Secret World (MMO by Funcom)

[Keroko]

Good grief this MMO is low key. But then, with all the MMO's popping up left and right it's not strange if you don't get heard unless you shout. Secret world looking anything but an MMO in the screens that float around here and there doesn't help either.

Still, it does a lot of things that make me interested the more I read about it.

[felix]

That's because all the actual ingame stuff scream wow clone, so unless someone comes out and explains in detail why we should care the entire hype around it can be seen as just another elaborate marketing campaign with little else to it. We've had plenty of duds, especially plenty of duds with nice trailers (and nice screenshots), let's just say anything but detail gameplay ain't cutting it anymore...

[Firefly00]

Thanks to Gamespot, I have an in on the upcoming beta test this weekend (reference), so I'll be able to contribute some impressions based on having boots on the ground.

Also should leave this here, seeing as it's related and all...

The Secret War

[Keroko]

My biggest gripe is whether it's going to be P2P or F2P. If it's P2P I'm going to pass on for now. What few funds I have are spend on other fees at the moment, and I don't exactly feel encouraged enough yet to add another subscription for this game.

[Xacual]

Originally Posted by Keroko

My biggest gripe is whether it's going to be P2P or F2P. If it's P2P I'm going to pass on for now. What few funds I have are spend on other fees at the moment, and I don't exactly feel encouraged enough yet to add another subscription for this game.

From searching around online, I found a dev saying the game was going to be F2P but it's old info so maybe not anymore.

[TJR]

Subscription + cash shop

I haven't followed this project closely, but Ragnar Tornquist's (The Longest Journey, Dreamfall) involvement is supposed to be a key draw. We should probably expect a detailed story and a unique world.

[Firefly00]

I so wanted this to be good. The modern-day/near-future setting is sadly underused in RPGs, and the backstory was certainly intriguing. So I get home Friday evening and boot up the client...

...and the framerate was absymal to the point of unplayability. My computer (Dell Inspiron 570 w/6GB, 2.8GHz, ATI Radeon HD 4200) is less than a year old with the most recent drivers for said video card, and I don't see what the problem here is when something like Firefall is quite playable, thank you very much.

Lastly, I'll leave this Gamespy preview here.

[Solace]

Originally Posted by TJR

Subscription + cash shop

I haven't followed this project closely, but Ragnar Tornquist's (The Longest Journey, Dreamfall) involvement is supposed to be a key draw. We should probably expect a detailed story and a unique world.

And it is. In fact, it's the biggest draw. The game itself is a complete mess, but the story is actually pretty good. I found myself lamenting "if only this was a single player game" many many times during the beta.

The Gamespy review Firefly linked does a decent job of highlighting some of the pros and cons, but I really question the viability of it as an MMO. As someone on the MMO Champion forums put it:

It's Funcom, that means it's going to be the most creative and original concept in MMO history, which will get released as the most half-finished and unplayable piece of shit you can possibly imagine. One data point is an outlier. Two is a trend. Failcom has followed this pattern with AoC and AO. This will just be their next half-finished MMO bomb.

I couldn't agree more.

[Keroko]

Having played a bit of beta myself today, I concur on both points. I stand by my earlier assessment. I might play it if it doesn't get a monthly fee tacked on, if it does... not worth it.

[Ak3mi]

I saw a stream of this last night, and pc gamers article on it. A lot of people are saying its very much like WoW. The graphics seem very outdated and the combat is the same :/. Pretty annoyed, from all the talk about this MMO being very different, its pretty much the same from what I can see.

[Firefly00]

Originally Posted by Ak3mi

A lot of people are saying its very much like WoW. The graphics seem very outdated and the combat is the same :/.

Can't comment on whether the combat is the same as in WoW, but as for the graphics? As noted, would be more interested in the dev team making them usable than bleeding-edge.

With respect to the controls: they should have taken a page from Firefall and base them around what you'd expect from any proper third-person shooter.

[-Sho-]

Wow wow wow...... , almost everyone compare MMORPG with Wow.... damn Blizzard making this...

Anyway , i read lot of reviews , mainly positives specially about the story & quests + the mysteries which are hard or really hard and take many thoughts.

But the gameplay isn't that great atm , sometimes it can be a big mess.

And , it's Funcom , can't really believe them after AoC , after the beta which look greats , therer were nothing great with the full game , like no dubbing at all after some quests , hell of bugs....
For the Cash shop , at first there were only comestics stuffs , but after imba armors & weapons , potions came in...

I'll wait for more info & next beta.

[Jazzrat]

I'm a terrible person for saying this but I'll get the game once it becomes F2P. Funcom's reputation with MMO makes me leery of plonking down the money upfront for it.

Maybe once it's out and there's more peer review about it, i'll revise my opinion about the game. Till then, I'm skeptical about it.

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by Ak3mi

I saw a stream of this last night, and pc gamers article on it. A lot of people are saying its very much like WoW. The graphics seem very outdated and the combat is the same :/. Pretty annoyed, from all the talk about this MMO being very different, its pretty much the same from what I can see.

The talk about it being different has more to do with the themes than the combat system. The combat system seems to be a lot like what guild wars has. Only ten skills at a time and all that.

The skill system is nice though, no levels but ability points that can be spend to customize your character.

[Elestia]

I felt this mmo would have done much better if it was a single player experience instead.

