Originally posted by Flaming_MMO

 I am predicting they give TSW at the very least a 8.5, but probably a higher score, and as you say, a couple months down the road they will be along with those "what TSW did wrong" columns when the populations dips and the early adopters who hop from game to game grow bored of the latest shiny thing.

The funny thing is that TSW is consistently getting lower reviews from professionals than it gets from the users. It has so far gotten a 8.9 on metacritic and 8.8 on this site. There are a good number of sites like kotaku.com that are in the progress of doing a review, but are so far just giving out initial expressions. To me it looks like the good sites are actually taking their time this time around.

"MMORPG.com is committed to giving our readers the best and most informative reviews of today's hottest MMOs. With that in mind, we're beginning our multi-part series on The Secret World. In today's installment, we take our first baby steps into The Secret World and give you our thoughts about the game. Read on!"

Translation:  We drank the SWTOR Kool-Aid and lost credibility.  This time we're being more careful.

You'll be entering dark mines wearing a mining helmet with lamp and get the pooh scared out of you especially when batteries go flat and it's pitch black.God those red eyes peering at you in the darkness errrhhh

You'll loose your group mates in thick fog while agroing everything trying to find them,you'll be entering parallel worlds trying to solve quests.

You'll need to die to solve others.You'll die and die and so many times you'll just survive by the skin of your teeth.

There are short quests,middle quests and ones that just go on an on.

You'll see scarecrows climb off their poles and chase you,you'll be chasing crows.

Come to think of it even your pet cat or dog chases you.

Then Pvp geezus 100's and 100's going for it and no lag for me just unbelievable.

Then the best bit friends on other servers can call you to join them.All it takes is an invite and bam your now playing with them.

The atmosphere in this game is just fantastic.....Scarey at times and you just  keep waiting for things to jump out.

Anyway for me this has been the best game i've played in a while it really pulls you in.

To think in beta I didn't like Kingsmouth and was not going to play this past the 30 days.

So glad I entered the other areas as I am now totally engrossed.

Originally posted by Thillian

"there is no going back. This was an intentional game design on the developers’ part as they felt it would break immersion. I suppose I can understand that but I don’t know that I agree with it. If a player makes poor choices or “experiments” and those choices result in poor or ineffective builds, not being able to respec one’s character punishes players for trying to do something unique"

This is not a valid complaint. If you picked wrong abilities and wasted a few APs, you can just rerun a couple of missions, and get those AP's back. First I ran through Kingsmouth as a DPS character, then at Savage Coast I realized I want to be a healer, so I reran several important Kingsmouth missions that give a lot of XP - and guess what, in about an hour I had all the AP's to make a viable healer's build, along with healer-item rewards from those missions. 

Now  one could say that I've wasted about 150 APs so far on abilities I'm not using, since they turned out to be not that good, but they are not really wasted points. Eventually, maybe in the later stage I decide to re-do the entire build and focus on different synergies, and find those abilities useful. Who knows.

 

Umm, yes it is.  Not everyone likes re-runs.  On TV or in a video game.  Also, many people don't have tons of hours to re-invest in "fixing" a bad choice either.  If you could respec, ya know, in 2 seconds, problem solved.

Just because a work-around exists, to *anything*, that doesn't mean that it was a bad design choice (to start with), or that you can't have a valid gripe about it.

I was in the beta and more people felt that a re-spec was needed than those that didn't.  Much more.

MMORPG.COM, where 7 is bad, 8 is decent and 9 is perfect. Let me guess, this one will be a 8.6, oh yeah, I have a feeling for it.

The secret world is not refreshing, its the same old crap in another skin. Hell, Conan was more inovative than the secret world. The abilities wheel is alright I guess, but nothing extraordinary, and once again our choices dont matter. Hell how dare a game punish you for making bad choices. Its champion online, its world of warcraft, its all point bulletin. Nothing original about this game, its not because you hold an assault rifle than its any different than throwing a spell with a staff, especialy when you heal yourself with your assaultrifle, sheeeeeeeesh.

Combat is the same old boring kind. Press TAB, cycle your abilites, press TAB. Brain dead gameplay, grinding in kingsmouth beta barely kept me awake.

The atmosphere is decent, they tried hard, they missed the mark by this I---I, but they missed it. Its the uncanny valley really. The environement look nice, but the character look completly retarded and since players have terrible taste we have bimbos running around jumping all over the place shooting their shotgun which completly kill the little immersion the game could have had. There is absolutly no sense of fear, even in a city ravaged by undeads, its a walk in the park, litteraly. Mobs are all over the place, which completly destroy the cenery. Another relic of the old and outdated MMO model.

I have nothing to say about the music, because I always turn that off.

Voice over is nice, but thats not what keep players playing, its fluff and doesn't add much.

In my book thats a 6.5, its decent, it can keep players enterntained for 3 months, it doesn't bring anything really new only some mutation to mechanics that have existed since the first MMOs. The setting is fresh, at the very least, thats all it got for itself.

