Unlike most of the current MMO offerings, The Secret World has an urban setting based on our world, in modern times.

The Secret World allows you to explore real world locations such as New York, London, Seoul, New England and Egypt as you battle evil together with thousands of others from all around the globe. Wield shotguns and black magic as you develop your character in a game that has neither levels nor classes.

On the one hand, The Secret World sounds like it is really breaking new ground with settings. I love the idea of sneaking around London with gold-plated pistols. The combat categories combine magic and melee with martial arts, black magic and voodoo and you can also gain “points” from exploration and trade skills.

On the other hand, the initial write-up promises “ferocious, non-stop player vs. player action in the Battle for Hollow Earth”. This, plus their description of an “intense, real-time, action-packed combat system”, makes me think that the game will be too twitch-based for me although I’m relieved to see that it doesn’t appear to be a PvP free-for-all. The game is expected to include plenty of PvE and the lead designer has said that soloing will definitely be possible.

The points system isn’t quite clear. There are no classes and no levels, leaving “truly freeform character customisation” and “gameplay that goes beyond the usually rigid MMO structure” so I’m wondering if it’s similar to the original SWG skill distribution system. You earn points as you play:

Earn points for everything you do – from combat and exploration, to trade skills and PvP – in order to rank high on both local and global scoreboards, gain titles and worldwide acclaim, and help make your secret society the most powerful and influential of them all.

The game has been in development for over three years and Ragnar Tørnquist, the lead designer of The Secret World, said they started envisioning the game over ten years ago. “We always wanted a different kind of online world, something scary and contemporary, something deeper and closer to our reality. Our goal now is to create a detailed world where players feel empowered and part of something big, something mystical and epic.”

There are three secret societies:

• the Templars (in red) with headquarters in London
• the Illuminati (in blue) with headquarters in New York, underground
• the Dragon (in green) with headquarters in a Buddhist monastery in Seoul

The factions engage in PvP against each other but also, apparently, stand united against evil.

The initiation test determines which secret society you are most suited for and also serves as a sign-up for the beta test.

It turns out I’m likely to join the Templars, which worried me until I saw Tornquist’s tweet on the subject:

Templars aren’t about Christianity. They’re about Faith. Which is different. And also about kicking demon ass.

That sounds like fun to me. I think I shall be watching out for this one.

If you are interested in taking a sneak preview for yourself, take the initiation test, choose a secret society and fill in the form with your name and email address.

You can also find out more on the The Secret World Official Forums and you’ll find some very specific questions answered on the transcript of the Ragnar Twitter interview.

Last month, Funcom revealed their second trailer, “The Puritan,” for The Secret World.

Wow.

I hate to get my hopes too high after being disappointed by Funcom’s Age of Conan but I am looking forward to hearing more about this one.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Press Release:
Macmillan: Tor-Forge: News: Tor Books announces EVE Online novelization

“EVE is a phenomenal SF offering,” said Eric Raab, Tor Editor. “The game is beyond awe-inspiring, and its intricacies deserve stories. Hjalti’s storytelling skills shine in-game and in his short fiction. We at Tor are truly excited for his first foray into the novel form.”

Synopsis:
EVE Online | EVE Insider

A vicious attack on a deep space mining colony results in its destruction and the death of nearly all its inhabitants. Of the handful of tattered survivors, a lone young man swears revenge upon the forces that cost him everything but his breath.

In another part of the universe, an agent of death loses her tenuous grip on sanity, leaves her profession and everything of her past life, and goes on a journey of redemption.

Their respective paths will take them through galactic empires built on faith, hedonism, discipline and rebellion, and plunge them into the darkest parts of space where they encounter denizens of the chaotic and dangerous pirate kingdoms. And all the while, as they draw closer to what they seek, they begin to realize that the only stakes worth playing for are the ones that bring danger and change…

An intriguing idea although I’m not looking forward to the glut of bad World of Warcraft novelizations if this turns into a success.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

The headline says “FUND…SHOP…ADVENTURE!” The latest twist in Everquest and Everquest II is the ability to purchase Station Cash which can be used to buy “premium in-game items”. The marketplace offers bonus experience potions, equipment, and house pets.

Real Money Trading has come to the Everquest games.

For Sale

Items can be purchased on the market place now. Bonus potions for all three types of experience (AA, Adventure and Tradeskill), pets and outfits for the appearance slots are the initial offerings. The station cash and the items purchased with it are all NO-TRADE.

Patch Notes

Hotfix December / 9 / 2008
STATION CASH

To get started, access the "Marketplace" from the EQII Window within the game. Click on the "Add Funds" button to purchase Station Cash to fund your wallet and then select items to purchase.

