The Secret World

Looks like RPS are doing a series of articles on it (since yesterday's was called "part 1"). The setting continues to really intrigue me, probably the most of any of the upcoming releases & certainly far more than SWTOR. Colour me excited with a tint of skeptic.

Showing off their Egypt zone.

They have a little test up on their site to determine which faction you fit in with.

http://secretwar.thesecretworld.com/

If you like applying order to your life and all that.

kazooka wrote:

They have a little test up on their site to determine which faction you fit in with.

http://secretwar.thesecretworld.com/

If you like applying order to your life and all that.

Dragon plant!

NathanialG wrote:
kazooka wrote:

They have a little test up on their site to determine which faction you fit in with.

http://secretwar.thesecretworld.com/

If you like applying order to your life and all that.

Dragon plant!

you're all dragons... just dont know it yet!

NathanialG wrote:
kazooka wrote:

They have a little test up on their site to determine which faction you fit in with.

http://secretwar.thesecretworld.com/

If you like applying order to your life and all that.

Dragon plant!

IMAGE(http://www.gardeningoncloud9.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/dragon-plant-02.jpg)

A super-secret leaker site put up a video from the Secret World Beta for worldly enjoyment. Not even sure if it's still up, but worth a look:

http://www.123video.nl/playvideos.asp?MovieID=1114967

High points:

- Dude is a guild leader for a ToR guild. Got into the Beta, didn't think he'd ever play Secret World (SW), servers were down on ToR so he jumped in for a lark. Hasn't gone back to ToR since. (He says.)
- Objectively, they're offering a lot of really interesting locations. They're selling the setting with great art direction; just within London alone the locations run the gamut from seedy alleys to upscale clubs.
- They're doing a lot of really wacky stuff with character advancement and a level-less system. It looks pretty complicated, and I'm not sure how many people will dig it, but it's definitely a novel approach to MMO character-building. Think a combination of the best parts of character-dev from Guild Wars 1 and Star Wars Galaxies.
- Their animations and PFX still need a lot of work. They're obviously in a 'testing' phase right now. Hope this game comes out near the end of the year to allow them time for polish, polish, polish.

Michael Zenke wrote:

Think a combination of the best parts of character-dev from Guild Wars 1 and Star Wars Galaxies.

This has been my take on it as well, and may stick them with just a niche crowd, but it has potential. Plus side it's at least something different.

Game definitely looks interesting, I will put a free month into it for sure.

ranalin wrote:
Michael Zenke wrote:

Think a combination of the best parts of character-dev from Guild Wars 1 and Star Wars Galaxies.

This has been my take on it as well, and may stick them with just a niche crowd, but it has potential. Plus side it's at least something different.

Every once in a while a bit comes along that gets me interested again. This is such a morsel.

I'm excited for TSW. To me, it's the opposite side from SW:TOR. TOR was "everything we know and love about MMOs, plus one new thing hopefully done well". (And that turned out to be exactly what it was.) TSW is "let's try something completely new and hopefully it works". I can get behind both ways of doing things. Even if TSW turns out to not be the best game, it'll be new and fresh and will show us some new things that somebody else might make work later.

The things that upset me are games that try to do what we already know how to do, but either make mistakes we already know how to solve or make small unimportant changes that are obviously mistakes.

Anyway, excited about TSW.

I was really interested in this game until I saw some of the combat videos and it just looked like people running around in circles spamming fire and lightning attacks like every other wizard I've played in MMOs and, for some reason, it also reminded me of Hellgate. That kind of cooled me a little but I'm hoping it was just my impression. Everything they've said about the game sounds really interesting but the blah impression I got from the videos has left me just waiting to play it when it comes out rather than following all the new info being released.

The way combat *looks* isn't terribly special—but I'm not sure exactly what a non-aim-based game is going to do that looks different from that.

The mechanics I've heard reported sound pretty decent, though. From the sound of it, different sorts of attacks create different kinds of effects (stun, burnination, whatever), and feed off of different kinds of effects. So, just to make an example up, sledgehammer abilities might tend to produce stun effects and do more damage to things that are in pain, and... let's say, fire magic does more damage to things that are stunned and produces burnination, and... etc.

