My excitement for this game is strictly because Ragnar is involved. If this game was being directed/designed by Gaute Godager (Anarchy Online, Age of Conan), then I'd be right there with all the other skeptics. Ragnar's games are all pretty much critically acclaimed and he's never been in a leadership position on one of Funcom's MMOs before. That by itself makes me extremely hyped for TSW.

 It is Funcom. Period. Not even worth looking at until about 6 months after release judging by thier past history. They have some great great Ideas and at that point those ideas should be sold to a competant company to make the game.

 Playing this game on launch day is like hiring a personal finance planner that has lost all of their clients money for the last 10 years.

I think Funcom's past hate and track record are actually a benefit to the Secret World.  People will have realistic expectations and that will keep the general hype subdued.  When you have little to no hype for a game that is when they have the greatest chance to grab you and impress you.  If you have unrealistic expectations or hype a game up too much in your head with your own ideals the game will never live up to your expectations.  I have seen it so many times where a friend gets so hyped when they finally play they only play for a couple hours and are left dissapointed.  Then a few days or weeks later if they go back and find what in the game actually suits them they end up enjoying it.

I think it can be true, and I think Funcom will deliver a pretty solid project.  Ragnar is great at what he does, and if you hold Funcoms track record against the game you should be able to also hold Ragnars track record in favor of the game. 

Cautious optimism, tinged by that little "but it's Funcom" doubt lingering in the back of my head.

Something interesting I found that pertains to this topic from an interview:

ZAM: Some of the team came from Age of Conan and are now working on The Secret World; were there any major lessons learned from Age of Conan that really helped inform the making of The Secret World?

Joel: There is a long catalogue of lessons learned but perhaps the ones that are most relevant to people who are "gun-shy" after AoC:

• We try to maintain the consistency of content across the entire spectrum of the game, rather than the uneven polish that Conan launched with.
• We have a much more mature engine, which was responsible for many of the complaints in AoC. We have years of bugfixes done on the game engine.

I will never believe any pre-game hype about a Funcom product.  What is supposedly in the game, shown on demos, etc. will not make it in the final retail launch.  Just a fact of Funcom.

I simply won't buy into any hype for an MMO. If they make a great game, then I am there. If they make a crap game and I shell out 50 bucks for it, then I'm the fool.

MMO companies seem to be immune to the wise words of Bush.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — [pauses] — shame on you. Fool me — [pauses] — You can't get fooled again."

Ill just write something I already wrote during AoC beta. It's Funcom, it must be a trap. Luckily GW2 will be around the time TSW releases, so I wont even think about playing another funcom game after being majorly fucked by AoC.

how can people talk about TSW being hyped? lol, if anything, it gets hate from people that doesn't even know what it is about.

SWTOR or GW2 are overhyped, if there is one thing that you can be sure funcon is doing right this time, is controling the hype level of their game.

just by that you know TSW launch is going to be far different from AoC.

This game has some really interesting ideas but I am very cautious... after all its a FC product and very recently we had 2 examples of what Failcom is able to deliver: the beta access "event" and the last AoC patch...

If there isn't any kind of open beta or trial I won't be at launch and I will wait a couple of months before buying it.

Is The Secret World too good to be true?

Probably, it's Funcom and it would be wise for anyone to take press previews of any game with a pinch of salt. I recall a certain DCUO getting massively good reviews not so long ago. How did that one turn out again?

Funcom's fundamental problem is that they are way too open about what they are doing.  During development they trumpet their wildly ambitious visions, promising to give gamers the moon and the stars, and then by the time their games actually launch, all they deliver is part of the moon on a cloudy night, and even if it's a really awesome part of the moon, people still end up disappointed because it is nowhere close to being what the company had led them to believe they were getting.  If they would just sit on information until it was finalized or close to it, they would probably be a lot more successful due to not failing to meet unrealistic expectations set by their loose lips.

Originally posted by Stofftier

We only can hope that it is true .... the mmorpg genre needs a title again that is complete different frome what else is on the market and being successfull at the same time that the genre can change again in another direction before all got burned out of the same stuff over and over again is my opinion.

