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The Secret World Beta Weekend
I went into this beta weekend for “The Secret World” expecting to collect some material about the mechanics of the game. Last time I played I hadn’t touched tradeskills and didn’t pay to much attention to combat and or skills in general, either. Guess what? I didn’t get around to gather more facts. Instead I solved puzzles, listened to voice overs and pushed dialog buttons to take in more and more of the great story this game is telling their players.
Competing secret societies are meddling in the world’s affairs, fighting each other and common enemies. Powerful mega corporations and powerless and corrupt political organisations are players as well. It’s never really clear if you fight paranormal activities or you are looking at failed experiments of the other involved parties. It isn’t clear if the experiments have failed, either. Chaos is introduced, just to learn how the system reacts. Every conspiracy theory is true, the water supply has been messed with, and they are ready to attach a tracking device to your spine anytime.
That’s what differentiates this game from all other MMO’s. The setting is unique and the story is unique. Do not approach it as a hack and slash game, don’t ask about the endgame. Sit back and enjoy the show, push that dialogue button again a few more times and pay attention. Take copious notes. You may need that information, or it hides yet another conspiracy.
There are more differences to other MMORPG’s. The game doesn’t have any classes nor levels. Only skills and abilities. These will improve over time and more abilities can be added. Your class is determined by the abilities you choose. Of interest is the fact that you are allowed to put only 7 active and 7 passive abilities into your hotbars. Skill levels replace classic levels, but with much more granularity, since those levels exist for almost ever type of equipment, weapons, talismans, belts and rings.
Other reviewers have complained about the quality of combat. I didn’t pay much attention, I just played. There is PVP, but I haven’t checked it myself. I’m just not interested in it. I still need to explore tradeskills. The basic mechanics are there, but what you can do with the items you collect isn’t fully clear, yet.
There will be another beta weekend starting this Friday, lets find out if I’ll collect more facts about the game or get lost in the content.
© Disclaimer: The Secret World
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Something Wicked [Spoiler]
I just finished one of the more difficult investigation missions in “The Secret World”. It made me pause a couple of times and lead to a good deal of head scratching. And using the game’s secret sauce “Google”. The Secret World has a built in browser and they expect you to use it, even to look up their puzzles directly, or just to research some of the riddles.
Norma Creed has seen plenty of strange things these days as well as in the past. And she’s dealt with it well. She recalls a series of murders in Kingsmouth a few years back in 2002. It looked like ravens were involved in it. Five steps will solve the mystery:
- Tier 1.
- Find more information about the murder, perhaps in a newspaper.
Hint
There’s an archive at City Hall. - Tier 2.
- The sheriff’s office held back more information on the case.
Hint
Check the computer at the sheriff’s station. - Tier 3.
- The suspect killed himself in his cell. Find a way to get inside the cell and examine it.
Hint
No key, no keypad, no saw or cutting torch. Go kill yourself. Find the message on the wall. - Tier 4.
- There’s a message inside the cell, find out its meaning.
Hint 1
Follow the white raven while still in anima form. It will lead to a group of ravens reciting a nursery rime. Release four of them in the order given by the message in the cell.Hint 2
Golden Girls, Sorrows Secret (6317) - Watch out when trying to do the final step in sequence. You share the quest area with others. If other players click things in different places, your sequence gets messed up. Coordinate with other players in the area.
- Tier 5.
- Find Jack.
Hint
But don’t kill him
And this sets the atmosphere of the secret world. Somebody mentioned in chat: “There are no puzzles in MMO’s”. Not until now, not in this form and not that many of them. I know Dungeons & Dragons Online has some and you might even call the platform jumping in SWTOR a puzzle. By myself, I’m not the greatest puzzle solver, but I just like the whole ambiance of the game. I could have left the Kingsmouth area for the next zone a good while ago, but those investigations will keep me here.
© Disclaimer: The Secret World
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Zombie Survival Tip: Outsmart them

Photo by: Sahlgoode
One of the biggest advantages you’ll have over your new found Zombie problem besides coordination and speed is the ability to plan your next move and have a contingency plan if things go wrong. Use these to your advantage. A simple start is always knowing your exits, quick climb areas and safe rest areas. Remember nowhere is safe, just “safer” and higher up is always better then hiding on the ground. A zombie might not see you hiding in the cupboard taking a nap, but he might stumble upon a tasty, napping treat.
