I’ve unlocked 4 starter decks now, Maverick was the latest, and am now concentrating on Chaos Theorist. I did appreciate trying various weapon combos out, but the one I like the most is fist/chaos so I’m saving up my ability points for higher level skills in those areas. Or inner circle skills, given the TSW skill circle.

Before leaving, I went to check my quest log and lore log to see what I missed. I also checked on the wiki… I think of myself as a reasonable explorer, so imagine my shock when I found that I had missed around a dozen of the side missions in Kingsmouth! I went on a spree to hunt them down and finish them off.

My last quest was the Idol of Nergal, in which I had to deliver the idol to the local church. While the quest was active, my aggro range was larger than normal, plus some extra zombies would spawn and follow me. I stopped occasionally to fight them off…

Reanimated Warrior

and eventually made it to the church and sent in my report (TSW lingo for completing the quest – many of them involve calling your faction’s HQ and reporting in).

I’ve crafted my own Quality Level 3 weapons, and have a set of QL 3 talismans. In TSW, talismans take the place of armor – the talismans have various buffs and stat bonuses and can generally be categorized as tanking, healing, or DPS. Ideally players would have a set of each, allowing them to swap talismans and weapons and change group roles. I’m not that well off and kinda take what I can get.

I really like the mission variety in TSW. Some missions require some stealthy action (infiltrate base, access computers while staying away from guards), some are outright puzzles (one requires solving a morse code message to get the next coords to visit), others are typical combat missions (kill X number of mobs, build up to a boss fight).

Snapdragon Armor

I think it looks pretty good and the only downside was the fact I blew all my money on this armor. I realized that right after purchasing 4 or 5 of the 6 pieces. Oops!

That’s an issue because eventually at level 40, I’ll want to buy a Master’s Training Manual so I can put 20 points into a trait line and also open Master traits… problem is the manual costs 1 gold and I’m super poor again.

I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it, but I am also willing to fix this problem the old fashioned way – spend money. As in, real world cash to the in-game shop for gems, and sell those gems for in-game gold.

Yeah that’s right, if I don’t have enough gold saved up to buy the Master’s Training Manual, I’ll just “charge it”. I’m not currently playing a subscription MMO and am willing to spend $10 to $15 a month for a game I like, so I’ll just view it as my monthly MMO budget spending. After my very brief experience in RO, I’ll plunk down some moolah to support a game I enjoy playing, even if they are F2P or B2P or whatever. I’ve bought Turbine Points in LoTRO during sales and plan to keep doing so, even though I’m a VIP and accumulate them monthly. I haven’t yet spent any additional money in TSW but that game is definitely worth it to me, and I will browse the cash shop and find something I want to get.

Anyway, while I’m taking Summer through the storyline (currently in the middle of joining The Order of Whispers) and exploring, I’ve decided to do the zone exploration thing on her as well. I went back to The Grove and Lion’s Arch and hit 100% completion. Since I was focused on opening waypoints before, this didn’t take long since I could map travel around, plus I already did this stuff on Aurora (my elementalist) so I don’t have to spend as much time figuring out how to get to vistas. I’ll do the zone completion a little differently on Summer – by backfilling a zone here and there while trying to level and keep up with the storyline.

I made a female archer, and fiddled around on the character creation screen for a few minutes.

Character Creation

After changing to a redhead with pony tails (one of my favorite looks for some reason, going back to my old main character from Guild Wars!) I was ready to enter the game.

Login Screen

Once in I spent a few minutes clicking various options to see what was available. I noticed an “emotional commands” shortcut and decided that was likely a bad translation. On the other hand, maybe the fact I can “pick my nose” in game means the dialogue was named correctly.

Emotional Commands

I was hit by a sense of déjà vu approximately 14 seconds into the game. I struggled to remember what other game Ragnarok Online reminded me of and after looking at the long list of free MMOs, I found it: Runes of Magic.

My initial quest was to kill 3 of the bouncing pumpkins in a nearby field:

First Quest

And then there were 2 more “speak to the guy just down to road a ways”. Not even a ways, I mean like 5 seconds of running got me there.

