a quick set of links, here's what we've covered in our Glory of the Hero series so far: Part I: Ahn'kahet Part II: Azjol-Nerub and Culling of Stratholme Part III: Drak'Tharon Keep Part IV: Gun'drak Part V: Halls of Lightning Part VI: Halls of Stone Let's get cracking. Head west, young player!
