Category Archives: Games

TSW: Whispering Tide and Dev Love + New Articles

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The Whispering Tide rises. The World Tree rots. The center cannot hold. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is safe.

She Who Crawls Outside in corrupted Agartha in The Secret WorldThe Filth has invaded Agartha.

After months of build-up, the Filth invasion event in The Secret World has finally begun in earnest. It’s not just Flappy the Filth Dragon dive-bombing the platforms anymore. An infected portal has appeared, complete with missions to drive back the zero point pathogen.

Putting aside the “OMGWTFBBQ FILTH IN AGARTHA” factor, though, it’s a bit of an underwhelming event so far. We started by gathering huge amounts of pure metal to power up a custodian, and now there’s just one short, repeatable mission to go through the portal and fight Filth beasts.

But this event is meant to last for months. It’s supposed to continue up until the release of issue #9, and we’re still weeks away from issue #8. So there are bound to be many, many more stages to work through.

As always, the community adds a bit more spice to the event. I’ve been greatly amused by watching the people kill time between missions outside the portal. There have been dance-offs, couples (I assume) /sleeping next to each other, and other tomfoolery. I even saw a guy polishing the custodian once.

A dedicated role-player polishes the custodian during The Secret World's Whispering Tide eventThere are also a lot of people offering to run lower level characters through the event mission. Despite my normally selfish and antisocial nature, I’ve been trying to do the same and have helped several of my lesser geared brethren do their part to reclaim Hollow Earth.

We ❤ our devs:

Something else that’s been on my mind lately is how different the developer/fan relationship is in The Secret World compared to other games. I remember Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street mentioning recently that he receives death threats on a regular basis, and there have been several recent incidents of developers quitting their positions or the industry entirely because they could no longer stand the abuse from fans.

On the other hand, TSW has “dev appreciation” threads and random people who show up at their office to give them donuts.

Yes, this has happened more than once.

My Templar battles the Titan of Dis in The Secret WorldI certainly think the developers deserve the high regard they’re held in. Aside from making an awesome game, they’re an incredibly friendly, open, and honest bunch. Tilty often posts in fan art threads to compliment the artists on their work. Scrivnomancer and I have discussed our mutual love of Jeffrey Combs and his role in the game. Joel is always answering questions on the forums — he’s even answered a few of mine.

Now, I wonder if they engage with us so much because we’re nice to them, or are we nice to them because they engage with us so much?

Either way, it’s nice to have such a healthy relationship between the fans and the developers. I maintain there’s no such thing as nice gaming community, but TSW probably has the least awful community.

New articles:

A couple more of my articles have been posted around the Internet. WhatMMO has 8 MMO Boredom Cures, and as someone who bought the WoW annual pass back when it was offered, trust me when I say it comes from personal experience.

Meanwhile, ADANAI has posted a list of the 10 Most Iconic Video Game Villains, as selected by yours truly.

Blizzard Trademarks “Heroes of the Storm”

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The plot thickens again.

According to a post on MMO-Champion, Blizzard has just filed a trademark application for “Heroes of the Storm” in New Zealand. This is seemingly in keeping with their new habit of filing trademarks in odd places in an attempt to keep them secret. I believe “Reaper of Souls” was first trademarked somewhere in Africa.

My monk endures a snowstorm in Kun-Lai Summit in World of WarcraftCould this be the next World of Warcraft expansion? History has taught me not to make definitive statements, but I’m going to take a guess and say it’s not likely.

I’m still a believer in The Dark Below. Perhaps the fact I want an ocean expansion is biasing me, but that sounds more like a WoW expansion title to me. Expansion titles to date have generally had a feeling of mystery or peril to them. Heroes of the Storm sounds too “ra-ra” to me.

Yes, I may be reaching.

However, there is another possibility. Some have suggested this may be a new title for Blizzard All-Stars. I think that may be our answer.

First of all, Heroes of the Storm is an excellent name for MOBA. Secondly, several of Blizzard’s artists operate a site called “Sons of the Storm,” where they collect their art for Blizzard games, as well as some personal projects. Since All-Stars was supposed to include characters from all three Blizzard game franchises, there’s an obvious similarity to the purpose of Sons of the Storm.

The official logo for Blizzard EntertainmentPlus, they’ve already changed the game’s name once already. It’s gone from Blizzard DOTA to Blizzard All-Stars. What’s another change? They’ve also done a total overhaul of the game to make it a standalone title rather than a mod for StarCraft II, so a name change would make sense under such circumstances.

And let’s be honest: Blizzard All-Stars was always a pretty lame title.

For the sake of argument, though, let’s say it is a WoW expansion. What might it be about?

A lot of fans are saying it could be a Burning Legion expansion, arguing that fire raining from the sky could qualify as a storm.

I think this is pure wishful thinking, though. People are so desperate for a Legion expansion they’ll take any hint as proof of one. Storm terminology has never been associated with the Legion that I can recall, so it seems a stretch.

Storms in Warcraft lore are generally connected to either Titans or shamanism. Cataclysm was a shamanism expansion, so if Heroes of the Storm is a WoW expansion, my bet is that it would be on a Titan theme. Didn’t Wrathion say something about rebuilding the final Titan?

My warlock confronts Thorim in UlduarWe have done quite a lot of Titan-related stuff over the last three expansions, though, so it’s difficult to imagine an entire expansion focused on them that wouldn’t feel redundant.

What say you? Is Heroes of the Storm a WoW expansion, the new name for All-Stars, a hoax, or something else altogether? If it is an expansion, what might it be about?