The Sword's Edge

Issue 18: July 9th, 2017 - In Ferro Veritas

Welcome to the 18th issue of The Sword's Edge! Our first issue since the SW:L launch, and of course the re-founding of Nine Swords.

The re-launches/re-founding for Nine Swords has been fantastic, as well as the blood sweat and tears to make sure we weren't just jumping with both feet - but that we had a plan! So far, it seems to be working! We have had a lot of fun celebrating the 5th Anniversary of Nine Swords, and on top of that we have of course included some of our regular The Sword's Edge segments.

I am pretty sure, that instead of our regular cuppa and cookies, we need to upgrade to some bubbly this issue. Happy Anniversary Nine Swords, and congratulations to the SW:L team at Funcom.

Hip! Hip!

9S First Cabal Meeting in SW:L!

It was wonderful to see so many members attending our first ever cabal meeting in SW:L. Durendal organised for us to all meet in his museum on the 2nd July. He aimed for a quite communicative meeting - where he was not doing all the talking! Instead, the meeting was aimed at giving our members a chance to give their own opinions about where we stand now as a cabal, and where we can see ourselves in the future. Those present were then able to discuss how we can see the cabal supporting these ideas.

A broad range of different things were discussed. If you missed the meeting, you are able to access the log here. If you see anything in there that you would like to talk with us about - please do either respond to the thread or send a PM!

Nine Swords 5th Anniversary

Nine Swords 5th Anniversary Celebrations were held on Saturday 24th June 2017 in The Secret World. A lot has happened over the last 5 years, and so Yuriksha and Katelin decided to take our members down memory lane via a tour around London. We stopped at different locations to tell stories about big things we did and got involved in, including re-visiting the plaque in the park - because, whatever happens we are TSW and will continue to be Nine Swords and we definitely wanted to sing this loudly and proudly - here are some of the highlights we shared during our tour.

Nine Swords launch

Nine Swords was founded in The Secret World on the 29th June, 2012. The founding was easy – especially when considering the work that was put into planning Nine Swords before this date for almost a year before that! Durendal was announced as the Commander of Nine Swords following discussion between our founding group of 10 Swords. Following Durendal taking on our overall leadership role, our division leadership roles were allocated between the other 9 founding members. In January, 2012 – our recruitment opened for the first time. We built such an amazing community before the game was even ready for us. A lot of our members were active completing war-challenges in the Facebook game “The Secret War” – and our forums were incredibly busy. The Secret War ended in May 2012, and just over a month later, we were able to log into The Secret World and finally make our cabal.

Cabal Pride

If there was one event that Nine Swords became known for in the wider community, it was the Cabal Pride recruitment event. According to the records I've dug up, as well as my own memories, we organized four Cabal Pride events since 2014. It grew out of the Cabal Recruitment Fair which was our contribution to some Sanctuary anniversary events in July 2014, and was the only one we held outside London. It was in the Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York. After its success, another was planned in February 2015. I think that was the first one we called Cabal Pride (though we still counted the Recruitment Fair as the first), and it took the form of a parade of each cabal down this very street in front of the Albion Theatre, and was followed by dancing to music provided by GSP at the stage in the Park. The next two Cabal Prides were held here on the stage, again fully supported by GSP. Cabal Pride III, in September 2015, took the form of a variety show with each cabal performing some sort of dance or skit, a bit akin to what we saw at Cabal Pride II's parade. Toward the end we took pictures with all the participants gathered on stage shooting off lots of fireworks, wing attacks, etc. Very bright and chaotic. Cabal Pride IV in October 2016 had a somewhat similar structure but each cabal was presented with a popular song of their choosing being played on GSP when they came out on stage. We are definitely looking forward to the first Cabal Pride in SW:L!

Jackapalooza

Jackapalooza was a kick-off to the Halloween season held on September 20th, 2014 around Jack's tree in the Wispwood part of Kingsmouth Town. We had music from Gridstream Productions and DJ Trevalin and plenty of prizes handed out by our trivia-master Floryn. Fancy dress is of course a big part of Halloween parties and we handed out dozens of Grim Glamours. Still had quite a few left over at the end of course, but it was a really good time. During the proceedings, Katelin tried to get everybody formed up for a 'biggest human picture', of a grinning pumpkin face I think, and I like to think she succeeded, somewhat, though it was a difficult task.

Pets on Parade

'Pets on Parade' event was another big community-wide party that Nine Swords hosted. It was a sort of fashion show with several rounds where people came out on the 'catwalk' with a pet chosen out of their collection. Gridstream Productions supported the party and Fred came along to take fantastic screenshots! At the end all the attendees did a very long conga line around the park with their pets and outfits to put the 'parade' in the name.

