A new Dragon teaser video and interview with Ragnar Tornquist was released for The Secret World’s Week of the Dragon. Nothing marvelously new for those who’ve been following The Secret World, although there are a few interesting tidbits, like shots of what looks like a train station in space. I believe that’s a closer shot of the end of Tokyo Flashback, revealed last week at NY Comic Con and available for public viewing thanks to the efforts of The Hydra Initiative, a Dragon Cabal for The Secret World.

And we get Mei Ling’s milkshake recipe. I’ve always preferred chocolate milkshakes, do you suppose I could use chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla?

• 1½ cups milk
• 2 VERY large scoops of vanilla ice cream
• 1 cup strawberries, hulled
• ¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 6 marshmallows, cut in half

Ever wish you could play video games to help someone in need? Now you can! On Saturday, October 15th, join charity-minded gamers across the globe in a gaming marathon for charity. It’s a 24-hour video game playing marathon to benefit the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. Much like the walk-a-thon charity events where walkers earn for their charity of choice for every mile they walk, gamers are asked to find sponsors who will pay $1 for every hour they stay awake and in game. I’m really late to the party on this one – I wish that I’d heard about it sooner!

You can start your own team, or join existing ones. Trion Worlds has one (their free weekend this weekend is dedicated to this charity event), as does Funcom, and both companies will be having giveaways during the 24 hour run. You could earn in game items and titles in RIFT, or beta access to the upcoming MMORPG The Secret World, Funcom points and more playing Anarchy Online or Age of Conan. I just spotted Team Razer, G4 Tv, Activision, and Wizards of the Coast, and I’m sure there are plenty of other recognizable names as well. All you need to do is turn on your computer (or your console, or even pull out boardgames – any game will do) and start playing!

Sign up for Extra Life and play games to help children in need!

The Secret World was primed for closed beta signups yesterday, with thousands of fans hovering anxiously over the forums and website. The timer ticked down, bounced up 4 hours, then ticked down again, and lingered on 00:00 before breaking completely. Server outage or bizarre new ARG that must be solved before the actual signups can be reached? Perhaps a mix of both? There are several debates going on in the forums, as people attempt to decode this letter which can be found when clicking the broken timer on the official site and determine whether it’s a real technical outage or a new puzzle. As of this posting at 9AM PST (4PM GMT) there are approximately 20 minutes before another announcement is expected.

Anxious for the beta signups and want to keep an eye on the progress?
Go here for the official timer thread with technical information.
Go here for the official discussion thread. Although this is the fifth thread and may be outdated soon with a sixth.
Go here if you want in on the ARG discussion.

If you needed any more proof that the free-to-play model was superior to the subscription model, enter Age of Conan: Unchained.  Today Funcom announced that since going Free2Play, AoC has quadrupled server activity, revenue has more than double compared to that of the initial launch, which if you remember launched with over a million copies sold, so that’s saying a lot.

Funcom also stated that since the switch to F2P about a month ago, 300,000 new players have signed up and entered the world of Hyboria.

“The launch of the hybrid business model has been very successful so far,” says Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas. “The activity levels on the servers are booming with a fourfold increase in players during July, we more than doubled the revenue generated from the game, and we have experienced a positive development in subscriber numbers. This definitely gives us great hope for the game’s future.

To celebrate the Funcom team is hard at work creating a unique tie-in for the upcoming Conan the Barbarian movie. The new Adventure Pack titled ‘Savage Coast of Turan’ will introduce all new world areas, as well as monsters, characters and player equipment that audiences can experience in the movie as it hits theatres on August 18^th.

In four short days, on June 27th, Anarchy Online will be celebrating its 10 year anniversary and being the worlds longest running sci-fi MMORPG.  The celebration will take place over three days, both in-game and out, and will be the Anarchy event of the decade.

Development started on Anarchy Online as early as 1995, in an age when the Internet had not even become mainstream. The initial design document even questioned whether the Internet had a future, and the stated the goal was to obtain at least 2500 players. Millions of gamers later, Funcom is ready to throw down the biggest party on Rubi-Ka to date.

