The Secret World

Farscry wrote:

I play off and on but have never managed to get into the gwj templar cabal due to not crossing paths at the right time. :)

I think I am the GWJ templar cabal so don't feel bad lol. I think maybe tannhauser is still active in it but I haven't seen anyone on in awhile

I'm still playing now and then! I'm stuck in the City of the Sun God, I'm honestly getting a bit sick of Egypt which is slowing me down a bit. The City in particular isn't as interesting to me as the earlier fare, it's very old school fantasy in vibe, and while it does it well, I'm hankering to return to a more modern setting, where the game really shines.

I might stop all the other quests there, get the main quest out of the way and move on to Transylvania. I want to have a maxed out character ready for when Tokyo opens up! I'd also love to do the New York raid, but I suspect that might be tricky to organise.

Edit: Oh, and we need more activity in the show us your character thread people!

Maybe it's just time commitment, but I stopped playing both this and GW2 way before their prime. Though I think I got out much more from TSW. At least my lifetime sub is good for something! There's no way I'll get to it again until the end of this year. This month is packed with new releases, most have MP, and Persona 4 Golden itself will probably take up to 100 hours of my time.

Good news for Tørnquist fans.

I'm still playing, though been pretty infrequent lately with RL stuffs. May be looking for another cabal, as it appears Gryphon Division will fold.

Redwing wrote:

I'm still playing now and then! I'm stuck in the City of the Sun God, I'm honestly getting a bit sick of Egypt which is slowing me down a bit. The City in particular isn't as interesting to me as the earlier fare, it's very old school fantasy in vibe, and while it does it well, I'm hankering to return to a more modern setting, where the game really shines.

I agree, I felt that Egypt was the weakest area story-wise. It might have worked better if they had stayed with the Atenists and the Marya but when half the quests involve you doing things for 4000 year old Egyptian sentinels sealed in statues...

Things pick up again in Transylvania. Yeah, we've seen vampires and werewolves dozens of times too but they've managed to mix it in with Soviet-era human experimentation. (And Kirsten Geary even makes fun of the traditional "vampire hunter" you run into.)

Finally made it to Transylvania, it was worth the wait! Egypt had its moments, but there was a lack of good characters there like you could find throughout Solomon Island. Transylvania has some excellent characters so far, Sophie and the Forest God in particular are great!

Oh, and the Amity House mission leading up to Transylvania was excellent as well, super creepy, even if it cribbed a bit from F.E.A.R.

I got distracted away from the Secret World playing everything else that's been out lately, but the quality of the writing and voice acting has sucked me right back in again. What a great game!

For the Illuminati you have to infiltrate Orochi headquarters before going to Transylvania. This is after the Illuminati order your execution. They're a fun bunch to work for.

Oh, no specific date yet, but here are the current patch notes for 1.4

New Missions
All Roads Lead To Rome – Investigation Mission in London
The Red Thread - Investigation Mission in Carpathian Fangs
To Sir With Love - Action Mission in Savage Coast

These will be “wave survival” mission in the lairs! More details coming soon!
The Last Strand: Kingsmouth Town
The Cover-up: Savage Coast
The Whole Truth: Blue Mountain
Up In Smoke: Scorched Desert
The Black Pharaoh’s Guard: City of the Sun God
Restoration: Besieged Farmlands
Kreep Rush: Shadowy Forest
The Shipping News: Carpathian Fangs

New Auxiliary Weapon – The Chainsaw

Just A Flesh Wound – Chainsaw Mission

New Social Features
The Albion Theater

New Combat Feature
Reticule Targeting

The First Raid
Manhattan exclusion zone

Looks like patch 1.4 will drop tomorrow, 11/15. Massive changes to PvP plus the first raid, a new auxiliary weapon and more. Spend your white marks now as they will be wiped with the patch!

Thank god.

PVP needs so much help this patch is a godsend. Fusang is a joke currently.

I'll grab the chainsaw but I still need to get rocket jump for the rocket before I sink too much AP into the saw. I'm capped on SP so that isn't an issue any more.

Anyone else getting horrid lag in the Savage Coast? Rest of the game seems fine, just the coast after 1.4 dropped.

parallaxview wrote:

Anyone else getting horrid lag in the Savage Coast? Rest of the game seems fine, just the coast after 1.4 dropped.

Yeah, everybody gets it, but only in the evening. Cue conspiracy theory coincidences. It's the only zone that's effected, so if you can't play during the day you'll want to play in a different zone.