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What I Learned from the Newbie Blogger Initiative
About a month ago Syp started the Newbie Blogger Initiative on his Biobreak Blog. Since then about 100 sponsor blogs and 100 newbie blogs have joined the initiative. Probably more than 5000 blog posts (my halftime count was 2540) have been produced by them in the month of May. I am a bit late for the NBI conclusion party, since I’ve been traveling for a week, but here’s a list of changes and ideas inspired by a month of community building among MMORPG bloggers.
- Added 120 blogs to my RSS reader. This count isn’t final, since there some blogs that joined late. I will have to cut back that number, since I just can’t handle the volume.
- Followed about 120 IDs more on twitter, effectively changing my plan for its use. Initially, I thought to tweet only new articles, follow gaming companies and some key people in the industry. It would allow me to keep track of news, but to keep out the chatter. But in the end, that’s not the way it works. In order to be a member of the community, you have to interact with the community. Just linking new blog posts will be seen as pure noise and ignored. It did help that I found tdash and hootsuite as Twitter readers helps me to manage the noise levels.
- Aggronaut’s article about the Google Reader Blogroll helped me managing my own blogroll and the MMONBI newbie and sponsor lists art the World’s End Tavern helped me keeping it up to date.
- Changed the WP permalink structure, without yyyy/mm. It sounds innocent, but having dated links as a result of a Google search decreases the chance of being read. Until recently it WordPress advised against it for performance reasons, but those problems have been resolved since the most recent WordPress versions.
- I decided against using livefyre in favor of commentluv. In the end livefyre will just collect to much data about me and my visitors. And it’s missing the commentluv functionality, most importantly the link back to a commenters recent post
- Due to this post at TL-DR, I’ve become more diligent in tagging my posts, not necessarily the visible tags, but the Meta keywords, which are usually only visble to search engine spiders
- I am using Photodropper now for stock photography. It allows me to insert creative commons licensed pictures into my through a pretty simple search in Flickr. This was mentioned in some discussion on the NBI headquarters forum
- From Hawtpants of the Republic the headquarters forum comes advice about RSS footer, a plugin to add a copyright notice into the RSS feed. Unfortunately this has become necessary, since eventually you will find your content on some scrapers website.
There are more items on my To Do list because of the Newbie Blogger Initiative. It’s all a matter of getting myself organized again.
And here’s the big link dump to all newbie and sponsor articles, originally posted at Biobreak.
New blogs to check out:
- Lotro Family of Flosiin Nightsong
- Red Neckromonger
- Casual Aggro
- SWTOR from Scratch
- Elfkina vežička
- Unwavering Sentinel
- Windy Acres Ranch
- TL-DR
- Saali in Taborea
- Bad Tauren
- Musings of an Altoholic
- Neurotic Girl
- Geo’s Ironman Challenge
- Crafty’s Corner
- Scattered Thoughts
- The Poison Mushroom
- My Staff is Bigger Than Yours
- Vagabond Goes for a Walk
- EVE All Night
- Dreadblade
- Priest All The Things
- Brazokie’s Blog Space
- Warp to Zero
- Altaclysmic
- Winniekin’s Adventures / Winnie goes F2P
- Diminishing Returns
- World’s End Tavern
- Warrior Needs Time Badly
- We do it the WASD Way!
- Middle-earth Initiative
- That Was An Accident!
- Aggrolicious
- Conveniently Placed Exhaust Port
- Adamant Nomad
- Toastman’s Blog
- Ravalation
- Gaming for Introverts
- The Incidental Analyst
- Funsponge
- Bloodthorne
- AntiPlasmaFrequency
- Kemwer Game Blog
- The Adventures of Danania, Supergirl of Lorien
- Unliving a Death Knight
- Deathstomp
- MMO Juggler
- White Charr
- Not Too Heavy
- Flask Half-Empty
- Raspberry Jammed
- Click to Loot
- Kaw Kaw! Get in the Bag!