“When Anarchy Online launched ten years ago nobody would have predicted where it would go, and that we would even see this day are all thanks to the dedication of our players and our community”, says Colin Cragg, Game Director on Anarchy Online. “I have so many fond memories from the years with Anarchy Online, and there are so many people to thank. The span of time and the way our world has touched the lives of so many is something we will always cherish. The fact that the kids of couples who met in AO are now playing our game says it all. I feel incredibly grateful to have been a part of Anarchy Online, and can’t wait to see what the future holds in store for us all.”

To help players celebrate the milestone, Funcom is adding new content for the festivities. Ranging from an all new birthday raid to new vehicles, clothes, gear, action figures and pets, players will have tons of new content to play around with. Players who choose to re-subscribe during the festivities will receive a special “Heckler of Celebration” social pet, as well as other benefits. The Heckler is known as one of the most notorious monsters in Anarchy Online, and it comes complete with a rocky personality and a 10th anniversary Birthday Hat.

Funcom is inviting all current and old players back to Rubi-Ka to help celebrate  this major achievement.   The party begins this Friday, and a complete list of times can be found on the official site.

Changes are coming to the land of Hyboria.  Today Funcom announced that Age of Conan will be re-launched this summer as a free to play MMORPG titled Age of Conan: Unrated.  Age of Conan will become free to play, however will retain a premium subscription option that will give players access to extra content.

Aside from the premium subscription, Funcom will also be opening an item store that will allow anyone to purchase exclusive content such as weapons and mounts.

SVP of Sales & Marketing Morten Larssen stated, “Now we turn to another chapter in this story as we thrust ‘Age of Conan: Unrated’ into the world of free-to-play games, a gaming space that is becoming rapidly more popular and profitable across the board.”

The “Unrated” part of the title is Funcom’s way of reaffirming Age of Conan’s position as the sexiest and most savage MMO in the world.

With each passing week, The Secret World is getting a little less secret. This weekend marks the beginning of a consistent offering from Funcom, paving the way for more significant reveals in the months to come. The Secret World’s newsletter covers this week’s new round of screenshots as well as an exciting gameplay trailer.

The official site has received a solid revamp, providing more information and a better browsing experience overall. In order to receive the newsletter via email, prospective players must complete the initiation test, which determines your place in the game’s three societies, the Illuminati, Dragon, and Templars.

Finishing off the letter is a recap of The Secret World’s presentation at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. Unfortunately, MMOCrunch was unable to attend the festivities, but a wide assortment of blogs, press sites and fan sites offered their experiences for us to greedily consume.

Hello again.  Since I started writing this column I look at things somewhat differently, considering sides and options I wouldn’t otherwise give a second thought to. I try to present things from all perspectives even if I can’t be exactly impartial; we all have our own opinion and preference about things, don’t we?

Age of Conan: The Rise of the Godslayer has a component of grind, though not everyone will agree on which part of the content is just Grind or Fun…

Every game can be seen as something fun and dynamic or the most boring “grind” ever experienced. The same game will be perceived by different gamers through their own likings and preferences. That challenge is what MMOs have to deal with.

All of you probably have thought on occasion, “Why does that exist in this game? Why not focus completely on this other facet of the game instead, and not split efforts and resources?” The answer is, in my humble opinion, really simple: because anything can become tedious after a while of repeating it. Well, almost anything I guess. *wink*

In a sense, everything in an MMORPG is a form of grind. Some people find questing boring, some people find PvPing not only boring but futile, some others find factions and the repetitive process of raising them, simply stupid. Everything, from raiding to crafting harvesting, building a city or collecting alts of maximum level is, or can be, a grind. It does have a purpose of course, a goal for each one. It is just a matter of finding the grind that goes with your style. And here is where variety plays a key role, offering the chance to try something different when the claws of the monster of boredom threaten to ruin our enjoyment.

I am not a PvPer; probably because I am more competitive than I like to admit and I am not as good at it as I would like to be. But that doesn’t mean I do not do PvP at all. Recently, I decided to see for myself just how much truth was in the statement about Bori Shrines. On the PvE-RP server that I play on, it has been renamed as Bori’ing. I can only imagine the hell (sorry PvPers, I am biased) it must be in a more populated server, knowing as I know now, that a single game can disrupt and ruin the effort of five others focusing on the altars.

