The Secret World (PC)

I wanted to start some discussion and hopefully create some interest in Funcom's The Secret World without shitting up the Final Fantasy XI thread. To my knowledge, no one on TNL is playing this yet, but there appears to be interest in eventually giving it a whirl.

Ragnar Tornquist, who was the Lead Designer of The Longest Journey, reprises that role here. You can choose one of three organizations to join: Dragon ("The Art of Chaos"), Illuminati ("Sex, Drugs, and Rockefeller"), or Templars ("Deliverance from Evil"). And the investigation missions sound like the best thing that's ever happened to MMOs.



Here are some links to learn more about the game:

Official Site

IGN article "Why the Secret World's Not Like Other MMOs"

Joystiq posts

GDC 2012 Presentation:

I kind of resent every game Funcom has been putting out because they're keeping me from my Dreamfall sequel.

I hear those investigative quests are pretty rad though.

I know that when you join the dragons that chick sucks your dick so hard you see the truth of the world.

That's still not enough to keep me away from the Illuminati.

edit: I left out the CDR link, aka the Steam promissory note, above.

I wanted to check this out in passing at PAX but that got poo poo'd for whatever reason. Oh well.

I blame Korly and probably Tekken.

I honestly think this was a RF decision. Korly was too busy actually running around the show floor.

I checked it out for a bit, and by bit I mean one minute before I got called away.

I like Ragnar and was intrigued by this game, but then lost interest when I read about all the milking. Price of the game + monthly fee + micro-transactions and probably more I'm forgetting.

I don't want to work together with people either, which is apparently required for some of the super-tough puzzles. So this game probably isn't for me.

What happens if there are other f-chan curmudgeons of indeterminate gender? You might make a new friend!

Unless an MMO is super-exciting to me I'm not going to drop full price on it, and combined with the monthly fees it's a genre that loves to drop to crazy low prices within a few months. I've also heard that the game is even more single-player than SWTOR is, since there's nothing like elites and only a couple dungeon-like areas where the "class-less" game ends up with everyone adopting the holy trinity anyway. To drive that point even further the game is littered with single-player-only quests, so even if you want to group up all the time the game won't let you.

Modern-day style RPGs as a concept sounds okay but in this case it looks like a means for the art team to be lazy as fuck about designing equipment (at least Resonance of Fate had the decency to hire a honest-to-goodness fashion designer for their clothes), so I remain disinterested every time I try to watch the game in action. Combat is also a pretty big thing for me and the general consensus seems to be that SW is kind of okay at best and always really floaty and loose.

I'm willing to give it a shot but I'm not paying more than $20 and there seems to be no reason for a monthly fee, so it's pretty far on my MMO backburner. Plus Guild Wars 2 comes out next month with no monthly fees. Sorry to be Debbie Downer all over this thread, but aside from having a couple of neat quests there just doesn't seem to be enough going on to justify its costs.

I was eyeing this because I like Funcom (really) and love the concept. But man, Guild Wars 2. Every other MMO should be scared as hell.

Free weekend starts a week from today. I'm downloading now and will definitely give this a whirl.

I'll try it because Ragnar Tornquist but there's almost no chance I'll stick around after the free weekend.

Was that an Oddworld Slig at 2:07?

The free weekend is underway if anyone else is interested.

edit: I like it. It's definitely an MMO, but I love the modern, elf free setting. We'll see how much I play it this weekend.

This is now on Steam. Danger abounds.

I played for a bit but wasn't interested in the end.

I love modern settings in RPGs so that's a plus. But even the intro started to annoy me. All sorts of ridiculous shit happens to your character in the first hour and it's all fully animated and well-voiced like a real gamey-game. Unfortunately, there's a huge disconnect when your mouthbreather barely even blinks in response. I don't expect vocal responses but there's nothing all all. Your character bounces from one insane monologue to another for no reason. Maybe I should have tried something other than the Dragon faction!

Once I finally started the real missions, my WoW fatigue set in. It's still a very tradional MMO at its core and I think I'm just burnt out on those.

Or maybe I resent it because of all those TLJ/Dreamfall references!

The Secret World drops subscription fee but isn't free-to-play. I might buy this during a Steam sale now.

That makes it a lot more palatable, but still, it's tough to devote time to this in a world where GW2 exists.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MechDeus

The Secret World drops subscription fee but isn't free-to-play. I might buy this during a Steam sale now.

---

Ditto. I like the world.

It's $15 on Amazon right now.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B007VTVKG6/
We jumping in chums?

That's a pretty good price. I'll do it if other people will, otherwise I'll wait to see if Steam Winter Wallet Rape 2k12 does a 75% off.

I can wait.

I might have to buy this right now.

I'm waiting for the Steam sale, but I definitely want this. I liked it during the trial.

This game is still so unfinished. Quests bugging out, pausing a tutorial video broke the entire thing and now help messages of any kind won't appear properly, glitchy spawns, wacky aggro glitches, targeting that doesn't work right, animations that bug out on a consistent basis, enemies that spawn faster than they can be killed at appropriate levels making escort quests impossible to do, etc., etc. The worst part about quests bugging out is that you can't drop them, you instead have to go run around and find other quests until you can push the current quest off the list and then go back and pick it up to start over. Who the fuck thought that made sense on any level?

The graphics and atmosphere are really good and make it worth slogging through at least for a little while, but the game needs some serious work. I can't believe they thought this was worth a monthly fee.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say I am halfway through Kingsmouth, and I really think it's fantastic. I haven't run into any of the bugs Mech mentioned (patches maybe?), and I just finished my first of the highly touted investigation missions. I got stuck on one part, but overall it was very well done and a lot different than "standard" MMO quests. If you hit "B" it brings up an in-game browser so that you can Google for some of the out of game references needed. I guess you could also order pizza, though there's no /pizza.

When I actually bought this, I re-rolled from Illuminati to Templar. I haven't seen any major differences yet, other than the "base" where go near the beginning before going to Kingsmouth. I'm using as Assault Rifle with Combat Medic skills to leech heal, which theoretically will be a good solo build but also a valid end game healing one as well.

This is $15 today on Steam with no subscription required. I highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the genre, based on its theme, story, and unique mission types.

Mech mentioned this in the Mario Kart thread. Rather than continue to drive (pun intended) that thread further off topic, I'll try to pick it up here with the new content trailer.