PS; The crap that usualy get a 6 from you MMORPG.COM should get a lot lower. 6.0 is passing grade, many crap MMO barely played dont pass today's standart(which is very low BTW) and should definatly get lower than 5.

The art direction looks amazing.  The sub fee and fears about endgame are keeping me away for the time being though.

Let me add that DAYZ for ARMA II is actually very popular because its an innovative take on older MMORPG model. You can argue as much as you want that DAYZ is not an MMO, but if its not then its only because they dont have the means to make the game on one single shard since they are only a mod team with zero budget.

Players are tired of the same old crap, they are tired of getting hand held, they are tired of linear models and restrictive environements, they are tired of huge arcadeish interface full of colors clustering the screen, they are tired of choices without consequences...

Games are now advanced enough to provide players with emotions, from AWE to FEAR, going by JOY. You won't feel any of these in so called modern triple A MMO. Instead you will get artificial and uninstinctive worlds. Where other people are only there to block your field of view or spam the trade channel. Where death mean next to nothing, where consequences are null and void.

We needed visionary modders like ROCKET to finaly open the eyes of disconnected developers with tunnel vision. Hopefully the waves he created will transform into tsunamies and we will finaly get a decent MMO before 2020.

Originally posted by Daedrick

Hell how dare a game punish you for making bad choices. 

You didn't play very long if you didn't figure out that you can eventually use every skill in the game and build your personal deck from that.

In fact, rereading your post it sounds like you just plain didn't grasp the combat at all.

Originally posted by Daedrick

Let me add that DAYZ for ARMA II is actually very popular because its an innovative take on older MMORPG model. You can argue as much as you want that DAYZ is not an MMO, but if its not then its only because they dont have the means to make the game on one single shard since they are only a mod team with zero budget.

Players are tired of the same old crap, they are tired of getting hand held, they are tired of linear models and restrictive environements, they are tired of huge arcadeish interface full of colors clustering the screen, they are tired of choices without consequences...

Games are now advanced enough to provide players with emotions, from AWE to FEAR, going by JOY. You won't feel any of these in so called modern triple A MMO. Instead you will get artificial and uninstinctive worlds. Where other people are only there to block your field of view or spam the trade channel. Where death mean next to nothing, where consequences are null and void.

We needed visionary modders like ROCKET to finaly open the eyes of disconnected developers with tunnel vision. Hopefully the waves he created will transform into tsunamies and we will finaly get a decent MMO before 2020.

 

Hate to ask but what game are you raging about? Because to me it really seems you never even tried TSW.

what kind of end game does TSW have? other than pvp.

An objective review with a huge TSW ad in the background and a recent in-game promotion (T-Shirt)?

Possible?

TSW is a fail MMO.  Won't last long.

Originally posted by umcorian

Another fairly glowing review for a new released MMORPG. Suzie, one thing you and the other MMORPG.com staff does is sing the praises of every big-budget new released MMORPG until, suddenly, you stop doing it a few months down the line.

 

SWTOR is probably the best example. You and Bill just had nothing but positive things to say about the amazing game until a couple of months later, you started running the: "where did it go wrong" style columns... it was as if you never had high opinions of the game. 

 

I won't fault the Secret World framework that this site has adopted (no doubt, EA has written them a blank check when it comes to marketing), but glowing reviews of every big-budget product 2-7 days after release have become too expected from this site IMHO. It's something you might wanna consider. 

 

 If you notice, though, their impressions seemed to echo that of many of the players, and people on other gaming sites. The initial "honeymoon" phase was still in effect and everything was new and different and exciting.

Then that sheen wore off and, just like with so many players who went from "Woohooo!!!!" to "Meh..." and left... So, too, did some of the folks on this site. So, really, their cycle of excitement to disappointment in TOR echoes that of a large portion of its playerbase. To me, that would seem to indicate that folks at this site actually do approach these games as gamers, not purely as "journalists".

Where they went wrong, perhaps, was in popping the champain and lighting the fireworks so enthusiastically, so early on.  At the time, while it was happening, I was rolling my eyes at the love-fest being shown for the game. I readily admit that.

Maybe this time they'll give it a little more time to let the newness wear off, let the cracks show as they may, and give their final review from a more "sober" perspective.

"If a player makes poor choices or “experiments” and those choices result in poor or ineffective builds, not being able to respec one’s character punishes players for trying to do something unique." - or punishes them for doing something entirely stupid :) But I wiill say that some skills don't play along with others like you may expect. I actually prefer my beta build to my current more experimental one...I just got my passives finally syncing  up with my attacks decently at QL5.

I was playing with a friends last night. Alt tab out to cheat on a quest we where working on =-P, (at least I dont bother Gen chat) to see it was 4 am PST was like F*** got to log told him it was 4 am he was shockd too. I caught a ton of wife agro today cause her parents where comming over for a BBQ and I had to get the back yard and the pool cleaned up. TY TSW

I am honestly blown away at how good this game is. Totally shocked. I love the combat it is so deep with so many choices. The quests are great and challenging. This is not an easy game, so some people are turned off by that. This is the best MMO I have played since all the MMO's got the WoW treatment.