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The Secret World MMO
12 years ago
General
So... about a week ago, Monday the 13th, I got a copy of Funcom's MMO The Secret World and after a bit of disgust at realizing I bought something that was attached to EA (I didn't realize it until I loaded it up and saw the logo) I rolled a character and started playing.
Its been ten days now.
According to Steam I have spent about 87 hours playing this game since I bought it ten days ago. Thats eighty seven hours out of two hundred and forty hours.
For some perspective on that...
I've clocked 91 hours playing Elder Scrolls VI: Oblivion.
I've clocked 76 hours playing Fallout 3.
I've clocked 120 hours in Fallout New Vegas.
I've clocked 340 hours in Skyrim.
So yeah. In ten days I've played this more than Fallout 3, almost as much as Oblivion, close to Fallout New Vegas, and about one forth as many hours as I've put into Skyrim.
In ten DAYS I have played this as much or more than some of my favorite Bethesda games.
I dunno how much better of an endorsement I can give this game. It has me hook, line, and sinker.
Its probably that it just happens to hit all the right buttons with me, which I will list below.
Setting and premise:
Its 2011. You woke up one night in your apartment after having a bizarre dream and discovered you now have supernatural powers. A week later a strange person comes to your front door and recruits you to either the Illuminati, the Templar, or the Order of the Dragon. From there you have to master your newfound Anima powers and use them to further your group's goals while indirectly saving the world from supernatural threats, mad sorcerers, undead monsters, ancient evils, and freakin' Chuthulu himself.
Your travels will take you from the misty forests of Maine to the sunbaked ruins of Egypt to the haunted mountains of Transylvania to the gorgeous city of Venice and more. During this time you learn to channel your anima through a weapon to achieve superhuman feats. Whether this weapon is a melee tool like a sword or hammer, a gun (in which your anima becomes it's ammunition and is fired like bullets), or even a fetish or icon that allows you to use magic you will use to to fight back the dark forces amassing against humanity.
Character Creation/Customization:
You can only be human, though you can choose a lot from there. Height, facial shape, basic outfit, hairstyle, hair and eye color, the usual. Once in the game however you can buy or earn a wide variety of clothing for your character. They don't have everything, but I found an outfit for each of my characters that I like.
You choose one of three factions to join during character creation.
- The Illuminati: Sex, drugs, and Rockafeller. These guys have been driving politics and corporations since before America was anything but a few British colonies. They're the guys who pull the hidden strings, who own entire states worth of politicians, and who help decide elections, all in the name of their bottom line. The Illuminati is a corporation at it's heart. When they terminate an employee, they don't mix a metaphor. Their 'labrynth' is hidden underneath Manhattan Island in New York City.
- The Templar. Formerly the Knights Templar, they've loosened the religious ideals in favor of saving humanity as a whole from the monsters who would devour, corrupt, or enslave them. Sacrifices must be made to save humanity as a whole, but they believe in their goal. The Templar are hardcore rivals of the Illuminati, eager to show them up at every opportunity. They're based out of London, England.
- The Dragon. The Cult of the Dragon breeds butterflies, throws coins, and rolls dice, ever seeking the patterns hidden in chaos. Their agents are sent out as agents of change. They are the wrench in the plans, the butterfly that causes hurricanes, the coin toss that decides fates, the dice that turn a prince into a pauper. They're the most mutable of the societies, constantly changing and shifting as needed. Currently they're hidden in Seoul.
Classes:
Three words: There aren't any.
In the intro quest you get sent to a training room and get to experiment with weapons, three types with three sub-types, and then pick one as your starting weapon. Players can stick with it or pick up a second one as they go. There are NO classes. You can mix and match as you like and use whatever suits you. Want to carry a pair of handguns and a hammer for smashing the monsters that get too close? Fine. Want to fry your enemies with a magic fireball and dice up the remains with a sword? Go for it! Have an assault rifle to shoot holes through a swarm of zombies before conjuring a puddle of boiling blood under their feet? Godspeed ya mad bastard!
There's three main types, with three subtypes for each as I said above.
