The Glade 4.0

The notion of the game appeals to me. Quests that require thought, in-game research, and puzzle solving sounds incredibly neat and rewarding.

The entire premise of the game setting couldn't make me less interested, though.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Played it on the last beta weekend. Good game, but in the current environment, not sure a sub game with a full box price will do as good as they want...

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Yeah, see, that's what interests me about it.

Setting is great...but the gameplay is so forgettable that I couldn't see my self playing this for very long, if at all.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

How are characters set up? What kind of options do you have other than your faction?

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I thought they were looking at an f2p model.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Pick faction & sex. Then, fiddle with looks and clothing. That's it.

Early on you are lead around your home 'hub' city and you pick up your first weapon (of your choosing) and some starter talismans. Talismans take the place of armor, in the way of providing the avenue for stat item slots. There's a head, two major, and two minor talismans that you can equip. These do not display graphically on your character. They can add to stuff like Crit rating, Block, Health, Heal Rating, etc.

Clothing is purely aesthetic; no stats. Your first outfit comes at character creation. There is an in-game clothier in London called Pangaea where you can buy a ton of clothes. There is also unlockable clothing that comes either from completing tiers of a particular weapon on the Ability Wheel, from unlocking a 'deck', or from faction missions. Decks are pre-made builds that you can spec into with enough AP points. Lastly, there is a real cash shop that you can access in-game and buy fancy clothes (along with pets and other fluff).

The Ability Wheel and the Skill screen are where you build your character's combat set-up. There are 525 abilities, split almost 50/50 between active and passive. You can equip 7 Active and 7 Passive abilities at any given time. Some abilities are tagged Elite and you may have only one Active and one Passive Elite on your bars at once. Ability Points (AP) are earned as you reach certain XP thresholds. Your XP bar remains linear rather than curving exponentially and as you get deeper into the game the XP rewards from quests get larger. There is no cap on APs so you could potentially buy all 525 abilities, eventually. You can mix and match anything you want from any of the nine weapon types, but you can only equip 2 different weapons at once. For example, you can have a Shotgun and an Elemental Focus equipped at the same time. In this case, you'll want to stick with Shotgun or Elemental abilities on your Active bar, but you may find some synergies in a Passive from say the Hammer line that you want to throw on your Passive bar.

I have not heard anything said by the devs about a f2p model...yet. As Khross pointed out earlier, this is a niche game and I have to think they will roll over into a f2p version within the first six months to a year but that is just speculation.

edits: added bits to the Ability Wheel explanation.

Well I'll keep my eye on it then. It sounds awful balanced against new and experienced players. I like that idea, but it might ultimately turn off people.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Finally picked this one up. They moved to subscriptionless F2P-style model except you buy the initial game. There's no huge benefit for paying the monthly fee (pets and mounts and things like that).

Love the game, love it. We're really having a lot of fun as a duo. It's "EQ hard" for sure, solo would be a real challenge. Lots of dying. Stealth quests are a beast especially if you're going for the "don't get seen" achievements. I've never been a "stealth" guy, but most of my attempts here to just tank through the sneaky quests ends badly. Quests are genuinely challenging, require a lot of thinking without spoilers. There have been a few times I've looked up spoilers, to be fair, but we try as hard as we can to go without.

The lore takes real-world history, as well as known conspiracy theories, and blends them together in new ways into almost-believable fantastical themes. The setting is pretty true to reality; the area where you start out as Illuminati is a very faithful representation of NYC.



Pace is a lot slower than WoW, and nothing is given to you. Expect to die a lot, and learn to be OK with it; death is this game's way of telling you that you're trying something the wrong way. The ability wheel took a little getting used to, but now I'm really enjoying it. You're a tank but you ran into a fight where you need a heal? Learn one and throw it on your bar. Flex into your roles - tomorrow you want to be a DPS? No reroll, no problem. Sets of abilities can get stored into the gear manager so you can swap between builds as long as you're out of combat.

I'm sure at some point it'll turn into a grind, but we're a few months in and still hooked. For thirty bucks or whatever it was, plus no subscription fee, we're getting more enjoyment than if we'd purchased a 2-player console game for the same amount.

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