Official Information

Station Cash Overview

For beginners getting started, veterans leveling up, players starting alts, or anyone trying to get more out of the game, using SC to purchase in-game items is for everyone. The items available offer new and experienced players alike convenience, customization and fun while providing a unique gameplay experience. Convenience items include potions of various types, from health to experience boosts. Several appearance packs in various armor types make up the customization category. Then for fun, we offer a selection of pets for your house or as travel companions.

Station Cash FAQ

What is Station Cash?
Station Cash is Sony Online Entertainment’s new virtual currency that players can buy to fund a virtual wallet. Once a wallet has been funded, Station Cash can be used to purchase premium in-game items through the in-game Marketplace in EverQuest® and EverQuest® II.

Consumer Protection?

This line in the terms and conditions is a bit of a handful:

You agree that SOE retains the unfettered right to modify its games and all aspects of characters, items, points and coin, including Station Cash (collectively, “Virtual Goods”) therein. You acknowledge that SOE has been, is, and will be constantly making changes to its games. You further acknowledge that SOE can and will, in its discretion, modify features, functions or abilities of any element of any of its games or any Virtual Goods (which may, among other things, make the Virtual Goods substantially more valuable, effective or functional, or less valuable, effective or functional, more common or less common, or eliminated entirely). You acknowledge and agree that all Virtual Goods represent a limited license right governed by the terms of this Agreement, and are not redeemable for any sum of money or monetary value from SOE at any time.

But once you simplify it, you are left with the following statement:

“You … acknowledge that SOE can … modify … any Virtual Goods … which may, among other things, make the Virtual Goods … less valuable … or eliminated entirely.”

That means SOE can change them or even delete them out of your inventory and you have no right to a refund. Do they mean that? They sure do:

YOU PROMISE, THEREFORE, THAT YOU WILL NEVER … BRING ANY CLAIM OR SUIT AGAINST SOE … WHICH IS RELATED TO … A CLAIM THAT YOU “OWN” ANY VIRTUAL GOODS IN ANY GAME [or] A CLAIM FOR THE “VALUE” OF VIRTUAL GOODS IF SOE DELETES THEM AND/OR TERMINATES YOUR STATION ACCOUNT

Veteran’s Reward

Sixes received this little bonus in his email:

As a faithful subscriber we want you to be among the first to enjoy this amazing new game enhancement. With that in mind, we are funding your in-game wallet with 150SC so that you can jump right in and experience item sales now.

That’s a dollar fifty right there, enough for a basic potion and a half … or an electrically charged slimy ooze for your house with change left over.

Of course, there’s nothing you can buy for 50SC so if you want to spend all of your free gift, you’ll have to buy some more – at a minimum of five dollars per purchase. Which … leaves you with 50SC left over again. Taunting you. Forever.

On the other hand, they haven’t mailed me. The whole thing is probably a gnome conspiracy. *sigh*

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Tipa tells us all about the Loping Plains Haunted House in EQ2:

West Karana » EQ2: The Loping Plains Haunted House. Scared yet?

Loping Plains hasn’t seen THIS much action since the Freethinkers threw that Christmas party and the Pumpkin-Headed Horseman barfed seeds and pulp all over Mayong Mistmoore. Everyone was talking about that for months.

Stargrace fills us in on the Everquest seasonal events:

MmoQuests.com » EverQuest Halloween Events

The costumes are a LOT of fun. You can become pretty much any scary creature at all that’s available in EQ, not to mention the fact that there are accessories! Want to wield a broom? A bucket filled to the brim with treats? Then that’s no problem at all. Looking for free treats and goodies to stock pile? There’s a vendor for that too, and what’s more is that they’re all free, no charge. The costumes do have limited charges, and are no rent which means they’ll poof if you log out for too long (they also dissolve on zoning) but the food (although no trade) will stick around later (I filled up my bags, I couldn’t help it, the stats were so nice!).

Ysharros gives some first impressions of WAR’s open RvR special, the Witching Night:

Witching Night in WAR « Stylish Corpse

So far I’m a little ambivalent about this event, or what I’ve seen of it today — which was only tier 2, with Amariel (the Archmage).

The good includes how much fun it is to have gigantic moshes in open RvR; at one point there were 30+ on the Order side in the Troll Country Witching Night PQ, and probably 20-25 Destruction. We owned them several times over, despite having to continually ask our own side to move back *inside* the PQ area.

No one seems to be blogging about their experiences in Kingdom of Loathing but the KolWiki has all the details you need to follow the event:

Halloween – TheKolWiki

Halloween is that time of year when Adventurers dress up and scam candy off total strangers. Or something. It occurs each Porktober 8. To go trick-or-treating, you need an outfit. Each round of trick-or-treating costs an Adventure, and is available from the main map

And the WoWInsider has a detailed guide for World of Warcraft’s Hallow’s End event:

Hallow’s End 2008 guide (updated) – WoW Insider

And, while these aren’t quests, don’t forget to trick-or-treat at innkeepers all over Azeroth and Outland for various goodies and neat tricks like pumpkin heads, masks, and magic wands. Don’t forget to visit the Wickerman Festival, done at 8:00 pm server time outside of Undercity each night of Hallow’s End.

