DocHoliday's MMO Saloon
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View
Joel Bylos, the Secret World Game Director, has been out of pocket for a bit since he was head down with the team over in Montreal. His first post clears up a couple of items that had been kicking around, and so far from the initial glance I like them.
First up, he talks about the changes to the store and this relates to new pets and the ability to make those pets account bound as opposed to character bound. This doesn’t apply to me (I’m only playing one character now) but this is a nice and welcome change. Essentially if you pay 100 points (I’m making up that number) for a character bound pet, you would pay 125 points (25% premium) to make that same pet account bound. You’ll also see in the store an option to unlock a previously purchased pet for the 25% difference. I really wish other games would take this approach and hopefully they’ll expand this idea to cosmetic items as well
In addition, they had announced the whole concept of a veterans reward system when they made the business model change and are now starting to flesh out the details. It is still a work in progress but essentially there will be a new set of currency that will be available for GM pack owners (lifers) and subscribers as well. Each month you’d get an allotment of these points in addition to your allotment of TSW points for DLC and the like. I don’t expect there to be any way to convert from one currency to the other, but that would nice too 
This is another nice perk and the items they’re talking about are things that I would love to use and aren’t anything game-breaking (IMO). Some examples are:
- repair consumables – these would be awesome for cases where you don’t want to pop back to town, a bit more painful on some missions then others now with the increased death penalty
- Bank/AH/Mail cosumables to bring these items to you
- Faction flavored Combat dummies
- Veteran outfits, titles, and pets
- secondary conduit or region teleport
- mission cooldown reduction consumable
Certainly this system will all hinge on how many points we get on a monthly basis and how much the items cost but I can think of cases when all of those items would certainly be helpful but not overly powerful that they hinder gameplay for those that don’t have them.
I’m also excited to see what all Joel has up his sleeve for his next “State of the Game” post slated for later this week.
I’d be curious to hear what others think of his post, especially those who aren’t subscribers or lifers.
DocHoliday
The Secret World Announces Store Changes and Veteran Rewards