Let me explain, for those of you not familiar with the mechanics of Bori. In the Cimmerian End (CE) of the Border Kingdoms, there are three flags at three camps that can be claimed by anyone (by clicking on the flags.) After some moments the flag is captured by the guild of the character who claimed it. A flag being captured can be contested, that is, someone else from a different guild clicks on it and tries to capture it for their own.

Once the flag has been captured an altar will appear nearby, and there is where the rare resources (aka greens) from the nodes in CE can be “sacrificed” to Bori. Each green sacrificed will add an amount of “units” to the sacrifice; the number varying according to the value of each. Tier 1 resources will add a very low amount, Tier 2 ones higher amount of units while the Tier 3 resources are the most valuable of them all.

When the altar reaches the sum of 666 units Bori will be pleased and each member of the group will receive Marks of Conquest, 9000 points of Glory, PvP experience and also Prowess and Mastery experience (Alternative Advancement points or AA); PvP and Prowess varying according to potions, Volumes of Carnage or possible buffs modifying its gain percentage.

So, basically, what one does at Bori is… yes, you guessed right, mine and chop. In a word: Gathering. Which, in itself, is not really exciting though highly effective towards AA and renown for the guild. This, of course, changes if/when someone enters the area and fights for the right to gather the coveted resources; which is most possibly what developers had in mind when designing and implementing this part of the content.

Do not think I’m criticizing the concept of PvP though. Not at all because, analyzing raiding, there are many arguments to consider it just another form of grind. Let’s admit it, going week after week to the same instances, killing the same bosses for months to get a set of armor is grinding. Sometimes even following tight schedules to adapt our real life, in order to attend all the raid runs, which can become a second job; committing to spend 4 or 5 hours, twice or three times a week is not something everyone is willing to do.

Another example is Housing. Housing is a feature demanded in AoC for many subscribers. Since there is no housing in this game, I will use the systems of other games, from building your own house from scratch, to craft the furniture or get nice items and trophies to place in your house, everything is grind.

Yes, my friends, we all grind, with different goals, for different objectives and in different varied manners. The key is finding the sort of grind that meets our requirements and satisfies our gaming needs of the moment, because the fun we get from it makes the difference from getting bored from wanting to stay just a little bit longer to finish whatever we started.

So, next time do not think so lightly about aspects of the game you don’t enjoy so much, for they could prove the source of fun if you get bored of the one you’re enjoying so much now. And if you disagree, please let your own experience or opinion on the comments; everyone is most welcome.

Hyrkanian Insight updates every Saturday.

Greetings fellow adventurers, and welcome once more to this corner of FunCom’s Age of Conan world. Last week I could not update Hyrkanian Insight due to technical problems which, incidentally, are not yet really solved; only patched temporarily. Whatever, here I am, back with renewed energy.

Today, I want to bring to your attention some of the work being done by the AoC Team, what’s new inside and outside the game, through the community updates from last week and the one published yesterday. Some very interesting things can be extracted between the lines along with a lot of speculation and guess-work.

Come aboard for some rumors and facts…

Technical problems

An important announcement for many, including me, is that memory handling has improved vastly so people having the “out of memory” crashes hopefully won’t suffer them any longer. Also DX9 and DX10 have been tweaked to offer better performance and/or higher visual effects. I’m hoping to enjoy Khitai beautiful design now without dreading to crash every time I zone or randomly when I go there. I must admit I have been avoiding Khitai because of this.

Last week I was not the only one having technical problems apparently, as FunCom admitted and announced in their community update on Feb 4^th. The issue was related to the Dreamworld engine since the anti-alising provided by graphic cards was not working with the new Deffered Shading, and the difficulty to offer a solution added up to the deadlines scheduled to bring the next patch to live servers.