- Mistress of Illusions
- Malefic Incantations
- MMO One Night a Week
- Omens of Onterion
- The Blue Haired Geek
- TFScribbles
- Glimpses from Middle-earth
- Goetia’s Letters
- /con mmob
- Gaming Abroad
- Backseat Game Design
- Divinity’s Reach
- Big Numbers
- Trippin Tyria
- Eons and Eons Away
- Horrible Ball of Fire
- Image Heavy
- Casually Vicious
- The Frugal Gamer
- Gaming Brew
- The Roaring Silence
- MMOARprz
- Game Delver
- The Diverted Muse
- Newbie Hobbit
- Battlemastered
- thenotsonewnoob
- Auction House on Farm
- Giddeon’s Hammer
- Noob Raider
- The Altoholic
- stnylan’s musings
- The 10th Level of Gaming Hell
- commentarilies
- Inside the Magic Shop
- Beyond Tannhauser Gate
- Argus or Bust
- Lotro Cinna
- Warlockery
- Stabby McStabStab
- Healing Mains
- The Loony Bin
- Warcraft Street
- Real Adventures in Fake Worlds
- GnomeGates.com
- Hipstalotro
- The Butterfly Gamer
- The Mighty Viking Hamster
- Why I Game
- Wald’s Wanderings
- Ald Shot First
- Sephora’s Closet
- Donovan Drones
- Beyond Reproach
- The Horn & Ivory Gates
- Landroval Style
- MMO Asylum
- Renai Hunter
- Space Fiddle
Sponsor advice posts:
- Stropp’s World: Being a blogger superstar, Just do it, The pros and cons of self-hosting
- StarShadow: Some blogging advice, Themes and widgets, Screenshots, Menus, categories and tags
- In An Age: Advice for new bloggers
- Tish Tosh Tesh: Who Am I?, Blogging is a social activity, For love or money,Thinking linking, Traditions
- Tastes Like Battle Chicken: Build your own boss, Week 2 challenge, A few words of wisdom, Week 4 challenge
- Tales of the Aggronaut: The Google Reader blogroll, Getting started, Be open-minded (unlike me)
- Wadstomp Gaming: The importance of social media, Submit a guest post, The best advertising payouts, Be sure to burn your blog to feedburner, Create your own voice
- Beau Hindman: General advice, Indie games and bloggers
- Games and Geekery: Why you should blog, Learning about blogging from perfect strangers
- Skycandy: Blogging wrong, blogging right
- Shards of Imagination: Choosing the subject of your blog
- MMO Compendium: Keeping up with the industry and bloggers
- Contains Moderate Peril: Some general guidance, Mind your language, Stats,Episode 61
- Lotro Fashion: Screenshots make your blog interesting
- High Latency Life: Finding your voice, You need a thick skin
- Scary Worlds: Mobile blogging, Creating a good title, Advice you don’t want to hear
- ETCmmo.com: General advice
- Nerdy Bookahs: Why do you want to blog?, Why haven’t you started your blog yet?
- World of Matticus: WordPress plugins, Finishing your blog setup, Making connections
- World’s End Tavern: General tips
- Parallel Context: The best advice
- Tremayne’s Law: Read Think Write Edit
- Jaded Alt: So you wanna be a blogger?, What’s in a name?, If you remember nothing else… write!
- Avatars of Steel: Curling up with a good blog
- Blog de la Burro: Why I started blogging, Some advice on blogging, Does traffic matter?, How to deal with writer’s block, What you should blog about, Are comments important?, Is it ever okay to rant?, How to get noticed
- Inventory Full: How the Bhagpuss came to be, Take a moment, Backing up your blog
- Gamerlady: Tips to start
- Just One MMOre: How to be consistent and make it painless and easy, One question high-traffic blogs ask
- Spinksville: Picture manipulation tools and copyright
- T.R. Red Skies: Quick tips, Objectivity, relating and heart
- Live Like a Nerd: WordPress plugins for bloggers
- I Have Touched the Sky: Avoid barriers to commenting on Blogger, Blogs lists and RSS
- Thade’s Hammer: Advice for the new bloggers
- Levelcapped: Tell me about yourself, None of my business
- Psychochild: What makes your blog special
- Bullet Points: The worst advice you’ll ever receive about blogging, You are your blog
- A Casual Stroll to Mordor: Learn how to podcast, Writing for the web
- Contains Moderate Peril: Episode 58, Fine-turning your blog
- A Green Mushroom: Blogging tips and hints
- Too Many Annas: Picking a name
- Grimnir’s Grudge: It feels good to be a blogger
- Gankalicious: Never tell the truth, Meeting interesting people, Who the hell reads this?