Melee:
Swords: One handed sword weapons. Mostly a defensive weapon that is used to block attacks as well as perform AoE attacks.
Fist Weapons: Claws, brass knuckles, and so on. Land a devastating combo and then scrape your claws together so the sparks cauterize your own wounds to heal you. You learn healing abilities with these as well as some powerful fighting techniques.
Hammers: Technically this also includes large axes as well as makeshift weapons, but I guess 'random two handed smashy things' was too wordy. This is all offense. Hammer in the morning, hammer in the evening, hammer some shoggoth skulls.
Ranged:
Dual Pistols: This is a support weapon as much as a damage dealer. Lay down a field that weakens an enemy's defenses, launch an explosive bullet that stuns enemies, or even summon a little helper drone. A versatile weapon type that's good in many situations.
Shotgun: Groovy~ The name says it all, the classic zombie hunting tool. Blow your foes into chunky meatybits. Pure offense and very messy.
Assault rifle: Somehow you get healing skills (don't ask me how, this is one of the ones I didn't try), but everything from the popular black military issue rifles to the fan favorite AK-47. Dakka!
Magic:
Elementism: All offense here guys. Elementism is what people think of when they think MMO magic. Fireballs, lighting bolts, and more. Blow a zombie's head right off with a well placed blast of flame, then electrocute his buddies.
Chaos: A more defensive school of magic, sort of magically enhanced martial arts. Land combos charged with chaotic energy and conjure weapons from your thoughts, then dodge an incoming attack by tweaking probability so that it -just- misses you.
Blood: My personal favorite, a darker school of magic that focuses on inflicting disease and suffering on your foes while protecting yourself with an armor of coagulated blood. Sacrifice your own health to power up your magic for a short time as well.
There are also auxiliary weapons that you can unlock by doing quests for them, but I haven't managed to get any practice with them. I have one of them now, the Quantum Bracelet, but I haven't managed to get enough points to actually equip it yet. The other ones are a whip, rocket launcher, flamethrower, and chainsaw.
... yes, you can have a chainsaw and a shotgun. Like I said, Groovy~
Leveling:
As for leveling your character... you don't, sort of. You won't see a level 20 Illuminati guy or a level 50 Templar in this game. You gain AP and SP as you go along, earning them by killing monsters and such.
You spend AP to get abilities related to your weapons (you have to have the right weapon equipped to use them though. You can't use pistol attacks with a shotgun or blood magic with a sword... unless you have both weapons equipped anyways).
SP is used to unlock weapon skill levels and the ability to equip better talismans (armor). The stronger you are with a weapon the better quality weapons you'll be able to equip and use as well as getting other bonuses. For example:
- The higher your offensive skill is with blood magic the bigger a damage buff you get while Blood Sacrifice is active.
- Points spent in healing with claw weapons make every claw heal give you 'Warmth', which increases how much healing your abilities do.
Combat:
Fighting is a mix of classic MMO stuff with some action elements. You use your abilities to deal damage and dodge around enemies as you go. Some enemies will telegraph their moves (shown as a white outline on the ground). Get out of the outline before their attack goes off and you can dodge it completely, though if you don't it'll usually do a hell of a lot of damage, inflict status effects, and more. I rather like this as it means I can avoid the nastier attacks if I stay on my toes, rather than just hacking away as they hack away and whoever hacks the best wins.
Questing:
It wouldn't be an MMO without it and we know it... but this is where TSW really shines.
Every major quest opens with a fully voiced cutscene showing your character interacting with the questgiver and giving you some backstory into the quest, what they want, and why they want it.
Quests are separated into tiers. Sometimes they're just a few tiers and short and simple... Go here, kill X baddies, do something, turn in for shiny things.
Others... well... this is where it gets fun~
Action quests are the typical MMO fare. Go beat up a bunch of monsters for fun and profit. Often they'll have you do other things such as collect items for body parts from them for some purpose or try to lure out some bigger monster, but the main focus of these quests is fighting and combat.