I find the graphics and interface to be cartoony, enormously so:

Busy screens

After a mere 25 minutes in-game, I decided to uh… do something else. The basic mechanics are there – classes, movement, quests, combat, level up (I made level 2, haha) – but I was not at all drawn into the game or giant in-your-face popups and balloon dialogues. I suspect this game is actually aimed at a younger crowd, or “eastern” audience with fundamentally different tastes and aesthetic expectations, or perhaps both. For me, there is a subtle (or not so subtle) difference between an obvious fantasy setting (WoW, RIFT, LoTRO) and feeling like you’re inside a cartoon. Not even a cartoon, because from what I understand Champions Online is generally well received. This is more like feeling inside a bad cartoon… or manga to be precise.

I hate to seem so down on a game without really giving it much of a chance, but I wanted to quit and watch TV instead. It could very well have a deep crafting system or interesting skill interactions. Or not. At least I can cross this off my list of games to check out, which still leaves me with a few others at some indeterminate time in the future.

I mapped in and started running overland, approaching Nebo Terrace. I detoured to grab the waypoint, and found a dynamic event going on, with several players participating. So I joined in… and was invited to group with 2 other players. I figured what the heck, and accepted the group request. After the event finished, the leader just put a waypoint in chat. I checked the map and saw they had already map traveled away and were running towards another orange circle – how a dynamic event shows up on the map.

Follow the Leader

I joined them and as soon we’d finish one, they were off to another. I followed as best I could – I had to take the long route sometimes because I lacked waypoints, but I ran by to collect the ones I didn’t have, and eventually I was able to map travel with them. We continued like this, racking up experience points like crazy.

We hit a cycle of four dynamic events that seemed to be available fairly often: defend Nebo Terrace, kill Veteran and Champion centaurs in a cave, kill Rock Dogs, and defend Ascalon Settlement. Sometimes there were 2 Veteran centaurs in a warcamp we detoured to defeat, detouring from running to another event.

Champion Battle

It was pretty fun and I think I participated in more Veteran and Champion kills during this time than the whole of my “main” char Aurora (who is level 80). Summer went from level 28 to 31 (halfway to 32) in one evening!

Cave Centaur Champion

I hope to group with those two again, but if they keep cranking away like tonight, they’ll be 5-8 levels higher before the next time I’m on. In that case I’m good with doing the storyline questing along. But I’ll definitely look to join up with other players doing events, it was fun and very efficient.

I’ve been experimenting with decks, and have spent my ability points buying skills so I’ve now unlocked 3 starter decks: Trickster, Cagemaster, and Champion, and as a by-product have also unlocked more clothing options (the uniforms associated with each of those starter decks). I like the look of the Trickster the most so I end up wearing that the majority of the time.

Next up will be unlocking the Maverick deck, and then I’ll just accumulate ability points for purchasing “inner circle” abilities. For one, getting decent weapons to cover all these decks take resources, and two, spreading my ability points all over probably isn’t too wise. However, I do like build variety so have 4 starter ones to choose from and switch between is worth it to me.

Quest wise, I’m finding them still fun and the puzzles challenging and mostly fair. OK, I cheat a little by reading along if I’m stuck, but a lot of guides will avoid direct spoilers and give a hint – for example there was a quest the involved a password to log onto a computer. The hint in-game was “my wife’s name” and the hint on the wiki said “check the bodies on the beach”. Sure enough, I found an id card and then, in a leap that doesn’t exist in many other games, I opened a webpage for the fictional corporation (the Orochi Group) and searched around and found the scientist’s wife’s name. Thumbs up!

I also stepped into the next zone, the Savage Coast. I did a quest or two, and soon found myself facing a bigger fight:

Savage Coast Welcome

I was able to defeat this monster and wrap up a quest before zipping off to New York to continue my storyline.

Illuminati Tunnels

Wayness was at the Digger Deeper mission for a while, and I finally tackled it. The mission given by Henry Hawthorne was to locate and explore the Illuminati Tunnels beneath Kingsmouth.

Unlike many other MMOs, in The Secret World, many missions require you to figure out how to start them. Or in this case, how to find them! I mean actually find the starting location, not counting the start as getting the mission from the quest giver.

