journal

Cry Gaia Journal: December 2011

On January 1, 2012, in Journal, by Vengeful-frog

  • Age of Conan:
    • The House of Crom update should be released around 11th and 12th January 2012 and take “advantage of the new lighting tools that came with the infrastructure update”. Public testing will be held “over the holiday period”. Source: ageofconan.com
  • Anarchy Online:
    • At the end of December, Producer and Game Director Colin ‘Means’ Cragg will be replaced by Dave ‘Ilaliya’ Williams as Producer and Fia ‘Lindelu’ Tjernberg as Game Director after having been a member of the AO team for eight years. Source: anarchyonline.com
  • Bloodline Champions:
    • Stunlock Studios announced its “Child’s Play Charity Pack”. It costs 240 Funcom Points and the profit goes an organization which gives toys to children’s hospitals. “The pack contains an Avatar [...] and a Title (Santa’s Helper).” Source: bloodlinechampions.com
    • Bloodline prices have lowered. “The 16 original Bloodlines now cost 360 Funcom Points and the Bloodlust ones 480 Funcom Points as standard price!” Source: BLChampions’s tweet
    • The Steelseries Sensei Winter Tournament is taking place from 15th December 2011 to 22nd January 2012. The teams ‘x6tence.ESET’ and ‘ZEPH NO DISBAND TEAM’ qualified. For the record, ‘x6tence’ is the team which won the Bloodline Champions tournament at DreamHack:winter. Source: bloodlinechampions.com
  • Funcom:
    • Funcom is recruiting:
      • Durham, USA is looking for customer service representatives fluent in English, French and German (one per language) and a French-speaking community manager.
      • Montreal, Canada is looking for a text coordinator, and French and German localization QA testers. The text coordinator should preferably have a “knowledge of the works of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker…” So, Howard (author of ‘Conan the Barbarian’) because of ‘Age of Conan’, Lovecraft and Poe because of TSW… Stoker (author of ‘Dracula’) perhaps because of TSW too.

      Their job descriptions (except, weirdly, the one for the German customer service representative) state “Funcom is currently developing the Massively Multiplayer Online game The Secret World and one unannounced project. They are also operating the MMO’s Anarchy Online and Age of Conan”. It seems to confirm what Senior Assistant Community Manager Glen ‘Famine’ Swan said to JeuxOnLine.info here last October:

      JeuxOnLine.info: In which languages will be the game for its release in April 2012?
      Glen ‘Famine’ Swan: In French, English and I believe German.

      Besides, Montreal, Canada is also looking for a Senior Rendering Programmer.

      Then, what “unannounced project” could they be talking about? Could this mean the long-awaited return of April Ryan?

      Source:
      funcom.com
      Interview of Glen ‘Famine’ Swan by JeuxOnLine


GAME INFORMATION

  • An interview of Creative Director and Senior Producer Ragnar Tørnquist performed by Gamespot brought new information and clarification:
    • “The idea behind death in The Secret World is that you lose consciousness. You are separated from your body. Your spirit is left to roam inside this shadow world. While you are in the spirit state in The Secret World, you might see things that are invisible to players who are sort of conscious. You might have certain missions that might have to be solved in this spirit state”.
    • Ragnar Tørnquist confirmed players will make Internet research thanks to an in-game browser so they don’t have to leave the game. There could be more linkings with Twitter and Facebook.
    • Funcom prefers to see more activity on the console MMORPG market before entering it. An Xbox 360 version should not be expected short-term although Ragnar Tørnquist “really really want[s] to make a 360 version or” a version for the next Xbox console generation. For now, the team focuses entirely on PC which it estimates is the core market of the game.

    Source: gamespot.com

  • Comments from Age of Conan’s Game Director and Executive Producer Craig Morrison to Zam.com seem to hint the single server technology will be ready for TSW’s launch although some features might require more time.Craig Morrison talking about the implementation in Age of Conan:

    “Early next year the technology infrastructure will go in, essentially pulling all the players together onto our new single server technology. Then we will start to roll out the features that this opens up over the course of next year.”

    Source: zam.com

  • Joel Bylos explained you can have simultaneously:

    1 Story Mission
    1 Main Mission – These can have any kind of goal but are always given by NPCs
    1 Side Mission – These can have any kind of goal but are always given by items found in the world.