And finally, a wonderful response from the Lich King regarding the complaints of WoW being overrun by zombies (via Broken Toys):

World of Warcraft – English (NA) Forums -> Announcement from the Lich King;

My deepest apologies.

It is my understanding that my invading forces, in their attempts to besiege your cities and snuff out all life on Azeroth, have inconvenienced the activities of common civilians. In the future, I will ensure that your commanding officers are informed well in advance of planned invasion times so that they may properly fortify themselves.

I have also looked into the issue of my plague being too quick in its purpose and too difficult to cure. Please be reassured that I have taken the matter up personally with my top necromancers and that any further incarnations of said plague should be only a slight challenge for your natural immune systems to overcome. Please forward any additional complaints to either Kel’thuzad or Anub’arak.

Regards,
the Lich King Arthas.

Hey, all we want to do is eat your brains…

Happy Hallowe’en everyone!

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

It can be difficult to keep up conversations taking place on blogs instead of newsgroups and message boards, so here’s a round-up of the recent discussion, with a brief quote to give you a taste of the post.

Mark Jacobs (Mythic Entertainment) started things off with this post on his blog: Online Games are a Niche Market:

A banning we will go, a banning we will go. Heave ho off the servers yo, a banning we will go!

I hate gold sellers/spammers. No, that’s not strong enough, let me try again. I HATE GOLD SELLERS WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING. Ah, that’s better. Now, why do I hate them you may ask? I hate them for a number of reasons, most of which have been detailed in various interviews I’ve done over the years. And now that they have taken their obnoxiousness to new levels with gold service spamming, I HATE GOLD SPAMMERS EVEN MORE NOW THAN EVER BEFORE.

Syp the Engineer kicked the ball into play with his response on Waaagh! A Warhammer Online Blog:
The Golden Rule

The problem doesn’t lie with the gold selling companies — they suck, yes, and they’re going against the EUALA, yes, but they’re providing a service that is in demand. Let’s re-read that sentence, okay? They’re providing a service that’s in demand. If the potential for pay is high enough, shadowy forces will weigh that against the risk and take their chances. The problem lies with Mike, and people like him. People who have no sense of morality or honor in online games. People who go ahead and buy gold to be instantly gratified, and a lesser extent, friends that see them do this and say nothing.

Tobold posts a surprisingly reasoned response to Mark and Syp on his MMORPG Blog:
WAR and RMT

Syp is right in saying that the problem of gold selling is the demand of gold buyers. But his solution is wrong, because he short-sightedly attributes the demand to notions of “morality or honor”, which is just plain silly. Player’s demand for gold is simply a function of how grindy it is to get gold, and what you need that gold for. And that are all questions of game design. It is a lot easier to solve the problem with good game design than to start a successful crusade to stop people from cheating in video games. Google has 80 million hits in a search for “cheats”, most of which are about video games, that isn’t something we can make go away if we all just hold hands and wish for it very, very strongly.

Michael Zenke of MMOG Nation weighs in with his view of the real problem:
On WAR, RMT, and Goldspammers

The truth, though, is that people wanking about the dishonor of goldbuyers and the scourge of goldsellers should really put it back in their pants. For better or worse goldselling is something that’s … well, I’ll say it outright: in my mind it’s not an issue that players have to worry about anymore. Every game I can think of has done their best to deal with goldfarming and spammers at this point. Every one. It’s 2008, and if you are still getting spammed by goldfarmers in-game it’s becuase the game developers want you to be. It’s as simple as that.

Scott Jennings (author of Massively Multiplayer Games for Dummies) puts forward a detailed solution based on treating RMT as vice on Broken Toys:
How To Stop Gold Farming

However, my belief – and this may well be false – is that enlightened self-interest does in fact work, and given the choice between patronizing other players and bad actors for RMT sales, players will patronize other players.

And that, I believe, would completely devastate the third party markets because there was no financial interest for that free market to develop external to the game.

Chris F of I HAS PC weighs in with a different solution:
$0 DOWN, $199/MONTH 2.3% FINANCING

What we need is some sort of solution. An obvious one, but one I haven’t seen or heard much about (I don’t read every blog and website out there, so sorry if it has) is the simplest one of all. Make gold bind on pickup. Eliminate it from the equation altogether. How can we eliminate gold changing hands, without eliminating item trading? Enter the lovely world of leasing.

