The Secret World

Templar here.

Kind of dissapointing if they have the grand master pack available after release. Should be like CE if you ask me. I actually would have waited to get grand master pack till later if I had known that you can get it at anytime. They might have changed it now, but there was nothing about being charged right away and grand master pack being available after release when i ordered.

Hypatian wrote:

I was planning on Dragon, but I'm really not sure about the whole creepy make-out session method of enlightenment now that I've seen it.

There's a dev interview somewhere where they said they deliberately wanted to make the Dragon intro unsettling as "unsettling" is kind of how the Dragon works.

So, concerning Factions - different factions can group up for PvE but not PvP. What about Cabals? Same faction? That is gonna put a hamper on GWJ!

Also, you get a cat for pre-ordering from Funcom? You'd think they would give you something better hehe

I am in for the lifetime. I don't regret my LT for LotRO, STO, or CO and I find I am much happier spending a larger chunk up front and then not have to worry about monthly fees or making a month I pay for "count" or "get my money's worth".

The biggest problem is that there are too many games! I burned out on TOR after paying for 1 month after launch month (and even then I am not sure I would have paid for that month as I was deciding if I was going to when the payment came out early). Since then I have been switching between DDO and AoC, with a little STO thrown in (the new feature episodes mostly). I have been mostly concentrating on DDO the last couple of weeks and really, really having fun.

Oh, and I am Dragon all the way, although I could be persuaded to go something different if there is a large majority of GWJ going to one.

[edit] Oh, and I cannot believe I am stuck with the cat for pre-ordering with FC. I just assumed I could pick from the 3![/edit]

ranalin wrote:

GDC presentation

The first scene has a lot of chords that sound like the Mass Effect 3 scene. So the whole time I was yelling, "Nooo, run! She's been Indoctrinated!"

Any Goodjers who are going to PAX going to look at the hands-on there? Give us a report when you get back.

Seconded!

Please do!

In with a pre-order via Origin. Was actually going for pretty cheap locally considering the usual pricing on MMOs. Almost $15 cheaper.

Totally going Templar but will roll an Illuminati alt eventually.

I'm still really interested in this one, but my current gaming habits (or lack thereof) mean I can't justify an MMO with a monthly fee anymore. I just don't play regularly enough to have $15/month make sense. SWTOR convinced me of this. So unless this is going with a guild wars model (pay for the box, no sub fee, microtransactions inside the game), I'm out until it goes F2P.

On the plus side, this makes the "Guild Wars 2 or Secret World?" question way easier.

tanstaafl wrote:

We're still two months out, one month from open beta (which all pre-orders are in), but is it too early to start thinking GWJ Cabals? (The TSW version of guilds.) Conspirators with Jobs?

What factions are people looking at? I'm probably going Illuminati, but that's how I roll.

I'll roll one of each eventually, but probably Templar to start. The Dragon starter kinda creeped me out.

Tried it at PAX. Has a nice look to it and I like the modern setting. Like most MMOs, it's a terrible game to demo on a show floor. I really don't have a strong sense of it after messing around for 10 minutes. Clearly nothing there that's re-inventing the genre though.

10 minutes? Ouch!

That isn't even enough time for someone who knows what they are looking for.

I'm looking forward to play this, specially since I enjoyed some other stuff from Funcom (AO mostly), but the gameplay videos I've watched left a bad impression on me. That's mostly because the animations seem so inferior to even Age of Conan, where they mocapped the whole thing.

Hopefully the gameplay, setting and storyline are good. The whole no level, no classes, skill based system appeals to me.

I won't pre-order but I probably end up buying the game when it's out. Crazy year for MMOs with SWTOR, Tera, Guild Wars 2 and somehow, I'm all of a sudden interested in Mists of Pandaria.

kazooka wrote:
ranalin wrote:

GDC presentation

The first scene has a lot of chords that sound like the Mass Effect 3 scene. So the whole time I was yelling, "Nooo, run! She's been Indoctrinated!"

What I liked originally about TSW was the sense of mystery and fear of the unknown. It looks like Funcom has done away with that, opting instead to have the hazard suit chick explain the whole situation at the outset, and I wonder if there's much of anything left for the player to discover on their own.

I hope it's not like that for every mission.