Some would find this frustrating, but I kind of like it. Especially because I’m behind the initial wave of players, which means there are spoilers available if I choose to go that route. But I always spend a few minutes searching and trying to use the in-game clues to make an honest attempt to figure stuff out.

After carefully following the quest instructions, I did find the start, but didn’t figure out how to open the door, so to speak. I punted and googled for some help – here is a bit of a spoiler on what I found:

The Key I Needed

With that, I entered and found myself facing several more puzzles – no combat at all in the tunnels. I do like this kind of variety in missions!

I eventually made it to a puzzle that immediately reminded me of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:

Spelling Puzzle

Remember that scene where they had to jump letter to letter across a hidden chasm? But the word had one letter different in the original language? Heh, no jumping across chasms here, but not spelling the answer correctly leads to poison gas release.

Further in, I finally access the Illuminati sanctum. I gotta say, this is decorated exactly how I’d picture a real Illuminati hidden lair would be.

Statue Puzzle

I eventually completed the mission and exited.

If I haven’t mentioned it already, I am really enjoying my time in TSW – I think it’s a great game. Nice mission variety, huge skill system with unique mechanics, etc. I know some people would blanch at the theme parkiness, but I like well done theme parks and so far (granted I’m still in the first area) it has been a fun time for me. Well worth the price.

Juggling MMO’s

Despite my blog name, I’m lousy and dividing up my time evenly. I find that playing 2 MMOs doesn’t result in a 50-50 split, it is more like 80-20. Similarly, trying to split time between 3 doesn’t come out as 33-33-33 (ok… 34-33-33 haha); for me it would likely be 70-20-10 or 60-20-20 at best. 4 MMO’s would probably be 70-10-10-10 rather than anything remotely close to 25% time devoted to each.

Basically, at any given time, there is one dominant MMO that I’m inspired to “get further” in and play more of. Which I suppose is fine, although I’m going to see if I can force a slightly better balance.

I hit level 12 or so while in Caledon Forest, and was at that awkward point of having finished everything earlier, but not quite being strong enough for the remainder. So I explored west into Metrica Province and worked my way to the corner where Rata Sum is. I really enjoy the look/feel of the Asura areas – floating cubes, golems, science with a fantasy twist. Poor Asurans though, for super geniuses they sure do have a lot of golem and machine calamities!

I did full exploration of each zone encountered on Aurora (my Asuran ele), exploring overland and steadily working my way around the map, but I found I wasn’t as enthused for that this time around. I did finish off Caledon Forest, but as for Metrica Province, I only discovered the waypoints (handy for future fast travel), did the hearts (good quest xp, rather than just grinding mobs) and skill challenges (extra skill points). I’m not going to get hung up on the Points of Interest or Scenic Vistas. I’m also trying to do more dynamic events, and have surprised myself by finishing a few on my own, despite being designed for groups.

I’m not going to explore as linearly on Summer (my Sylvari mesmer). Instead, I’m going to skip around, because I’ve spent very little time in Charr regions and quite a bit in the Asura/Sylvari ones. After arriving at Rata Sum, I ran around to discover all the waypoints, then zipped over to Lions Arch, Divinity’s Reach, Hoelbrak, and Black Citadel in order to do the same.

When I continue, I’m going to travel to the Black Citadel and quest out of there.

Super Adventure Box

For now, it is time to play the Super Adventure Box, because it might go away at the end of April!

After finding Moto near the Lion’s Arch Asura Gate, I jumped in and played around for a bit. It’s a fantastic game-within-a-game and great replica of good ol’ platformers from 20 years ago.

Super Adventure Box

Playing this reminded me of playing a Nintendo, from the graphics and music to the level flow. I hope they keep it around after April; it would be a shame to have this much effort by the artists and programmers only playable this month.

My main char, Aurora Tian, is somewhere towards the end of the storyline, on a mission named “Starving the Beast” out in Malchor’s Leap. I decided to roll up a new char instead. My two favorite professions from GW1 were ranger and mesmer, and I decided to start a new mesmer. What tipped me that direction was seeing a mesmer leveling guide on reddit, which also linked to some great videos.