Sabotage quests require stealth and cunning. In these quests you cannot cannot CANNOT get caught! Either you'll have to start over (the guards will throw you out), or you'll have to start over (the monsters will go 'MANFLESH' and then bleeding happens). The goal of these involves finding a solution to a problem. Monsters can't see you if you walk behind them, so if you pay attention you can avoid combat completely... and then you step into the path of a security camera, step on a land mine, set off an electronic eye, or something goes wrong and it's a mad dash while spamming healing/defensive spells to get to safety or at least closer to your goal before you go belly up. Frustrating at times, but very satisfying once you finish.
Investigation quests are my favorites. TSW is all about mystery and intrigue and these quests actually require research and thought. No quest helper for you guys! If you want to find the secret of the Illuminati tunnels you'll have to figure out what that scrap of paper with a reference to Psalms means and how it relates to the tiles on the floor with letters on them on your own! Even if you don't get the Steam version of the game it comes with it's own built in browser and it fully expects you to use it to find these out. One quest had me looking up the ISBN number of a book on Amazon.com because it was the password to a guy's computer, another had me going to a fully designed website for the Orochi Group (a fictional company from TSW) to find a link to the website of one of their subsidiaries (also fictional) so that I could figure out how to repair an antenna at an airbase and spy on transmissions.
The investigation quests are amazing, they make you think, which is a hell of a change to normal MMO fare. You may have the greatest sword of all swords, once wielded by the lost king of swords, but unless you can figure out what the four statues are for and what you have to do with them to get the door open you're shit outta luck, raid gear or not.
Lastly, the Main (story) quests. These are HUGE quests that follow the storyline for an entire region of the game and stretch from the moment you first set foot there until you leave. They're the missions handed to you by your superiors in whichever conspiracy you belong to. My current one, which is in Transylvania, is 29 tiers long. The first one for Maine took me an entire week to complete.
Needless to say, this game gets a definite recommendation from me. If you have the cash (about $30 for the main game, $50 for the version with all the current DLC) its well worth the price. I haven't been able to stop playing it since I got it and now I've got one of my friends hooked as well.
I don't like EA, but they have a real winner with this one. I have to give them that.
http://www.thesecretworld.com/
Its been ten days now.
According to Steam I have spent about 87 hours playing this game since I bought it ten days ago. Thats eighty seven hours out of two hundred and forty hours.
For some perspective on that...
I've clocked 91 hours playing Elder Scrolls VI: Oblivion.
I've clocked 76 hours playing Fallout 3.
I've clocked 120 hours in Fallout New Vegas.
I've clocked 340 hours in Skyrim.
So yeah. In ten days I've played this more than Fallout 3, almost as much as Oblivion, close to Fallout New Vegas, and about one forth as many hours as I've put into Skyrim.
In ten DAYS I have played this as much or more than some of my favorite Bethesda games.
I dunno how much better of an endorsement I can give this game. It has me hook, line, and sinker.
Its probably that it just happens to hit all the right buttons with me, which I will list below.
Setting and premise:
Its 2011. You woke up one night in your apartment after having a bizarre dream and discovered you now have supernatural powers. A week later a strange person comes to your front door and recruits you to either the Illuminati, the Templar, or the Order of the Dragon. From there you have to master your newfound Anima powers and use them to further your group's goals while indirectly saving the world from supernatural threats, mad sorcerers, undead monsters, ancient evils, and freakin' Chuthulu himself.
Your travels will take you from the misty forests of Maine to the sunbaked ruins of Egypt to the haunted mountains of Transylvania to the gorgeous city of Venice and more. During this time you learn to channel your anima through a weapon to achieve superhuman feats. Whether this weapon is a melee tool like a sword or hammer, a gun (in which your anima becomes it's ammunition and is fired like bullets), or even a fetish or icon that allows you to use magic you will use to to fight back the dark forces amassing against humanity.
Character Creation/Customization:
You can only be human, though you can choose a lot from there. Height, facial shape, basic outfit, hairstyle, hair and eye color, the usual. Once in the game however you can buy or earn a wide variety of clothing for your character. They don't have everything, but I found an outfit for each of my characters that I like.
