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The Secret World: The Four Pillars of The Secret World
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
In this week's dedicated The Secret World column, Managing Editor Bill Murphy takes a look at what we learned from the EA Showcase's dungeon reveal. The classless system, the combat, the story, and more were discussed.
Last week we sent our own Carolyn Koh down to EA's Summer Showcase where Funcom's The Secret World was on hand for an exclusive and semi-private demo of the games combat, skill system, and dungeon mechanics. Finally, after a whole lot of waiting I feel like we're getting something to talk about! The focus of the event was definitely the dungeon where the freighter Polaris ran aground on what used to be the habitable Solomon Island. The team, for the first time that I can recall, talked about the "four pillars" of The Secret World: the modern day setting, the classless skill system, the secret societies, and the games deep sense of storytelling. Let's dig into what we learned and saw, and opine on it all shall we?
Read the rest of Bill Murphy's The Four Pillars of the Secret World.
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Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
They have talked about the four pillars for some months now. Love the sound of the skill system so far!
Being "shipped off to the internet" to do research sounds like it could get a bit tiresome.
Everything about this game looks very cool -- but all the demo videos I've seen thus far have looked like group content virtually everywhere all the time.
Yah, I know it's an MMO, but if it's not a reasonably solo-friendly MMO, I won't be playing it, cool or not. My days of messing with the typical MMO PUG/LFG crap are pretty much over.
If I can play the game and have fun on my own or with a couple of friends, then fine, but if I always have to find 4 other players (1 tank, 1 healer, + 3 DPS -- blah, blah) to do anything worthwhile, then ... forget it.
Awesome a game that focuses on group content, atlast!
One thing I am sick of is people who think that just because they can solo through levels they are gods and dont need to show even the basic amount of human courtesy to other people. I miss the days when community and grouping were required and if you were an arse word got around. I miss the days where combat was tactical where you had to actually consider what you were doing and where.
This is my standby mmo incase ToR doesnt work for me, i am still leery of Funcom but its getting my interest more and more...... i may even try it regardless.
They have said that you will be able to solo all the time, but you will prly be missing some of the content. Still wondering where you seen all these group contents, this is the first time i saw it. The other demo from gdc was more like public missions, no need to group for that. (They just added more players to play with so it didnt look desolated)
Let's hope that EA and Funcom doesn't screw with this one, as the features sound very good indeed.
The only thing missing so far is information about PvP. If there's no meaningful PvP and territorial warfare then it'll be just half the MMO I'm looking for. ArcheAge, allthough very different setting sounds good in that regard, so we'll see who get's my money in 2012.
Sounds like Overwolf was made for this game
should contact them and see if they can do a promo deal togetter 
Meaningfull pvp does not exsiste in mmo's anyway DaoC,Eve or any other game were pvp is considered "good"and active its still about Epeen smack talk rigths. anyway 3 fractions game so it should have some fun tho I expect it to be limeted as the game focuses more on the 4 pillars game itself then pvp. (can argue that the secert sociaty pillar is pvp but doubt that.)
EA is barely co-publishing TSW, selling boxes in america. They have nothing to do with the game and when its done.
I like almost everything about this game. The reason I won't play this is the same as swtor. Quest based storyline, no matter how good, is completely the wrong direction in my opinion. If there are quests in a game I might play one or two. But I'd probably get bored halfway in the middle.
The setting is okay, the horror not so much but we definately need more urban fantasy.
skill system is good.
combat is okay. not a gamebreaker. But I hate missions and sucvh a reliance on them IS.
As a member of a large group of people who play games solo most of the time, if you force group play, you will alienate that pretty large group. I am really looking forward to this game and many others I know are as well. Please don't ame group play mandatory at all/most fo the time, this would be a deal breaker for myself and many, many others.
DING! DING! DING! DING!
I think we have a winnah!
See you in '12
I really, completely disagree here, but to each their own opinion.
Eh? I indeed saw group content but not exclusively, at least I didn't get the impression that it was all only group content. Could be something like public quests ingame though.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
This game looks like almost everything I hope for. Yet on behalf of every Bruce Campbell lovin' maniac out there I have to ask this question:
Can I use a chainsaw?
Good article Bill. Keep on them about three-faction warfare!
I'm curious what your alternative is.
I can see what you mean about SWTOR, since it seems to be on the traditional "follow the yellow brick road" model where you have to do certain quests in a certain order simply because there is only a limited amount of content created for each level range. I've grown to hate that, too, so I can definitely understand your frustration.
But from what I've seen so far of TSW, the "horizontal" idea seems to include the freedom to travel to whichever zone you like and do whatever missions you feel like, because there are no levels limiting you to specific content. I could be wrong about this, I guess, since the info we have to go on is incomplete.
I just wonder how you imagine a game with no sort of quest/mission structure at all? The only alternatives I know of are either aimless wandering or dynamic events. And note that even GW2, which is pushing the idea of events really hard, also has the "personal story" which sounds suspiciously like a questline - just one that has been tailored to the choices you made at character creation, which injects a little more variety.
_____
Bright indications singe cool undisciplined hours.
Yes you can use a chainsaw!! Heck they even have zombies/golems with chainsaws in the game..
The Secret World will have immersive in-game browsing... Each player will have a PDA or iPad equivalent on their character.
Going on the internet to research clues could be awesome. They could do something like create a youtube video that has specific search tags from the game. The video could contain clues that help you solve the mystery. The internet is choc full of fun things you can mess with that the developers could use to their advantage. They could make strange wikipedia entries on various topics for you to discover, or urban dictionary definitions that they made up to give you clues on how to figure stuff out in the game.
that would be the goods.
And the Pillar of Freedom is void yet again.
Guide my hand through everything, please.
Been there, done that.
I've had TSW , SWTOR on radar for awhile, along with recent interest in Tera and Blade & Soul. Believe it or not TSW is winning out on my vote atm. While I will admit none of the games look like they will offer what I am truly looking for in my MMO. Which is to live and feel like a citizen of the universe I am in and not a combantant, unless I choose to be. Sorta like how SWG was in the first 1-2 years of release before it got destroyed.
My only worry is that while having only 7 active skills the gameplay itself can get a bit boring. After watching all the videos I've found so far, it looks like the players are all just one trick ponies. "Look at me, casting a fireball here. And again. And again. *sigh* And again...".
I just fear that the combat is so dumbed down you fall asleep while fighting. Let's hope not though. I'm really looking forward on this game!
YESSS!!!
.....And baseball bats too, right? I'm gonna go all Zombie Land on these guys. =D
If dynamite, a baseball bat, and duct tape can't fix it, then you've got a serious problem.
Not always:
In The Secret World, for example, different mission types require a different feeling of flow.
Action Missions – We tend to be fairly heavy handed here. Action missions will lead the player from point to point, dealing with enemies and obstacles along the way.
Sabotage Missions – These are more open, but not completely freeform. Yes, we want players to use their skills and abilities to find the way into the pumping station, but we still tell them where the pumping station is!
Investigation Missions – Here we tend to be completely freeform. We don’t guide players at all. We let them find the path with no attempt to guide them beyond the most subtle of clues.
So yeah, sometimes they will guide you, other times they'll be like; Ok this is what you gotta do. So...*shoves you out of the helicopter* HAVE FUN!!!
Not really, but you get what I mean.
If dynamite, a baseball bat, and duct tape can't fix it, then you've got a serious problem.