Running Man wrote:

What I liked originally about TSW was the sense of mystery and fear of the unknown. It looks like Funcom has done away with that, opting instead to have the hazard suit chick explain the whole situation at the outset, and I wonder if there's much of anything left for the player to discover on their own.

I hope it's not like that for every mission.

Sadly, it will be. The majority of players want to be led by the hand, they don't want to fumble around or deal with 'n00bs', ahem. So they go and find the info on the net, while complaining. Kills the fun of exploring and learning for the rest of us. But, follow the money, they will do the profitable things, and that means spoonfeeding the info as you go.

On the plus side, if you can just go on the net and look things up, you can find out what is bugged and not working, as opposed to just me being sluggish and stupid and not being able to figure things out. I mean, its not like there are ever going to be buggy things in an MMO, amiright?

LtWarhound wrote:
Running Man wrote:

What I liked originally about TSW was the sense of mystery and fear of the unknown. It looks like Funcom has done away with that, opting instead to have the hazard suit chick explain the whole situation at the outset, and I wonder if there's much of anything left for the player to discover on their own.

I hope it's not like that for every mission.

Sadly, it will be. The majority of players want to be led by the hand, they don't want to fumble around or deal with 'n00bs', ahem. So they go and find the info on the net, while complaining. Kills the fun of exploring and learning for the rest of us. But, follow the money, they will do the profitable things, and that means spoonfeeding the info as you go.

On the plus side, if you can just go on the net and look things up, you can find out what is bugged and not working, as opposed to just me being sluggish and stupid and not being able to figure things out. I mean, its not like there are ever going to be buggy things in an MMO, amiright?

I thought I had read somewhere (maybe a PAX preview?) that there is an option to turn off the quest guide, so that you have the option of exploring yourself. Of course if the option is there to turn on, it can be too tempting to turn it on when things get tough. I know I have that problem when I look up a hint for a problem I really can't figure out. As soon as I do that, the bar gets a little lower for what is too hard the next time I run into a problem in that game.

The irony of this add and what site it is on cracks me up to no end.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/8EEc5.png)

If you haven't heard yet The Secret War started up yesterday. Requires Facebook. You can unlock in game items for release as well as beta weekend access.

http://secretwar.thesecretworld.com/...

IMAGE(http://l3cdn.funcom.com/tsw/artworks/header_secretwar_launch01-612x337.jpg)

Ghadmar wrote:

If you haven't heard yet The Secret War started up yesterday. Requires Facebook. You can unlock in game items for release as well as beta weekend access.

http://secretwar.thesecretworld.com/...

As I posted elsewhere. I'm now done with them completely and I was really looking forward to this. I'm going to modify my arenanet letter and snail mail it to them so they know where we stand.

-----------------
Dear ArenaNet,

Facebook?! Are you kidding me?! You have completely lost your mind teaming up with a company more hated than Microsoft, AOL, and Packard Bell. Your fans are puking sick with grief over this and you don’t seem to care. We’ve been waiting for a public apology since you sent that spam and haven’t heard diddly. Perhaps you are still trying to compose yourself? Was this some sort of sick pre-april fool’s joke and you can’t stop laughing long enough to let us know? The fanboys will put up with this and stick with you but those of us that are merely fans, won’t.

Until you publicly apologize for this facebook abomination, and cease any future endeavors with them, we will continue to boycott all of your products.

Hoping you do the right thing,

I'm pretty sure ArenaNet is developing Guild Wars 2 and not The Secret World. You should try Funcom next time.

KillTrash wrote:

I'm pretty sure ArenaNet is developing Guild Wars 2 and not The Secret World. You should try Funcom next time. :D

Sorry I wasn't clear. I said I was going to modify my letter I sent to arenanet after that GW2 fiasco and posted the arenanet letter as an example since it will take some time to craft an appropriate letter to funcom regarding TSW.

ibdoomed wrote:
Ghadmar wrote:

If you haven't heard yet The Secret War started up yesterday. Requires Facebook. You can unlock in game items for release as well as beta weekend access.

http://secretwar.thesecretworld.com/...

As I posted elsewhere. I'm now done with them completely and I was really looking forward to this. I'm going to modify my arenanet letter and snail mail it to them so they know where we stand.