Pex-Corrh wrote:
parallaxview wrote:

Anyone else getting horrid lag in the Savage Coast? Rest of the game seems fine, just the coast after 1.4 dropped.

Yeah, everybody gets it, but only in the evening. Cue conspiracy theory coincidences. It's the only zone that's effected, so if you can't play during the day you'll want to play in a different zone.

It was not a massive issue for me, I was just there for the new mission, but it is still sad as the Academy is one of my favorite spots.

This looks interesting:

THE END OF DAYS IS COMING

TrashiDawa wrote:

This looks interesting:

THE END OF DAYS IS COMING

correction:

They've made this ARG event open to everyone!

This has all the hallmarks of a free-to-play announcement, I dearly hope that isn't that case, heh!

Redwing wrote:

This has all the hallmarks of a free-to-play announcement, I dearly hope that isn't that case, heh!

I would think that too, but they spent 3 years before launch doing ARG events.

If they do go f2p, I feel I got my monies worth. It has been pretty clear from the get go that the game was built with eventual f2p in mind.

They did a good job with Age of Conan's F2P, and Anarchy Online is still going (is that one still sub-based, or F2P now? I can't recall), so even if TSW goes F2P, I actually have reasonable confidence in Funcom's ability to run this one well.

I still play periodically, haven't let my sub lapse yet, partly because I want to support the game, and because I play it so sporadically anyway too. I actually put in a fair number of hours this weekend. It's kinda funny, I'm still in Kingsmouth, but I really enjoy just exploring and playing around casually.

I think it's still a bit early for them to go F2P so I don't think that's it *quite* yet.

In his "Letter from the Game Director" on 11/22 there was this

Joel Bylos wrote:

Okay... one more thing. I know people are eagerly awaiting the "Christmas" event and there is rampant speculation about what it will be. Time to fuel that fire.

It has nothing to do with Christmas or Winter.

OTOH, they also said this in last month's forum Q&A

Joel Bylos wrote:

Have you guys noticed any trends with people who love the game versus people who dislike the game? Do you have any plans on using those trends to turn the people who don’t love the game into players?

It's pretty scattered. The overwhelmingly largest reason people (who answer our surveys at least) refuse to play the game is the business model. The second is the combat. Obviously we are doing what we can with the combat and the business model is always under discussion.

OTOOH, F2P only goes so far. If it doesn't bring you more revenue then you're actually worse off (since you now have higher server load with lower revenue). Players like it because who doesn't like free, but it isn't a panacea for everything.

I hope that when they say "the combat" they don't mean the absolutely awesome and flexible character-building system and freedom of what skills/abilities to slot and when. Because that's my favorite thing about the gameplay.

I believe the combat concerns are that people want more "active" combat like in GW2 or Tera

As for the ARG, I'll point out that 12/21 is the "Mayan Apocalypse" date and this may just be a big planned event.

Yeah, I have to say that combat is pretty fun in this game, right behind GW2.

The combat in Secret World isn't quite up to the level of Guild Wars 2, but then Guild Wars 2 has a lot less abilities to worry about. My character's combat style in Secret World is much more pronounced, and my pistols/blade character might fight very differently to another pistols/blade character.

There's a great flow to the combat as well, at least with all the builds I've tried. My paladin based build on my main character makes me feel like something out of the Matrix, it's great.

In fact, I've talked myself out of my original statement, I think both games bring strong points to the table. Their combat systems are different, but I don't think one is inherently better than the other. I will admit though that they really nailed the mobility in Guild Wars 2, if they had the same flow to the dodging and evading in Secret World, I'd be in MMO combat Nirvana.

So the other day I got this strange email I thought was some sort of bizarre spam but today I went to log into TSW and remembered I signed up for their ARG.

Spoiler:
email wrote:

Agent , We have located the latest communication from Target 29. http://bit.ly/2012-12-07 Regards, - Msika

Bravo Funcom, alas it's been a while since I've played so the clue in the ad doesn't mean anything to me.

tanstaafl wrote:

Start here... - http://pastebin.com/iuDpLWm6

Cheers, all caught up with everyone now.

Now everyone can play for free (after buying the game for $30)

http://www.thesecretworld.com/news/s...

Seems kinda quick coming only 6 months after release but might bring in a slew of new people.

New people doesn't help unless it brings in new revenue too.

tanstaafl wrote:

New people doesn't help unless it brings in new revenue too.

What are the other options though? If they arent making enough money for subscriptions you have to try something or you shut the game down.