this game is really good didnt expect that one coming

its a fresh air to the mmo genre along gw2

epic skill system

awesome lore

incredible atmosphere...ofc they r some cons like character creation wich is horrible (aion remains the best to date) and animation combats..they need to fix those asap.

but everything else is pure awesomness

Originally posted by Sebber

This is so bias, if you look at some of the review's they don't even give scores yet.... The scores is just made up by Funcom.

yep and gamespot is one of them

waiting their reviews since its the best video game site in the world like it or not

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Originally posted by Baddogbill

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Originally posted by bcbullshit http://thesecretworld.com/news/first_press_reviews_and_ratings   Kinda scary to me. Reviews like this bring in a different crowd. I hope FC sticks to their guns. 

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Is this as good a rating as SWTOR had after a week?....kinda scary to me also next thing ya know shit on a stick will get a 97% rating (well in this case it has )

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SWTOR got game of the year only like a week after release. Goes to show that these reviews are all a bunch of crap.

TSW is so underrated in those reviews

Originally posted by Arawulf

I wholly believe that an MMO should never be rated until after a full month of play.

That's rather ignorant of you, since the press have had access to the closed beta for over a month.

Originally posted by Skuz

Originally posted by Arawulf

I wholly believe that an MMO should never be rated until after a full month of play.

That's rather ignorant of you, since the press have had access to the closed beta for over a month.

And there's never any change between a CB product and the released one of course.

Originally posted by tares

Originally posted by Derpybird

Originally posted by MattVid

I can't take review sites seriously anymore.

The fact is, I play the game and see if I like it. If I don't, I don't buy it. If I do, I buy it. I am done being spoonfed all the BS from media, especially since they never know what they are talking about anyways.

Games go from "glowing reviews" to "desert wasteland" in a month, they need to hire some people that actually know what they are talking about with gaming. Most flaws are easily spotted in just a few hours of play. A day one review of an MMO is just completely pointless, unless it was very negative.

Agreed.

Case in point:

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/star-wars-the-old-republic/critic-reviews

 

And really, given that these game sites depend on the ad revenue from the games that they are reviewing, how unbiased can those reviews be? When was the last time you saw a negative or highly critical initial review?

Meta critic has the meta score of 72 and a couple of those reviews put the game on blast.  What does TSW do that SWTOR didn't do? TSW has a few investigate quest and puzzles while SWTOR has morality or at least multiple choices for every quest. The thing many people raged over in SWTOR is a lack of endgame, TSW has the same issue.

What worries me is that over 100 user reviews went up within 24 hours all scoring it a (10) on many different websites.  It shows how easy it would be for a guild, company, employees, or anything to skew the user rating systems. So how do we choose what games to play now, play all 1000 games that come out each year?
 

TSW does NOT have a lack of endgame. It's preobably the themepark in recent years with most to do at endgame.

Originally posted by Arawulf

I wholly believe that an MMO should never be rated until after a full month of play.

You are absolutely right about that.

Originally posted by Niimarr

Originally posted by Arawulf

I wholly believe that an MMO should never be rated until after a full month of play.

 

You are absolutely right about that.

that doesn't sell banner ad crap.... the game is a blast - nice graphics [yes, the characters could use some work] good combat [yes, the animations could use some work], excellent, engrossing puzzles [just some investigative quests... please... when was the last time you HAD to listen to the quest giver? or use your eyes? or use your mind?] It actually feels like there is TSW and then the old stuff... you know, the WoW type games... kill ten pigs... be sure and bring a healer, tank and dps for that... BUT sites make ad $$$$ based on their traffic and if they all bite the hand that feeds them by annointing TSW as the new model... so we get trolls... kill me ten trolls... now there's a quest.

Is it the game for EVERYBODY? Probably not, there will always be a market for twitch fest, old games... kind of a nostalgia thing... remember when we were at band camp and we were playing Wow? My kids at band camp this summer and she's playing Wow too...:).... ah fun.

No farmers, no bots, no serious grind... closest is that pain in the ass Norma Creed with all her frickin zombies... goal oriented, ADULT game... that's the thing... this is not a game for end-game grinders... the value is the journey not the destination, btw... you don't wear armor .. so that's not a big deal, a little bit of weapon usage leveling... but it's all about the skills- that's it... it's all about YOU Bunkie... no +5 Magical Sword of Omigawd is gonna save you if you don't know how to use it... but here at least, if you've spent a point on knowing what end of it to hold, you can use.

