A couple of things: Funcom claim to have fixed the “Men In Black Vans” quest we discussed in the podcast. A few folks claiming it to still be broken, but I was able to complete it without a hitch late Monday night, FWIW.

Now that I’ve listened to this, I can see where you were coming from in your previous comments, Tom. And I pretty much agree. The game really doesn’t explain itself very well and it does enough things in different and sometimes idiosyncratic ways that it really needs that explanation. I love that it doesn’t hold my hand on the puzzles, but like you say, I need to know what my toolset is, and it never really cues you in on: looking outside the game onto the internet, using slash commands, sometimes needing to die (and stay dead). Just to name some examples. And my god, the advanced tooltips not only need to stay on when you toggle them on, they need to be the default.

The basic tooltips not only obscure useful numerical info, but they don’t always tell you all the things the ability does. I had no idea, for example, that while Blood Spike is on initial application a moderate up front damage hit that applies a damage over time effect and sets Afflicted status, if it hits a target that already has its DOT effect on it, instead of reapplying that DOT, it does a -lot- more damage. Like, almost double, IIRC. Nor did I realize that Infection, while it is a damage spell plus DOT effect that chains to additional enemies, also causes said enemies to explode for area of effect damage if they die while that effect is in place. Because neither of those secondary effects are even mentioned in the basic tooltip.

I still don’t care about the PvP being weak, though. And I wish one of these days an MMO would be brave enough to just skip PvP entirely and focus on the solo and cooperative elements of the game. I know that there’s a small but vocal crowd that would be aghast at such a thing, but I’m pretty sure a game like The Secret World never had a moment’s chance of capturing the hardcore PvP audience.

Yeah, that line is pretty fantastic

Yes, I discovered that too :(