I watched the first video and learned a ton. It’s kind of embarrassing actually, you see, I made it all the way to level 80 on my ele without understanding how combos worked. Ouch! I thought 2+ players were involved: one to lay down a combo field, and another to use a finisher skill. I was intrigued to see Mr. Prometheus (from the videos) doing both sides of the combo equation — and giving bonuses to his clones/phantasms! Hm… that sheds a different light on how I play my ele. I supposed I did OK in zerging action because other players were triggering the effects with combo finishers – in those situations I stayed back in water attunement and placed water combo fields. However, it seems that I can find better synergies among my own weapon skills by supplying both the field and finisher skill.

For now, I was eager to play a new char in a starter area. I went with a Sylvari mesmer (I also redid my other char slots and wound up with a Norn ranger, Charr guardian, Human thief. This way, someday way down the road I’ll theoretically be able to see portions of all the racial storylines) and dinked around Caledon Forest for a bit.

The early levels in GW2 are fun because every few minutes you are unlocking new weapon skills and the leveling is fairly fast as well. I grabbed all the weapons mesmers can use and was sure to keep swapping them around in order to unlock more skills, and then visited my Hall of Monuments to transmute all the weapons and armor into fancier looking items.

The game looks pretty good on my Mac Mini. Here is a screenshot of my mesmer standing outside the portal to The Grove:

Mesmer Costume (mac)

and here is a screenshot of the same pose on my PC:

Mesmer Costume (pc)

The similarity is good enough for me! Unfortunately my PC still hits the video problems I had months ago, despite always updating to newest video drivers, so I’m glad I have an alternate computer to play GW2 on. The game plays identically on the Mac/OSX as the PC/Windows. For the tech minded, my gaming notebook has GeForce 285M graphics, while the Mac Mini has Intel HD4000 integrated graphics. That probably matters for people who run insane resolutions or with every setting maxed out, but I’m happy. For my regular graphics demands, the only difference is a bit of text that says “Mac Beta” at the top, to the right of all the icons. You can spot it in this next screenshot where I didn’t hide the UI:

Mac GW2

In the options menu, taking a screenshot is bound to the “Print Screen” key… which doesn’t exist on most Mac keyboards. I have an Apple wired keyboard, which also doesn’t have a Print Screen key. However, there is an F13 key and it works as Print Screen, letting me have the same easy one-key screenshots I have on my PC (at least in GW2).

Actually, I just realized there is one slight difference between the PC and Mac versions of GW2: PC screenshots go into the Documents\Guild Wars 2\Screens folder, while Mac screenshots go onto the desktop (the game client message refers to the D: drive). Basically, no gameplay differences I’ve noticed at all, and the screenshot destination is too trivial to worry about, haha.

I kept going until I unlocked all weapon skills except for spear (I don’t really like the underwater portions of the map as much as the land areas – I get disoriented trying to determine which direction an attack is coming from) and hit level 11 where I earned a trait point. I spent it on Illusionists Celerity, following the leveling guide suggestion. Sometimes I enjoy fiddling with builds and taking a different path than typical (e.g. earth magic on my elementalist) and sometimes I’m good with being lazy and following someone else’s build suggestions (e.g. my mesmer so far).

Cultivation

This appears to be the skill training method. When you click on the little icon, a box pops up with three choices:

• Internal Cultivation
• Practice Martial Arts
• Team Practice

Internal Cultivation is the one I mentioned before, where I can pick which skill my character is training in the background, and offline (if I were VIP). I tried the Practice Martial Arts choice, and that boiled down to eat some foods, which I had received as login gifts and perhaps through finishing quests (I wasn’t playing that close attention), which gave a small amount of cultivation points.

I tried the third option, Team Practice, after taking a quest to visit a wise man on a quiet mountain overlook… or maybe not so quiet as it was jammed with other players. Fortunately in Age of Wushu, F9 makes all non-NPC’s vanish! That’s a handy feature. (They reappear with another press of F9).