-----------------
Dear ArenaNet,

Facebook?! Are you kidding me?! You have completely lost your mind teaming up with a company more hated than Microsoft, AOL, and Packard Bell. Your fans are puking sick with grief over this and you don’t seem to care. We’ve been waiting for a public apology since you sent that spam and haven’t heard diddly. Perhaps you are still trying to compose yourself? Was this some sort of sick pre-april fool’s joke and you can’t stop laughing long enough to let us know? The fanboys will put up with this and stick with you but those of us that are merely fans, won’t.

Until you publicly apologize for this facebook abomination, and cease any future endeavors with them, we will continue to boycott all of your products.

Hoping you do the right thing,

I dont understand why this is a big deal. Lots of people use Facebook. You dont need to play this Facebook game, you dont have to have Facebook to play Secret World.

A bit surprised by all the Facebook rage over the stupid minigame. When did it become cool to hate FB? I never really use FB myself so I wasn't aware it had jumped the shark.

My wife and I both ended up getting the lifetime subs. We looked long and hard at the upcoming MMOs and decided that there was nothing else we were really looking forward to that is scheduled for release within the next couple of years. We are interested in WoD Online but that's about it. The lifetime subs are def a hit at the onset but we've found that it will save us money in the long run and let us play when we want without feeling pressured to get our money's worth.

I decided that I was going to play this game to hell and back regardless of how jankety the gameplay is because I'm so tired of the average MMO setting and this looks like such a refreshing change. The monster design is awesome as well and they said they are working on the animations which was my biggest concern based on what i've seen so far.

My wife and I are on media blackout a bit right now. We want to play through with our characters without the aid of forums and guides. Instead of min/maxing I want to choose skills based on a chacter concept and just have fun playing without racing to max level.

At this point I'm so sick of elves and orcs and fantasy MMO tropes that I'm willing to commit to TSW just for the setting alone.

Soooo, I will be playing an alt most likely so when the time comes I'll probably be hooking up with a Goodjer Guild if there is one.

NathanialG wrote:
ibdoomed wrote:
Ghadmar wrote:

If you haven't heard yet The Secret War started up yesterday. Requires Facebook. You can unlock in game items for release as well as beta weekend access.

http://secretwar.thesecretworld.com/...

As I posted elsewhere. I'm now done with them completely and I was really looking forward to this. I'm going to modify my arenanet letter and snail mail it to them so they know where we stand.

-----------------
Dear ArenaNet,

Facebook?! Are you kidding me?! You have completely lost your mind teaming up with a company more hated than Microsoft, AOL, and Packard Bell. Your fans are puking sick with grief over this and you don’t seem to care. We’ve been waiting for a public apology since you sent that spam and haven’t heard diddly. Perhaps you are still trying to compose yourself? Was this some sort of sick pre-april fool’s joke and you can’t stop laughing long enough to let us know? The fanboys will put up with this and stick with you but those of us that are merely fans, won’t.

Until you publicly apologize for this facebook abomination, and cease any future endeavors with them, we will continue to boycott all of your products.

Hoping you do the right thing,

I dont understand why this is a big deal. Lots of people use Facebook. You dont need to play this Facebook game, you dont have to have Facebook to play Secret World.

Ya whats funny is the folks that think letters like this will actually make a difference or change policies. At the same time it's annoying because they use large sweeping statements like they're talking about me or the folks i play games with and they couldnt be more wrong.

I'm not enraged, but I am kind of ticked off that even though I have been looking forward to TSW since day one, I'm excluded from participating in this because I don't use facebook.

It's like not being able to get special deals at my supermarket because I don't have a membership at the local video store—even though they're run by completely separate companies.

Every time something that is completely unrelated to facebook or twitter in any way *requires* facebook or twitter, it makes me cranky. Either they want to "leverage" peoples' contacts to advertise or they can't be bothered to implement their own login system. The former is more than a little slimy. The latter implies a rather serious lack of competence.

(And of course, it's the former. Duh.)

TheArtOfScience wrote:

A bit surprised by all the Facebook rage over the stupid minigame. When did it become cool to hate FB? I never really use FB myself so I wasn't aware it had jumped the shark.

My wife and I both ended up getting the lifetime subs. We looked long and hard at the upcoming MMOs and decided that there was nothing else we were really looking forward to that is scheduled for release within the next couple of years. We are interested in WoD Online but that's about it. The lifetime subs are def a hit at the onset but we've found that it will save us money in the long run and let us play when we want without feeling pressured to get our money's worth.