Karoke

As part of our 4th year Nine Swords Anniversary - we ventured over to Seoul. Hit-Parade and Floryn invited us to join them at the Kumiho hotel for karaoke. We have some talented cabal members. It should also be noted that Swords should be removed from your belts before sitting on sofas.

The tour around London

Floryn was in-charge of one of our most memorable Anniversary events, which actually inspired this years anniversary event too. It was a tour around London that made us go from location to location, based on clues – and then at each stop we heard information about our divisions.

SARP - Saturday Afternoon RPing

Role-playing has been a part of Nine Swords' activity from the beginning, in various forms, including writing in-character vignettes on the forums and sometimes doing missions together in-character. One of the longest running initiatives was Monday Night Roleplaying, organized by Maelina, Floryn, and others, that was taking place in the Tabula Rasa. In 2015, Floryn and Hit-Parade started organizing Saturday Afternoon Roleplay so that players who couldn't fit MNRP into their schedule could get involved in RP. SARP has been in many places and had several campaign stories to date, from just hanging out in the Horned God to slugging through the Carpathian Fangs as a proxy for the gulags of the Russian Far East and beyond.

Of late, we've had longer-running campaign stories going on, the first being 'Loose Threads Tangling', where we had to stop a Nine Swords member gone rogue who was trying to blow up the Labyrinth. Our current campaign is 'Cryptozoology in the Secret World', conceived as a lecture series with lore hunts out in the world. We started with draug and... well, we're still on draug; they've proven quite complicated to deal with, complicated even more academia politics and owing favours to elemental spirits. We also had one side story to this campaign where Yuriksha was 'possessed' by a revenant while unveiling the paragon revenant exhibit and the attendees had to chase Yuriksha through "They Mostly Come at Night" and he 'summoned' the revenant spawns. Great fun!!.

Learning raids

I am not sure I ever met a group of people before in a game who were not just willing to learn - but willing to go back and continue wiping a squillion times while helping others learn too. To put that into context for you - the first successful kill of a New York Raid in 9S was Saturday January 5th, 2013. All these years later and I know we have had lots of new people learning with us! This culture we have formed together of helping, sharing knowledge - on the whole it has been so incredibly positive. I am thankful for our way of being, and I know that more than ever if we can continue to uphold this while we learn again for SW:L and then with our Academy, or in our teams - support others too .. it makes us stronger as a cabal, and it helps us maintain an active and welcoming community for others to join.

The #IAMTSW event

Are you TSW? I am TSW - even got a T-Shirt to prove it, and so did many of our members. We had a lot of fun for the #IAMTSW event. For anyone that doesn't remember the event, or have any idea what I am talking about - #IAMTSW was an event run by the Funcom Community Managers. The community was invited to get involved by offering prizes to the event. Nine Swords chose to do something pretty special - we donated lair boss kills to the winner. This meant, that we formed a team and together with the person that won our prize - went to every single lair in TSW and summoned the bosses, and killed the bosses for them. We also killed the regional bosses. The effort that went into collecting the fragments for all the bosses was great, and really well attended. All for helping someone get their achievements - and of course our name on the plaque in the park!

Where am I?

Did you ever play "Where am I?" in our forums? - No idea what I am talking about? Well - it is a forum game that we started in February 2014. In our kick off game, we started with the clue "RM758" .. which led us to this bus! The game continued, sometimes with clues and sometimes with screenshots that people had to go and find the location that the screenshot was taken. With a community spread over so many time-zones, it is definitely good to have things going on in our forums that bring people together - and I hope that we see more of this as we grow into SW:L.

The Sword's Edge

I am proud of a lot of things in Nine Swords, and The Sword's Edge is up there near the top of my list. Our cabal newsletter is a great way for us to share information about what has been happening in the cabal .. But also, as I have found this last few weeks when I started moving the content to our new website - it is a really wonderful way to have a quick look back at what we were doing over the years.

Nights in the Museum

The Nights in the Museum was a big meta-event that took place from September to December last year. After Durendals storytelling kick-off event many lairs, 10k hunts, lore hunts, summoning of rare spawns like Resurrection Joe and so forth were organized to help cabal members get achievements needed to fill out their museum exhibits. We finished off with one of those late events I mentioned, the New Year's Museum Tour (held January 7th).

Many thanks again to everyone that attended our 5th Anniversary celebrations!

Interview with...

Helixia got in touch with some of our leadership team this last month, to get some impressions from them before the launch of SW:L and what they hope for Nine Swords future. He asked them the following questions:

1) From what we all gathered from news, interviews, letters from Funcom, what do you think Secret World:Legends will be? Are you particularly optimist or pessimist about some aspects of the new game with the new re-launch?

2) Is there anything you hope to see happening in Nine Swords with the re-launch? Not necessarily just the division you are leading, but any division.