Combine that with: 1) the fact that specific creatures or encounter features might make certain kinds of effects more or less powerful or useful, 2) the GW-like model of "you can have many abilities, but you can only equip a few of them at a time", and 3) the system of unlocking broad skills and then working up into more and more specialized abilities over time (with a crap-ton of abilities)

And now it starts to sound a bit nuanced. Every character has the potential to do any of the possible things—but you have to think ahead to what you want to do, and you also have to think about how best to use the abilities you have unlocked to produce the most effect along with all of your colleagues.

Also of note, I believe I recall hearing that you can move while using any ability (or at least the vast majority of them). Not having people locked in place to maximize their damage output provides for all sorts of messy situations that you couldn't fairly throw at people who have to stand still.

Sorry but I'm not getting the fresh and new from this.

I am looking forward to this game but none of this hasn't been in UO or Darkfall or Mortal Online or Earthrise (from what little I know)

The setting and premise are really cool. It is about time someone made a horror MMO. (other than some cash shop F2P clone)

fangblackbone wrote:

Sorry but I'm not getting the fresh and new from this.

I am looking forward to this game but none of this hasn't been in UO or Darkfall or Mortal Online or Earthrise (from what little I know)

Ah yes, but for those of us who have been living under a rock, this sounds HOTT.

fangblackbone: The "solve mysteries by doing outside research" thing (not planted stuff like in ARGs, but actual history of crazy conspiracy theories and stuff) as a form of questing is a new idea, so far as I know.

Hypatian wrote:

fangblackbone: The "solve mysteries by doing outside research" thing (not planted stuff like in ARGs, but actual history of crazy conspiracy theories and stuff) as a form of questing is a new idea, so far as I know.

Plus i've played all the games you mentioned there and i dont see the similarities.

New location video

Combat looked a lot better in that video.

After never liking WoW (I put a fair amount of time into trying it) and disliking TOR beta because it was the same thing, I'm looking to try an MMO that is different. I think this will be the one for me to give a shot.

I tried registering for the beta, but I couldn't tell if my request went through. I didn't receive a confirmation email or anything. At any rate, I'll at least try it upon release.

Definition of the deck systems

GR: How did the idea of the deck system come about? Or was it strictly because the game is so freeform you wanted to give people some suggestions?

MB: Yes, that was how the initial idea came about. We have such a free form progression and ability system, and we wanted to give the players who want it a bit of guidance. Keep in mind that we have over 500 abilities and thousands of combinations! However, this should not be looked at as playing in easy mode, because the execution of the deck is still strictly in the player's hand. We also rank the decks from easy to medium to hard. If you're new to MMOs, or skill based games in general, I would recommend starting out with one of the easier ones and build on it from there. If you're a pro player and been raiding every night for the last 10 years, you can probably start on the harder ones, but don't stop there! Keep thinking and building YOUR deck with YOUR flare and wreck some havoc.

Some deck templates

Wow! This game just jumped to the head of the pack. I did not reallize the depth of the skill system.

I know I am asking for the moon but have they posted a skills list somewhere? Or has anyone in the beta leaked one?

Summons, turrets, proc variety, kickass passives, wow! This can either be so overwhelming or awesome and more than likely both!

fangblackbone wrote:

Wow! This game just jumped to the head of the pack. I did not reallize the depth of the skill system.

I know I am asking for the moon but have they posted a skills list somewhere? Or has anyone in the beta leaked one?

Summons, turrets, proc variety, kickass passives, wow! This can either be so overwhelming or awesome and more than likely both!

I'm trying my best to stay on black out on this until it lauches or i get into beta. Supposedly it's launching in April...

... Launches June 19th!!!

Can't wait =)

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02...

Should have pushed it one more day so they could launch on the Summer Solstice; it would actually make thematic sense.

Definitely have to give it a go, I think. No idea if I'll play for more than a week, but...

"Please don't suck. Please don't suck."

Hypatian wrote:

"Please don't suck. Please don't suck."

I'm crossing digits as well. They have so many good intentions. I hope they're able to follow through on them.

AoC got a lot better with the expansion. So I have full confidence they can fix issues if the launch game is not up to snuff. The concern is that nobody wants to wait more than a year for a game to work well/right.

fangblackbone wrote:

AoC got a lot better with the expansion. So I have full confidence they can fix issues if the launch game is not up to snuff. The concern is that nobody wants to wait more than a year for a game to work well/right.

Well interesting thing about AoC is that all the improvments with the engine and all that jazz was due to the TSW development team passing it down to AoC.