Yes, people are gonna screw up builds [yawn... take an hour and rebuild] the skill wheel rewards some effort... take it or don't, is no try.... yes, some of the quests are bugged... gee at launch? under load? wow! what a cluster that is...

I've been playing since April [when I started playing, we had to walk to a quest, UPHILL - both ways! in a blizzard <,<, with wild dogs trying to eat us.... no wait, that WAS the quest]

Point is, it's different, in a lot of different ways and if you come at it with preconceptions, you will likely be disappointed. Case in point, The Boogie Man... yes. you have to get it on with THE Boogie Man....

My main was wavering between tanky-dps and dps-y tank... until that fight and scraping myself off the wall after TBM wasted me for the 8th time... now, she's pure DPS and getting DPSer more each day.... and as a pure fighting machine, I was able to take TBM down... then my little wife had her shot at him...

She was running a pure heals build and got taken out 4 times... I helped her set up her skills a bit different [added some blood magic offence and dropped some "other people" heals....

Well, it took 15 minutes [yes, it really did] and she kited him from here to there and back... but she took him out... big deal, I hear you say, so what, I hear you say... well I watched the fight... the boss fought her DIFFERENTLY than me... reactive AI is very nice I say... adapts to what you're doing, I say... forces you to change what you do on the fly.... fastest way to die in a boss fight is to stand toe to toe.... bosses in TSW do nasty unexpected things.... very nasty and when you least expect....

So there we are... and we haven't even talked about the pvp...

Graphics: 9.5/10 - characters could use some work, not a game breaker but... and some animations could use some work, same thing

Sound: 9.5/10 - creepy fricking stuff, Montague...very immersive and spot on for the mood and place - in battle sounds could use some work

Replay: 8.6/10 - don't think this really applies... compared to other games which encourage you to create an alt-army... the base game gives you three slots... hmmm, there are three factions... coincidence? But ...

Gameplay: 9.7/10 - not a lot of buggy quests - BUT... when the name of the game is solve the riddle, any bugs look worse.

Overall: 9.56 / 10 - course, that's MY opinion and your mileage may vary... it's not Wow, L2, Aion, LotRO, Rift, Tera, DD or GW... it's The Secret World... ;-)

   See ya in the funny papers....

Sylentz

In the current state the game is a 6.5/10 at max because of these issues:

1. Combat is still not refined and reuses 90% of the animations and sounds for the skills. It's just feels unfinished and raw.

2. Engine is not optimized and has many memory leaks, a very unique "play for a while - get lowres textures" bug and the all visible shadow popping issues.

3. Bugs increasing the further you progress:

• Kingsmouth: No bugs, smooth and polished, Poseidon Dungeon bug free (see AOC starter island).
• Savage Coast: very few Quest bugs, Inferno Dungeons has bugs, some of which make you loose the loot.
• Blue Mountain: More Bugs, More Problems... this continues as you progress and the game becomes more and mroe frustrating. 

Originally posted by taus01

In the current state the game is a 6.5/10 at max because of these issues:

1. Combat is still not refined and reuses 90% of the animations and sounds for the skills. It's just feels unfinished and raw.

2. Engine is not optimized and has many memory leaks, a very unique "play for a while - get lowres textures" bug and the all visible shadow popping issues.

3. Bugs increasing the further you progress:

• Kingsmouth: No bugs, smooth and polished, Poseidon Dungeon bug free (see AOC starter island).
• Savage Coast: very few Quest bugs, Inferno Dungeons has bugs, some of which make you loose the loot.
• Blue Mountain: More Bugs, More Problems... this continues as you progress and the game becomes more and mroe frustrating. 

4. ZERO replay value. Once you done it with one character you seen it all. Sad, but a typica problem these days.

 

5. Retail + Subscription + Shop. Makes the transition to F2P easier in the future but is asking a lot from early players.

 

Part from that the game is a real joy to play. I am surprised that Funcomo pulled this off. If they can refine the game and the later Maps/Levels they sure got a winner here.