- Herding Cats: Creating a podcast on the cheap with WordPress
- Distilled Willpower: 8 blogging tips they won’t tell you
- Vicarious Experience: From there to here
- TL-DR: Protect your blog!, Tags and Categories
- Multiplaying: You should be blogging
- Blue Kae: Advice is a strong word
- Screaming Monkeys: Top five tips
- Caer Morrighan: Get started with WoW blogging
- Hawt Pants: New blogger advice
- Tiger Ears: Why I started blogging
- Berath’s Brain Burps: Sage words, How to get lots and lots of hits
- Just One More Unlock: Newbie blogger tips, Opportunity
- Hunter’s Insight: An idea is formed, What not to do
- ALT:ernative: Starting at the beginning, The first idea
- Epic Slant: Tips and links, Guest post
- MMOGC: 3 little things
- A Journey through the Mind: My 0.2 ISK
- Red Cow Rise: What and why to post, Blog setup and community building
- Epic Slant: Writer’s block
- Creeping…: So you think you can blog
- The Ancient Gaming Noob: Playing blogroll breadcrumbs
- Dragonchasers: How not to build an audience
- Welcome to Spinksville: What you should write and how to write it
- The Stories of O: Top 4 tips
- A Ding World: Blog posting
- The Wild Boar Inn: Blogging tips
- Professor Beej: Stop writing!
- Nomnom.info: 4 blogging tips
- Gamer BC: A solid foundation and a step forward
- Casual Is As Casual Does: Tips, tricks and who am I kidding
- Roll One Hundred: Managing screenshots
- Bullet Points: I refuse to call it a blogosphere
- KIASA: Good advice
- Pumping Irony: Before taking the plunge
- Life is a Mind-Bending Puzzle: Wrapping up advice all in one place
- Rikna’s Rants: The blog rings, By this keyboard I rule!, Guests and cross posts
- Sheep the Diamond: Advice from an old bull
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Zombie Survival Tip
There are numerous forms of viral transmission and no one can predict where the infection will come from. If CDC has yet to declare its transmission type remember the basics. Do not come in contact with any fluids from a zombie. Make sure to cover ALL mucus and salivary ducts while handling a zombie threat. A clean finishing blow on the last zombie can really be a downer if even the slightest drop of their blood gets in your eye. If you can’t get your hands on any military grade equipment, paint ball masks and basic gardening (or rubber wash gloves) make for a much safer kill.
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Name’s Eastwood, Frodo Eastwood
I don’t like guns in fantasy MMO’s. I just can’t wrap my head around it. Here’s why:
Imagine Lord of the Rings without Pippin and Merry. Why? Because they had been shot by Farmer Bolger on one of their mushroom heists. Or at least shell shocked and unable to help Frodo and Sam.
Imagine Bree and The Prancing Pony. The ring wraiths / desperados are stepping into the bar wearing a full cowboy outfit, each of them with a pair of six shooters made by Samwise Colt. Doesn’t matter if they’d get the hobbits or not, it’s just mind boggling.
Now to Rivendell where the ring is presented to the future fellowship. Gimli pulls his revolver, shoots at the ring and sends it in a high arc off into the waterfall. End of story.
Of course Bilbo will hand Frodo his mithril shirt and his pair of duel pistols with ebony grips named Right and Left.
Moria! They’d never escape Moria. The goblins would be armed to their teeth with muskets and perhaps a cannon or two and no need for cave trolls. Those brittle walls would have crumbled to dust from all the cannon balls and all the ricocheting bullets.
Lothlórien would be filled with elven sharpshooters and their spotters camouflaged in the bushes. Forget the notion of a quiet enchanted forest. The noise from the shooting range alone would be deafening.
How about Helm’s Deep being defended by musketeers? It would probably work, until some fire arrows hit the building where the powder is stored. No need to send the bomb into the gully. The day will be saved by Éomer’s cavalry coming down the hill, revealing a battery of Gatling guns once the canvas are pulled off their wagons.
There are more occasions where things can go wrong when using fire arms in Middle Earth. Likely scenarios include the main characters getting killed in the crossfire someplace. You can get some comic relief from Merry and Pippin having used their single shot pistols and starting to use them to bash their opponent’s heads. Tragedy can be introduced by Samwise being unable to load his pistol, being way to nervous with his beloved Frodo under attack. It ends with him emptying his powder horn in one clumsy move and again a pistol being used as a club.
And finally at theMountainofDoom, how would you like an ending with Frodo shooting Gollum in the back after his finger got bitten off. Good thing it wasn’t his trigger finger. But now Frodo has to live with shooting a man in the back. What a hero.
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