Anyway, Team Practice is a way to earn cultivation points by essentially playing a Simon-says mini game. Others can join in, and the group as a whole benefits if everybody hits all the patterns, but I was just by myself this time around.

Doing a Team Practice changes the screen up a bit, and disallows the Alt-Z hide-UI option. Which probably makes sense if hiding the UI also hides the Team Practice directions… After a countdown from 3, a sequence of keys to press in order is displayed, with a timer.

Team Practice Instructions

If you hit the sequence, you get a congrats animation that goes on for 10+ seconds, and then you settle in for the next one.

Success!

There are four different Team Practice options available, which boil down to a similar mechanic. The reward is cultivation points.

After doing this for a while I decided to follow the storyline for a bit.

Storyline

The storyline took me back to my starting city, where I solved a few problems for various citizens. One person’s daughter was kidnapped into prostitution, and after beating down the guards and winning freedom for the girl, the madam asked that I fix things up with her loan shark.

Chengdu

The NPC groveling at my feet is the one whose daughter was kidnapped, and the brothel is on the left. Nice looking place at least.

After smacking these criminals and seedy people down, the next quest took me to a nearby castle, where I decided to stop. Looking back at my origin choice (where I was caught between the law and criminals and chose to flee), I see how that is worked into the storyline I’ve seen so far.

Other Stuff

I’ve come across all sorts of stuff just clicking on the UI to see what each icon does. There are several game mechanics I’m unsure of – crafting professions; trade/market; school/faction/Jianghu missions that involve spying, kidnapping, escort/guard duty, arrays(?) and grouping, etc.

The tooltips for my weapon skills refer to chi: foul chi, sword chi; consuming anger points, energy… OK I can figure out that energy is the blue bar for my character, haha, but I’m not sure what the others are – how to build them up. The skill book has 5 tabs for internal skills, techniques, flying skills, arrays, and meridians. And I’m still fuzzy on what exactly the Wudang School does for me – the school tab is jammed with all kinds of diagrams that look like reward levels.

There is a guide on the website, which has some information.

Continuing

There is certainly plenty to do in game, and lots to figure out. The catch is this being a PvP-centric MMO – skill cultivation matters, because that is how to raise skills, and only VIPs can cultivate offline.

So, while the game is enjoyable so far (granted only 4-5 hours isn’t a lot of time to evaluate) I’m hesitant to plunge in for a VIP membership for the enhanced cultivation (skill training). Plus, there are some other MMOs I want to look at, or look at again, with the goal of whittling my play list down to a few I can rotate between, have fun and make some progress.

I had no problems launching the game, or logging in and getting oriented, so I think that’s a pretty big accomplishment for the developers. The typical launch day is a disaster, but as far as I could tell this one had no issues at all.

After logging in, I faced four choices concerning my character background. They were:

• 

  Nameless Sword

  Nameless Sword – an assassin destroys your family
• 

  Phoenix Pledge

  Phoenix Pledge – you and your sister are orphaned, she was then kidnapped
• 

  Scholar’s Legend

  Scholar’s Legend – you got between criminals and the law and had to flee
• 

  Tianshan Swords

  Tianshan Swords – you were ambushed but survived

Since the Scholar’s Legend background didn’t involve a tragedy, I went with that one.

The character creation screen didn’t take long – there weren’t really many appearance options. I went through various looks and settled on one quickly:

Aurora Tian

After that came a basic skills tutorial – talk to the NPC, receive a skill book to read, gain the skill, then use that skill against another NPC. It’s a straightforward system with no surprises. Naturally, this being a martial arts MMO, the skills have fancy names: Embrace the Moon, White Cloud Covers the Top, Step Backwards Over Seven Stars, Sit and Breathe.

The “Step Backwards” skill required a certain amount of “rage” to enable, so I blocked, defended, used my other skills until I accumulated enough rage and noticed the icon glowing differently, then unleashed the skill. What happened then was a slow-mo (sort of bullet-time-esque) super combo that honestly looked pretty cool.

My instructor then sent me to buy some wine at the store. I headed off, figuring this was the part of the tutorial where you get introduced to the cash shop, but when I got near to the store, a cutscene took over. Three thugs were threatening a young girl, so I thought “Aha – a fight!”… but in the cutscene I was knocked unconscious and dropped down a well!

