Joel speaks once more!

The April Dev Letter has arrived and with it came some very important information concerning the future content of the game. The topics themselves weren't all too surprising, I mean this is the same content we have been talking about for the past 6+ months, but what is refreshing to see is some honesty in regards to a reasonable and realistic "roadmap" as the creative director put it. Either way, I still want to dedicate this blog post to talk about the coming additions to the game and my thoughts on them.

Interestingly enough, there is also an interview with Joel Bylos (creds to mmorpg.com) where he more-or-less goes over the same topics, but I feel that the way he talked about stuff in the interview was not exactly how he put it in the Dev Letter. Don't get me wrong, I am not about to take what he says out-of-context and call him the devil, but what I am saying is that you should definitely take a look at both! In the Dev Letter he talks more about the content less about the reasoning, and vice versa in the interview by mmorpg. For example we did not really understand how much of the single-server tech we were about to get, or anything at all really. All we had in the beginning was "it'd be cool to get this in the game" which sounded like a promise at the time. Now though we understand in the letter that they have divided it into phases and the team will eventually try to pave the way for really cool stuff like cross-server minigames. An idea I personally pitched in 2008 but proceeded to get shot down by my own freaking community.. but that's beside the point. Anyway in the interview he did not talk about the single-server tech in phases all that much, but he did talk about the reasoning behind it. Fact is, we will never get single-server tech like in the Secret World. Craig Morrison (A man not needing of a description.. I HOPE) toyed around with the idea of having a single, large, happy universe where you get to choose whom you spend your merry days with. It actually sounded incredibly awesome, yet somewhat unrealistic as this is also expected from an upcoming MMO called ELDER SCROLLS and even they are struggling. That's not to say I am disappointed with what we are getting, and in the end I think it is great that we get to benefit from The Secret World now that there's a single team of (hopefully) experienced people working on all Funcom games.

Next couple of items on the list are the Unchained additions coming to the game (+dragon's spine content)!
The PvP part of this is way more interesting than the PvE part in my opinion, seeing as how we know that we usually get a good amount of 6-mans and a .5 raid of some kind. However, I did not expect to hear about an Unchained version of PvP minigames, and it almost completely overshadowed the fact that there's a NEW minigame linked to the Palace of Cetriss raid? Both of these are fantastic pieces of news though, and at this point I think PvPers are so starved that they'd accept pretty much anything playable. The only real concern I am having with this is; with Unchained Minigames, gear and pvp levels are useless. What will happen now that there's no PvP reward system? This is a great start, but I hope there's a follow-up in the future.

Speaking of PvP; I did notice two things, I fear that I might derail too much, but they are worth noting. First of all they are going to change the guard situation on PvP servers to get some more World PvP happening, and at the same time there is also the question of "will the B&G ruleset survive?". No guards, Tortage PvP and Player Looting were the key defining factors here and now key factor #1 for all the endgame players is looking a lot less impressive. I say the PvP situation is looking more and more dire, and I dearly hope to see some awesome revamps coming here like how the Murder System is handled, how Sieges are handled, how World PvP is handled. Unchained Tournaments maybe?!

It is a very important topic, but I am going to leave that for now. Funcom is at least looking at PvP and that is worth more than any piece of content, but trust me, when the time comes to discuss what sort of competitive endgame content we want in the game, I believe the community will be more than happy to share their opinion on just that. This text is getting longer and longer, but sometimes they need to be! What I can tell you though is that there is only two things left to talk about, and first up is crafting. (because I love it so!)

I love it so much in fact that it pains me to even copy/paste this quote: "This feature is still some months away from delivery". At least he is being honest, I know, but I feel like I have already used up that excuse. Fact remains the same, and even though that was the one feature good enough to bring me back I do still feel like resubscribing this summer, so I have. I have not experienced the newest Adventure Pack, nor have I written a review on it, so I do still have some content to burn through. With a new raid, minigame and revamped crafting system being pushed back further this also means Fall/Winter 2013 is going to be a great time for Age of Conan (yes I am willing to settle for that).¨

Speaking of good times (smoothest segway you're ever gonna see here man), the Devs are actually planning to do something cool for the 5th anniversary. To be honest I was pretty happy when I read that and it rounded off the letter with something positive. Some optimism on the side to wash down that postponed crafting revamp. I like that idea, so I intend to do the same. For this very occasion, have a funny* picture!

*funny is a subjective term here and will not necessarily guarantee laughter in any way, shape or form.