DoPo said:
So, how is TSW? Anything to praise? To curse? Anything to write home about? I saw some info about it and I got a really strong World of Darkness vibe off that, which I guess is OK. But I haven't looked into the game any closer than a glance quick skim of the official website.
Eh, I wouldn't really say it reminds me that much of the World of Darkness. I mean, there is some overlap since they both use world mythology and folklore to create a modern day horror setting, but that's kind of the extent of the similarities.
Anyway, as for the game itself, I played it for the first month or so, and I really liked it. I got sort of bored though, so I haven't been playing recently. That isn't really the game's fault, though. I have a really short attention span, and Everquest is the only MMO that has ever held my interest for more than a month at a time.
The main complaint that I have is that it isn't a very good MMO. That is, the whole game is very linear, and everyone basically goes through the same areas in the same order doing mostly the same missions. This is not exactly unusual; lots of MMOs seem to have taken this approach in recent years, but it does not make the world feel like a world. In Everquest, there were a ton of zones at launch, and any player of any level could go to them (although some were very dangerous for low level characters). There were many different starting locations and cities, and the cities actually were large and populated by a lot of NPCs, many of which were quest givers. Furthermore, many zones had mixed level content, so there was less segregation by level. All of this combined to create a game world that felt immersive and alive, despite the lack of sandbox elements such as player housing. The secret world has none of this feel. Everything runs on rails, and the cast of NPCs is quite small (although they are characterized more fully than the NPCs in Everquest).
The other complaint that I have about the secret world is the cutscenes. The fact that your character never speaks makes many conversations really awkward. They often go like this: "So what do you think: is this really the end of the world? ... you don't talk much, huh? well that's OK, I guess it takes all kinds." It just feel strange that people will directly address you, yet you just stand there mutely. The same thing happens with even non-verbal interactions. Sometimes an NPC will offer you their hand as a greeting, but your character just stares at it as though he (or she) doesn't know what a hand shake is. Combine this with the fact that your character sometimes has strange expressions or is staring past the person who is speaking to him makes it seem like you are a recently lobotomized mental patient.
At launch, some people also complained about "all the broken quests", but really there were only around 3-5 broken quests per zone (out of like forty quests per zone total). While it was kind of annoying to get halfway through a quest and find that you couldn't proceed due to a glitch, this only happened on a small fraction of the quests, so it really didn't seem like a big deal to me. I never felt like I had any shortage or working quests, especially since most of them are repeatable (which you may even want to do in many cases since a lot of the quests are actually fun).
So, that's it for the bad (all I can think of off of the top of my head, anyway).
Now some of the good (there's really too much to cover here):
First, the setting is really cool. The whole modern-day horror setting is such a wonderful change after years of generic fantasy MMORPGs. It also leads to some really neat areas like the abandoned tree house of a children's monster "hunter" club (which is now located in a forest that is crawling with horrible giant moth monsters), a haunted house that will knock you on your ass if you try to walk in the front door, a monster infested parking garage without any lights in which you have to toss out road flares to see where you're going, a police station barricaded against endless waves of attacking zombies, the mythical hidden city of Shambhala, an Egyptian village that is home to a cult that worships Akhenaten (or something like that, I can't remember exactly what their goal was), and an ancient temple that is being encroached upon by the highrise apartment buildings of modern China.
Next, the quests. Some of the quests are your garden variety, boring-ass go here kill 10 of X quests, but there are also a ton of really interesting quests. TSW is the first MMO where I've really enjoyed doing quests. The investigation missions are especially interesting. Many require you to open up google (there is an in-game web browser) and do research. Sometimes this means looking up information on fake websites that Funcom has created for the game (such as looking up personnel files on an in-game company's fictitious, out-of-game website to figure out who a character's wife is) and other times you will have to look up historical information about 17th century painters so that you can figure out where to go in-game. One even requires you to decode a message in Morse Code. This took me at least an hour, but it was embarrassingly entertaining. Obviously, these sorts of quests won't appeal to everyone, but if you are having trouble, you can always ask for help or look up a walk-through online (or just skip them entirely; like I said, there are a ton of quests).
Also, the quests givers are distributed throughout the zone, rather than clustered in a single locations. This means that questing is usually not an issue of grabbing all the quests you can and then running out to do them, then running back for your rewards and more quests. Instead, you get a quest, then go do it. This will usually lead you to several locations since most of the quests have multiple stages. After completing the quest, there is usually a new quest you can pick up in the immediate vicinity, and this will lead you to a new location and a new quest. The way you move organically around the zone means that you almost never feel like you are just running back and forth like some kind of errand boy, which for me is an ENORMOUS improvement over WOW's hub-based questing system, which pretty much every other modern MMO seems to use.
Combat is also a lot more fun than in most of the MMOs I've played. You still have a hotbar that you use to trigger your abilities, but different enemies require different strategies, and you have to stay alert and dodge their attacks (there is a dodge button that makes you dive out of the way to avoid many enemies' special attacks). I found this to be really fun, but then again, I don't play many non-RPGs anymore, so maybe this system would be too basic for people with broader gaming experience.
Character advancement is really great too. You have a bajillion abilities to choose from, and they don't become obsolete as you level up. You have no limit to how much experience you can accrue, so you don't need to worry about buying the wrong abilities and gimping yourself. You can spend hours planning out different builds, which won't appeal to everyone, but I found it to be the most fun I've had with character advancement since pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies. There are so many combinations available, and trying to figure out what abilities will synergise well together is like a treasure hunt. Unlike most MMOs, you can only have seven abilities hotkeyed at a time, so you end up with a highly focused skill set, instead of the 20+ abilities you end up trying to use in the heat of battle in many MMOs. You can swap out abilities anytime while not in combat, so you have a lot of flexibility. This also allows you to play multiple roles with a single character. For example, I use a DPS build while soloing so that I can kill large amounts of enemies in a hurry (shotguns are awesome because they deal AOE damage in a cone, so fighting groups is easy), but when I group for dungeons, I switch to a tank build. This is great because I prefer to play as a tank or healer in groups, but these roles are usually boring to play while soloing. My healing speced Sith Sorcerer in TOR was really fun while grouping, but soloing was slow. TSW's system makes it so you don't have to choose between being good in a group vs. being good solo.
Finally, the dungeons are really fun. They have almost no trash mobs in them, so you go almost directly from boss fight to boss fight, and each boss is interesting and unique. Furthermore, as you go along, you will find that you need to combine the strategies you learned to beat each previous boss to defeat the more complex bosses towards the end of the instance. Running through dungeons multiple times doesn't feel like grinding for gear; it's actually fun.
So, to sum it up, I think the Secret World is a really fun, unique game but is a bad MMO. I didn't stop playing because the game was boring, I stopped playing because I have an extremely short attention span. I've left my subscription active, even though I haven't been playing, because I want to support such a creative game, and I know I'll be back sooner or later.
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