The Whispering Tide #TSW

The past week in gaming for me was quite interesting. Starting with an unheard of full-noob guild run of Ascalon Catacombs in Guild Wars 2, and culminating with fighting back the filth with members of the Beyond the Veil Podcast! The events going on with The Filth in The Secret World really took center-stage, though.

We were aware at the conclusion of Issue 7 that business was certainly left unfinished. The latest revealed antagonist Lilith was launched through the Tokyo portal, which the Filth, a black oozing substance intent on madness and destruction, was seeping out of.

The Filth, all things considered, is the real true menace of The Secret World. It is everywhere, in every zone, and seemingly unstoppable. How does one stop the ocean? Especially an ocean, controlled by a maleficence, intent on destruction. In-game Lore points to the Gaia Engines. These enigmatic, powerful devices that have seemed to be keeping The Filth in check, are failing. Their failure, possibly brought about by the Tokyo Incident, in which a Third-Age device was detonated, is allowing the Filth to move. … or at least that’s what I THINK is going on. In The Secret World, you can never be sure. Things are rarely what they seem.

Starting last Friday, September 20th, (which I totally called, by the way) the Filth decided to make it’s move and corrupted one of the portals leading into Agartha, the heart of the world used for instant transportation to many other locations around the globe. The corruption was instantly repelled by the forces of Gaia, and had the players collecting the crafting material Pure Metal (great band name, by the way) to get it done, turning it into something, which turned into a new currency. This lasted until the playerbase gathered enough Pure Metal to open the portal, which took, oh, all of 3 days.

Funcom’s newest CM, Sezmra, announcing the end of Part 1.

I have no idea if this was an expected timeframe to Funcom or not, but I’d hazard a guess on ‘Not’. It seemed ridiculously quick. But really, a great majority of players are at “level cap”, either running dungeons, farming or being bored, and have been doing nothing but hoarding these materials, so a fast turnaround from something based on crafting mats is kinda to be expected.

So on Monday, September 23rd, the next round of the defense of Agartha commenced. The guardians of Agartha cleaned the entrance to the portal, and players were able to step through, onto a branch of Agartha that had already fallen. The instance is not that tricky to complete, and comprises essentially trash mobs, an endurance fight, more trash mobs, a mini-boss, even more trash mobs, and then fighting the big boss, a bird/spider looking Filth monster, all to get a more special piece of currency.

Rowan had the thought, and I agree, that Funcom may have learned from the sheer speed of the first part, and put this mission on a 30 minute cooldown timer. Not a long cooldown, but long enough where you can’t complete it over and over and over again and to give the rest of the community a shot at earning some of the new currency. So, it may be a few more days until we see the next part, which is fine by me.

I just hope these currencies don’t disappear on us. I’m all for specific currencies for specific rewards. I do this one special thing, I get special coins to spend on special items to show others that I did this specific special thing. Awesome. However, if you’re going to have a ridiculous amount of currencies, then PLEASE make a way to transfer them back into a the standard currency. Any of these leftover Extant Third Age Fragments, for example, I’d like to convert into PAX somehow. Not saying it has to be a lot of PAX, but the same way I don’t carry around Yen or Euros in my pocket, I don’t want to be stuck with leftover fragments that can’t be used post-event.

So, what do you think the next step is? If we beat back this bad guy over and over again, is the next step going to be going on the offensive and prepping for Tokyo? Or do you think we haven’t seen the last of the Filth invasion into Agartha and it’s only going to get worse? (My money: worse)

Either way, it looks like TSW has pulled my attention back into it’s grip. Which is alright by me because it’s such a fantastic game. So if you’re not playing it yet, the real question is:

Really, why not?

// Ocho

P.S. – The fine folks over at Holosuite Media, the Beyond the Veil podcast team, Funcom, and WeLoveFine.com even have a contest running: Send in a screenshot of the fight against the Filth and the best ones win in-game prizes! Click HERE to see details. All you need is a good screenshot (so please don’t steal mine 😉 )!

P.P.S. – Are you reading this, do not own Secret World, and it’s before 1 PM EDT on September 28th, 2013? Yes?! THEN GO PICK UP THE GAME WHILE IT’S STILL ON SALE ON STEAM!