I decided that I was going to play this game to hell and back regardless of how jankety the gameplay is because I'm so tired of the average MMO setting and this looks like such a refreshing change. The monster design is awesome as well and they said they are working on the animations which was my biggest concern based on what i've seen so far.

My wife and I are on media blackout a bit right now. We want to play through with our characters without the aid of forums and guides. Instead of min/maxing I want to choose skills based on a chacter concept and just have fun playing without racing to max level.

At this point I'm so sick of elves and orcs and fantasy MMO tropes that I'm willing to commit to TSW just for the setting alone.

Soooo, I will be playing an alt most likely so when the time comes I'll probably be hooking up with a Goodjer Guild if there is one.

I plan on playing for the same reason! I'd like to give a different setting a chance (although I may play GW2 also).

TheArtOfScience wrote:

A bit surprised by all the Facebook rage over the stupid minigame. When did it become cool to hate FB? I never really use FB myself so I wasn't aware it had jumped the shark.

It hasn't jumped the shark, it's just mainstream popular, and a lot of people avoid it/hate it because of that. They'll cite stuff like spam posting or ad datamining to rationalize their hatred of it, but most of that can be opted out of or turned off.

Unfortunately, FB hasn't added an option in the account settings to make the site obscure and unpopular, so there will always be certain people who spit bile at every mention of it.

I'm coming into this thread pretty dark (ie. I'm skimming). The setting for this looks amazing, but I know next to nothing about the mechanics themselves. Is the combat looking to be like a reskinned WoW? That was my biggest beef with The Old Republic.

Does this have any shooter/action combat mechanics in it for instance, or is it your standard bland keymashing affair? A million abilities I'm going to have to try to find hotkeys for? Is it looking like they'll incorporate the dreaded trinity (threat, healing, DPS)? None of these things will make me instantly dismiss the game, but they're all negatives for me.

I'm also aware that everyone may very well be in the dark as much as I am!

Redwing wrote:

Does this have any shooter/action combat mechanics in it for instance, or is it your standard bland keymashing affair? A million abilities I'm going to have to try to find hotkeys for? Is it looking like they'll incorporate the dreaded trinity (threat, healing, DPS)? None of these things will make me instantly dismiss the game, but they're all negatives for me.

I'm also aware that everyone may very well be in the dark as much as I am!

There is no "aiming" like a shooter and it works on the push a button and something happens school of mmo thought. However, I've heard that all abilities are able to be used whilst moving and that positioning plays an important part in battles, especially boss fights. This should hopefully make combat seem snappier and more interactive.

You can earn every available skill in the game on one character theoretically. I imagine it'd take a lot of grinding but it is possible. However, at any given time you can only have 7 active and 7 passive skills slotted. This is nice in that it gives you access to a bounty of skills but you don't become overwhelmed with choices.

There is probably going to be the trinity mechanic at play. This is mitigated somewhat by no character classes. It's quite possible to build a tanking build and then learn all of the skills for a DPS build and just choose the build that best suits your current objective or group composition. I also get the impression that the whole "stand here and play HP whack-a-mole" brand of healing will be absent in favor of more dynamic healing abilities but I'm not 100% sure on that.

Redwing wrote:

I'm coming into this thread pretty dark (ie. I'm skimming). The setting for this looks amazing, but I know next to nothing about the mechanics themselves. Is the combat looking to be like a reskinned WoW? That was my biggest beef with The Old Republic.

Does this have any shooter/action combat mechanics in it for instance, or is it your standard bland keymashing affair? A million abilities I'm going to have to try to find hotkeys for? Is it looking like they'll incorporate the dreaded trinity (threat, healing, DPS)? None of these things will make me instantly dismiss the game, but they're all negatives for me.

I'm also aware that everyone may very well be in the dark as much as I am!

The setting definitely lends flavor and breaks from the WoW norm. Yes, the holy trinity of MMOs plays a role, but theoretically you could do well in all 3 with a single character. The skill system is pretty unique. As for hot keys you are limited to seven on the hot bar. You basically choose seven active and seven passive abilities as you "level" and progress. You also distribute character points that impact how effective those abilities are. Positioning does matter for heal, damage, and avoiding damage.