Well Bottom

That wasn’t expected. But as it happens, at the bottom of the well was a skill book – Skyward Feint Step, essentially a double jump – and that skill let me jump up some rocks to grab a rope and climb to my escape. This entire episode was the “Flying Skill Introduction” tutorial.

Rope Escape

The next quest taught a simple weapon skill, using iron darts to kill wolves. At first I had to get close to the wolf, then afterwards I was taught a thrown dart skill. Completion merely required killing two wolves, so soon I finished and returned to the martial arts scholar for a brief introduction to cultivation.

Skill Cultivation

Skill cultivation appears to be some sort of offline/background training. The tutorial had me select the “Self Recollection” skill to cultivate, and after doing that I had a progress bar that filled over 5 minutes. When that time elapsed, I received notification that Self Recollection was cultivated to level 2, and I had the option of continuing, which I did. Level 3 would be reached in 10 more minutes, and undoubtedly, each higher level grants a higher stat bonuses and takes longer to reach.

I received my final school story (tutorial) quest, which was to visit another NPC and select between the eight major schools. Shaolin was out, because they only take male students (balanced by the Emei which only take female students), and I also discarded the Royal Guards and Wanderer’s Valley as both are evil (maybe I’d consider that for another character, but not right now). The NPC mentioned that the Tangmen and the Scholar’s are neutral, while the good schools are Shaolin, Emei, Wudang, and Beggar’s Sect. Since I didn’t want to be a beggar, I joined the Wudang, and was instantly transported to Wudang School.

Once there I spoke to the Wudang leader, Immortal Ziyang, and officially joined the Wudang. I decided this was also a good time for a break and dinner.

Later I was able to play a tad more. I took another quest to learn some sword fighting skills: Turbulent Rapids, Pure Awakening, Blow Away in the Clear Wind, Clear Sound and Gentle Rhythm. As an aside, it’ll be funny to see players looking to form groups later on, spewing out cryptic abbreviations. Can you imagine? “Looking for DPS, needs TR, PA, CSaGR” and so on. There are so many skills people will need a codebook to figure out what is going on. Haha!

When you get a scroll to learn a new skill, there are two buttons: Replay, Study. When you open the scroll, a shadow figure animates the skill, complete with jumps and whirls. Replay causes that animation to repeat, while Study is what you do to learn the skill. After learning the skill, when you check your skillbook, each skill displays a mini avatar of your character, and when you click the skill on the left half of the book, the figure animates. It’s cool, maybe just eye-candy, but then I think this game is all about cool looking martial arts moves, and this is how you can check them out without actually fighting an enemy. I kinda like it actually.

Skill book

I also notice a “cultivate” button on each skill… so this is one way to bump up each ability, by training (in the background) constantly. I see that VIP members can also train while offline. All the skills I’ve received have been for free from quest givers (except the jump skill) and I’m getting the impression the skill training system, cultivation, will rely on being able to do it offline for the best results, which means payment. Well, it is F2P so you gotta figure there will be various advantages to subscribing, or in this case, topping off your account each month.

AoW also has an integrated way to record videos – no doubt to show off awesome looking fights – but hilariously, the videos don’t play on my Windows box (then again, I have a very barebones Windows 8 install, with just about nothing at all besides the base OS). To see the video, I had to go to my MacMini.

Before I take more screenshots next time, I need to figure out how to disable/hide the UI. I know it makes all the pics I took very busy but I looked over the settings menus and didn’t see a way to do it. EDIT: ARGH I see it now, Alt-Z. Dang it, I can’t believe I missed that when I looked before.

Here’s a screenshot in a Wudang courtyard with the UI hidden.

Courtyard

Much nicer!

Well, that about wraps my first day in Age of Wushu. It looks interesting and I would like to play more, but also try to see how viable it is as a free player for a while. The graphics look good as do the skill animations. I’ve budgeted for one subscription game, and since I dropped my EVE subscription, I’m willing to spend that equivalent somewhere…