 The problem with this is that when a developer does do something completely different from the standard, people lose interest because its not what they are used to, and the uncomfortableness of it all leads to a small population base or niche gaming. And what people also fail to realize is that change takes time to become good. WoW was very EQ like at the start and had its problems, but people stuck with it to make it what it is today. Gamers aren't so eager these days to do the same it seems.

Such as the radical changes in AC2 and EQ2 from the originals, people were outraged and left early. Earthrise was very inventive but no one wanted to stick around and give it a shot. Autoassault and APB both tried different niches from other game types that were succesful, ie twisted metal and gta, but sadly they both never reached any new heights.

So while I constantly hear that people want "change" and "something different" they really do not, and even if a small majority actually does want to see something different, no one is giving any new games the time it takes to make it a good game.

My instincts with TSW are either, wait a couple of months before playing, or just expect a bunch of bugs and problems if I play from day one.

I am looking forward to the game... but not the launch.

Chances are I'll be testing this game too... but even in the off chance I don't get to test it,  MOST games I end up buying if they tickle me.... and TSW has tickled me quite a bit.   Even after multiple requests to stop.

I tried DCUO when it was set to launch and loved the game for what it was... and probably would have continued playing had SOE been able to squash those pesky exploits and put out the content reliably like they initially had planned.   

Funcom or not,  this game looks like it will be something interesting.. and I'm all for giving it a try.  People who stay away from games based on their developer just don't make sense to me.  If I have even the slightest chance of enjoying myself in game,  its worth it to take that chance.  

I'm approaching it with cautious optimism. 

Some of the issues FC has had in the past *cough* Gaute Godager *cough* are not present in TSW and Ragner himself has a winning record.  Looking back in history, AO launched with serious issues with game code, with servers, with accounting and it was a good year before they righted that ship.  AoC launched with fairly stable code, very solid servers, and poor accounting/CS but also saddled with a ton of poor design choices, much of which can be laid at Gaute's feet.  It took Craig Morrison, yanked from AO to run AoC in place of Gaute, a good year to stop the backpedaling, and another year to get some forward motion going.

I'l be in the beta at some point and get a much better view of things, but for now I jsut take notes and read all I can.

Originally posted by Myrdynn

Originally posted by crysent

Honestly its not the game that's the problem, it's the company - Anyone who has dealt with Funcom know's they have a terrible history.  It's taken them 5 years just to fix AoC.  Maybe the game will have great graphics, maybe it will have a great story and nice mechanics, but I'm betting it will be full of bugs, class balance issues and broken quest, then it will take Funcom 5+ years to fix things during which the population will dive bomb until it ends up like AoC -a game with great potential early on, a great idea, a great population at first and then nothing..

 

we know one thing, there will be no issues with class balance.  Its skill based, classless game, where everyone can have every skill

 

People stil think classless games needs no balance? lol you're living in a fantasy world..

Edit. People on this site are getting hyped b/c they game will be classless. Everyone think that this is the fix for all the problems in mmos ever.

Edit2. And if it's true that the game will have sub and cash shop I can bet it will go freemium like AoC in 1 year. There is simply no way FC will be able to compete with f2p games or only p2p games like SWTOR.

"Suzie doesn’t impress easily."

Is it because she is ugly, threatening or what? Unless you wanted to say: Suzie doesn’t get impressed easily. I hate being so picky but this seemed such an awful error.

Anyway, I have stopped getting impressed by what people write or say and rather prefer seeing with my own eyes instead. Hope it is good but after AoC I am a bit more reserved with that company...

TSW was kinda on my radar but wasnt that interested until Suzies article I believe the phrase was "A thinking mans game"  her description of the skils and how they are attained in fact just everything within the article appealed to me,    could it finally be that MMO that strays far enough from the themepark that I can fall in love with a MMO again.

I don't want beta, I avoid the TSW forums like the plague, I to will find out in April (OK so July because we all know its gonna get delayed)  and I must say I am quietly anticipating it.

Actually, I kind of hope everybody takes a wait and see approach. I'd rather not have as many people flooding the servers at launch when I start playing from Day 1.