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[Column] The Secret World: Spying On The Secret World
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The Tourist returns with another jaunt into one of today's hottest games. This week, he takes a trip into The Secret World. See what he discovered before heading to the comments.
Nothing is as it seems. That seems to be the central tenet guiding Funcom’s The Secret World. Everything you see, everything you believe, is a lie concocted to keep you blissfully unaware of the hidden war brewing just under the surface. It is a war between secret societies -- The Dragons, Templars, and Illuminati -- and a war for reality as we know it. Except the balance has shifted. Horrors half viewed from the corner of the eye have slipped into being. Creatures once reserved for storybooks now march on quiet towns and frightened villagers. That’s where you come in, a soldier in one of these armies, and one part of the thin hope our world has left.
Read more of Chris Coke's The Tourist: Spying On The Secret World.
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Comments
Second that, marz.at.play. Great column, well-written and fires up the mood to let's go and play some TSW
Just two small corrections, first it's not a firefly in the beginning, it's a bee, with a small particle of Anima 
And as for the first paragraph, it's quite the opposite... I mean the "Everything you see, everything you believe, is a lie" part.
The core concept of TSW (as it was stated right in the first trailer and many other places) is that Everything is True. Secret societies, vampires, good ol' Jack O' Lantern, witches, wights, the Boogeyman... everything
edit: the ARG's and the real world web presence are great ways to tear down the borders between the game's world and our real one's - or at least what we think is the real one
When I first red Tyler's blog, with several months old comments, way before his Issue... awesome. Or the Sam Krieg fansite. Or the news section on Kingsmouth's own page. TSW is a unique game experience, hands down. Ragnar rocks.
It is a great game worth trying, but... it doesnt have staying power, once you have done the quest lines, you are done with the game. This is really the real problem with the MMO genre these days. The designers havent understood how to keep players around.
Most liked feature : The quest line and its stories
Most hated feature: The weird and awkward hangout place at the center of the earth
Agartha is a pretty common topic, just as Yggdrasil or the World tree in average. I agree, the movement on the branches is a bit awkward... though cool
issue 8 Scenarios= they nailed endgame BIGTIME!!!!-it magnificent!...grindy not grindy i don't care its just pure fun!!!
solo-duo-or group!!! its all there!!!-monsters-they are all there!!!
this game has totally surpassed my expectations of an mmo!!!-so awsome!
ive been spending so much time with my cabal- playing this game, iam beginning to sound like an infomercial!!! cant say enough abt TSW!!!!!
just play it!
i forsee TSW style scenarios getting adapted into other mmo's like events in gw2 did.
I know, right? Like Tyler's last entry from February, 2010 about the evidence he will reveal "soon":
http://www.monstersofmaine.blogspot.ca/2010/02/evidence.html
(ok, I know too that the blog is from 2013 techincally, but let's not ruin the immersion
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I am getting ready to come back, played from launch, and stopped for a while, due to content, but it was one of the few mmos in the past 6 years that I enjoyed. The stories are great, and I usually hit the spacebar in mmos.
I just am not sure how to figure out what all is new and what to do. I will have to probably do a lot of update reading, since it seems a lot of content was added to old zones. I left when Transylvania was the top thing to do, and before the NY raid I think was the next big thing after I left.
I did keep my sub going though, as appreciation, till it went b2p.
The combat is the main reason I'm not still playing. I left soon after launch, not because I disliked the game, but because there were other games I wanted to play more and I didn't think TSW was worth a sub, even though I liked it.
I came back some time ago and played for a while again, doing some new content and such. I had gotten over the 'shock' of the combat system, which I loathed at release. I still didn't like it, but at least I knew what I was getting into (again) and I got a little more used to it.
But after a while it started to bore me; the combat mostly. So I quit again.
The combat system is really TSW's weakest link. I hope they'll 'fix' it some day.
I disagree.
I like TSW, specificaly the quests, they are very well done (but needing to leave the game to find a way to decode morse was a bit too much). The reasons i don't play much is the combat (it's weird, i can't put my finger on it, it just doesn't feel right) and the fact that i'm an altoholic and there's no point in alts in this game.
The introduction to the weapons/magic system could have been done better (i'm gimped because i kept changing weapons/magic because of the weird feel in combat)
Other than that it has some of the best quests i've ever seen and a great environment.
You could have used your in-game smartphone browser (The in-game browser.
As for the combat, maybe it is because my experience with MMO games is short but I have never seen the issue. It works just fine for me.
I will agree about the introduction. Lol, TSW doesn't tell you hardly anything about build theory and that stuff. It just throws you to the zombies... literally....
TSW combat gets boring and repetive in the first area, the moment you stop slaying the zombies and get stuck into single unit mobs that take just a bit to long to kill to feel like fun.
And combat is the main element of any MMO. I quit after a dungeon at the end of the game with grates with vampires on them. I defeated one, noticed the time it took, looked at the endless corridor filled with mobs and sayed "fuck this" and stopped playing.
Games should be fun, not a grind. A grind is called work and I expect to be payed when I work.
Nope and yes. I wholeheartedly agree on the grind one, that's exactly why I avoid the so-called "endgame" in mmo's. Grind sucks, period.
The other is totally wrong. Or at least should be totally wrong, sadly Blizz and their frakkin' diablo did a decent job with infecting the genre with this BS.
In an ideal world combat would be one of the least important elements in an rpg. Same with mmorpg's. True, you wrote simply MMO, and I agree that for example in an mmofps the combat is in the focus, but not in an rpg.
(edit: in a previous thread I actually ranted about the very same, that rpg <> combat, I don't type it here too
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/5994179#5994179 )
Yeah its so great that it practically bankrupt the company.......They didnt even get half of what they were hoping for financially out of this game.
What I don't get is this: TSW has been out for almost a year and a half now (16 mo's).
Why are articles like this still being written about it like it just came out?
Why wasn't this an Issue #8 review (or even a preview)?
Neither IGN, PCGamer, Kotaku, Gameinformer, Gamespot, nor a lot of other gaming sites bother to keep up with TSW. The ones I've found that DO, are Massively, MMORPG, and TTH. Of those three, there was a 'preview' article of Issue #8 on TTH 2 days ago. No review, basically dispersing the info devs have made available about it.
How can this game generate hype with gamers when it does so little to even generate hype among gaming sites?
Maybe because the gaming sites that you quoted like PCGamer, IGN ect ect only focus on new flashy game releases and look toward only to the next new game and rarely at past games unless there is an expansion and sites like here, TTH, and Massively are dedicated to MMOs and not for every new flashy game release that comes out.
This, plus it was one of Chris's Tourist columns, which is not about the shiny new stuff, it's about visiting games "as a tourist" and sharing the experiences.
(actually I'm a bit surprised the poster didn't mentioned the missing rating at the end, since all the other sites are giving ratings...
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It was repeatedly stated at initial launch, and all subsequent initial reviews, that this game was not for everyone. Well that could be said for any mmo.
However, "not for everyone" turned out in fact to be "only for a few". What followed was well publicized.
To some it's the best mmo out there bar none - and for the sake of those players I hope the game continues for years to come and thrives.
To others, it's just not their taste.
Myself - I'm having another determined go with it, but the melee combat............
Gaming since 1985; Online gaming since 1995; No End in Sight! My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8POVoJ8fdOseuJ4U1ZX-oA