Helixia

I can totally understand Funcom's point of view when deciding to relaunch the game as a new product, and while I'm not happy with erasing all our progress, I'm over the frustration of having to start over again. I certainly hope that it will prove a success, and the areas they hope to improve (combat, quest flow, skill rework) will be interesting and appealing to new players, so the game will be healthy and see regular content updates. Until the official launch we can't know for sure what this means and I will give the new game an honest try, although the thought of grinding again through the same content with new mechanics is not what I would call an exciting prospect.

From my point of view, we, the Nine Swords members, did not play this game as much for what it offered us, but more for the awesome sense of community that is our Cabal. I hope this will carry on in the new game, and while I imagine we will lose some members over the new changes, either from disliking the new game, or not starting it at all, I hope the new players that will join the game and hopefully Nine Swords will prove just as friendly, helpful and dedicated as our current membership. TSW had one of the best communities in online gaming and this is something I definitely hope to see in Secret World:Legends

ShockG

I am not optimistic about SWL because most of the weapon gimmicks are not fun and, in fact, draw player attention away from the action in FC's "action-based combat," we are 23 days from launch and FC is still succumbing to complaints about the reticle combat system, there is only one viable weapon effect in the weapon meta because in-combat speed is important now, and the gear improvement system is confusing.

The division I lead will be mostly meaningless when SWL launches. There is no faction PvP, and the people behind the game seem to have taken the stance that they want it eliminated permanently. I have no idea where I'm going to end up. That said, I'd like to see the cabal as a whole be organized when it comes to end-game content. The game's content will have changed very little. We will be doing the same missions, etc. that we've already done. All that remains in terms of game play is for players to advance and refine their skill loadouts and gear.

Ishco

I think Secret World: Legends will just be TSW with a new combat system. I honestly I'm indifferent with any aspects of the new game with the new re-launch. I liked the "old" combat system and I have no idea what the new one will be, since I didn't get chosen for the beta. I really didn't like what Funcom did with all the "re-launching the game" and I'm not convinced things will get better with the re-launch. I clearly can't say I'm optimistic, even if I'm not pessimistic neither, and I still hesitate to try it or not. There are other good games out there (and other developers who don't pull the rug from under their players feet without notice) and some of them even reunite some 9 Swords!

Well, the re-launch will change a lot of dynamics in the cabal, between players who won't be in/will stop playing Secret World: Legends and newcomers. I just hope for this nice cosy space to remain cosy. I also think this re-launch is a good opportunity to start anew some part of the organisation. The Academy will be very useful for those who weren't in the beta and will be able to get explanations by those who were in.

Aberlour

Hopefully it will be a success. When they first announced Secret World: Legends I was cautiously optimistic. I had reservations because I’ve seen similar changes (I’m looking at you Star Wars Galaxies) completely ruin a game. But at this point I am fully optimistic. I’m definitely going to miss the old combat of TSW, but I don’t mind how the new combat looks. And I’m looking forward to having to figure out dungeons and builds again. Next to the story, that was the part of TSW I liked the best. And if Legends succeeds it means we get more story. So I’m excited for that possibility.

I hope to see people playing and enjoying the game. I hope to see old friends return, and to make new ones. I hope Nine Swords continues to grow and be a collection of awesome people.

Floryn

I am optimistic by nature but I do notice the bears on the road (as we say in Dutch) fairly quickly. I am looking forward to replaying the game and to pay way more attention to the storyline and the hints that are given after missions and in cut scenes. The most important thing that worries me is the combat system. From what I have gathered it seems a lot easier than TSW and that may put the hard-core TSW-players off.

I hope to see a lot of old people cross over to SWL.

What's your name?

Why the name LeMort and LeMortieth?

Am I French? Many online players have asked me this over the years. When I turn out not to be, they follow up with; Do I know what it means? 

My name is Morten. It is a modern variation on the Nordic name Martin. Very common in Denmark and Norway. I am from the latter. It apparently means The Brave One. I think it has roots all the way back to the time of Vikings.

I have been LeMort in-game for over 20 years now. Exclusively. It started with Quake, then Quake2. When I was re-educated, for health-reasons around 2K, we used to sit in the classroom and play Unreal Tournament against each others, over LAN. It became my name, this first year of my way towards Bachelor in Multimedia. I may think they hardly remembered my real name towards the end. But it has become harder to get this name inside games. If I am not paying attention and grabs the game at launch, it will most often be lost. It is so important for me to have this name that I in TSW paid to reserve it. In, for instance, Lord of The Rings Online and World of Warcraft I have a LeMort on multiple servers, in case I will play him on another server one day.