 

Estimated Subscription time: 3 - 4 Months

Life Expectancy: 4 Years

Free to Play transition: Winter 2013

1.  I think the combat is just fundamentally bad.  It really should have been designed better than it is.  Making every build use resource builders and consumers was a big part of the problem, but there are quite a few other things wrong with it.  This seems to be the biggest turnoff to people.  Playing through all the way to Translyvania and Rank 13 in my faction I can say the combat doesn't really get much better.  I'm still spamming my resource builder and one consumer the majority of the time with the occasional use of a longer cooldown skill.  The game does make really good use of the combat system it has though with really active boss fights that require you to be situationally aware.

2.  The engine works pretty well if you disable DirectX 11.  There is a memory leak, but it only becomes a problem for me after 10+ hours of play.  As long as DirectX 9 (and the in game web browser which crashes the game a lot) is enabled over DX11 performance is decent enough, at least for me.  Enabling DirectX 11 caused my beefy system to crash every hour or so and sometimes other issues such as frame rate drops in certain areas.  There are few graphical glitches too that occur in both DX9 and DX11, for example getting tased and dying will cause your screen to go entirely black forcing you to use reloadui and another one that causes all colors to become washed out forcing you to reboot the game.

3.  I noticed a bit of the opposite.  The first two areas Kingsmouth and Savage Coast have many bugged quests (one of which was fixed in a patch).  Blue Mountain has two.  Egypt only has one bugged quest per zone.  Have had one pop up in the first zone of Translyvania so far too which is almost complete for us.  Haven't noticed any bugs in the instances aside from if someone loots while someone is watching a cutscene they lose the opportunity to loot.  The game is VERY buggy though, that's for sure and a lot of missions could have used a better QA pass (poor multiplayer functionality, poor respawn rates, some missions don't always update properly, etc.).

4.  I agree it probably lacks replay value.  It has a decent enough amount of content (hardcore play can finish up the solo/leveling parts in a week or two, the elite dungeons in another day, no clue on the lair content, I think your estimate of 3-4 months is a decent amount of time for a semi-hardcore player at 2-3 hours a day) moreso than say Rift released with, but Guild Wars 2 will certainly trump it in replay value with more leveling zones (and content in general), WvWvW, and dynamic events.  Yes, it has PvP for replay value I suppose.  Though there might not be much replay value with the current content it's hard to say how often and what kind of future content we'll see out of Funcom.  I'm a bit skeptical considering their rate of releasing new content in Age of Conan wasn't very good and missions and dungeons are far more complicated than Age of Conan ever was.

5.  It's definitely a big turn off to players.  I really wonder if the amount of money they are making from the shop really is more profitable than the loss of subscribers they probably got for having it in the first place.  I'd imagine this game would be really popular (no idea how profitable) if they did away with the sub model entirely.

Overall I'm enjoying the game despite it's issues.  I really love the investigation missions (when they work).  The dungeons are a lot of fun.  The game has fantastic atmosphere.  It's a "deep" game in terms of what content is given to you.

Originally posted by Aerowyn

MMOs almost always get glowing reviews from gaming sites... just look at warhammer online and SWTOR initial reviews...

^^This^^

It's only after the shiny has worn off a game do we get some real unbiased opinions of the good and bad of an mmo.

Originally posted by Arawulf

I wholly believe that an MMO should never be rated until after a full month of play.

+1

I am loving the game but I also used to love SWTOR

the reviews are not biased, however since these are links from their own site, obviously they will post the good reviews only :)

bearing that in mind, I still think this game is very cool and deserves those reviews

Reserving judgement but...  Game reviewers need to eat too?

Most movie critics don't say every movie is great

Most food ciritcs don't say every restaurant is awesome either

Most gaming sites do say that just about every new release is a great game though

ITs hard to find any at all that come right out and say that a game is crap from the get go

Originally posted by Theocritus

Most movie critics don't say every movie is great

Most food ciritcs don't say every restaurant is awesome either

Most gaming sites do say that just about every new release is a great game though

ITs hard to find any at all that come right out and say that a game is crap from the get go

very true.. movie critics give harsh reviews on WAY more movies than they give raving reviews... but if those movie and food critic reviewers got a chunck of change from said movie company or restaurant you think that may butter up their review a bit?

Not going by the reviews, but the game is getting more positive reviews than negative reviews from even players on different website forums including this one. At this point, just like everyone says, wait till the honeymoon is over, but all in all very good game experience so far with me, let's just see how longevity is.