Matt (Sparkplay Media) writes about their blind auction and arbitage system on his blog, The Forge:
Dual Currencies in MMOs

At Sparkplay, we’re tentatively planning to restrict credit transfers as well as have the currency exchange (blind auction) that Iron Realms has, and I’m reasonably confident it will keep professional gold farmers out of the game. I firmly believe that gold farming isn’t the problem anyway – it’s the behavior of many of the pro gold farmers that’s the problem. Anyone throwing ‘morality’ out there as an indictment against gold farming is not to be taken seriously on the matter in my book, but it’s certainly legitimate to find being spammed with gold ads obnoxious as hell.

Will the next generation see the end of the gold spam? Certainly it seems to be a priority with the developers of the moment.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Turbine finally announced their big secret: the Mines of Moria expansion. We can look forward to two new classes, level cap raised to 60 and new advancements for crafters. Personally, I’m just looking forward to fishing in Lothlorien.

Meanwhile on World IV, Tuebit writes an analysis of the weaknesses of LotRO from the point of view of a level 50 hunter. Be sure to read the comments where the arguing commences conversation continues. I love the exploration aspects of LotRO but I must admit that I also browse the web during combat on my minstrel.

GamesPolitics.com reviews The Ten-Cent Plague, a new book dealing with the struggles to get comic books accepted, drawing the obvious corollary to the gaming industry today. It looks like a good read.

On the other side of the coin is Yahoo’s vaguely tongue-in-cheek look at Seven Ways to Win Back Your Gaming Spouse for those neglected non-gamers (hey, find a game!). I was a bit disappointed by the piece but that was quickly superseded by my enjoyment of Sanya’s excellent rebuttal, Eight Tips to Save Your Marriage to a Gamer.

Tipa has written an interesting commentary on Betaleaks, offering coverage of games in beta and what the testers are leaking. Tipa’s views on why this is a bad idea is right on target.

And in the better late than never category, last week Cuppycake found a Legends of Norrath card announcing that the bards and troubadours of Azeroth will be singing praises! Ooops! The offending card has since been removed from the website.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Barbie Girls and Ty Girlz

I wasn’t allowed Barbie dolls when I was growing up – my mother felt the peroxide blonde hair and boyfriend accessory were sending the wrong message. The message on these pre-teen competitors to Second Life is very clear: no boys allowed. Not even Ken. Last month the month the Washington Times reported that Barbie Girls have 10 million registered users – that’s a lot of grrl power!

Neither of these has any actual gameplay as far as I can see: you can meet with your friends to shop or have a slumber party in your room or just hang out. Ty Girlz is at least slightly less relentless with the pink. I’m not sure why they make such a fuss about girls only, I can’t imagine a boy managing to make it through the sign-up without gagging. I sure couldn’t.

Hello Kitty Online

I’m actually a big fan of Hello Kitty Hell, a site dedicated to complaining about Sanrio cuteness in all its forms. Hello Kitty’s stare has always freaked me out and I just can’t imagine being able to immerse myself in that much cute … despite a vague curiosity as to how the “sophisticated combat system” could actually work.

But don’t despair! Tipa over at West Karana says she’s going to create a video application to get onto the Hello Kitty Online closed beta. She’s made of stouter stuff than I am, I can tell you that.

Guppylife

Guppyworks describes this as an MMO for girls (is it just me that is bugged by the lack of a noun in MMO?) – it sounds like a mashup of Barbie Girls and Neopets. There is this summary on Wonderland:

It’s Danish, it has AI, and is about cuddling critters, by the looks of it.

It’s a lot less pink but the big staring eyes give me the creeps – and that’s just the girls! The Guppies themselves look like they ate their previous owners and are just waiting for you to fatten up a bit.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Here’s the recent history (the last ten days) as an example of the type of thing you can expect to see on my twitter feed:

If you are interested in the occasional, somewhat random link about the internet and gaming, feel free to watch http://twitter.com/mmorpg. And if you have your own twitter, let me know in the comments here and I’ll watch you back. :)

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

China’s leading online game operator Netease.com Inc. (NTES.NASDAQ) is likely to make its first step on being licensed to operate overseas online games in the near future.

Caijing Magazine reported that the first foreign online game to be operated by Netease, which used to rely on independent R&D, will be Starcraft Online, developed by US-based Blizzard, quoting an industry insider as saying.

Netease CEO Ding Lei didn’t confirm the market saying, adding that the company is observing many online games and has not signed any formal license contract.

When it first came out that Blizzard were working on “an unannounced Next-Gen MMO”, Starcraft seemed an obvious candidate. Unfortunately, the English language edition of Caijing isn’t carrying the story and my Chinese is not up to scratch, so it’s a bit of a dead-end from there. Hopefully we can expect to see a statement soon and stop all the second guessing!

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

The series is completely funded by user donations and we have it on good authority that Episode 7 and 8 are already being filmed. If you’ve not seen these clips before, start at Episode One – I bet you are grinning by the end of it. :D

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.