    If, for example, you had a story mission which asked you to kill zombies, a main mission that asked you to kill zombies and a side mission that asked you to kill zombies – all three would tick upwards on a single zombie kill.

    “Paused” missions are restarted by returning to a quest giver (or having a friend share the mission!)

    You can make custom markers with custom notes on your map.

    There are a few reasons for restricting missions. Some of them are:
    - The oft quoted “immersion factor”
    - We don’t want you to spend 30mins in cutscenes when in a quest hub, while you run around and gather all the missions.
    - We have many mission types and we want people to “switch” mindset when they choose between action, sabotage or investigation.

    If I had to compare it to anything out there, I’d say the restriction feels somewhat like in GTA or Red Dead Redemption. You take a mission – you can leave it and do something else – but you have to return to the mission giver and pick it up again (and because we are nice, you pick it up where you left off).

    Try not to think of “paused” missions as something you care about. For all intents and purposes they don’t exist on you until you return to the quest giver.

    He also gave an example of item mission: You’ll have to find Danny’s iPhone and bring it back to him. “Yes, item missions can be that simple as they are often about directing you to people”.

    Other missions can ask you to “follow strange footprints in the sand” or ask you “who has been ravaging these boxes of fresh squid”.

    Source:
    Joel Bylos’s first post on DDCG
    Joel Bylos’s second post on DDCG
    Joel Bylos’s third post on DDCG

GENERAL INFORMATION

  • TSW received MMORPG.com’s Rising Star award. Source: mmorpg.com
  • The Hydra Initiative launched the second of its three bi-monthly contests. This one, running from 2nd January to 4th February, is “strictly for fan art inspired by The Secret world”. “A poll will be opened up for the community to vote on [the] submission[s]. After the polls close the top three submissions will be voted upon by the commentators from The Secret World Uncovered” and they’ll announce the winner on their podcast. The winner will receive 2400 Funcom points. The contests are open to all factions. Source: Announcement


CABALS

  • The Fallen is a casual guild moving from Age of Conan (where it is “known as Kaaos/Circle of Mercenaries”) to TSW. The guild will focus on PvE and PvP. Expanding to RP is however possible if members wish so. Despite its laidback gameplay, the guild aims for good ranks. It is “looking for mature (+18) players” from all over the world. Announcement thefallen.guildlaunch.com
  • Mayday made an Illuminati Christmas card. DDCG thread
  • The Gentlemen describe themselves as “a friendly, relaxed and mature” cabal composed of 30+ year old gamers from Finland and UK who played numerous MMOs. They will be present in all aspects of the game and intend to remain a rather small group. Applicants should ideally be at least 18 years old. “There’s no geographical limits, but most of [the members] are at GMT +2 time zone”. This is the cabal behind the Leaflets from a Crazy Guy. Announcement

CABALS

  • Ludere is a French-speaking cabal with a family atmosphere. Their goal is just to have fun while keeping in mind that RL goes first. They however intend to achieve great things in-game and are expanding to multigaming. The cabal accepts all kinds of players. Announcement ludere.fr
  • Agora is a social French community of gamers aiming to last and stay together, to regroup people by regions so they can have RL contacts if they wish so and to regroup players having the same profile. Members are generally 25+, preferably able to speak English, liking to out-game read & write and in-game chat rather than in-game VoIP. Agora is not looking to be the best of the best but is not casual either. It is involved in Age of Conan, Aion, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings and Rift. It intends to expand to Guild Wars 2, SWTOR and The Secret World. They have groups in Aquitaine, Ile de France, Languedoc-Roussillon, Rhône-Alpes and more are coming. The Agora community has chosen the Templar faction. Announcement guilde-mmo.com
  • Nine Swords is a cabal formed by ex-members of Ouroboros. Their creed is “teamwork, community and order”. Regarding the RP, it is a “melting pot of new bloods and old guards” who “don’t favor or shun, [they] get the job done”. The cabal has “nine divisions, with their own dedicated officer. Members will be able to participate in as many divisional activities as they want, and can even join a department to help along their fellow cabal mates.” Recruitment will start in January 2012. Announcement nine-swords.com
 
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