You choose one of three factions to join during character creation.
- The Illuminati: Sex, drugs, and Rockafeller. These guys have been driving politics and corporations since before America was anything but a few British colonies. They're the guys who pull the hidden strings, who own entire states worth of politicians, and who help decide elections, all in the name of their bottom line. The Illuminati is a corporation at it's heart. When they terminate an employee, they don't mix a metaphor. Their 'labrynth' is hidden underneath Manhattan Island in New York City.
- The Templar. Formerly the Knights Templar, they've loosened the religious ideals in favor of saving humanity as a whole from the monsters who would devour, corrupt, or enslave them. Sacrifices must be made to save humanity as a whole, but they believe in their goal. The Templar are hardcore rivals of the Illuminati, eager to show them up at every opportunity. They're based out of London, England.
- The Dragon. The Cult of the Dragon breeds butterflies, throws coins, and rolls dice, ever seeking the patterns hidden in chaos. Their agents are sent out as agents of change. They are the wrench in the plans, the butterfly that causes hurricanes, the coin toss that decides fates, the dice that turn a prince into a pauper. They're the most mutable of the societies, constantly changing and shifting as needed. Currently they're hidden in Seoul.
Classes:
Three words: There aren't any.
In the intro quest you get sent to a training room and get to experiment with weapons, three types with three sub-types, and then pick one as your starting weapon. Players can stick with it or pick up a second one as they go. There are NO classes. You can mix and match as you like and use whatever suits you. Want to carry a pair of handguns and a hammer for smashing the monsters that get too close? Fine. Want to fry your enemies with a magic fireball and dice up the remains with a sword? Go for it! Have an assault rifle to shoot holes through a swarm of zombies before conjuring a puddle of boiling blood under their feet? Godspeed ya mad bastard!
There's three main types, with three subtypes for each as I said above.
Melee:
Swords: One handed sword weapons. Mostly a defensive weapon that is used to block attacks as well as perform AoE attacks.
Fist Weapons: Claws, brass knuckles, and so on. Land a devastating combo and then scrape your claws together so the sparks cauterize your own wounds to heal you. You learn healing abilities with these as well as some powerful fighting techniques.
Hammers: Technically this also includes large axes as well as makeshift weapons, but I guess 'random two handed smashy things' was too wordy. This is all offense. Hammer in the morning, hammer in the evening, hammer some shoggoth skulls.
Ranged:
Dual Pistols: This is a support weapon as much as a damage dealer. Lay down a field that weakens an enemy's defenses, launch an explosive bullet that stuns enemies, or even summon a little helper drone. A versatile weapon type that's good in many situations.
Shotgun: Groovy~ The name says it all, the classic zombie hunting tool. Blow your foes into chunky meatybits. Pure offense and very messy.
Assault rifle: Somehow you get healing skills (don't ask me how, this is one of the ones I didn't try), but everything from the popular black military issue rifles to the fan favorite AK-47. Dakka!
Magic:
Elementism: All offense here guys. Elementism is what people think of when they think MMO magic. Fireballs, lighting bolts, and more. Blow a zombie's head right off with a well placed blast of flame, then electrocute his buddies.
Chaos: A more defensive school of magic, sort of magically enhanced martial arts. Land combos charged with chaotic energy and conjure weapons from your thoughts, then dodge an incoming attack by tweaking probability so that it -just- misses you.
Blood: My personal favorite, a darker school of magic that focuses on inflicting disease and suffering on your foes while protecting yourself with an armor of coagulated blood. Sacrifice your own health to power up your magic for a short time as well.
There are also auxiliary weapons that you can unlock by doing quests for them, but I haven't managed to get any practice with them. I have one of them now, the Quantum Bracelet, but I haven't managed to get enough points to actually equip it yet. The other ones are a whip, rocket launcher, flamethrower, and chainsaw.