So, why LeMortieth then? Obviously, it is a female variation on LeMort. She was born in Age of Conan. For the first time I chose to have a female character. (Who did not?) However, In TSW I started out as LeMort again. As usual. But the combo of weapons LeMort started with never appealed to me. I can not recall what combo anymore. For this reason I started an Alt, just to test a different combination. And basically, this is how LeMortieth became my main character. She started out with AR/Blood but she later switched to Blade/Shotgun and have stuck to that since. In Legends it became Sword/Elemental. The other day I actually overheard her say the new combo actually was fun.

I am very fond of LeMortieth. So much that I for some weeks felt quite certain I wouldn't play Legends. I was afraid I couldn't get the same look. And I didn't either. But she's very close and actually looks a little bit older now. This made sense to me! TSW LeMortieth and LOTRO LeMort are the two characters I deeply care for. The other LeMort's, LeMortielle's, LeMortur's (and so on) can go eat a bun. For all I care

By the way, I of course have a second character slot occupied by LeMort already... And yes, I do know what it means. It is a good pun on my name, eh?

TSW in the real world

The Real Secret World: by Floryn

A lot of things in the Secret World are based on actual stories, events, art, etcetera. The Real Secret World will highlight one of the things you can see in the Secret World and tell you something about it’s origin in the real world.

Today’s highlight is the Kumiho Hotel in Seoul.

The name of the hotel comes from a creature that appears in the tales and legends of Korea. Deriving from ancient Chinese myths and folklores, a fox that lives a thousand years turns into a kumiho, like its Japanese and Chinese counterparts. It can freely transform, among other things, into a beautiful woman often set out to seduce boys, and eat their liver or heart (depending on the legend). There are numerous tales in which the kumiho appears, several of which can be found in the encyclopedic Compendium of Korean Oral Literature. (from Wikipedia)

The Real Secret World: by Ishco

I decided to look at Nine Swords in the Real World for this issue of The Sword's Edge.

The Nine of Swords symbolizes solitude it being voluntary or not. It also means, for the person who gets this card, that they will have to be brave. In the Advice position, it means that one's projects are possible, but also that sacrifices and energy have been made and spent for something that can't work. Of course, the meaning differs if the card appear reversed! Then, in the Marseille tarot, it points someone untrustworthy or an unbalanced situation to come. Being prudent is a must! To resume, the Nine of Swords is not a negative card, since it puts in the spotlight a way to make things better! You can find more detailed information about this card, in the Rider-Waite tarot or the Marseille, all over the Internet!

If you find something you think is worth mentioning in The Sword's Edge, send it to us!

Changes to Nine Swords Recruitment

With the Relaunch, as with many things, we took the opportunity to make some changes to our recruitment process. The vast amount of the changes are dependant on our website - in some cases (for the short term), it has decreased the automated functions we have but on the whole, made us re-assess the process that we have had in place for the last five years and make some sensible changes.

While I am sure you would all be fascinated with the "behind the scenes" application processing we have for our recruiters and leaders, I think more interesting for you guys is how the changes directly impact our cabal members and new applicants!

Cabal Faction

Nine Swords is now welcoming applications from people of any faction in Secret World: Legends. We have spent five years as a Templar only cabal, so this now changes our RP story from now on too. This is being discussed in our forums - if you are a member of our cabal, and want to have a say how our story continues I would definitely recommend you contributing to that post.

No waiting!

For our new applicants, we have removed the 48hour voting period we have had in place for the last five years. Following a chat with one of our leaders or recruiters, applicants who are still interested in joining us (and not scared away) will be recruited immediately to the cabal. There may be occasions where someone applies to join us and it is clear after chatting that the applicant and our cabal are not suited, but that is why we have this pre-recruitment chat in place!

Re-Recruitment / Alt-Recruitment

It is really important that all Nine Swords members who are seeking re-recruitment post in our forums, as well as for the recruitment of alts. We want to know who is who! Not everyone matches up their ingame name with their forum name - so it does make our lives easier if we have a paper trail!


Our recruitment process documentation is undergoing finalisation and will be available as a step-by-step guide for our recruiters. In addition to this, our Recruitment information for prospective applicants will also be updated to reflect all the new changes.

Sharpening the Blades

Sharpening the Blades is an event that we are going to kick-off again at the end of July. It is a monthly event that we ran really successfully in TSW with great attendance from our new recruits, so there is no doubt in our minds that it should be something to continue on with in SW:L.

The event is mainly targeted at our new recruits. It provides an opportunity for our new recruits to provide feedback about our cabal to our Academy team - we want to know how quickly people settle in and feel part of our community. We also use the event to answer questions our new members may have, and help them find a division to join if they want to contribute more to the cabal.

Our hopes as we kick off this event in SW:L is that members who are returning to us from TSW also come along and evaluate whether they want to continue in their previous division, or perhaps take on something new.

Keep your eyes on our events calendar and Noticeboard forum for the date and time of the first Sharpening the Blades in SW:L!