I know I am

Global Agenda Patch 1.1 introduces several commonly requested new features, including a friends list, two new Conquest Zones, the ability to repair upgrades, additional player choice when queueing, and more. The patch also fixes a variety of bugs and annoyances. A larger Patch 1.2 is being worked on for later release that will introduce significant additional content to the game.

The first major patch since release for Global Agenda hits today, the server will be down between 1600-2000 GMT to be patched. There are a few nice things in this release, a friends list, ability to repair upgrades and the choice in queues will be nice as it was in the alpha/beta.

Will it be enough to keep people interested until the next one that will be adding more content? Who knows, but for me I am happy enough for now as I find it more fun to play than Team Fortress 2 now as that has just got silly now and lost some of its charm.

Full patch notes can be found here…

On a side note, I really need to sort out my PC so I can run this game properly

This week has had the following…

A well run team of Medic and an Assault (hi CrazyHippo) happily taking on a whole enemy team and winning, alot. These games of stompage also revealed my Medic is able to absorb an insane amount of damage! Me also finding out that Robotics are a fun class to play when played right.

Getting all my gear in order and loaded into my carrier in Eve Online so I can finally jump over to where my new corp is so I can get involved once again in playing Eve properly.

Realising that Uncharted 2 is one of the best made games I have played so far, I am looking forward to completing this!

Realising that playing a video game character in Ghostbusters the game might not be as fun as being a real Ghostbuster, but its close enough for now!

Hopefully this weekend I can pick up a copy of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing and enjoy some good old fashioned kart racing on the 360 with the kids, watching them fight over being Sonic should be fun…

It is going to be hard to tear myself away from playing Uncharted 2 as that game is truly amazing, but hopefully I can blast through Ghostbusters pretty quickly.

On top of both of these I still need to get myself organised in Eve by getting all my gear into my carrier and jumping it over to where the actual corp is so I can get playing properly again. I also want to play some more Global Agenda as my medic is now very close to hitting level 30 and I want to get my recon up as well.

4-5 months ago I was moaning that I had nothing to play… just goes to show that gamers are never happy unless they are moaning about something

Firestorm had two proper (right amount of the correct classes etc..) Strikeforces up and running for attacking and defending hexes so I joined the 3rd team that was building up.  This team was tasked with trying to drag forces away from where the other two were attacking and trying to keep nearby agencies distracted so they didn’t attack our hexes while our teams were away.

Our team was comprised of whoever was available so we didn’t really expect to be able to fight any organised groups very well, or at least this is what I was told. I figured it can’t matter that much surely as long as you have the right amount of people?!  I was very wrong.  Conquest isn’t like just joining a pick up group in the normal PvP matches, these are all well organised teams who have their whole team specced to win. My first attack on a hex showed me just how true this is, we didn’t even get close to taking the first point

A couple more attacks went a bit better, we got to the 3rd point a couple of times in a few of them.  One match even had no one defending so we actually won one   Trying to keep people alive during these hex raids is hard work, and you really feel like you are letting the team down when people die (even if there was nothing you can do) but as you can see I can put out a nice amount of healing so I am happy.

The map came to a close and I could see more clearly what we had lost with all the attacks that hit us, the map looked like this..

Only Alliance hexes..

All in all, it was a good night and a good experience in what Conquest mode has to offer.  Looking forward to seeing the more full scale battles with people bringing proper equipment (tanks etc..) to the field. Echelon looks to be a very busy map so keeping hexes is going to be a challenge. Bring it on

ThreatN and Firestorm alliance however were busy it seems on the Echelon map and ended up taking a fair few hexes, at close of map play the alliance holds 20 hexes. This is how the map looked.

With just alliance hexes showing…

Not a bad nights work, hopefully I can actually find some time soon to join in some AvA!

The medic class in Global Agenda can be a tricky one to use, so I figured I would note down a few tips for anyone playing them or wanting to play one.  This is all from personal experience so if you don’t agree that’s fine as I tend to be wrong alot anyway   Anyway, here goes…

1. Always be aware of your surroundings, in both PvP and PvE things can sneak up on you and your party so make sure you see them coming so you can be prepared.
2. Be aware of your targeting reticle, the first thing you will notice when trying to heal someone in Global Agenda is that your heal beam will sometimes lock on to random other people nearby.  The game seems to have some kind of last person/priority to heal system going on which can mean you wont be healing the person you were trying to.  I get around this by doing quick bursts of healing to confirm I have the right person ‘locked on’.
3. People appreciate medics that actually heal, now poison medics are very nice and can do alot of damage but if you don’t actually heal people you are going to make more enemies than friends.
4. Remember, even other medics need healing sometimes!
5. If you have to choose a class to save, try and make sure its the assault. These are guys who can do the most damage (and take it) so they should be the priority when trying to judge who to heal in a group if your power is limited. Remember you can also hide behind them quite well as well
6. Go with the flow. Annoying as it sometimes is, try and stick with where the majority is and hope that they are actually doing the objectives. If you try and do these yourself it will just end up with major stress on your part!
7. Ignore the people who moan. Probably the most important one, people will always moan at medics so just ignore them unless they have a good point.

I have probably missed a few things, will probably update this over time as my experience grows in Global Agenda.

If you look closely in the top right of the map, the 5 green hexs… This is territory held by Firestorm Alliance of which Threat Neutralized (my current agency) is part of.

Firestorm (FS) has a good 50/50 split of timezones it seems so we are battling over each timezone map.  At the current count we have 22 hexs under control, lets just hope we can expand on that.

Tonight is Global Agenda night for me, hopefully I can get some conquest action in.

Global Agenda went live yesterday for people who have bought the game, we get an early start where we can level characters to level 10 only before the official launch on Monday 1st Feb.

Above is a good overview on how AvA (Alliance v Alliance) will work for the people with paid for subscriptions.

This is a very nice collection of video footage for each of the classes in Global Agenda.