... yes, you can have a chainsaw and a shotgun. Like I said, Groovy~
Leveling:
As for leveling your character... you don't, sort of. You won't see a level 20 Illuminati guy or a level 50 Templar in this game. You gain AP and SP as you go along, earning them by killing monsters and such.
You spend AP to get abilities related to your weapons (you have to have the right weapon equipped to use them though. You can't use pistol attacks with a shotgun or blood magic with a sword... unless you have both weapons equipped anyways).
SP is used to unlock weapon skill levels and the ability to equip better talismans (armor). The stronger you are with a weapon the better quality weapons you'll be able to equip and use as well as getting other bonuses. For example:
- The higher your offensive skill is with blood magic the bigger a damage buff you get while Blood Sacrifice is active.
- Points spent in healing with claw weapons make every claw heal give you 'Warmth', which increases how much healing your abilities do.
Combat:
Fighting is a mix of classic MMO stuff with some action elements. You use your abilities to deal damage and dodge around enemies as you go. Some enemies will telegraph their moves (shown as a white outline on the ground). Get out of the outline before their attack goes off and you can dodge it completely, though if you don't it'll usually do a hell of a lot of damage, inflict status effects, and more. I rather like this as it means I can avoid the nastier attacks if I stay on my toes, rather than just hacking away as they hack away and whoever hacks the best wins.
Questing:
It wouldn't be an MMO without it and we know it... but this is where TSW really shines.
Every major quest opens with a fully voiced cutscene showing your character interacting with the questgiver and giving you some backstory into the quest, what they want, and why they want it.
Quests are separated into tiers. Sometimes they're just a few tiers and short and simple... Go here, kill X baddies, do something, turn in for shiny things.
Others... well... this is where it gets fun~
Action quests are the typical MMO fare. Go beat up a bunch of monsters for fun and profit. Often they'll have you do other things such as collect items for body parts from them for some purpose or try to lure out some bigger monster, but the main focus of these quests is fighting and combat.
Sabotage quests require stealth and cunning. In these quests you cannot cannot CANNOT get caught! Either you'll have to start over (the guards will throw you out), or you'll have to start over (the monsters will go 'MANFLESH' and then bleeding happens). The goal of these involves finding a solution to a problem. Monsters can't see you if you walk behind them, so if you pay attention you can avoid combat completely... and then you step into the path of a security camera, step on a land mine, set off an electronic eye, or something goes wrong and it's a mad dash while spamming healing/defensive spells to get to safety or at least closer to your goal before you go belly up. Frustrating at times, but very satisfying once you finish.
Investigation quests are my favorites. TSW is all about mystery and intrigue and these quests actually require research and thought. No quest helper for you guys! If you want to find the secret of the Illuminati tunnels you'll have to figure out what that scrap of paper with a reference to Psalms means and how it relates to the tiles on the floor with letters on them on your own! Even if you don't get the Steam version of the game it comes with it's own built in browser and it fully expects you to use it to find these out. One quest had me looking up the ISBN number of a book on Amazon.com because it was the password to a guy's computer, another had me going to a fully designed website for the Orochi Group (a fictional company from TSW) to find a link to the website of one of their subsidiaries (also fictional) so that I could figure out how to repair an antenna at an airbase and spy on transmissions.
The investigation quests are amazing, they make you think, which is a hell of a change to normal MMO fare. You may have the greatest sword of all swords, once wielded by the lost king of swords, but unless you can figure out what the four statues are for and what you have to do with them to get the door open you're shit outta luck, raid gear or not.
Lastly, the Main (story) quests. These are HUGE quests that follow the storyline for an entire region of the game and stretch from the moment you first set foot there until you leave. They're the missions handed to you by your superiors in whichever conspiracy you belong to. My current one, which is in Transylvania, is 29 tiers long. The first one for Maine took me an entire week to complete.
Needless to say, this game gets a definite recommendation from me. If you have the cash (about $30 for the main game, $50 for the version with all the current DLC) its well worth the price. I haven't been able to stop playing it since I got it and now I've got one of my friends hooked as well.
I don't like EA, but they have a real winner with this one. I have to give them that.
http://www.thesecretworld.com/