This must have been a real worry to them, taking into account their own words when explaining that they are working on an integrated solution to implement

… even if it may not come in the launch version

Wow. I mean, to announce that they cannot guarantee a solution says much about the magnitude of the problem. Though, knowing that they also were thanking people for their help on the test servers and also asking everyone to go there over the last week also says clearly that they were expecting the patch delivered after such mentioned week. Don’t you agree?

In a way it was good that I couldn’t write last week’s article, since this point caught my attention and I was sure to mention it on the Hyrkanian Insight. But yesterday the new community update was published and Oh surprise! Not only have they “found” a solution to the anti-alising, what they will be using is the newest technology from Nvidia! Yes, you read right, Age of Conan will be using the FXAA anti-alising which is the latest development from the graphic card giant. If you are interested in the detailed explanation from the render coder, visit the official forums.

I don’t know you, but I cannot help thinking it is not mere chance that the Nvidia guys miraculously developed this new anti-alising off the top of their heads so they must have been aware of this issue with previous engines and graphic cards. Also I can see FunCom thinking they could come up with a solution of their own to save up paying more money. Of course all this is speculation on my part for I have no proof towards or against it.

Item Packs for sale

However, as every other company their goal is profit (of course) and this new option is available for every subscriber on the account page just proves it.

The Christmas offer of a 1-year subscription to get not only a discount on the overall prize of it, but also a nice white tiger as mount along with porting scrolls, potions to boost Prowess & Mastery XP, PvP XP and adventuring XP or tasty foods and drinks to keep your character ready for anything in Hyboria and beyond have raised, or so FunCom claims, much expectation amongst gamers. So much that they have decided to add this as a permanent option for everyone to have access to it.

It seems that the path towards F2P system has started. I have been told that there won’t be too long before AoC become free to play, and definitely things like these Packs for sale seem to confirm it. Though as with everything, rumors are to be believed just so far, even if we are not the only ones to bring this subject up.

I cannot know about the US servers, but the EU servers have experienced a decrease of active gamers for whatever reason. Some are expecting the new Dreamworld to bring many back into the game, but with skepticism. Again rumors grow that there will be another merge among the European servers, even getting to name different servers as the candidates to be merged together.  After checking numerous threads that have been there for long months, I can’t really say if it’s a rumor or just wishful thinking from some (or many). Every thread on the official forums I’ve checked starts as a suggestion of a merge to solve the low population issues of different serves and ends up as an open battle of PvP against PvE against RP and none will accept that there are issues on all sides, that there are improvements on all sides and that there are efforts to give something to everyone. Fact is gamers have been quitting AoC, as of late all guilds in my chosen server are struggling to get raids and minis and Khitai Hard Modes… as it seems almost all the other servers have population issues and people leaving as well.

Community Features

I have left this for the last because it makes me wonder beyond imagining. So, they are introducing personal interviews with gamers. Most people agree that the number of people participating on the Forums and expressing their opinions/ideas is minor. You will mostly see the same names repeated thread after thread on the general and server forums, so this new feature will reach not the majority of the subscribers. One would guess that this is an answer to all those complaining that the player base is not heard or taken into account by the developers.

Well, there you have it. My question is:  What is the choosing method? How will they decide who is interviewed? Many will probably consider this a very good opportunity to get a moment of “fame”? But also is a way to try and tip the balance towards their preferred area of the game. In their words you could introduce yourself, your guild or express your likings and disliking. We can only guess, my friends, maybe they have a fixed series of questions that they’ll make to every gamer chosen, maybe it’ll be more of a relaxed conversation… we will just know when it’s released, which it will be soon, since the first persons being interviewed will be contacted within this month, February.

Conclusion

Next week the testing finishes (with a bit of luck) and the focus will be the plan to deploy the update to the live servers. Will it bring more whining from the noisy members on all sides? I am sure many will be pleased though and will see it as a proof of the effort the Team is making to give us what we want, which not always is what we really need.

Let us pray to the 999.999 Gods of Khitai, with any luck there’ll be at least one that listens to us. Meanwhile feel free to post your pray, facts or rumors in the comments. And as good bye this week I present you the protagonist of the tale I’ve started narrating some weeks ago and which soon will see its continuation.

Hyrkanian Insight updates every Saturday (usually ;P)