[Keroko]

A lot of us singleplayer RPG gamers have been thinking that lately...

[Xacual]

You really have to blame the people funding the projects though. They will always see WoW and be like "I want some of that pie." without realizing that WoW was like a bundle of luck and random factors that let it get that popular. A lot of games probably would have done a lot better had they just been a single player RPG instead of MMO. SWTOR comes to mind as well.

[creb]

I'm not sure why it's "like Wow". I mean, at some level, you can find similarities between a toaster oven and an orange, if you really try.

I've played the beta here and there for the last few months. I think the game is going to be a complete failure in the vein of AoC (though I think it's a gazillion times the better game).

Now, I should make some things clear. I love Funcom, even if I think AoC is quite possibly the worst game ever made (ok, FF 14 takes that title, but AoC comes really close). TLJ and April Ryan were pretty much my video game holy grail when it was released, and Ragnar Tornquist has easily been my favorite video game writer/personality over the years. I also loved, LOVED, AO, until-in an effort to increase subscriptions, they threw complexity out the window to try to cater to, in their own words, stupid people.

That said, even taking The Secret World into account, I still think AO is the best MMO Funcom ever made. One of the biggest strikes against TSW are the aesthetics. Back in 2001? when AO was released, it was slick and sexy. With graceful and smooth aesthetics (for its time). It was like comparing oh....the current 'Lupin' series, with oh...Gundam AGE, with AO being Mine Fujiko, and AGE being Everquest. It was the first graphical MMO (MUD usage was still common place back then) where I finally felt like I was playing an actual person, graphically/aesthetically.

Those aesthetic details were shown in TLJ, and continued through all their games, even in Dreamfall (ok, combat aesthetics were horrible, but ignoring that...). I don't know what happened, but TSW has horrible aesthetics. Your character is blocky and completely the antithesis of graceful and 'sexy'. It's very difficult to belief this is the same Funcom that made all those previous games. Everything is blocky and awkward. Painfully so.

The engine was shown to be *cough* not very good (to be polite) in AOC (it was hilarious at how many AO references still existed in the code and error messages at AOC's release btw), but they continue to use it anyways for TSW. It's just very strange that using this same engine, they've somehow managed to go backwards aesthetically over their two previous MMOs.

Now, it's not all bad. The 'story' is good. In fact, I'd say it's far superior to SWTOR (I only bring up SWTOR as-whether it's true or not-it seems to have lead to some soon-to-come games to adopt a more cinematic approach to questing). It also has voicework, something I hope becomes the standard. Not everything is voiced, but a lot is. The expressions and voicework are pretty good as well. I really do feel like I'm playing a Ragnar-written game when playing TSW. Just, an ugly one.

If you loved TLJ//Dreamfall (or, even just the TLJ, while hating Dreamfall for not being about April Ryan ), you'll probably like TSW for its story.

The combat is utterly boring, and again, a large part of that blame is in how bad the aesthetics are. Combat animations are bad. So, so, so very bad. Words fail in describing how clunky animations are in this game.

Like GW2 (a game that presumably many of you with questions have tried out), your skills are largely tied to the weapon you are using, with a caveat. While skills change due to the weapon you wield, you get to choose what skills to 'level'. It does add a little more depth to it all than the incredibly shallow system in GW2, but if there's anything I've learned in playing MMOs over all these years, it's that the average player doesn't want anything resembling complexity. I'm fairly certain the current system we see will either not see release, or within a few months of release, be simplified and streamlined. A lot. My personal opinion? The more complicated the better.

As for why this game should be an MMO? Beats me. Yes, there are group quests and encounters, and what not, but so what? I have come to the conclusion that MMOs shouldn't be released as MMOs unless they are specifically built around grouping with other players, and we haven't seen an 'MMO' like that since...oh the very early 2000s. Games like TSW (and virtually every 'MMO' made since the mid 2000s), would be better served as a single player game that has a multiplayer component that lets you play with friends via some central server/matchmaking type system. From my perspective, this is not a TSW-specific criticism though, so I can't really hold that against them.

But, again, the story. It's pretty decent. The quests can be pretty good as well, with many of them actually requiring you to use your brain. Anyone who actually followed this game over the years will probably remember the puzzles that Funcom would release. There are definitely puzzles to be had in-game. Of course, the internet being what it is, I'm sure answers will be available immediately, and most players won't bother figuring anything out on their own. That said, I must repeat that it's refreshing to see some quests that really make you wrack your brain/pay attention. I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, and some of them left me stumped. Full disclosure, many of the puzzles the Funcom team released over the years as they developed this game left me stumped as well. I applaud them for not being scared to put some things into the game that aren't meant to cater to the most common denominator, even if it'll be futile when the answers all show up on google instantly.

So, yea, I think the game is going to be another failure. I'm going to maybe buy it just to finish off the story, because I do enjoy that, and I can pretend it's just another TLJ/Dreamfall like single player game. A large part of me, inside, will scream and cry that they spent all their resources on this, rather than bringing some damn closure to the April Ryan saga, but such is life.

[-Sho-]

Maybe i'll try it , if i have times.
Specially for the story , background , mysteries etc... i really like those things.
The skill mechanic is like GW and yeah , the combat animations is crappy.
Well , i'll see with my friends.

[felix]

Judging by some recent video gameplay it looks to be just another very very generic MMO (as expected sadly).