pauraque_bk | the secret world

Bee sting update: I put ice and neosporin on it and it got better. I appreciate the advice. ♥ I have a doctor's appointment coming up soon anyway, so if it gets worse again I should still be good.

Anyway! Last weekend was the free promotional period for The Secret World, an MMO that came out last month, so

hannelore and I checked it out. A friend of ours has been playing it since beta, so he was able to get us up to speed and answer more questions than we probably could have worked out on our own in three days.

It's a modern-day, real-world setting, which is a nice change right off the bat. The premise seems to be that you're a regular person who is granted mystical powers by a swarm of magic bees(?) and then you get recruited into a secret society that sends you on missions to fight paranormal evildoers around the world.

The questing experience is very different from most MMOs I've played. Some quests present puzzles and mysteries to solve, providing a few cryptic hints and leaving you mostly to explore the world and try to guess the answer. I found some of these clever and engaging, though a few left us with a King's Quest-like feeling of 'man, that was illogical' even after we figured them out. I definitely applaud the concept, though. The game's community seems pretty into it, too. My friend said he got yelled at for giving someone a hint about a quest in public chat. "No spoilers!" they said. :P

There are also stealth quests where you have to figure out how to avoid security systems and such, rather than just blasting your way through. And of course you also get the standard kill-collect quests, though even those can make you think. You may be able to see the thing you're supposed to get on the roof of a building, but still have to figure out a way to get up there.

It's fun to play with a group so you can bounce ideas off each other and see who gets the answer first, but there are a surprising number of solo-only instances that you have to get past to continue with your quests, some of which are decently hard. It's not a game you can get carried through even if you decide to look up all the answers (which would be no fun anyway). Sometimes you know what you have to do, but it's hard to execute.

The combat has a fairly standard MMO feel. Instead of levels you only get skill points to put towards learning different abilities and being able to equip more powerful weapons. You'll eventually have access to every ability in the game, so there's no need for alts, though you can only have 14 abilities and 2 weapons active at a time. I'm not sure how much cherry-picking of abilities will be possible or necessary at endgame. Giving people too many options can backfire and have the opposite effect, where people just pick "the best" skills and most possible builds go unused — more potential choice can lead to less actual choice.

I guess my main concern with the game is how much of its unique feel can be maintained when you've capped all your skills and done all the quests, and you're PvPing or raiding. (Raids haven't been implemented yet, but they're coming.) I mean, when they open a raid they could (and should!) provide challenging attunement quests, but once you're killing bosses, how are they going to successfully make that feel different from killing bosses in WoW or any other MMO? I think Funcom is smart to try to fill a new niche and be something other than "it's just like WoW except the hunter is called an ARCHER zomg", but I just wonder how that is going to translate into keeping subscribers in the long run.

Anyway, it's an interesting game that I'll be keeping an eye on. If you liked King's Quest even when it drove you crazy, check it out. It's not just WoW with a different coat of paint.

This entry was originally posted at http://pauraque.dreamwidth.org/24254.html. Comment here or there.